Category Archives: authentic life

The Buffet of Life

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We are each given so many options every single day in our lives. 
And we have the opportunity to travel along the same path or mix things up a bit and go down a different route.
While these choices are wonderful, we may sometimes feel overwhelmed by them. 
We may start to feel scattered and find ourselves retreating into the known instead of embracing the new. 
This is where I am today. 
I have so many wonderful new options in my buffet of life.
And I really want to step out of my comfort zone and try some new options.
But to do this and enjoy them, I feel that I first need to get grounded and get focused.

And I would suggest that if you are ever feeling a bit overwhelmed by all of the choices you get to make – to take a deep breath, take some time to go within, and just sit with it all. 

Which choices feel right for you and where you are right now in your life?
Which choices are a bit of a push, but still feel like something you would like to try?
How would your life be different if you sampled more choices and pushed yourself?
What’s the worst that could happen if you went for it and dared to do something different? 

Make sure to keep coming back to yourself and listening to your inner voice. 
And also make sure to breathe and center yourself before making any decisions. 

Focus and grounding do wonders for feeling scattered and overwhelmed.
Today I invite us all to take the time to center ourselves, so we can fully be present and appreciate all of the amazing choices that we get to make.

Planting Some Roots

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It’s a beautiful spring day here in Oregon – the sun is shining and the birds are singing.
Dan and I moved to this area two years ago (wow, time sure flies!), 
and I am so grateful that we did. 
We were living near San Francisco at the time while he finished graduate school. Because we work from home, we really could choose anywhere to live – exciting! We both had a great feeling about southern Oregon. I had never even been here but felt a strong pull to this area. And so we moved. And I have to say that trusting my intuition and planting roots in this area has been one of the best decisions I have ever made.
For the first time in my life I truly feel that I have found my forever home. 
I found this writing prompt from our Journaling Within book, which I thought was a perfect exercise for this particular day! 
Describe where you would most like to live. 
If you don’t live there now, 
what steps can you take toward achieving this dream?

Take some time and really think about where you would like to plant roots.
What about this place draws you to it? 
The weather? The people? The landscape? The opportunities? 
Write about what it feels like to live there. 
And then create an action plan to make this dream your reality. 
As long as you are living and breathing, 
you always have the power to make changes and create your ideal life. 
You can make your dreams come true if you visualize, stay on course, and take action. 
Have fun with this exercise! 
Spend this beautiful day dreaming about where you would most like to live.
If you already live there, write about how grateful you are and appreciative you are to live in such a wonderful area that truly reflects your best self. 
This is a great way to get clear about what you want for your life and what you can do to make that happen. 
P.S. – This week’s poll results are in! Most of us read to relax and recharge! Second place went to spending time with pets. Third place was a tie for napping and watching tv or a movie. Thanks to everyone who participated – I love polls, and I think it’s so interesting to see what everyone chooses. (Be on the lookout for a new poll tomorrow!)

Grateful for Authenticity

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It’s Wednesday, which means it’s time to write a post about gratitude! 

Feel free to click here (or below) to learn more about our Gratitude Project. 
Okay – now for today’s post:
I had the amazing opportunity yesterday to attend a wonderful telesummit focused on helping women entrepreneurs practice self care and put themselves back on their own priority lists. 
put together by the amazing life coach, Susan Liddy.
Susan worked her magic and found 24 inspiring women in many different fields – each offering advice and strategies to help us feel energized and taken care of as we continue to run our businesses. 
I can’t wait to attend future events!
I am so grateful for Susan and her ability to be completely authentic. 
She tells her true story, which can be a vulnerable place. I admire anyone who can talk about not only the wonderful highs of owning your own business, but also be realistic and talk about the lows that can come as a result of working for yourself. 
She recently was working so hard and such long hours that her adrenal glands stopped working correctly. She has since begun to really evaluate her life and take steps to truly take care of herself and her body. 
I am in a very similar place, and so her story really resonated with me.
Running your own business can be a slippery slope. You can lose perspective and start having a hard time recognizing what is work and what isn’t. It starts to seem natural and normal to think about work all of the time, to not have balance, and to keep pushing yourself to achieve your goals. 
I was feeling really tired and burned out a few months ago, and so I went to a nutritionist. It turns out that (among other things), my adrenals were completely shot. I had been keeping crazy hours, stressing out, and overworking for so many years that they just didn’t have anything left to give.
So I stopped.
And I took some time to reevaluate my life.
And I came up with a plan to create a life that was authentically me, calmer, and balanced. 
And while I am still in the midst of all of this soul searching, 
I am excited to see what the future holds. 
Having people like Susan share their similar stories is a gift that I am so grateful for. 
Having the courage to put your authentic self out into the world is so inspiring. 
So thank you, Susan, for being authentically you – honest, caring, and forthright about your experience. I am inspired and know that you are helping so many women who are in similar positions. I am truly grateful that our paths have crossed.
If you are also a FEMpreneur and could use a little pick-me up, you can still join the telesummit – and it’s completely free! 
It’s never too late to start practicing self care. 
And it’s never to late to start living your authentic life.

New Month – Fresh Start

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Happy March! 
I love the first day of a new month! We get to start over again. If our last month wasn’t the greatest, we can put that behind us and start again. If our last month was great – we can make this one more of the same (and even greater). I love that the possibilities are truly endless. March is an especially great month for new beginnings because Spring is just a few weeks away – new life, new growth, a new freshness starts to fill the air. 

It’s completely natural in winter for us to hunker down and take more time than we usually do to go within and really think about where we want our life to go. We tend to spend extra time journaling, pondering, and organizing (both our thoughts and feelings and also our material possessions). We declutter, make warm meals, and cozy up with our loved ones in the comfort of our homes. We build our own cocoons of comfort.

And now that March is here, we can start thinking about taking all that we have learned about ourselves through the winter and begin to emerge. Begin to break out of our comfort zone – begin to show the world our most authentic self. This is such a wonderful time full of so many possibilities!

Today you may want to take some time to think about if there is any part of you that wants to emerge. Is there any part of you who has been living in a comfortable place but perhaps wants to push the boundaries and risk a bit to live an even more authentic life?

It’s a beautiful day here in southern Oregon – a perfect time to realize that spring and new beginnings are just around the corner!

Who Are You Living For?

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This is a really important (and sometimes really hard) question to answer. 
In an ideal world, we are living for ourselves and only doing things that make us feel great and are on our authentic path.

But…it doesn’t always work this way. It’s normal to want to please others. It’s normal to want to be liked. But ask yourself at what expense are you willing to sacrifice your own wants and desires to fit in. 
Think of how you live and the decisions you have made and continue to make. 
Are you making them based on what you think people will want or expect you to do? 
Are you making them because someone else’s voice (a parent, a spouse, a friend) is inside of you directing how you live? 
Are you making them because you don’t want to upset anyone? 
Are you making them because that’s how you’ve always done it?

And now think about how you want to live. The answers are always within us if we just take the time to listen.
As the answers come to you, write them down. And as you write them down, make sure that it is your authentic voice coming up with the answers. This is an exercise that you can keep coming back to with every part of your life – every decision, every action you make, every second of how you live your day.

Make sure you are living YOUR life – whatever that means for YOU. 
There may be friction…
Sometimes when you start coming into your own power – your own authentic self – the self you know you were meant to be – friction occurs with those around you. When someone we love changes, it can sometimes be seen as threatening. It can bring up emotions, fears, and questions about our own life. This is why so many people resist it and why so many of us live lives that we know aren’t our best lives – comfortable, “I’m not rocking the boat” lives. And through this process of finding your own voice, you may have to let go of the voices you have carried within you – and this may mean letting go just in your mind or letting go of that person in reality as well.
Sometimes the perceived friction is only in our heads…
We all know how active our imaginations can be. When we are consciously deciding to live our best lives, we can start imagining how rocking the boat will lead to anger, disconnect, and complete withdrawal from those we love. We just know they won’t support us or understand this new person we are becoming. We get ourselves all worked up just thinking about showing them our authentic self. We are so afraid we won’t be accepted. And sometimes we aren’t. But more often than not, our loved ones completely support us and are completely okay with our changes. And we wonder why we were so worked up about it in the first place.  

Showing ourselves and the world who we really are can be a scary, vulnerable place. But it can also be an empowering place. You get to be you – fully you.

If we stay conscious and continue to examine each moment of how we live, we will learn more and more about ourselves and get closer to living our authentic life.

Now that’s worth living for!

An Authentic Life

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Are you living an authentic life? 

When you look at yourself in the mirror, do you know and like who you see? 
Is there anything that you aren’t being truly honest about with yourself or others? 
Is the “you” that you represent to the world the “you” that you really are?

I thought it was interesting the other day when a friend posted on Facebook that they sure hoped they could live up to their profile there.

In one of his stand-up routines, Chris Rock talks about dating and how we tend to send our representative to make a great impression.

While these are funny concepts – they are also very true. We all want to be liked. We all want to please others.

Sometimes to live an authentic life, we have to rock the boat. We have to stir things up a bit. And change isn’t always easy – for you or for anyone who knows you. It may seem threatening. “But they have always been this way – maybe I never really knew them at all,” they might say.

When this happens, stand strong in your own beliefs. Stand strong in knowing that you are living your own life to the best of your ability. Live the life that feels most like you, even if it’s not how you’ve done things in the past. Your inner voice will let you know if you’re on the right track.

Live an authentic life. And when you look in the mirror each morning, you can be proud of who you see smiling back at you.

🙂