Wellbeing Wisdom Tiny Bites

Are you satisfied with where you are in life right now? Are you living the life you want to be living, or is there something that feels missing?

It’s not uncommon to just go through the days in a routine kind of way, not thinking about where you are and where you’d like to be. Today, give yourself 10 minutes to think about your life and how you would make it different than it currently is.

No beating yourself up, please – this is a mental exercise that’ll help you spot the pathways to your new life now.

No matter how old you are, no matter your economic circumstances, no matter your partnership status, no matter your current responsibilities – think about what your life would look and feel like if you could wave a magic wand. Write down where you’d be, what your home would look like, and how it would feel to be living that life.

Start a document or a journal or a diary, and every day, take 10 minutes to re-read what you’ve written and add details to it. When you focus, you teach your brain to focus on it, too.

It’s not too late. You’re not too old. Dream the life you want to lead into being, ten minutes at a time.

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A dear friend had a minor incident between her new car and the garage door. Her husband was with her and had directed her to pull into the garage farther - she was pretty sure the car was in far enough.

Oops.

Her husband was not amused. He yelled and I told you so’d and had a meltdown over the scratches and dents in the rear bumper that the garage door kissed. It would have been easy for my friend to fall into the very human trap of self-recrimination.

My friend is very wise.

Yes, she felt awful and it hurt her heart to damage her pretty new car. No, she didn’t own her husband’s bad behavior. She knew he was pre-irritated for her convenience – the ball game he was listening to wasn’t going well for his team and he was already mad about that. His tantrum was about him and who he is when he’s upset.

My dear friend went into her office and closed the door to let him have his own space and time to get over it and get himself back under control.

Don’t I have a wise friend? Next time something like this lands in your life, be like my friend – don’t own someone else’s failure to control themselves.

PS...want more? Subscribe to the Mind, Body, Soul Sessions podcast, a weekly mental spa treatment for your total self! #success #leader #lawofattraction #personaldevelopment #mentalwellbeing

We’ve talked about love before – it’s such a rich topic, let’s talk about it again.

That brand-new-love feeling is downright intoxicating, right?

Guess what? You are.

When a human is loving another person, place, or thing, that human is producing the love cocktail – dopamine, oxytocin, and norepinephrine. Dopamine makes them feel good, oxytocin makes them feel connection and love, and norepinephrine makes them feel aroused and excited.

Falling in love is a chemical condition that happens inside your body – isn’t that great to know?

That means you can feel the feelings of falling in love any time you want. Simply practice feeling like you’re falling in love and soon you’ll learn to produce the love cocktail inside you whenever you want!

PS...want more? Subscribe to the Mind, Body, Soul Sessions podcast, a weekly mental spa treatment for your total self! #success #leader #lawofattraction #personaldevelopment #mentalwellbeing

Have you ever had this happen – you had a friend you thought was a friend, and suddenly they turned on you?

When my marriage ended, a friend made sure I wasn’t alone on what would have been my 30th anniversary. She threw a party filled with girlfriends, food, and fun. I showed up early to help set up and prep the appetizers, brought desert, and had a lovely time.

The next day she treated me like I killed her dog – I’ll probably never know what set her off, but we haven’t talked since, and that was 8 years ago.

Have you ever had a friend treat you like that, too? Think about it, though…is that how a friend acts, really? No.

They showed you, like mine showed me, that there never was a real friendship there. Move on…their bad behavior isn’t about you and doesn’t deserve another minute of your time.

PS...want more? Subscribe to the Mind, Body, Soul Sessions podcast, a weekly mental spa treatment for your total self! #success #leader #lawofattraction #personaldevelopment #mentalwellbeing

Do you sometimes have little stabs of jealousy when someone has something good happen to them? Congratulations – you’re human.

Because our brains have a negativity bias, if we just go where it goes, it goes to feelings of loss and lack and jealousy. In some neanderthal part of your brain, you’re feeling jealous because you think there’s not enough good for everyone, and when someone gets some, that’s less for you to get.

That might have been true with cave men and food – it’s most certainly not true anymore.

There’s plenty. Really. Trust that – there’s plenty.

Next time you feel the neanderthal in your brain getting green eyes, tell it to sit down and shut up because you have some celebrating to do. Make a big fuss of your friend or co-worker who had good fortune, secure in the knowledge that they’ll be celebrating you next.

Because there’s plenty. And it’s yours, too.

PS...want more? Subscribe to the Mind, Body, Soul Sessions podcast, a weekly mental spa treatment for your total self! #success #leader #lawofattraction #personaldevelopment #mentalwellbeing

Oh, the drama that surrounds an unhappy person!

Most of us learn to manage our own unhappiness – some people displace it. Instead of feeling it and dealing with it, they live by the motto, “when momma ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy.”

Maybe you’ve been the target of that?

A friend from the past contacted me, asking if I kept in touch with someone she met through me. The person she asked about passed away a couple of years ago, and she was so relieved to hear that! She had reached out via text to invite them to a launch party and gotten cussed out!

Apparently the person who has that phone number now isn’t happy, doesn’t know how to deal with that and fix it, so they “if mamma ain’t happy” all over everyone who crosses their path.

When someone like that dumps their unhappiness on you, remember – this is their drama. You don’t have to be part of it.

PS...want more? Subscribe to the Mind, Body, Soul Sessions podcast, a weekly mental spa treatment for your total self! #success #leader #lawofattraction #personaldevelopment #mentalwellbeing

Do you feel anxiety, depression, or a fear of rejection, either occasionally or daily? A lot of people do, and those feelings are helpful to let you know that you’re focusing on something that’s not helping you.

At the base of all these seemingly different worries is one commonality – the need for validation. Through social conditioning and a desire to feel seen and heard, at some point in our lives most of us seek validation.

Listen to me – validation is only for parking.

When you need someone else to value you in order for you to value yourself, you give all of your power to that other person, and that’s a recipe for anxiety, depression, and rejection. If you don’t want to feel those feelings, validate yourself.

Yours is the only opinion of yourself that matters.

PS...want more? Subscribe to the Mind, Body, Soul Sessions podcast, a weekly mental spa treatment for your total self! #success #leader #lawofattraction #personaldevelopment #mentalwellbeing

A friend has been waiting to hear about an application she submitted. It was taking a while…longer than she thought it should, and we were comparing prior experiences with this process. She was worried about so many layers of so many possibilities – reasons that maybe kinda could be coming into play that might be slowing down her application.

My friend went deep into MSU – not the college or university, the mental state of Making Stuff Up.

Humankind learned and passed on knowledge long before the invention of printing presses and written language through stories. Our predecessors used storytelling to share wisdom and warnings and to entertain each other.

Our brains love stories, and in the absence of direct proof, our brains can make up some incredible stories! Usually when we go to MSU, our brain is making up a story that’s far worse than any eventual reality turns out.

When something not optimal is happening in your life, resist the temptation to make up stories about what might be behind it – focus on something that’s within your control and let the other thing play out as it will.

PS...want more? Subscribe to the Mind, Body, Soul Sessions podcast, a weekly mental spa treatment for your total self! #success #leader #lawofattraction #personaldevelopment #mentalwellbeing

The other day a new person showed up in a mastermind group I’m part of. We meet once a week and many of us have been part of the mastermind for years. I don’t run the group and yet when a new person shows up, they might come to the conclusion that I do because of how I treat them.

Dad was career military – we moved a lot, and I was the new girl in school every year or two. It’s an uncomfortable feeling for most people to be the new person in an established bunch of people, and might be shy about being the one to reach out so friendships can begin.

I set an intention at the beginning of this year to make it easy for the “new girls” in the mastermind.

Maybe you can do something similar? If there’s a pain you’ve personally experienced, how can you help others not need to experience it the way you did?

PS...want more? Subscribe to the Mind, Body, Soul Sessions podcast, a weekly mental spa treatment for your total self! #success #leader #lawofattraction #personaldevelopment #mentalwellbeing

Do you enjoy the feeling of regret? OK, that’s kind of a dumb question, right?

What is regret, anyway? Regrets are nearly always about the choice not taken. The simple version is we wish we’d gotten chocolate instead of vanilla ice cream.

In everyone’s life there are more complex versions – words we’d like to take back, a bad career move, or a relationship we jettisoned and now, in hindsight, think maybe it wasn’t so bad after all.

No one enjoys the feelings of regret, yet when you pay attention to your thoughts, you might be surprised at how often your brain beats you up over events from the past.

When regret creeps into your mind, that’s the moment to shift your perspective on that past event. Reframe it in a way that allows you to recognize your growth and your ability to make good decisions. In the ice cream example, remind yourself that vanilla is the most popular ice cream flavor in the world for a reason, and you can always choose chocolate next time.

Catch yourself when you feel regret bubbling up and kick it to the curb – regret is a powerless emotion and you are NOT a powerless person.

PS...want more? Subscribe to the Mind, Body, Soul Sessions podcast, a weekly mental spa treatment for your total self! #success #leader #lawofattraction #personaldevelopment #mentalwellbeing