Were You Born to Teach?

All my life, I never thought I was a teacher. I thought I didn't have the patience to teach students, since my idea of being a teacher meant I would be standing in front of 25 or more fifth graders all talking at once, and my brain would immediately begin to smoke from mentally trying to control my patience. Then I moved through life and learned that being a teacher was more than just the formal academic style of teaching; it actually meant I would pass along my knowledge and expertise to those who want it, need it or request it. Wow! How empowering to think I have something to teach another individual. I must say that I highly respect those who teach in formal setting, and my hat goes off to them.

When I realized this, my personal philosophy began to adjust, transform and expand. I made the effort to become conscious of when I was "teaching" and when I might be "learning." It wasn't long before I understood that I was easily and instantaneously flipping between these two roles without interruption. I knew then we all were born to teach, and our teaching careers begin with our first breaths. As we journey through life, our "student" and "teacher" selves are invoked based on the experience or situation we happen to find ourselves in and at which point one of these two energies becomes primary. I was able to discern when my teacher role kicked in, which was when I was being asked to share any knowledge I had to another individual and realized that when I was in "listening" mode my student self stepped forward.

My question to you is, do you believe you were born to teach? If so, what is your personal teaching philosophy? I've spoken about this topic in previous blog posts. But with this new year, the new vibration and the new energy, we're all being asked to step up our teaching games. I didn't quite believe by how much until recently when I was asked to partner with an amazing woman and collaborate on teaching courses. Within the next four weeks I not only will be passively invoking my teacher self but actually standing in front of a classroom teaching. My younger years perspective of teaching is becoming a reality. (Not that I will be teaching fifth graders, but I will be teaching adults. And no, that doesn't mean I'm smarter than a fifth grader!)

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New Year, New Goals

Last year you took the leap and started your own business, or maybe you embraced your inner entrepreneur and set out to start your own business this year. Either way, you've been focusing on what it means to look to the future and set goals. This has been a hot topic with clients over the last month: looking to 2012 and going for it. Whatever "it" is, this is the year they want to step out and step up their game. The challenge, it seems, is knowing the limits, length and distance they (and you!) are willing and wanting to go to create the career of their (and your!) dreams.

Working for yourself, starting your own business provides a great amount of satisfaction; but it's a lot of work to get started. The underlying emotional fear that's holding you back may just be related to money. Do you have the financial means with which to start your own business? From where will the money come if you don't have savings from which to draw? Is your business idea good enough to convince other people to invest in you and your new business? These are all valid questions because it's important to know your own relationship with money, abundance and all things financial.

Your relationship money will definitely dictate how you will perceive the "value" of your idea as well as the "value" you personally bring to the business itself. On the upper level of consciousness you may believe you love money (Who doesn't?!) and the idea of being wealthy. But what has been holding you back until now to step into going after earning this type of wealth?

Your level of self-confidence (for one) and your ability to be honest with yourself (for another). Understanding your relationship with money requires more than just you looking at your past to learn how your spending habits have affected your ability to save or gaining the clarity of why you buy certain products and subscribe to specific services. Having the confidence to honestly admit your inner most thoughts regarding money is the space you want to visit during time of reflection or meditation.

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Holiday Mindset Melt-Down

We're just a week away from the busiest shopping day of the year – Black Friday – and it's also the beginning of the most stressful time of year: the days between Thanksgiving and the kick off of the next year.

For most it means a time of family, friends and great fun, but for others it could mean something quite entirely different. Stress does funny things, but this time of year we're emotionally triggered by numerous types of events and easily fall into the pit of allowing ourselves to become victims.

Victim mentality is a common and hot topic these days, and it bodes well to play the victim role when we need an excuse for certain types of behavior, or we feel we need to be right and validated. Take a minute and think back over the last several months to see if any of these statements have been true for you:

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Confidence + Goodwill = Success

Asking current clients for referrals can be difficult, but for moving forward it is an absolute necessity. What holds you back from asking? Your confidence: that's what! So how do you move through this confidence challenge? By looking back and identifying which of your clients had the greatest success. These individuals will be (and will continue to be) walking testimonials and advertisements for you and your business. Here are three tips to improve your business confidence and savvy while increasing your client base!

Take Stock & Boost Confidence
Your first priority is to gather all the positive feedback, comments and notes from current and previous clients you can find. Next, make a list and read through it a few times. Reading over your list of positive feedback will allow you to establish a mental and emotional connection based on positive thoughts and experiences. This allows you to reach out to each of these individuals more confidently. Asking for help is never easy, but when we make a positive emotional connection with those to whom we are reaching out, we can design a new thought pattern. With a new pattern in place, you create new beliefs—and your new beliefs increase your confidence level!

Using the positive comments from your clients in your communication, remind your clients of how much they appreciated what you have done for them. Then ask them for referrals to associates, family and friends who could use your services.

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Women, Business and Confidence

Recently there has been quite a bit chatter in the news regarding women, business and women's inability to move ahead. A report recently on MSNBC cited the following two key elements for the reason:  "Glass Walls" and confidence (specifically, a lack of confidence).

When I was watching these news broadcasts, the lack of confidence resonated with me, as I believe we've all had our confidence shaken and challenged more than once as well. Similarly, I connected with the reference to the Glass Walls. I never personally believed in the Glass Ceiling excuse, but I do see the truth within these newly identified walls.

What confines us behind these walls are the following three parts, as set out in the news broadcast:

• Doing everything
• Lack of network support
• Thinking small

But I would like to add a fourth part: emotional trust.

The first three are obvious in their definitions, but the fourth—emotional trust—may not be so obvious since it also contains a few elements of its own. Being part of the human race means we're emotional beings; we use our emotions to learn, experience and grow. As women we embrace our emotions on an even greater and deeper level, resulting in our having a larger emotional investment in all that we do. When our emotional investment causes us pain or we experience negative backlash, our emotional trust is challenged and we become more cautious regarding where we place this trust in the future.

All our decisions are based on where we stand emotionally with regard to...

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Where Your Truth Goes, Your Confidence Follows

So you now know how confident you are, right? I mean, when ranking yourself regarding your confidence level, you were truthful, right? Oh, you mean you stretched the truth a little? Oh well, that’s okay because we all do it: stretch the truth, I mean. But if you can’t be honest with yourself, then with whom can you be honest? Knowing your truth is the second critical piece to being confident. The first was realizing that all your actions and reactions to life's events and decisions impacted your confidence level. Truth is what empowers you to step out of your comfort zone confidently and take the actions or steps necessary in life.

In the first part of this three-part series you were introduced to your two main life accounts into which all your actions, decisions and experiences are either made deposits into or taken from as withdrawals from your integrity and confidence accounts. Remember that both these accounts affect your level of success in your career, your relationships, and your overall personal wellness.

Your confidence level will dictate how you handle and manage your stress. Some stress is important in life, but extreme stress can be hazardous. Your goal is to be able to handle yourself regarding decision-making during times of crisis as well as you do during normal circumstances. With a lower confidence level it becomes more difficult for you to make effective decisions.

Examples of normal stress or daily triggers of your stress might be balancing your checkbook, creating employee schedules at work, or arranging a food drive for the local food bank. While moving through these situations, your physical, emotional and mental bodies are working according to plan. There may be emotions you experience such as frustration due to trying to coordinate others' schedules and availability, but these frustrations are easily worked through and released. There are no residual emotions floating around; in other words, you've let them go and moved on.

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What's Your Confidence Level?

If someone were to ask you to state how confident you are, what would be your response? Ten? So very confident that you easily articulate your point of view, present ideas as required, make decisions swiftly without a lot of second guessing? Or zero?  You have no confidence at all since you believe others have desire to hear thoughts and you are hesitant, can't make a decision without wanting to know at least three people's opinions. Or is it somewhere in between?

I was shocked to learn recently there is a crisis in self-belief running rampant among women these days: not just professionally, but in their personal lives as well. Women, it seems, are missing the self-confidence to articulate or offer up their two cents or receive acknowledgment for a job well done.

Sounding at all familiar? At first the thought seemed foreign to me, but then I started looking around at the ladies in my life and I realized that yes, the truth of the matter is that a good number of my conversations with friends and associates indicate they lack the confidence to move out and into doing more than just merely existing in their lives. Wow!

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Negative Body Image Issues

Both emotional specialists and psychologists generally agree that eating disorders are generally rooted in negative body image. When this happens, sufferers usually see distorted body images when they gaze in a mirror – and as such, feel "fat" or otherwise imperfect regardless of whether these terms accurately describe the structure of their physical bodies.

Negative body images can manifest from one or more of the following factors:

Negative Conditioning Our parents' and family members' attitudes toward food and concepts of beauty can significantly factor in our body image. For example, parents who emphasize the importance of outer appearance or who obsessively count calories may have children who retain or develop similar attitudes that can potentially result in negative body image.

Negative Thinking If you have low self-esteem and therefore constantly hound yourself about your appearance or give undue importance to other’s opinions, you can develop a negative body image over time.

Unrealistic Ideals Movies, articles, advertisements and other media propaganda often promote perfection as being attainable – which, of course, it is not. Aggressive marketing techniques seek to create unrealistic aspirations regarding beauty ideals for profit. Children and teens are particularly susceptible to these techniques and can therefore develop negative body image issues due to their desire to conform to media "norms."

Overcoming Negative Body Image

You will have to affect a dramatic change in your self-perception to successfully build a healthier body image. I'll readily admit that negative attitudes firmly entrench themselves in the subconscious over time...

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Self-Worth and the Law of Attraction

Have you been able to make the law of attraction work for you? Are you doing everything right but still not getting the results? If the answer is yes, then you need to ask yourself if you honestly believe you deserve to get what you want. One of the greatest inhibitors I’ve experienced with clients is they try hard to create and work toward the life they desire, but their self-worth and the value they hold of themselves stands in their way to achieving it.

From the perspective of life in general, we attract what we feel we are worth receiving. Therefore, self-worth is one of the most important elements of the law of attraction; that is, you need to have confidence in your own abilities—and most importantly, you need to believe you truly deserve all you desire.

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Got Bad Breath?

Bad breath may not be a serious health problem, but it definitely is a very embarrassing one! To bid good riddance to it, however, it is important to understand its causes. The following are some of the most common causes.

Food particles remaining stuck in or around your teeth often cause bad breath. While it may not be possible for you to brush your teeth after lunch and breakfast, rinsing your mouth with water after every meal is a good alternative, as is chewing sugar-free gum for five minutes. Needless, to say you must brush your teeth at least twice in a day.

Certain foods like raw onions and garlic also cause bad breath. Since these foods have excellent nutritive value, avoiding them completely is not advisable. You can, however, chew one or two pieces of clove or some fennel seeds after your meal to mask the smell of these foods.

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Dreams: Flying and Personal Power

Dreams are usually specific to each individual encountering them. It is quite uncommon for two people to have an almost exact same dream, but it is also true that there are some common themes connecting different dreams that people have.

The fact that people from entirely different backgrounds and age groups can have dreams of a similar theme or nature seems to imply that we are perhaps not all that different from one another even if we are separated by continents and customs. Psychologists believe these similar dream themes serve to connect us as a human race. It means when the conscious mind stops working, we share the same concerns, hopes and fears.

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