Mid-Life Unfolds

Life Unfolds - Dedicated to "Attracting What's Next in Mid-Life and Beyond!" Have you reached mid-life or beyond and are you wondering what is next? Life Unfolds provides business and personal coaching and training to help you thrive while answering the what nexts. We specialize in helping mid-lifers achieve their dreams, change careers, retire happily and to thrive through transitions. More information can be found at http://www.lifeunfolds.com.



Friday, June 29, 2007

LOA - Intensity and Duration

For those of you who are practicing consciously creating your life using the law of attraction, intensity and duration of your thoughts and feelings are keys to being successful. What does this mean to you?

As you are aware, thoughts create feelings, and feelings create the world around us. If we want to have a better life, we need to have better thoughts. Often in my workshops, we practice focusing on our desires and goals for 15 minutes a day, but that is only a start. The idea is to have more positive thoughts and feelings directed towards your true desires. But 15 minutes a day is only to up your awareness and to start the practice. The practice must become a way of life, part of your daily living. Duration just means focusing on the desires for more time each day, putting in as much time as you can dreaming of, talking about, and imagining the desire as if it were already occuring.

Think "immersion". Immerse yourself in the habit of being more positive, in catching yourself sooner when experiencing negativity, in expressing more positivity through your words and actions, in expecting positive events in your life, rather than expecting the negative. This does take practice, but every minute you spend in positive thoughts and feelings is a step in the right direction. At first, you may only be able to manage a few minutes at a time. But with practice and diligence, this will expand. Before you know it, within weeks or months, you will have more positive than negative thoughts and feelings and this is the pivot point. At this point, things that you want in your life, especially those that are in alignment with your purpose and true self, will significantly accelerate into your life.

The more intensity you can add to your feelings about your desires, the easier they will manifest. Intensity just means having stronger feelings. So instead of pleasure, think overjoyed. Instead of pleased, think excited. Instead of excited, think ecstatic or passionate. There are many ways to "amp up" your feelings to get the intensity necessary. Let's use the example of wanting an overseas trip. Typically, you might just sigh and say "I really wish I could go to X". And leave it at that. You might put it on your life list or your to do list. That is the opposite of amping up your feelings. To get more intensity into your feelings about this desire, you will want to focus on it daily for at least a short period of time. Read books about the place, talk to people who have been, attend a lecture and slide show of someone who has been, search the Internet, go to a travel agent and pick up brochures, create a dream board for the anticipated trip. Write letters to the Universe about what a great trip you "had". Every time you do these actions, you will feel more and more excited and happy.

If you are practicing the law of attraction and things are not happening as you expected, lack of intensity and/or duration may be the problem.

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Monday, June 11, 2007

Relish Discomfort

And, no I'm not talking about pickles!

Discomfort is a sure sign that we are stretching ourselves. That uneasiness, that queasiness, is proof that we are stepping outside our boxes, that we are trying on something new and discovering new facets of ourselves. This is the stuff life is made of!

It's funny how humans are conditioned to desire comfort and sameness. We get to a place and we stop. We think, this isn't so bad, I think I'll stay here. Of course, the world is constantly changing and so are our lives. Most of our unhappiness centers around trying to keep things the same. We become very attached to our lives, just the way it is, thank you very much.

Sameness leads to dullness. Sameness is the opposite of growth, of insight. Sameness is not something to cling to. Sameness is not something to be desired, although we all do it.

As we take on new tasks, new jobs, new areas of growth, we often feel discomfort. We may question what we are doing, why we are doing it. We may feel fear or anxiety. But that is the necessary step that comes with true growth, with real expansion of self. Each stretch we go through expands our lives and the richness of our experience.

Excitement is often masked as discomfort, maybe an uneasy stomach or tension in the chest. Breathe into it and let it be.

Is there some area of growth or expansion you are avoiding? Is there something that keeps coming up for you to try, but you find a million reasons why you can't or won't? Life is change, whether you desire it or not. So stretch yourself. Give in to your higher desire to be more and to express your talents in this world in new ways.

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Find Your Grail



I was lucky enough to see the hit Monty Python musical, "Spamalot", this weekend. It was incredibly funny and entertaining. We had such a great time. If you get the chance to see it, go!

One of the songs in the play was "Find Your Grail", meaning find who you were meant to be, or find what you are meant to be doing in this life. The song expressed the true joy of being you and only you. So many of us plod down a path that was laid out for us by our parents or our upbringing and circumstances at birth. We fall into our careers based on whim or chance or what will gain us the most money. We choose as a 19 year old, either after high school or in college, what we will do for the rest of our lives. Our career choices often become our identity. Our egos cling to this, creating a huge story about our life as a ____ (doctor, teacher, mechanic, VP, mother, etc.) We puff up with pride or cringe in embarrassment about what we do. We take it on as if it were who we are. We eventually believe that our professions are who we are and that without this profession, we'd be no one. We weren't born being this vocation, it is a choice and can be unchosen. After all, when introductions are made, the next question is often, what do you do? And we answer with our career choice, I'm a doctor! A much more interesting question is "who are you when you're not at work?"

Find Your Grail. I like the picture of going on a holy quest for the grail, the answer to life's questions about who you are meant to be. Everyone goes on this quest at some point in their lives. Some do it early, some late. Some do it thoughtfully and well, some don't. The quest is to discover who you are, what your unique gifts are and how they can be expressed in the world.

What can you do today to begin this quest?


  • Take stock of where you are.

  • What are you doing with your time and energy?

  • How do you feel about your career or lack of one?

  • How do you feel about your life, in general?

  • What talents and gifts do you have that you can share with the world?

  • In what ways and how often do these get expressed?

  • What are your favorite things to do, things that make you feel more alive?

  • Make a life list of things you want to do before you die. Then start doing them. You'll find out a lot about you are and what you are interested in by this exercise.
In case you're interested, the song lyrics can be found at http://www.allmusicals.com/lyrics/spamalot/findyourgrail.htm

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Saturday, June 02, 2007

Life Balance vs Obligations


Life sometimes gets out of balance because of what we think of as "obligations". Women, especially, who often serve as caretakers for their family and friends, feel obligated to this care. What is an obligation? According to the dictionary, an obligation is: “something one is bound to do, a duty or a responsibility.” That sounds simple, right?

So what are some obligations? What things in your life do you think of as your responsibility or your duty?

Driving on the right side of the street is one
If you are a parent, you are obligated to care for your child
If you have a job, you are obligated to show up and produce.

What many of us do is put a great deal more things in the obligation category than is necessary. We use language like “I have to do this” or “I must” or “I should” or “this is what “good mothers” do” or “all the other managers are doing this”. Here are a few examples of things we often see as obligations or duties or responsibilities that truly are not.

Befriend folks in our lives who are down and out or lonely
Take care of everyone else’s needs and wants
To pretend that you like something when you don’t
To be nice 100% of the time
To live someone else’s dreams (parents, children, spouse, media, church, etc.)
To give up your own dreams for your spouse or children or family
To take that night course
To stay in that relationship
To live in a city you don’t like
To have a clean house
To live in a big house or any house
To mediate among family and friends when conflict arises
To continue a relationship with an addict
To make others happy at your expense
To volunteer at school or anywhere else when your heart is not in it
To host parties or arrange get-togethers

Now, you may choose these things. You may want to do these things. But it is not your moral duty to do any of them. You have a choice. Doing things you do not like to do that are not true obligations wastes your time and energy and contributes to your own unhappiness. I would go even further than this, you have a moral duty to take care of yourself, to be your true self and to find ways to express that in the world. And often our choice of obligations goes directly against this idea.

One way to determine whether you need to do something or not is to ask yourself “what are the likely consequences of not doing it?” For example, you may have a schedule that says your refrigerator must be cleaned out every month. So here you are staying up til midnight to get it cleaned out. What are the consequences if you don’t? Your homeowner’s association may be sending you nasty-grams about your yard. What happens if you ignore them? All the other children in the neighborhood have elaborate, time-consuming, expensive birthday parties starting at age 1. Your child wants the same thing. What are the consequences of saying no? Well, you get the idea.

So the challenge here is to look at your own list of obligations.

Obligation Worksheet

An obligation is something that is a responsibility or a moral duty. We have obligations for some things such as driving on the correct side of the road or caring for our children. But we often extend that definition to all sorts of things that are not truly obligations. This eats up our available time and energy.

List all the obligations you currently believe you have. One way to start is to look at where you spend your time and energy. What are the major parts of your life? After you’ve made a comprehensive list, ask yourself the following questions for each entry: “What are the consequences if I don’t do this?” and “Who would/could do this if I didn’t?” and “Do I enjoy doing it/Does it make me happy to do it?” After completing this exercise, are there tasks that you thought were obligations but really aren’t? If you do not enjoy them or are having time or energy stress, can you drop them? Identify those and eliminate from your schedule. Be ruthless with this. It is your life, energy and emotional health you are protecting and nurturing. You can always add it back if you find that you are sorry you cut it out.

The idea here is to ask the question “is this a true obligation?” when faced with taking on new tasks and deciding what to do on any given day. If you have difficulty with eliminating items, notice your inner talk. How do you convince yourself that this item is different or that it really needs to be done by you? Free up time and energy by recognizing that whom you serve and what you do are totally your choice.

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