Posts Tagged ‘joy’

Turn-on is compelling, enrolling, motivating, creative, fun…..and more.  At a women’s group this week we filled two flip chart pages with words defining and expanding what turn-on is. I realized that when I’m turned-on, things get done, business flourishes, life works, and relationships are alive.  When I’m turned off, the opposite is true.  I never thought of it this way, but one of my joys as a coach is to support turn-on in my clients.  Turn-on keeps their energy, juices, ideas, connections flowing in a project, business, relationship, etc.

Napoleon Hill, in his book “Think and Grow Rich” has a chapter called “The Mystery of Sex Transmutation”.  He says that the highly successful people he studied and those he read about  going back 2000 years “possessed highly developed sex natures”.  In other words, they’re turned on!  He writes about transmuting sexual desire from only physical expression to creative and intuitive and mental outlets.

“Sex desire [turn-on] is the most powerful of human desires.  When driven by this desire, men [and women] develop keenness of imagination, courage, will-power, persistence, and creative ability unknown to them at other times.  So strong and impelling is the desire for sexual contact that men [and women] freely run the risk of life and reputation to indulge it.  When harnessed, and redirected along other lines, this motivating force maintains all of its attributes of keenness of imagination, courage, etc., which may be used as powerful creative forces in literature, art, or in any other profession or calling including, of course, the accumulation of riches.” Napoleon Hill

Many of my clients have been looking for work, and they are not turned on.  Sometimes we find that the kind of work they feel they should be seeking is not really the work they desire right now.  They get turned on when they let their dreams come to the surface.

Mini-Coaching:
If you’re not turned-on about something you care about, just notice without judging what is happening.  Explore the circumstances and the environment around you as well as within you.  Get curious about what might be the turn-off.   Don’t immediately try to fix it- keep exploring and allowing it to be for a few hours or days.  Begin an inquiry, “What is turn-on for me?”  “Where am I turned on in my life?”  “What’s happening in me and around me when I’m turned on?”  When you’re ready, turn up the turn-on in your turned-off situation by experimenting with inspired changes and actions.  I’m available to work with six more clients in August for you to make some powerful changes here.

Have a hot, turned-on rest of the summer, because why not?  What’s turned on in your life?  Why?

The sun bounced off the water on a beautiful summer afternoon at Lake Chabot where I was walking with my business partner, Julia.  She’s about to take off for 10 days and won’t be looking for internet connections or have her cell phone on. We started looking at how, even http://www.emergingbrilliance.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/Dreamstime-Mountain-Hiker-150×150.jpgthough we own our own businesses, we don’t shut down and take off for fun.   We need fun, happiness and laughter for health and creativity.

I asked a client who was looking for work for months and frustrated to take a day off for her favorite activity, golf. She agreed not to spend any mental energy on her challenge and fears around finding work during the day.  A few weeks later, she had an offer.  I assert that the peace, centering, and rest afforded by a true, deep, fun chunk of time is invaluable for clear and heartfelt thinking, creative solutions, and results.  You all know that, but do you do it?  Do I do it?  No.

So, since I’m the coach here, I’ll ask the questions you’re expecting, and some you may not be expecting, to uncover something new about fun.  What’s your payoff for “keeping your nose to the grindstone”, for staying in electronic communication even when you’re out for fun, for never taking more than 24 hours off?  If we’re doing it, there’s a payoff.  And an underlying belief.

What’s the price you pay for going and going and going and going with the daily commitments?

Since fun leads to relaxing which leads to reduced stress (which is a physical state in your body that wears on it, not to mention your productivity and joy) which leads to increased health and creativity, what do you need to do to take care of yourself  for fun?  Will a few hours do it?  Or will it take a week or two or a month away?  A woman I’ve worked with has her own business.  She took two months off over the summer.  She was afraid she’d lose all her clients.  Many waited for her.  When she got back, she had more business than ever which has been steady for two years.

What brings you pleasure and joy?  Leave a comment. 

Come home to yourself – to the very alive, sweet, precious experience of your own body, your personhood – its culture, values, beliefs, biology, purpose and passions.   Home is your body, your spirit, your mind.  Home is you.  It’s to know yourself as whole, complete, capable,  and creative.   And to feel your energy, your own energy vibrating in your cells, to be fully awake to experience this moment.

Come home.  Why come home to you?

1. To know your own wisdom,  value, values, preferences, purpose.  To get to know you like you know your Facebook community or co-workers.  To discover the culture that is unique to you.
2. To experience the very alive, sweet, precious essence of you.
3. To  love.  To know love – love of yourself and others.   To grow love so that when you’re with partners, children, colleagues, family and friends you have your own wellspring of love to bring to the relationship.  You are not needing love.  You are full and  sharing it.
4. To choose.  The input of the world meets your own personal biology, beliefs, values, and purpose when you come home in order to choose.  Your choices will honor your own personhood – not that of the outer world.  You can say yes to a request from being home rather than from not knowing home and thinking that what others want is also good for you.   You can say no, thank you.  You can honor the wisdom of your body in order to sustain your own inner peace and follow your purpose.
5. To rest.  Your lives are lived at a tremendous pace – every 5 years adds dozens of new distractions, games, shows, demands, and possibilities.  Bodies are built to recieve input – nerves fire and process all over them all day long.  Sleep is a way of coming home.  And so is hitting the pause button in the middle of the day.  When I feel exhausted in the day, often just five minutes of quiet time re-energizes me.

How do we come home? Here are my suggestions – you check out your own biology, life, and style and discover what coming home is for you.

1. To begin, stop  leaving your home, your body / mind / spirit for a period of time each day.   Sit here and just know you.  Even if just for a minute a day to begin.
2. Come home from phones ringing, buzzing or vibrating;
3. and  music, no matter how spiritual it is to you.
4. Come home from digital images flickering through your eyes and brain.
5. Just for these moments,  come home from  people in your space
6. and thoughts churning about problems.  Yes, you can pause them.
7. Come home to your presence in nature, in quiet, in reduced input.
8. Yes – seated, standing, or lying down.  Yes – awareness and senses turned inward.
9. Try the meditator’s way to center -  be aware of your breath. If you are doing this for a minute that is about 10-12 calm breaths.  That’s all.  Be aware of your breath in your nose, throat, chest.  Good.
10. Massage is good for becoming aware of your body.  Start here.
11. At any given moment, just tune in-ward.  After a workout,  during or after a meal, during or after sex, during or after an argument, turn your awareness inward for a deep and pleasurable homecoming.

Now that you have come home, what inspired actions arise from your connection to yourself?  Write them down, then take off!

I offer coaching and workshops on inner peace, and taking off from there

In what ways do you come home to yourself?  What do you discover?

A Leg UP

“One of the great discoveries of human unfoldment is that happiness and joy are not effects, but causes…The happy person is forever encountering things…to vindicate his happy spirit.” Eric Butterworth

Happiness is a choice

Happiness is a choice and it doesn’t come from outside, as much as the advertisers and transformation gurus want us to believe that it does. They say, “Buy this sexy car; great hair color; get your lashes thick, long, with no clumps and then you will be happy.” “Get the relationship, the promotion, the fit body, then you will be happy.”

Our culture and language habits make happiness appear to be achieved by accomplishment or product. This is like people believing the sun revolves around the earth because that’s the evidence. Happiness doesn’t revolve around things or accomplishment. Things and accomplishment revolve around happiness and joy. Watch babies learn to walk. They don’t deprive themselves of happiness until walking is achieved. In fact, they’d probably take a lot longer to learn if they weren’t happy.

So Choose it

I was doing sit up/ crunches yesterday and I didn’t feel all that happy so I didn’t feel like doing them. Then I decided just to laugh as I counted out my allotment of crunches, and it was easy to laugh! It was contagious and kept itself going and lifted my mood for the rest of the day! Hah! I didn’t have to buy a new car, get my hair colored with the latest and greatest, lose that extra weight, or solve global warming. In the moment, in the present, in the now, we can choose. “There is no way to happiness, happiness is the way.” says Eykis.

According to my friend and Law of Attraction Coach, Noelle,…You ALWAYS get back what you put out; NO EXCEPTIONS!” So put out joy, fun, whimsy, glee, laughter, chuckles, jubilance, happiness, smiles, giggles, jokes, cheer, ecstasy, playfulness. Noelle is the happiest person I know – she watches her thoughts and nearly always allows the thoughts that feel good, and discards the thoughts that don’t. She does this in the midst of challenges that would put many of us on a downward spiral of despair because we forget we can choose.

Don’t Dumb Down Your Joy

Not only do we mistakenly believe that happiness is a result of circumstances, we also believe that we need to stifle our joy because others don’t have as much or we can’t boast or show pride. What on earth good does it do to dumb down our joy because the world is in a pickle, a spouse is mad or sick?! Eric Butterworth writes, “At the very time when we need more light, we reduce the flame of jubilance, and walk in darkness.”

How Do I Generate My Own Happiness?

To turn up the flame find one small thing to be grateful for – and then another and savor them. Also, we can recall and talk of successes and what works. Simply smiling or laughing changes your energy.

OK, go ahead and laugh. Make up a belly laugh. I was struggling with writing this article – so I just started laughing. It’s much easier to have ideas flow through a joyful mood. I also invite you to see if you can make others happy – that might make you happy. Notice if it’s their choice or you can force it on them.  Just “don’t worry, be happy” this week.

Follow your joy to activities and perspectives that have you thrive. It’s definitely in my territory as a coach -much of my work is about reconnecting people with their purpose, their strengths, and rekindling joy for their lives.