MaXIMIze - The Greatest Love

It has been said that there can be no greater love than the one that compels one to lay down his or her life for another.

I would posit, however, that the greatest love we have is the one we have for our Self, for how we love our Selves is how we love others.

If we feel we are capable of following our dreams and bringing our visions to life, then we can encourage others to do so as well. If we feel like no matter what we do, we hit roadblock after roadblock and our dreams and visions become so much dust on the windowpane, then we cannot encourage others - in fact, we end up discouraging them instead.

The best way we can love our Selves is by practicing extreme self-care. I've hit on this time and again over the last four years, and will continue to do so. If you can't take care of yourself - love yourself, believe in yourself, push yourself - then you can't take care of others.

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.

CALL TO ACTION: What can you do right here, right now, to better take care of your Self?

CHECK IN: We had two Calls to Action last month:

• Breaking one resolution you made for the new year down into clear, concise, achievable goals - and then moving out on those goals.

• Identifying the impetus for change in your life - is it coming from within you or from an outside force?

How are you doing with these Calls to Action?

I can tell you that I am working my resolution to eat better hard and heavy by packing a salad for lunch during the work week. I have also cut my soda consumption from nearly daily during the work week to 3-4 in the last month. I have also dropped four pounds since the start of the New Year - baby steps, but steps forward for sure!

NEXT TIME: We will continue with the theme of Relationships. The exact topic, however, has not come to me yet.

If you have a specific topic that relates to the theme of the month you would like to see addressed, please feel free to post about it in the comments or send me an e-mail about it.

Until next time, Namaste!

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Questions? Comments: Feel free to contact me at the e-mail address below.

Beth Henderson, MaXIMIzer
maximize.beth@gmail.com

MaXIMIze - Reflections and the New Year

Hard to believe that this begins the 4th year of posting this blog for me. When I began the first iteration of this blog, I had a goal of helping others as I continued to grow myself. Less than a month after I started blogging, my life went into a tailspin - I got a promotion to a job I really wanted, but that in the end was much more challenging than I realized it would be, and my then-husband told me he wanted a divorce. Writing this blog and keeping focused on healing and growing myself kept me going through that first tumultuous year.

The process of writing the blog posts that y'all read - some of you on a very faithful basis! - continually proves that it is truly about progress not perfection. I look back over the past three years and see the progress I have made and it is amazing! I now have a great job that I love and a man in my life who truly accepts me as I am - two very rare gifts indeed! I am blessed with family who came together for the Christmas holiday and there was no drama - lots of noise with three grandchildren under the age of 7 of course, but no drama!

Are there still ripples from stones I've dropped in the pond in the past? Are there still weeds in the garden to be pulled? Of course there are! But the ripples are getting fewer and weaker and the weeds are becoming sparser. It took time to get to the point I was at and it takes time to get to the point I want to get to now. So I'm enjoying the learning and growth I'm experiencing along the journey as I make progress down my path.

The growth of this blog from a mere 25 entries that first year to the 49 entries in 2014 - and the compilation of some of those posts from 2012 and 2013 into my book titled Take Your Life in Your Arms and Kiss It! - is also proof of the progress I've made, particularly since becoming a Certified Professional Coach in 2013.

Organization helps too…I had themes for every month and topics for every week in 2014, and I have the same for 2015!

For the rest of January, we will be talking about Passion and Persistence.

In February, we will discuss Optimism versus Pessimism, Abundance versus Lack, and what truly is your motivation.

We'll start March off with the Seeds We Sow and Unintended Consequences, and review what our current satisfaction levels are in the areas of health, finances, career, relationships, spiritual well-being, and overall well-being.

For April through September, we will focus on each of those six areas, one per month, much like we did with last year's posts.

In October, we will look at what we have harvested this year, and why.

November is our month of Gratitude, and December ends our year with Celebration!

If you have been with me as a long-time loyal reader - Thank You for your support and welcome back for another year!

If you are a new reader, Welcome, and please read the previous years' posts to glean more goodness for your life!

Until next week then, Namaste!

MaXIMIze - Mid-Year Review/Recap

Okay, so I was a week off last week. My inner calendar was telling me this was the first weekend of July, not the last weekend of June.

Since we are halfway through the year, this is a good time to take stock of where we are and how far we have come (or not) since the year turned.

At the beginning of the year, we started with a bunch of questions to gauge where you are now, what is important to you, what your satisfaction levels were in the areas of overall well being, physical health, spiritual health, finances, career, and relationships and how your personal prose is affecting your satisfaction level.

We worked through the Circle of Perception exercise and discussed values, goal setting and the 5 Whys and manifestation boards.

We talked about identifying roadblocks and assessing the true risks to achieving your goals.

We discussed moving from unconscious incompetence to conscious competence, giving up bad habits, and getting back up after following off the wagon.

We worked on developing our follow through, moving through fear, and spring cleaning.

Finally, we discussed growing our best lives before starting the specific areas of finances (April posts), physical health (May posts), and spiritual health (June posts).

During the last six months, I've also thrown out several challenges for us to work on, starting with manifestation boards and including the following:

Sharing positive energy and eliminating negative energy

Tracking your expenses

Analyzing what we truly need

Tracking your input (diet) and output (exercise)

Fine-tuning your input (diet)

Believing you are enough, you have enough, you do enough (meditation)

Three pages a day (journaling)

Now I challenge all of us to review the material and the challenges we've accepted (or ignored), and see where we are right here, right now.

Has anything improved in our lives?

Have we truly committed to MaXIMIzing ourselves, MaXIMIzing our lives, and living our best life now?

If you've fallen off the wagon, remember you can always get up, dust yourself off, and get back on the wagon that will take you down the path of your best life!

For additional inspiration and support you can keep at your fingertips, I offer my book, Take Your Life in Your Arms and Kiss It!, available here.

Next week, we will tackle the topic of career, starting with is this just a J.O.B. or is this truly W.O.R.K.

Until then, Namaste!

MaXIMIze - Spring Cleaning

"You can't reach for anything new if your hands are still full of yesterday's junk." ~ Louise Smith

It seems only appropriate with the turning of the season from Winter to Spring that we focus on cleaning out and letting go of that which no longer serves us in order to lay the groundwork to sow the seeds of our best life now.

Just as we get annual physical and periodic dental and eye exams, so too should we take stock of and excise where necessary our emotional and psychological baggage.

If you've ever read Cheryl Richardson's book Take Time for Your Life, then you've seen this theme run through her writing as well. And as I said in my post from July 19, 2013 on my previous blog, as we move up the spiral staircase to our highest, most MaXIMIzed life, we must leave behind those things - ideas, habits, thoughts, people, situations - that no longer serve us, and in some cases are pulling us down the bannister back toward the bottom step.

In order to do this, we must inventory and acknowledge that which we currently have and take stock of it - ask the question of what is still truly serving us by helping us achieve our goals and what is holding us back by directing energy away from our goals.

We can MaXIMIze our lives by minimizing the baggage we carry through them - both physically and otherwise. Sometimes though, we need to work through the otherwise to be able to minimize our physical baggage.

Once we identify those things, thoughts, and beliefs hat are holding us back, we can work to disengage ourselves from them by removing physical reminders and replacing them with things, thoughts, and beliefs that fulfill us and lead us to achieving our goals.

Those things that are holding us back are the darkness in our life, and those things that fulfill us and lead us to achieving our goals are the light in our life. So, we need to close the door on the darkness and always face and move toward the light.

Next week, we will discuss sowing the seeds to grow our best life now.

Also, my new book - Take Your Life in Your Arms and Kiss It! - is available from lulu.com - click here for more info!

Until next time, happy cleansing and namaste!