Well, when it rains, it pours, especially when you are open to receiving your vision in whatever ways it shows up.

A friend of mine has started his own publishing house, Open Heart Publishing, and one of his first projects is publishing an anthology of short stories along the theme of “An Honest Lie: Encouraging the Delinquency of Your Inner Child.”  He asked me if I would consider contributing a story to the anthology and I relished the idea.  I liked the idea so much, I started to write.

As another friend of mine says, “the secret to writing, is writing”.  It’s also apparently part of the secret to getting published.  I wrote a delightful short story called “The Life Boat”.  You’ll get to hear more about it and read excerpts later.

The important part of this life story right now is the value of staying joyfully inspired and motivated toward your visions and being open to receiving opportunities in whatever form they come.  It may not look like the original picture you painted for yourself, but it could be just as good or better in terms of the feelings, experience and even more opportunities you get from taking the leap and following up on what’s presented.

I know I’m glad I started writing and actually submitted something (none of the other people the publisher specifically invited to the anthology submitted anything).  Now I get to play even more in the arena of writer, published author, and speaker.  Even more exploration of this vision of author I’ve created for myself.  What fun!

As long as you keep your attention on the “where you desire to be” end of the rubberband you will naturally and easily snap yourself into that vision. However, if you start to feel doubt or in any other way lessen your attention and good vibration from where you desire to be, you are putting slack in your rubberband and essentially keeping yourself where you are.

To help you stretch your vision rubberband into your future, and keep it tight with good vibrations, I’d like to introduce you to a beautiful NLP guided visualization called Strategic Visioning.

You can download your audio version here:

http://www.catalize.com/catalize_strategic_visioning.mp3

(right click the link and select Save As to save it to your hard drive and play it from there)

In this guided visualization you step into all the details of your vision – seeing it, hearing it, and feeling it.  Then you step out of the vision, but keep a picture of you in it so you have a snapshot of that moment when you arrived and you can easily recall all the good feelings associated with your vision being realized.

Then you stretch your vision rubberband by floating up into the air, above the stream of time, and drop your energized picture into the future date when you wish your vision to be fulfilled.  And now you can relax and allow all the events and opportunities and people to flow into your life with perfect timing, knowing that your vision is complete.

I love this NLP guided visualization because you can use it over and over again, each time adding even more feeling and detail to your experience to keep strengthening the good vibrations of your vision rubberband.

Try it, and let me know how it works for you!

p.s. you may desire to use the Catalize Wheel of Life to help you create visions and intentions for every area of your life and then use the Strategic Visioning guided visualization for each area.  Sign up here for the Catalize monthly newsletter to get your copy of the Wheel of Life … or just follow the instructions on the audio recording for more information on how to create your inspired vision.

The darker days, the magic of the holidays, and the quietude of this season all support you as you go within to discover your heart’s desire and your higher self’s greatest wish for you.

To help you receive your inspired vision, I am gifting you the Catalize Future Self Journey guided visualization.

Catalize Future Self Journey
(right click the link and select Save As to save it to your hard drive and play it from there)

This 15 minute visualization will help you to connect with your most inspired, positive Future Self and through that connection you will discover your inspired vision now.  You can listen to this visualization many times – each time you may get a new insight into your vision.

Oh, and if you would like your own copy of the visioning questions you ask your Future Self in this journey, here they are:

• What is your highest vision for me?
• What must I become to empower this vision?
• What must be released?
• What must be embraced?
• Is there any other information that is needed at this moment?
• What metaphor or symbol or phrase best represents the focus of my vision now?

Many thanks to the Center for Spiritual Living for the input of the questions used in the science of mind Visioning process.

Enjoy your journey and let me know what you are inspired to now!

We had a great discussion about the importance of sincere gratitude in attracting what you want in life – and especially how to avoid the “but” thoughts that sometimes follow gratitude for present circumstances.  You know, “I like where I am now, but I would really like …”

Listen on to hear my recap and the valuable insights of how to use gratitude, the law of attraction, and even work around attracting money in your life by clicking this link:

An Example of Gratitude and the Law of Attraction

Wishing you much success and sincere feeling in your own gratitude and attraction proactices!

Do not write your story like a factual documentary, weighing all the pros and cons of your experience, but instead tell the uplifting, fanciful, magical story of the wonder of your own life and watch what happens. It will feel like magic as your life begins to transform right before your eyes, but it is not by magic. It is by the power of the Laws of the Universe and your deliberate alignment with those Laws.

Now, I believe in this optimistic approach to life. I’ve found over and over again how much easier and powerfully effective it is to focus on what you want (the motivation of desire) than on what “is” that you don’t want and how to get around it (realism?). For the past couple of years I have chosen my daily activities by doing what feels good in the moment, rather than what I think I “should” be doing in order to get where I want to go.

From a Realism perspective, this Optimistic approach to life seems silly, ineffective, and ignorant. From a Realism perspective, you must look at your obstacles and your weaknesses and find a way around them in order to get where you want to go in life. From a Realism perspective, you must do what’s hard, and even struggle, in order to achieve the level of success you desire.

Many of us are brought up with a Realism perspective. As employees, as entrepreneurs, as kids and adults in our society, we’re all taught the motto “no pain, no gain”. And many of us live long lives of struggle with the hope that it will result in yummy results that we can enjoy sometime before we must struggle towards the next goal.

From an Optimism perspective (like this Abraham quote suggests), you don’t need to focus on your obstacles or weaknesses or what you think should be done in order to achieve what you want. You just need to focus on all the good feelings of your desire and let yourself be inspired to take action from that desire and trust it will end in good results. When you use this approach, there is never any struggle and you are enjoying life while you are moving towards your goal, not just for the brief moments after you’ve achieved it and before you set out for the next goal.

So, does this Optimistic approach really work?

Here’s an example from my own life that I feel proves it:

For the past year I’ve done only a few public speaking engagements, even though I knew that more public speaking had been proven by others to increase business. I didn’t want to do lots of public speaking because I didn’t fully enjoy it then. Essentially, I had some mental and emotional blocks that kept me from desiring that action.

From a Realism perspective, I had a weakness to overcome in order to achieve my goal

From an Optimism perspective, I wasn’t led by my desires in that direction (yet).

After a year of “knowing that public speaking would help, but not wanting to do it” I attended Chris Howard’s Presentation and Platform Skills Training. I had the option of attending this course the year before, but it didn’t feel good then – it felt like it would be a distraction from the other business-building activities I wanted to be doing.

So, when I did finally take the course, I was completely in the right state of mind to receive the valuable information and to apply it in such a way that I easily and effortlessly overcame my mental and emotional blocks to public speaking. Now, by acting on what feels good, I’m actually wanting to do more public speaking … and my business is structured to support it.

Could I have achieved all of this sooner if I had taken the Realism approach and focused in on fixing my weaknesses and “just doing it” anyway? Maybe, but it wouldn’t be a fun journey and that struggle might have lead me to drop my business vision altogether since it wasn’t enlivening anymore.

Did I get good results in good timing using the Optimism approach? You’re darn tootin’!

So, if you’ve been using more of a Realism approach, or you’re still surrounded by people who are touting the “no pain, no gain” theory, try your own test.  Pick an area of your life to experiment in and just do what feels good, only focusing on what’s working well that you like and what you desire more of.  And let me know your results!

Well, now here’s a sample of just what you can do with this stuff, especially with all the new improvements to the software (Namely the addition of audio and the ability to save as a video).

Without further ado, here’s my sample vision board … (see my gratitude to resources below)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XE_ajRr2xX4

Much gratitude to Charity Lankford for the use of her song “Peace and Harmony” from her You Are Love album. Check out her site for more on her album: www.charitysmusic.net. I bet you’ll like it as much as I do … in fact I use her Alleluia song on my personal vision board too.

A shout-out goes to my dear friend Kristie Mclean who just happened to be doing a photo project on the word “intention”. And I just happened to have a wad of cash. And she just happened to have an exercise ball to tape the cash too. And well, I got some great images for my vision board!

And of course a grateful shout-out to my partner, Dan Coppersmith, for all the great photos of me while hiking and musing and being. For a nature photographer he does allright with people too.

Oh, and if you like the background image in my vision board it’s my own photo of the Pyramid at Gaylor Lakes (as I call it) from Yosemite. You’ll be seeing more of that image when my book Conversations With Nature is released to the public (stay tuned).

Whew. A blog post will get away from a gal when she’s busy being grateful.

So, if you like what you see and hear that you can do with vision board software, I highly encourage you to get your own copy and start creating today.

Here’s why I think OrangePeel Vision Board is the best:
* Easy to use interface lets you add your own photos and select from a growing image library
* Associate an affirmation/statement and a power word with each photo
* See your photo-word associations on your desktop and as a screensaver … or anytime you want to watch the show
* Choose from several dynamic views of your visions, or rotate through all of them
* See your word associations in pop-up balloons along your task-bar at regular intervals
* Add audio to your vision – uplifting music or even recordings of your own voice telling you how amazing you are
* Save as a video file so you can even more easily share your vision board with others … you can even add it to your ipod!

Get it here: http://www.visualizeyourgoals.com/cgi-bin/t.cgi?a=452787

Sorry Mac users, this isn’t available for you yet (and I don’t know if OrangePeel will make it that way). Let me know if you find a good alternative.

In the meantime, happy visualizing and creating!

Basically, Bandler and Grinder reviewed the transformational work of three very successful therapists:

• Virginia Satir, family therapist
• Fritz Perls, gestalt therapist
• Milton Erickson, hypnotherapist

Using their programming and language skills, Bandler and Grinder took the best methods from these three therapists and created standard, repeatable tools for people to change their neurological pathways into patterns that are more supportive of their desired outcomes.

It’s like magic. In fact, the first book to describe NLP is called “The Structure of Magic”. Most of the co-creators’ original books are out of print, but you can read my reviews of two of them here:

Frogs Into Princes

Using Your Brain for a Change

Personally, I’m one of those people who cares more about the application of a tool than all the many details of how it was created and when and so on. If you’re like me, read on. If you want all those fact-like details, try wikipedia.

What You Experience

A lot of NLP tools that I use are like a guided meditation. Most often I use NLP with a client because they have some stuck emotions or a limiting decision/belief that they created in response to a significantly emotional event from the past.

Using an NLP guided meditation, you’re more able to work with your unconscious mind (aka subconscious) to release the thought and feeling patterns that you created in the past to survive, but that are limiting you now.

When you release an automatic response pattern, you are freeing your naturally creative self to choose from many possible responses and resources. You may still choose to respond in ways you’ve responded in the past, but your response will be a conscious choice instead of an automatic, uncontrolled habit.

Another powerful NLP tool I use often is called “anchoring”. The mind-body connection is amazingly profound, and you can use it to your advantage by associating certain mental/emotional states with physical actions. We can use anchoring to help you associate positive, uplifting states with a certain action – like punching the air with success. Then, whenever you need to elicit that uplifting state (like when you’re feeling down), you can make the physical movement (punching the air) to immediately transform your mental and emotional state.

Anchoring is also key to an NLP tool called the Neurological Bridge that lets you automatically change your behavior patterns, such as from procrastination to energized motivation. I’ve even used this one on myself to move from nervous energy (like before public speaking) to grounded calmness.

These are just a few examples of the powerful NLP tools I use with clients. In all my coaching training, psychology education, and personal development work, I’ve not found anything so easy, quick, far-reaching and long-lasting as NLP.

Principles of NLP

Following are some of the principles behind NLP as I use it:

• You, the client, are always in control. You know what’s best for you and I listen to your intuition as I offer you creative solutions and resources.
• You don’t have to relive the past to heal it. If you are working with significantly emotional events from your past, I don’t have to know what the event is, and you don’t have to relive the experience in order to get the positive learnings and release the automatic response pattern you created then. NLP processes are generally VERY quick and easy.
• NLP will always generate more options for you. Whether you are removing stuck emotions and limiting beliefs or installing a new strategy, the process of NLP will never remove your ability to act as you want – it will only ever give you the ability to act with more variety, including and beyond your current habits. For example, if you are using NLP to remove a stuck emotion of anger, you are still able to choose to feel angry whenever you want … you just won’t automatically feel anger in those situations that are automatically triggering an angry response now.
• There are many ways to peel an onion. We’ll both use our intuition to determine what NLP process is best to use for your current needs. Often, once you’ve released one thought-pattern, another layer of your onion (life) reveals itself to be released. The great news is that with NLP the releasing is very quick and you can easily be discovering new resources and owning your brilliance within just a one hour session.

Other NLP Methods

There are lots of ways that NLP is used by many different kinds of practitioners. You may also hear about NLP in the context of sales, negotiation and influencing others. In these contexts you’re likely to hear about representational systems and what direction your eyes move when you talk about something (up for visual, sideways for auditory, down for kinesthetic or self-talk).

Though I’ve been trained in these NLP tools as well, my focus is much more on the uses of NLP to support transformational change in the context of results coaching. If you’re looking for NLP training or an NLP practitioner, make sure you’re getting NLP in the context you wish to use it … not all NLP is the same.

Try it Out

I believe the best way to know about NLP is to experience it for yourself. If you would like to better understand my methods of using NLP in the context of life coaching, please request a sample coaching session from me following the instructions on this page:

http://www.catalize.com/introsession.html

Sample Coaching Session
$20

Once I receive your Paypal order I will contact you by email to schedule your session. I’m looking forward to meeting you by phone!

Be sure to mention that you wish to experience NLP in your email.

I wish you all the goodness you desire with all the resourcefulness you have within!

]]> http://catalize.com/blog/archives/23/feed 3 http://catalize.com/blog/archives/22 http://catalize.com/blog/archives/22#comments Thu, 21 Aug 2008 23:55:07 +0000 Melissa http://catalize.com/blog/archives/22 Thanks to my friends at Christopher Howard companies, I got this great analogy for the coaching relationship … and how to make the most of it when you’re the client.

Investing in coaching is like buying a lawn mower.

When you buy a lawn mower, you get an instruction manual of how to use it, but you have to supply the gas, and you’re the one who’s got to mow the lawn. (Unless of course you hire that out, but that’s another analogy … called delegation).

When you sign up for a coaching relationship, you may get an instruction manual or some verbal instructions about how to interact with that coach. But no matter how good that coach is at catalyzing your life (aka mowing the lawn), you’re the one who has to supply the passion (gas), and you’re the one who’s got to take the actions (mowing) to make your life (lawn) the way you want it.

Is the coaching (lawn mower) still a good investment even though it doesn’t automatically create the effects you want immediately with purchase?

Well, until you find someone who’s willing to make your life just like you like it (mow your lawn), I’d say it’s one of the best investments in yourself you could make. And with the right coach (one who fits you and your desires well), it’s probably the best investment you could make.

If you want to read the “manual” for coaching with me or you want to give the lawn mowing process a spin, check out my current life coaching offers here: http://www.catalize.com/coach.html

]]> http://catalize.com/blog/archives/22/feed 3 http://catalize.com/blog/archives/16 http://catalize.com/blog/archives/16#comments Thu, 21 Aug 2008 23:35:42 +0000 Melissa http://catalize.com/blog/archives/16 Finding Flow, by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

I love working, creating, scheduling, and being in a state of flow and I align my coaching so that all my clients expect to experience flow even as they are setting visions, intentions, goals and choices of their activities. So, I was really excited to read this latest book on flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (pronounced “chick-SENT-me-high”).

Ironically, even though I was a Psychology major and ran plenty of social and behavioral experiments when I was in college, I was turned off by the psychological approach of this book. It’s not surprising that the book is so scientifically based – Mihaly is a psych prof at the University of Chicago and has done plenty of research on what “flow” is in the context of everyday life. And in the setting of the science of psychology, I’m sure this is ground-breaking work. I just didn’t find it to be “breakthrough” information on a personal level.

I think the best example of what I mean is when Mihaly begins to describe the “autotelic” personality – someone who does activities or tasks for their own sake “because to experience it is the main goal.” The categorization of this personality is helpful, because the associated traits mean this person is more often in a state of flow. After describing how autotelic people are more autonomous, independent and more involved and immersed in life around them – more in flow – Mihaly asks the question “how can we find out if someone is autotelic?”

Now, being a practical-minded coach, I’m thinking it doesn’t matter how to find out if someone is already good at being in flow … I want to know, how do you become autotelic if you aren’t already?

It just goes to show that the questions you ask can make a profound difference on the directions you head in life. I mean, instead of the old expression “it’s not what you know, it’s who you ask” I really think we ought to start saying, “it’s not what you know, it’s what you ask“.

The whole book was filled with categorizations of what it means to be in flow with respect to daily activities, work, and relationships. Psychologists are good at categorizing and drawing conclusions about human behavior based on scientific observation of many individuals. And the general conclusion seemed to be that artists, entrepreneurs, scientists and other creative types are more likely to be in flow more often than people who follow the rules and go through the motions designed by others.

If you like psychology, read the book. If you’d rather find practical ways to introduce more of the joys of flow into your own life, go do something creative.

]]> http://catalize.com/blog/archives/16/feed 0 http://catalize.com/blog/archives/21 http://catalize.com/blog/archives/21#comments Tue, 12 Aug 2008 21:16:56 +0000 Melissa http://catalize.com/blog/archives/21 Stuff has been on my mind lately. I even have a manila folder labeled “stuff”.

Since I moved to Texas a year ago I’ve had a storage locker back in Seattle with some stuff I thought I might still want back there, but didn’t really need here. It’s been a valuable exercise in evaluating what stuff means to me and noticing how that meaning can change over time … if you let it.

The first thing I noticed in this journey of stuff is that it costs a lot of money to have stuff. There’s the original price you pay for stuff, the cost of maintaining it, then the cost of moving it or storing it, and finally the very minimal return you get when you sell or donate it (my accountant recommends 1/4 of the original price paid and I’ve often received even less than that when selling items on craigslist).

This leads me to my second big learning about stuff. The value of stuff is not so much monetary as it is energy. If a $5 knickknack brings me oodles of joy, then it’s worth it to buy it, care for it, store it, and ship it.

And third, that energetic value changes over time. What brought me joy when I bought it as a kid might not bring me joy now, even though I have a long history with it. I can only decide from who I am now, what brings me joy now.

But what if I change my mind and I wish I had back the stuff that I’ve passed on?

After having stuff in a storage unit for a year, I can tell you, most of it I didn’t even remember until I reopened the box. It was a bit like Christmas – new surprises under each layer of newspaper. And it was really obvious which stuff still brought me joy, and which stuff was a nice memory but no longer impactful.

The joyful stuff made it into the long car-ride home and has been integrated into my stuff here. And with that integration process, a lot has been removed from the walls so that the key reminders and most joyful stuff can stand out and receive my focus.

Managing stuff is an ongoing process, but it’s easier and easier when you focus on the joy it brings and ways to honor the memories of the stuff that is no longer fully supporting your joy.

So, how’s your stuff? And what’s it doing for you?

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