MaXIMIze - Choices and Letting Go

This month's theme was supposed to be finances, however, circumstances led otherwise.

Yesterday, as I was gearing up to work on course work for online classes I'm working to get up and running, I wrote this piece instead of focusing on the course work. The issue that brought this forth is still chewing at me this morning, so I figured I'd post this piece instead of trying to focus on finances.

Judgement and Defensiveness

As I was preparing to work on course work for a class I want to teach, I was angered by someone else's judgement of my choices. I felt the negative emotion surge through my body, raising my blood pressure, making my muscles shake with unreleased tension.

I wondered at my visceral response as I was mentally lashing out in defense of my choices. I realized I do not need to defend my choices to anyone else. I cannot force someone else to accept my choices let alone understand why I do the things I do.

Others will judge no matter what. However, their judgement does not matter in the long run. It truly doesn't. What matters is your judgement of yourself, and whether that judgement is a reaction to the voices of others or a response to that small still voice that comes from your inner Self.

Once we learn to truly listen to and learn from the Self within us, we can move from reacting to responding, from judgement to love, from defensiveness to giving, from lack to abundance.

How to learn this is the question.

Focus is the answer. Determining the focus of our reaction or response will help us discover the root of it.

If we can determine what we are focusing on with our reaction or response, we can figure out why we are reacting or responding the way we are.

In my case, the choice was about an adult child and his current domestic situation. I choose not to become embroiled in the drama that is in his life right now.

Others do not accept or understand my choice, and therefore judge me harshly for it.

Does that judgement hurt? Yes, it does.

Is it going to make me change my choice? No, it will not.

Did I learn why I was reacting so strongly to the judgement of another? Yes, I did.

I raised my children with the idea that family comes first, and one of my children feels my choice in respect to his brother's current domestic situation goes against that idea.

My choice of non-involvement, however, is based in the belief that adult children have to deal with their domestic issues on their own. To the best of my ability, I've given my children the tools to deal with life. Like a horse chooses whether or not to drink the water he is led to, my children have to choose to take on the responsibility for their choices in life and work to make better choices for themselves and their children.

And so the anger and defensiveness at the judgement of another of the choices I made in this situation ebbs away as the root of my reaction to his judgement is brought into the light of day.

Was the process easy? No, it was not.

Am I in a better place for going through it? Yes, I am.

I hope that sharing this experience with you helps you work though your reactions and responses to the actions and judgements of others.

Until next time, Namaste!
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Questions? Comments? Feel free to share on this post, or email me at the address below.
Beth Henderson, MaXIMIzer
maximize.beth@gmail.com

MaXIMIze - Relationships - Communication and Feedback

A lot of the angst and/or friction in relationships comes from communication.

Communication is both verbal and non-verbal. There are the words we say and then there is the meaning behind them. There are also the words we don't say, thinking the other person should know what we mean and want by our non-verbal clues. As I'm sure we all have experienced, this is not often the case.

Few if any of us are mind readers, so we need to hone our communication skills in the verbal sense. And we need to be aware of our non-verbal cues - how our posture is, our eye contact, and even the tone and volume of our voices.

Trust me, I am quite sure the word "fine" has very different meanings for men and women, as an example!

Feedback is also important in communication.

Again, few if any of us are mind readers. If we don't let others know how their words and actions affect us - both negatively AND positively - there can be a serious breakdown in the relationship due to pent-up angst, resentment, and anger.

It's fine to bounce your reaction to the words and actions of one person off of someone else you know and trust as a reasonable and relatively unbiased sounding board, however, once you've sorted out the wheat from the chaff of your reaction, you might need to discuss things with the person whose words and actions you reacted to in the first place.

Open and honest communication and feedback are important elements to the success of a relationship - whether it be personal or professional.

And, if the person you are providing feedback to ignores, rejects, or belittles your feedback, that might need to be examined too, in relation to your, well, relationship.

Is this relationship buoying you up or dragging you down? Is it helping you grow, keeping you stagnant, or worst of all, stifling you?

As always, I welcome your feedback. Contact me here, and let me know how this blog has helped you over the last nearly four years of it's existence.

I am on vacation next weekend, so we will pick back up in September. The theme for the month will be Overall Well Being.

Until next time, Namaste!

MaXIMIze - Optimism vs. Action

I recently read an interview of Gabrielle Oettingen, author of Rethinking Positive Thinking, by Magdalena Puniewska in The Atlantic magazine.

In this interview, Ms. Oettingen talks about a process she calls "mental contrasting" - visualizing the goal one wants to reach and then going through all the potential roadblocks to reaching that goal.

This outlook or concept is actually right in line with my coaching training and practice, as noted in the posts from this time last year on identifying roadblocks and assessing them.

Optimism and the power of positive thinking are wonderful tools, however they are only one set of tools, one piece of the puzzle as it were. While we need the belief we can attain our goals, no matter how lofty, we also need the realism to identify potential roadblocks and obstacles in our path to those goals.

This is called planning, and planning is the first step in taking goals from daydreams to reality.

Moving from dreaming to doing means being able not only to visualize where you want to be but also to be able to plan out the "how" - plan out the route to get from where you are now to where you want to be. And that means being able to identify potential roadblocks, obstacles, and issues. When you plan for a trip, you take into account traffic flow during certain parts of the day and weather conditions during certain parts of the year, right? Plotting the course from where you are now to where you want to be in life takes the same tools and skills as planning a trip.

Now to get to the title of this post - Optimism vs. Action. I know I said we'd talk about optimism versus pessimism, however when I read that article my focus shifted.

Yes, we need the optimism to dream and aim high much more than we need the pessimism of potential failure. We also need the action of planning and moving forward down our path rather than staying in the dream state of simply visualizing our rosy future.

Remember having to answer the five questions - WHO, WHAT, WHERE, WHEN, and HOW - in English class during writing assignments?

Well, you are the WHO. That vision of your rosy future is the WHAT and the WHERE.  The planning is the HOW, and moving forward down the path toward your future is the WHEN.

Now write your story; live your best life now!

Until next time, Namaste!

MaXIMIze - Bringing in the Harvest - What is Manifesting in Your Life Now?

Last week, we took a well-deserved break and went to Lassen National Park area for the weekend. Very little cell coverage and a nice, peaceful, beautiful respite from our day-to-day lives.

On to the post…

In order to plan for the future, you need to first analyze the past - what has worked, what actions are still resounding through your life now.

We've discussed the ripple effect in previous posts - the fact that what you sow today will reverberate into the future, much like the ripples a stone skipped across a pond makes that are still coming ashore long after the stone has sunk to the bottom.

So what is reverberating - manifesting - in your life right now? Can you trace that to actions, reactions or responses in the past - things you have sown either intentionally or unintentionally?

Think about it, journal about it, analyze it. Likely you will have at least one if not more "ah ha" moments as you connect the dots from past stones to present ripples.

Now - think about what you want to manifest in your life from now on - what do you need to sow now to manifest that in the future? What does that look like, feel like, taste like, smell like, sound like?

Finally - what have you sown in the past that has yet to come to fruition - what stones have you skipped across the pond whose ripples are still coming to the shore?

Lots to think on - next time we will discuss Letting Go of Ghosts and Goblins - until then, Namaste!

MaXIMIze - Your Most Important Relationship - You!

This month's blog topic is Relationships. Over at least the next five posts, we will touch on various types of relationships in our lives - however, since this is a blog about personal coaching and personal development, the relationship and interaction we are going to focus most on is the one with ourselves.

The relationships we have with others are mirrors of the one we have with ourselves.

What I mean by this statement is: No one can make us feel one way or another. Our feelings, particularly as a reaction to someone else's action, come from within. Since they come from within we can choose the way we feel about and respond to (rather than react to) the actions of someone else.

My book, MaXIMIze: Take Your Life in Your Arms and Kiss It! covers a lot about developing your relationship with yourself.

We see the world through the lens of ourselves - our thoughts, our feelings, our view of the world - so it makes sense that to be the best person we can truly be, we need to know ourselves as intimately as we think we know our lovers.

We need to truly understand what motivates us, what stalls us, what truly lies beneath the way we react and respond to the world around us.

So the first question I have for you to ponder is - are you treating yourself the way you treat others?

"Love thy neighbor as thyself" is one of the tenets of the New Testament, and as I often people-watch I wonder - do the people I watch truly love themselves?

What we put out in the world is a reflection of what we have and who we are inside. Do you really know who you are? Do you know the root cause of your reactions to people, places, and things?

I challenge you for the next week to take note of your reactions and to apply the 5 Whys to each one to get to the true root of that particular response. If you don't have at least one "Ah Ha!" moment doing this, either you know yourself very well - in which case, great! - or you are not going deep enough. Whichever it is is up to you to know.

Over the next few weeks we will be discussing dealing with toxic people, letting go of the past, holding on too tightly (sands and hands), and guilt.

There are likely to be more challenges along the way - I encourage you to do the work to get to know your true self.

Until next time, Namaste!

MaXIMIze - Personal Prose

Before I jump into this week's blog, need to take care of some administrative business. Since this is where I have my coaching business e-mail address - maximize.beth@gmail.com - I figured 2014 was the year to move my blog over as well. So, for the previous blog posts, click here.

Now on to today's post...

Everyone has their personal prose - their way of communicating not only with others, but with themselves as well. By identifying our personal prose, we can work to change it and by doing so bring more of what we desire and deserve into our lives.

Here are some points to ponder:

Do you tend to want to move toward something or away from something? Moving toward something or looking forward to experiencing it is positive prose, and that's where we want to focus.

Do you want to have things or do you want to feel things? Goals that come from the inside, that make you feel good about what you do and who you are, goals that are important to you, the individual, are positive - and that's where we want to focus.

How concise are you when communicating? Do you tend to maybe make mountains out of molehills, as the saying goes? Instead try making molehills out of mountains by looking at where the action or event fits in the big picture, in the long-term view, rather than the short-term, small view.

So, when you catch your inner critic castigating you about something, answer back with, "yes, and next time I'll do ________ instead."

Remember, the space between action and reaction gives you time to frame your response, and thereby take responsibility for your reaction.

Are you garnering power or poison? What words and phrases you consistently tell not only others, but more importantly yourself, have a huge impact on how you view life and how well you attain your goals. Poison words and phrases include but, can't, could have, should have, would have, if only, maybe, might, someday, sometime, try, what if. I'm sure there are others you can identify as well.

One of my mother's favorite phrases was, "Woulda, coulda, shoulda, but didn't."

And of course there is now the famous Yodaism, "There is no try, only do."

Here is a list of power words to ponder and incorporate into your daily dialogues with others and your inner critic: abundance, accomplish, achieve, among, attract, aware(ness), because, becoming, before, beyond, causes, claim, clarity, comfortably, confident, content, create, delight, discover, during, easily, energized, enhanced, enjoying, exceeds, expanding, experience, flourish, flows, generate, giving, grace, harmonious, imagine, immediate, impact, increasingly, infinite, inspired, limitless, meaningful, naturally, now, passion, perfect, possibilities, purpose, radiates, realizing, receiving, results, success, thriving, transformed, transitioning, wonderfully. I'm sure there are others you can identify and use as well.

So rather than drinking the poison, feed yourself power by using and being these words instead.

Next week, we will work on our circle of perception, an exercise I use in my coaching practice and also use myself at least annually to gain perspective on the various areas in my life.

Until then, namaste!