Set Yourself up for a Positive Day – Every Day!

Think back to this morning – How did you feel when your alarm went off?  Did you drag yourself out of bed with your head filled with all the things you needed to get done today or was your head filled with worries about something which happened days ago? Or….. did you jump out of bed with excitement wondering what wonderful things the day has in store for you and expecting the day to be great and flow easily? 

Do you feel frisky about your day or start to worry about it as soon as you open up your eyes?

How we feel and what we think about our day ahead can really effect how in fact the day will actually turn out.

If we begin each morning dreading what the day will hold, we will unconsciously create an affirmation or a statement of what we want. Those affirmations then become our reality.

For example, if you get up in the morning and the first thing you do is trip over your slippers or poke your mascara wand in your eye, you will probably start to think ‘this is going to be a rotten day’.

This starts to create a negative pattern of thought. The more you then focus on how 'bad' your day is going, the chances are, more things will probably go wrong and you may lose any opportunity to experience any positives in your day. Then, you may actually make your day worse and by the end of it, you may end up affirming, ‘this was a horrible day and everything I did just went wrong!’

Then, if this wasn’t bad enough, if you continue to bombard yourself with negative ways of thinking, you will begin to believe negative things about yourself and your behavior will follow accordingly.

Negative thoughts, lead to negative expectations, lead to negative outcomes!

However, had you believed the day was going to be great, and you jumped out of bed filled with excitement, you would have used the power of your own thought to make it a great day! You will then feel more positive and attract more positive experiences into your life.

Whether you believe in the power of affirmations or not, they are already operating in your life. That is why it is so important to understand and use them to your advantage. The process of consciously transforming your thoughts, through the use of positive affirmations is the first step in changing your external world.

Positive thoughts, lead to positive expectation, lead to positive outcomes!

Try these affirmations to start your day with a bang!

• I would really like this to be a good day
• I expect things to go well for me
• I may not feel like it right now, but everything will work out for me.

• My day is filled with love and happiness
• Everyone I come into contact today is happy and loving

Another useful trick to start your day on a positive note is to take 2-3 minutes each morning, visualizing the ideal outcome of your day.

Don’t worry if you feel this is too difficult, just try and relax into it and run a little movie in your mind of how you wish you day to be.   If you have a difficult meeting or task to do, imagine the perfect outcome to your situation and also how you will look and feel after you have completed the task. Visualization is very powerful and you can really make a difference to your day by taking a few minutes each morning to complete this task. Most of all, make it fun so that it brings up good feeling emotions inside of you.  

Have a great week!

Lisa x

Do you need some more help on taking care of yourself? If so please check out my great range of self-development eBooks at www.amazingcoaching.com.au and  http://www.howtoempoweryourstaff.com.au/

How do you react if someone over steps your boundaries or makes an inappropriate remark towards you?

Your body really is your best emotional compass and it really will give you a clear indication if it is time to take action towards a person who may have stood over your boundaries.  

Most of us however, choose to ignore our bodies and can find ourselves knocked back by someone by someone's poor behavior.  We swallow our anger and fear the consequences of standing up for ourselves.  We suppress our feelings and often then give ourselves a hard time for not answering back or speaking up.

If someone is nasty or rude towards us, we often question ourselves or tell ourselves we are being too sensitive.  We dismiss our needs and feelings and in doing so, give other people permission to treat us badly.   Regardless of why we do this, it is expensive to our wellbeing to continue down this path as ultimately, it will  eat away at your self-esteem and leave you feeling resentful and hurt.

Many people feel really uncomfortable in speaking up, especially when in the past, they may have been taught that keeping your mouth shut was in fact a safer option!  Others fail to speak up because they fear the other person will think badly of them or they may end up hurting their feelings. We often have the desire to be liked or the ‘ disease to please’

What about YOU?

If you are too sensitive to other people's feelings, you are actually being insensitive to your own. In fact, standing up for yourself and using you voice is a great way to empower yourself and show other people how you deserve to be treated. Don’t you deserve the same respect as other people?

Try this process the next time you are faced with rude or inappropriate comments or behaviours:

1) Take a deep breath and acknowledge what happened and how your body is feeling.  If you would rather walk away and let the ball go out of play then do so. You may wish to say ' I am sorry, this doesn't work for me so I am choosing to walk away from you'

2) If you decide to address the behavior ( yes, it will feel scary but I promise you, it will make you feel powerful afterwards!) then try the following statements:

' I need you to know that I am not comfortable with you speak to me like that, I would like you to stop' or ' I am not willing to talk about that with you'

3) Don't get judgmental or try to explain yourself. Short and firm statements are best. Express your feelings and state what you would like to happen.

4) If someone continues to treat you like this, it is acceptable to just walk away from the relationship.

When you begin to stand up for yourself, it is going to feel strange and uncomfortable. Sit with this uncomfortable feeling and soothe yourself with kind and encouraging words.

Do you need some more help on taking care of yourself? If so please check out my great range of self-development eBooks at www.amazingcoaching.com.au and  http://www.howtoempoweryourstaff.com.au/

Feel Good

When working with the public, it is not just about making your clients feel good, it is also important to make sure that you feel good about working with them! As you are always interacting with others, it is very easy to take on their negative stuff. You might even take responsibility for feelings that aren’t yours.

Therefore, it is a useful habit to learn how to protect yourself from the occasional negative client (or co-worker!) that may leave you feeling drained of all your energy. Emotions such as fear, anger, frustration, and immobility are energies and you can easily ‘pick up’ these energies from people without realizing it.

What to do when there is no escape?

So what do you do to protect yourself from those energy vampires, the client who leaves you feeling drained and sucks all of your positive energy out of your body? You know the type, the person who spends their entire appointment complaining about how bad their life is or moaning about everybody else? The type that is more interested in sharing their ‘poor me’ story than actually focusing on the good that is happening?

Of course, it is much easier outside of the workplace to walk away and detach yourself but what do you do when there is no escape? These types of people will drift in and out of your life so the trick is to learn some simple strategies for dealing with them that you preserve your own valuable energy.

Here are a few of my top tips for taking care of yourself when you work with negative clients:

1. Surround yourself in a big white bubble. Yes, I know this sounds silly but it does work. If you deal with the public daily, it is probably a good idea to do this every morning. Before you depart for work in the morning, visualise yourself being surrounded by a large white bubble. By doing this, you actually protect yourself in a healthy energy field so negative people won’t have as much impact on you.

2. Dis-engage Try not to engage with negative people as much as possible. Stays detached in your comments and try not to get involved in what they are saying. Just keep smiling and nodding! The more they drag you into their ‘story’ the more exhausted you will feel. Don’t ‘buy into’ their negative views and give them fuel to continue.

3. Do a Conversation Switch. When you have listened to someone’s negativity for a while, switch the conversation to something positive. You can also try telling them ‘Now why don’t we talk about something more positive’. If you like, you can always tell them something positive about yourself. If you feel positive then hopefully some of your positivity may rub off on them. Stick to light-hearted topics if you can.

4. Have an Epsom salt bath. Get into the habit of having an Epsom salts bath. The salts are very grounding as well as cleaning. They clear away any toxic, stuck or negative energy that we may pick up and store from other people.

5. Protect your Solar Plexus. If you find yourself stuck in an environment of negative people, put your hand over your solar plexus and turn away from them if possible. Crossing your arms will do the trick as well. We often pick up negativity through the solar plexus so make sure you protect this area.

6. Learn to use compassion as a way to defend yourself. Compassion allows you to be empathetic to the plight of other people but also requires that you are compassionate toward yourself. This means taking care of yourself and not feeling guilty for protecting yourself from harmful people or energies. It also means that you keep yourself healthy by not immersing yourself in the world of negative people

7. Surround yourself with Positive People. Although you may feel stuck with negative clients, you don’t have to choose to be around negative people in your personal life. Surround yourself with positive people as much as you can – those that share your dreams and can see how fabulous you really are.

Remember, your time and energy is precious so it is good to look after yourself. This includes protecting yourself from people continually dumping their toxic stuff onto you. You are most energetic and vibrant when you’re in touch with your own energy, experiencing your own subtle energies and feelings—not everyone else’s.

Do you need some more help on taking care of yourself? If so please check out my great range of self-development eBooks at www.amazingcoaching.com.au and  http://www.howtoempoweryourstaff.com.au/

THE BAD NEWS ...I USED to be a NICE girl.

One of the disadvantages of being a nice girl is that you often allow people treat you like a bloody doormat. You also end up exhausted or resentful as you spend the majority of your time placing everyone else’s needs before your own. As a nice girl, I have also sold my soul on several occasions in order to gain love and approval and would suffer trolley loads of toxic guilt if I, heaven forbid, inadvertently upset another human being.

Being nice is a very expensive habit. Some of the more designer ‘nice’ items I have purchased include:

1. 5 years in an abusive relationship
2. 6 months of stress while being bullied at work by a mad psychopath
3. Ripped off and taken advantage of by people
4. I have also been ‘stalked’ by 4 different men over the years, none of which I ever told to bugger off! (nice girls don’t upset anyone remember!)

This doesn’t include the times I have agreed to do things I didn’t really want to do, failed to honour my own feelings and emotions and generally carried on living my life with the firm conviction that everybody else’s needs and opinions were faaaaaaaaaaaaaar more important than my own.

THE GOOD NEWS...The universe has decided (along with some assistance from nicotine withdrawals) that it is time for me to own my nasty (and not so nice) assertive side.

This NEW ME started to manifest about Christmas time 2009 and, within a few weeks, it had really had become a tad feisty!

It’s work has included:

1. Arguments with three friends and four family members
2. Informing at least 5 people that I didn’t appreciate the way they spoke to me (one of which is still giving me the cold shoulder)
3. Complaining in 3 different shops / restaurants about poor service or products
4. Informing one male colleague that if he continued to call me at 6am, I would personally rip his balls off.

Don’t get me wrong, entertaining this assertive part in my body was really quite SCARY. Let’s face facts, I didn’t actually invite this part to visit after all. In fact, when it first came to stay I tried everything in my power to send it away – I even offered it a free cruise in the Caribbean. I didn’t like this assertive side. It just wasn’t me. I didn’t like the way it made me feel. Having it around make me feel VERY uncomfortable.

AAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH PANIC – What if people didn’t think I was NICE anymore?

Two months on however, I am glad to say that things are looking quite different. I have become rather fond of this feisty little part and there is NO WAY I am going back to being that nice girl! I am now quite happy to balance both the bitch and the nice!

Tapping into this super duper action part has allowed me to:

1. Inform others how I would like them to treat me
2. Speak up when people insult me or overstep my boundaries
3. Let other people know what is both acceptable and not acceptable to me
4. Release people from my life who no longer support me or add to my positive energy
5. Feel safe in the fact that I can indeed, take good care of myself; and
6. Honour my own feelings and emotions.

So, to all you NICE PEOPLE out there who may be suffering with the DISEASE TO PLEASE, try inviting your very own little assertive side to visit. Although it feels a bit strange at first, I guarantee that you will invite it to stay! I promise, people won’t love you any less but they will respect you more! And those who don’t, let them go.

Do you need some more help on taking care of yourself? If so please check out my great range of self-development eBooks at www.amazingcoaching.com.au and  http://www.howtoempoweryourstaff.com.au/