Are you giving this gift to yourself and others?  

If you’d like to be a better you……have better relationships and live a better life, definitely start out by frequently giving this gift to BOTH yourself and others!

I’ll condense a story from the book QBQ by John Miller

John’s first job in sales was to recruit twenty sales managers to attend a five-hundred-dollar, two-day workshop.

“I was cold calling and working hard but by the time of the workshop, only nine people had registered.”

The day of the workshop, his boss looked out at the participants and said, “I see 20 people.”

John responded back, “I only see nine and I only sold nine tuitions.”

His boss smiled back and said, “I know, but I see 20 because I know you can do it.”

The next workshop was 60 days away and it was like a graduate school class in rejection. One day John made 75 phone calls and was turned down by all of them.

John thought “this is impossible.”

But his boss’s voice kept coming back to him.

 “John, I see 20.” “I see 20 because I know you can do it.”

Hearing his boss’s words again and again, John thought:

“Ok,maybe I can. Maybe I can.”

Have you ever been uplifted by having someone really believe in you?

Someone who helps you see and believe what is really possible for you?

Sometimes, when our belief in ourselves is stretched really thin, we need someone to transfer their belief into us.

What messages do you send to the people around you?

What messages do you send yourself?

Too often, instead of sending positive, encouraging messages like “I see 20!”-we send discouraging messages of doubt, such as:

“Why’d you do it that way?”

“Why can’t you get things done on time?”

“You can’t handle it.”

“You did what?”

“When will you get it right?.”

Each of these say:

“I doubt your capabilities,” 

“I don’t really think you can do it,”

“I don’t trust you to make good decisions.”

When we communicate negative messages like these through our words and actions to the people around us, and to ourselves, we do more harm than good.

Positively encouraging ourselves and other people is a POWERFUL service.

How does it make you feel when someone believes in your potential even when you don’t?
Can you pass that gift on to help pull someone else up?
Can you also work on giving this gift to yourself?

We all deal with vulnerability, uncertainty, and failure.

BELIEVING allows us to move forward in faith and trust that we’ll figure it out.

BELIEVING is the biggest difference between successful people and unsuccessful people. It isn’t intelligence, opportunity or resources.

BELIEVING is what makes it possible and allows you to make progress.

BELIEVING raises the bar on what we can learn and accomplish regardless of what’s happened in the past.

People will often say to me,

“I wasn’t thinking anything.”

“I don’t really have any thoughts going on in my head.”

or they’ll say:

“I have a million thoughts bombarding me all the time.”

The truth is that you have anywhere between 60,000-80,000 thoughts per day so you think A LOT!!

It’s just that you haven’t been trained to think about what you’re thinking, or to take control of ‘monkey mind’ (that’s when you have hundreds of thoughts bouncing all over the place.)  Your thoughts have been going on for so long in the background of your mind that sometimes you just tune them out.  It’s like they’re there but they’re not really there.

Your thoughts are connected to your feelings and your actions. 

 

So, if you’re feeling resentful, angry, depressed, anxious, frustrated—it does have something to do with your thoughts.  Yet some people have no awareness of what those thoughts are.

They say if you asked a fish what water is—they wouldn’t have a clue.  It’s always been there—they don’t even notice it.

Changing your thoughts does have the ability to help you change your life.  

 

Yet, how can we change our thoughts if we’re not even aware of them?  The first step to changing anything is awareness.

Mindfulness helps you become aware of your thoughts. It also helps by give you a pause or a buffer of space between your thoughts and your reactions to those thoughts.

Do a google search and you can find hundreds of articles on research studies and the benefits of mindfulness.

Some thoughts have a positive effect in your life

Some have a negative impact and

Some thoughts have a neutral impact. 

Think of mindfulness of your thoughts like this:

Imagine yourself standing at a train station.

 As you watch, you notice trains coming and going. Imagine that these trains are like thoughts entering and leaving your mind.

 Some of the trains are looking pretty worse for wear and headed to a destination you don’t want to visit.

 Others are looking pristine and rolling along to somewhere exotic.

 Which trains do you allow to pass?

 Which do you hop onto?

 Notice how if you simply do nothing, the trains leave and are replaced with new ones (i.e. new thoughts).

 You can choose to observe the train cars coming and going without jumping on them.

 Mindfulness gives you the ability to allow thoughts that create mental suffering (frustration, anger, anxiety etc)  to pass through and move on without creating so much pain and misery for you.

Notice the trains arrive. Then, watch them leave.

Just like the train, the thoughts come and you observe them without getting attached to them and then you watch them leave, without hopping onto them.

With practice, you will notice that when the thoughts that have a negative impact on your life enter your mind, they will have less of an impact on your life.

I can’t tell you how many hours of frustration I have saved in my life since I’ve used this process to manage my thoughts instead of letting my thoughts manage me!

It’s so empowering and freeing to be able to choose which thoughts you let come and go.

 

That’s when life becomes

easier and less frustrating.

 

Save the date, Wednesday August 22 at 7 pm, for my next webinar in which I’ll share some techniques on how to use Mindfulness to decrease anxiety, frustration and worry.

I’ll send out a registration form next week.

Do you have issues in your professional and/or personal relationships that are weighing you down?

Do you have conversations with people in your mind but you avoid having them in real life?

Are you waiting till you feel ‘ready’ to have the conversation?

There have been many, many times in my life when I should have had conversations and I didn’t.

I was waiting till I felt ready or I was procrastinating because I feared the uncomfortable feeling that would be involved.

• I’ve learned that waiting until you are ready is the same as expecting it not to happen.
• I’ve learned that I need to stop waiting till I feel courageous enough. (I’m still a work in progress but getting better)
• I’ve learned that the person who ‘just does it’ is the person who’s going to win.

What comes first, MOTIVATION or ACTION?

The answer is action. Then motivation follows.

You have to push yourself out of your comfort zone to ‘just do it’ (Nike really did come up with a great marketing slogan)

There’s no other way.

You stop waiting for the right time.

You stop waiting till you feel ready.

You stop waiting till you know you’ll say it right.

If you keep waiting and thinking about it, you’ll increase your chances of never doing it.

What’s a conversation you need to have?

Do you keep using the excuse, -“I’m waiting for the right time”

Waiting makes it worse.

The more we wait

……..the more we think

……the more we think

……the more our brain talks us out of it!

The self-doubt, uncertainty, and worst case scenarios we play over and over in our mind keep us procrastinating and waiting.

We don’t want to:

be rejected.

feel like a fool

be uncomfortable

be criticized

to feel those raw emotions 

The list of fears that keep us waiting and procrastinating goes on and on.

We start to tell ourselves:

Maybe:

“the situation isn’t really that bad”

“the problem isn’t worth mentioning”

“it will get better on it’s own”

“talking about it will make it worse”

“I won’t be able to deal with their anger”

“it’s too sensitive and it’s too emotional to talk about”

Our mind immediately thinks of all the things that could go wrong;

• How awkward and uncomfortable it may feel instead of thinking of all the positive possibilities or outcomes.

As the saying goes, everything you want is on the other side of FEAR.

You have a choice:

Face Everything And Rise 

or

Fear Everything And Run

The TRUTH is:

• You can be afraid and have the conversation anyway.

• You can fear rejection and still go for it.

• Courage is what you need.

 

The day you start to follow your intuition and have the conversations you need to have is the day you will start to feel better about yourself.

Each time you step up and speak up, you will become more powerful.

Nobody else can have those conversations for you.

You need to be courageous, activate the power inside of you and take action.

Listen to what your heart tells you to do-don’t listen to the chatter in your head that tries to talk you out of it by telling you how many things might go wrong.

Take the risk.

Don’t talk yourself out of it before you even try.

If you want to improve relationships, you’ll have to step out

of your comfort zone and have courageous conversations. 

You might not get the response you want right away.

It can take many difficult conversations and rejections

before you get to where you want to be.  

Keep trying.

Five quotes by Thomas Edison.

• “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”

• “When you have exhausted all possibilities, remember this – you haven’t.”

• “Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.”

• “Just because something doesn’t do what you planned it to do doesn’t mean it’s useless.”

• “Negative results are just as valuable to me as positive results. I can never find the thing that does the job best until I find the ones that don’t.”

The more often you push yourself to do it, the higher your chance is of success.

Remember–

If you wait,

You may never feel like it, and

There’s a good chance it will never happen.

If you allow your feelings to run the show, you’ll choose what feels easier rather than pushing yourself to have those conversation you know you need to have.

Do you feel like having that conversation, like speaking up, like sharing what’s on your mind?

The answer is often “no”

Once you hesitate because you–

Feel too:

…..tired

…..scared

…..nervous

…..unworthy

…..vulnerable

You’ll talk yourself out of it.

You can’t always control how you feel but you can CHOOSE how you act.

Feel the Fear and Do it Anyway

Improve your relationships by having one courageous conversation at a time.

You’ll Discover—-You Can Do It.

Make sure to read my newsletter next week on specific techniques to help you have those courageous conversations!

________________________________________________________________________________

Fay Prairie is a Relationship and Mindset coach. She helps set you free from stress, anxiety, worry, negativity, DEPRESSION AND FRUSTRATION so you can start creating a Better You, a Better Life, and Better Relationships.

Check our her counseling/coaching page by clicking here

Fay also provides workshops and trainings.  Check out her speaking page by Clicking Here

Contact Fay to set up a FREE 30 minute call to discover how Personalized Coaching can help you begin making positive changes in your life!

E-mail fay@fayprairie.com

Phone: 507-829-0181