Lightarted Living: Confidence Crisis: Facing Life's Most Dangerous Op...

Lightarted Living: Confidence Crisis: Facing Life's Most Dangerous Op...: Confidence Crisis All of us experience a confidence crisis when we're on the brink of starting a new venture or taking a new directio...

Confidence Crisis: Facing Life's Most Dangerous Opportunity

Confidence Crisis

All of us experience a confidence crisis when we're on the brink of starting a new venture or taking a new direction in life. There's always that moment when our fear of being seen as 'not good enough' prevents us from stepping confidently into the world.

To achieve your heart's desire to successfully navigate the world you must experience, then walk past, the fear of not being worthy or good enough. You must face life's most dangerous opportunity--a crisis of confidence--head on.

Chinese Symbol for Crisis

A Confidence Crisis is Life's Most Dangerous Opportunity

Why do I call a 'confidence crisis' life's most dangerous opportunity?

By definition, a crisis is a decision point--or point in time when things come to a head--such as in a medical or personal crisis when it's a critical time to decide on a course of action and follow through.

The Chinese symbol for the word 'crisis' has two characters with one meaning danger and the other opportunity. Every crisis presents us with both danger and opportunity.

Crises come in many forms--job loss, divorce, illness, financial difficulties, new boss, or dealing with difficult people. In each of these crises we can choose to see the danger or we can choose to step past the fear to see the opportunities to make new choices for a better life.

A confidence crisis is life's most dangerous opportunity because you must conquer it first before taking on the other crisis at hand. A confidence crisis allows you to test your ability to handle life. 

You'll grow stronger and more confident every time you choose to deal with your confidence crisis by taking action despite the fear.

Step Out of the Danger into the Opportunity

Do not be afraid of life's difficulties and crises. They strengthen your ability to tackle life.
Choose to view your momentary fear of unworthiness as your 'most dangerous opportunity' and consciously step out of the danger into the opportunity. 

If I knew I could not fail, what would I do today to create the life I desire?

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For more than 35 years, Susan Meyerott has been helping people lighten up and step over invisible barriers to change one step at a time. She speaks to your heart, puts you at ease, and makes letting go and moving forward with life easier than ever before.

Do you know someone who could benefit from uplifting messages? Please share Lightarted Living with them. If you or someone you love is interested in learning more about closing the gap between where you are now and where you want to be, join the FREE Lightarted Living mailing list.

Lightarted Living: Write on Your Heart Every Day is the Best Day~Ralp...

Lightarted Living: Write on Your Heart Every Day is the Best Day~Ralp...: Write it on Your Heart “Write it on your heart  that every day is the best day in the year. He is rich who owns the day, and ...

Write on Your Heart Every Day is the Best Day~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Write it on Your Heart

“Write it on your heart 

that every day is the best day in the year.

He is rich who owns the day, and no one owns the day 

who allows it to be invaded with fret and anxiety.

Finish every day and be done with it.

You have done what you could.

Some blunders and absurdities, no doubt crept in.

Forget them as soon as you can.

Tomorrow is a new day~begin it well and serenely~

with too high a spirit 

to be encumbered with your old nonsense.

This new day is too dear~with its hopes and invitations~

to waste a moment on the yesterdays.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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For more than 35 years, Susan Meyerott has been helping people lighten up and step over invisible barriers to change one step at a time. She speaks to your heart, puts you at ease, and makes letting go and moving forward with life easier than ever before. 

Do you know someone who could benefit from uplifting messages? Please share Lightarted Living with them. If you or someone you love is interested in learning more about closing the gap between where you are now and where you want to be, join the FREE Lightarted Living mailing list.

Lightarted Living: Living with Integrity Results in Higher Self Estee...

Lightarted Living: Living with Integrity Results in Higher Self Estee...: ' When you choose to act with integrity, you are strengthened by your experiences; when you choose to act out of ego, fear, anger, ...

12 Affirmation Hearts to Color Your Day Calm and Confident

Choose a Good and Happy Life

💙The purpose of our lives is to be happy. 

💚Happiness is not something ready-made. It comes from your own actions.

💛In order to carry a positive action we must develop here a positive vision.

💜If you can, help others; if you cannot do that, at least do not harm them.

💓If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion. 

The Dalai Lama 

12 Affirmation Hearts to Color Your Day Calm and Confident

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For more than 35 years, Susan Meyerott has been helping people lighten up and step over invisible barriers to change one step at a time. She speaks to your heart, puts you at ease, and makes letting go and moving forward with life easier than ever before. 

Do you know someone who could benefit from uplifting messages? Please share Lightarted Living with them. If you or someone you love is interested in learning more about closing the gap between where you are now and where you want to be, join the FREE Lightarted Living mailing list. 

Lightarted Living: Bloom Where You're Planted

Lightarted Living: Bloom Where You're Planted: Bloom Where You're Planted Today is the day and now is the hour for you to flourish and grow. Accept your natural place in natu...

Bloom Where You're Planted

Bloom Where You're Planted

Today is the day and now is the hour for you to flourish and grow.

Accept your natural place in nature. Like a flower--you're commissioned to bloom where you're planted despite harsh environments, scourges or thorns in your sides.

Just like perennials growing in your garden you're perfect at every stage of the life cycle--and destined to succeed over and over again despite the ebbs and flows of life.

All you're required to do is show up and bloom where you're planted.

Today is the day and now is the hour. 

FLOURISH!

'I held a moment in my hand, brilliant as a star, 

fragile as a flower, a tiny sliver of one hour. 

I dropped it carelessly, 

Ah! I didn't know, I held opportunity.'

Hazel Lee

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For more than 35 years, Susan Meyerott has been helping people lighten up and step over invisible barriers to change one step at a time. She speaks to your heart, puts you at ease, and makes letting go and moving forward with life easier than ever before. 

Do you know someone who could benefit from uplifting messages? Please share Lightarted Living with them. If you or someone you love is interested in learning more about closing the gap between where you are now and where you want to be, join the FREE Lightarted Living mailing list.

Creating Harmony: When we Listen to Understand Our Brains 'Dance in Parallel'

Listen Up!

According to Emma Seppala, Ph.D., science director of Stanford University's Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education, brain imaging studies show:

"When two people talk and truly understand each other, something quite spectacular happens: Their brains literally synchronize."

    

On with the Dance! 

"It is as if they are dancing in parallel, the listener’s brain activity mirroring that of the speaker with a short delay."

Emma Seppala

Listen to Understand

"That is the kind of communication we should all aim for—and one that may lead to not only better relationships, but more compassion."

Emma Seppala

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For more than 35 years, Susan Meyerott has been helping people lighten up and step over invisible barriers to change one step at a time. She speaks to your heart, puts you at ease, and makes letting go and moving forward with life easier than ever before.

Do you know someone who could benefit from uplifting messages? Please share Lightarted Living with them. If you or someone you love is interested in learning more about closing the gap between where you are now and where you want to be, join the FREE Lightarted Living mailing list. 

A Relaxed Mind

“When the mind is totally present, it is relaxed, nimble, and sensitive. It feels lighter and clearer. It notices everything, but it is not distracted by anything. It is the feeling of knowing exactly where you are and what you are doing.”

Sakyong Mipham

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For more than 35 years, Susan Meyerott has been helping people lighten up and step over invisible barriers to change one step at a time. She speaks to your heart, puts you at ease, and makes letting go and moving forward with life easier than ever before.

Do you know someone who could benefit from uplifting messages? Please share Lightarted Living with them. If you or someone you love is interested in learning more about closing the gap between where you are now and where you want to be, join the FREE Lightarted Living mailing list. 

Acceptance

“The most outrageous thing we can do in this world is to accept what happens and fly with it.”

Sakyong Mipham

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For more than 35 years, Susan Meyerott has been helping people lighten up and step over invisible barriers to change one step at a time. She speaks to your heart, puts you at ease, and makes letting go and moving forward with life easier than ever before.

Do you know someone who could benefit from uplifting messages? Please share Lightarted Living with them. If you or someone you love is interested in learning more about closing the gap between where you are now and where you want to be, join the FREE Lightarted Living mailing list. 

Strength and Gentleness

“The self-assured strength that grows from knowing that we already have what we need makes us gentle, because we are no longer desperate.”

Sakyong Mipham

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For more than 35 years, Susan Meyerott has been helping people lighten up and step over invisible barriers to change one step at a time. She speaks to your heart, puts you at ease, and makes letting go and moving forward with life easier than ever before.

Do you know someone who could benefit from uplifting messages? Please share Lightarted Living with them. If you or someone you love is interested in learning more about closing the gap between where you are now and where you want to be, join the FREE Lightarted Living mailing list. 

Anxious? Be Cunning to Loosen Anxiety's Grip

Anxiety is Secretive

"Anxiety is secretive. He does not trust~not even his friends worry, terror, doubt and panic. He has a way of glombing onto your skin like smog and then you feel unclean." 

Ruth Gendler

You must Be Cunning to Get Rid of Anxiety 

"He is sure a nuisance to get out of the house. He has no respect for locks or curtains or doors. I speak from experience. 

It takes cunning to get rid of him~a combination of anger, humor, and self-respect. A bath helps too. 

He does not like to get wet. As a last resort, if you are not near a bathtub wet your face with tears." 

J Ruth Gendler

'Anxiety' from 'The Book of Qualities'

"Anxiety is secretive. He does not trust~not even his friends worry, terror, doubt and panic. He has a way of glombing onto your skin like smog and then you feel unclean. 

He likes to visit me late at night when I'm alone and exhausted. I have never slept with him but he kissed me on the forehead once and I had a headache for two years.

He is sure a nuisance to get out of the house. He has no respect for locks or curtains or doors. I speak from experience. 

It takes cunning to get rid of him~a combination of anger, humor, and self-respect. A bath helps too. 

He does not like to get wet. As a last resort, if you are not near a bathtub wet your face with tears."

From The Book of Qualities by J Ruth Gendler

The Book of Qualities

I first fell in love with 'The Book of Qualities' 27 years ago. This brilliantly intuitive work of art breathes life into the rich diversity of human qualities making them come alive to resonate deep inside us. 

The other day I stumbled across my copy of 'The Book of Qualities' that had been waiting quietly for years in my library for me to rediscover it. Gendler's description of anxiety was just what I needed to incorporate into my Q'art (quote art) and share with you today. 

Let it wash over you and refresh your spirit.

You can order The Book of Qualities on Amazon. 

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For more than 35 years, Susan Meyerott has been helping people lighten up and step over invisible barriers to change one step at a time. She speaks to your heart, puts you at ease, and makes letting go and moving forward with life easier than ever before.


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The Power of Imagery to Banish Negative Thoughts

What are you carrying with you?

Picture This: 

👃You come home from work to find overripe, odoriferous bananas in the fruit bowl amassing fruit flies overhead. The smell sets off your gag reflex. What do you do with the greasy black heeled bananas serving as a breeding ground for irritating bugs getting in your face?

👃 Hoping to enjoy a bowl of cereal, you open the milk carton that's a month past it's sell date to give it the sniff test and about fall on the floor from the smell. What do you do with the soured, lumpy milk?

👃When you come home from vacation you open the refrigerator and you're greeted by the overwhelming stench of rancid meat. You find the culprit--slimy chicken that's two weeks past it's sell date. What do you do with the fetid meat?

Like most, you could easily see and smell the offending foods in these visual images and hastily replied 'THROW IT OUT'--but not before crinkling your nose and turning your head to get away from the smell--and washing your hands after.

Our brains have the wonderful capacity to see things that aren't there, and that is an asset when you need to get rid of something that isn't serving you. It doesn't matter if the image you create is real or imagined. What you imagine is every bit as real to the brain as real life.

...And this is how the power of imagery to banish negative thoughts works! 

What's leaving a bad taste in your mouth?

Negative Thoughts Start to Stink Past Expiration Date

Who wants to sit with their negative thoughts any longer than necessary? We all harbor hurts, disappointments, self-doubts, pain, grief and sorrow. But why should we provide them a safe harbor to lock in and stay put? 

Although negative thoughts have their place in prodding us along in life, most of them stay well past their expiration date and begin to stink and leave a bad taste in our mouth, making life unpleasant. 

To rid ourselves of stinking thinking caused by negative thoughts the solution is clear: throw them out--but how?

Chose Simple Visual Imagery to Help You Let Go

When we allow ourselves to get attached to something--even our negative thoughts--we have a visceral reaction to letting it go. 

If you've been nursing a hurt or 'how they done you wrong' story it can be difficult to let it go after you've invested all that time and attention to it. 

Chances are you've created a visual image of those negative thoughts glomming onto you or hanging over your head like a storm cloud. You need something simple and powerful to offset the staying power of negative thoughts and stories.

Creating simple visual imagery to help you let go of negative thoughts is that powerful tool. 

See Yourself Let Go

The Ultimate 'Letting Go' Imagery to Banish Negative Thoughts 

Early in my career I dealt with a very nasty political situation in which I was going to be made the scapegoat for a situation I had no hand in. There were lots of moving parts and political players needing to shift the blame. It was a very dark and scary time.

But after being overwhelmed by the situation for too long (well past it's expiration date) I looked for a way to move past it and get the horrific situation from taking up so much space in my mind. 

It was in this moment I discovered two of my all-time favorite images for letting go of negative thoughts and stories that still allowed me to view them anytime I felt the need. 

I still use both of these visualizations when I need to. I watch as I go through the motions of 'letting go'. 

Whatever imagery you use, look for something that gives you a visual and visceral effect for letting go of what's rancid so you can get back to your open, bright, and sunshiny life. 

The Archived Book

I imagine myself putting the story, complete with negative feelings and nasty players into a book. The book has to be put away for safekeeping so I watch myself walk down a long deserted hallway to the back of the library where I have to climb a tall ladder to put the book on a dusty archival shelf with other ancient history. I climb back down the ladder, walk back down the deserted hallway, and out into the bright, open spaces filled with sunlight.

Up, Up and Away in a Balloon

I imagine I enclose the feelings, situation, person, or story  in a helium balloon. I tie a string at the base and hold on to that string until I'm ready to let go. I release the string and watch as the balloon flies up, up and away until it becomes a tiny dot in space before disappearing.

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For more than 35 years, Susan Meyerott has been helping people lighten up and step over invisible barriers to change one step at a time. She speaks to your heart, puts you at ease, and makes letting go and moving forward with life easier than ever before.

Do you know someone who could benefit from uplifting messages? Please share Lightarted Living with them. If you or someone you love is interested in learning more about closing the gap between where you are now and where you want to be, join the FREE Lightarted Living mailing list. 

Do You Carry Negative Experiences with You? The Parable of the Naked Lady and the Monks

"As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live."  Johann Wofgang von Goethe

Uncovering the Naked Truth

Do you know the story of two monks who happen upon a naked woman standing by a river? It goes something like this:

The woman wants to cross the river and asks the Monks if one would carry her to the other side. One Monk agrees while the other steps back in horror, but says nothing.

When they get to the other side, the Holy Man carrying the woman puts her down at the bank of the river and the two Monks walk on, traveling the next 10 miles in silence. 

The Monk who maintains his purity by refusing to touch the woman ponders the incorrectness of the other's action. As he walks down the road, he simply cannot get the image of the naked woman out of his head. He plays the image of his Brother carrying the naked woman over and over. 

Finally at the end of the day the uncontaminated Monk can stand it no longer. He breaks his silence and says, 'how is it you soiled your body and mind by touching that naked woman?' 

To which the other Monk replies, 'I left her at the bank of the river while you, on the other hand, have carried her with you all day.'

Two Faced

Which Monk Are You? 

We all carry the spirits of both Monks within us. 

There is the side of us who jumps into life with simple, straightforward non-judgmental action, and the other side who is filled with shoulds, don'ts, rules and judgments--who continues to ruminate and second-guess actions and experiences long after they're over. 

Which Monk do you relate to most? 

Do you spend more time carrying negative thoughts and experiences with you? Or do you strive to walk through your negative experiences so you can let them go, and move on with your life?

Feeling Alone and Vulnerable

'Naked Lady' Experiences Leave You Feeling Vulnerable

Let me share one of my 'naked lady' stories with you. Early in my career, when I was a trusting and fresh-faced professional, I had a charismatic colleague I admired very much who methodically turned other co-workers against me. This was a very public experience that left me feeling exposed and vulnerable, and influenced my outlook for years. 

Initially when I revisited my old stomping grounds after moving away, my mind would be drawn to revisit that uncomfortable experience, and I had to deal with the feeling everyone was judging me each time we came in contact.

Yet years down the road as I was conversing with a colleague who was a major player in THE EVENT I discovered she had no memory of it at all. My naked lady experience I carried within me as a HUGE memory she put down immediately after things transpired. 

Furthermore, when I checked in with other people who were involved in my BIG EVENT, their recollection of the experience was minuscule or non-existent. 

There was no group memory of what transpired--only what I carried with me in my mind. I could have put my 'naked lady' experience down instead of carrying it with me all those years.

What 'Naked Lady Experience' are you carrying with you today? 

💧 What events, experiences or embarrassments are your 'naked lady' experiences causing you to feel exposed and vulnerable?

💧 Have you been publicly embarrassed, laid off, divorced, or 'made a fool' by a love interest?

💧 Are you embarrassed because you've lost your home, failed to get a job, or while you may have a job you're being underpaid for your skills and talents?

💓 What do you need to name, examine and let go? 💓

Most people are too busy with their own lives to maintain an inventory of your negative events and experiences. Don't let your 'naked lady' experiences get a toe-hold in your mind. Let them go and move on unburdened with negative experiences of the past.

'Don't carry your mistakes around with you. Instead, place them under your feet and use them as stepping stones.' Sun Gazing

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For more than 35 years, Susan Meyerott has been helping people lighten up and step over invisible barriers to change one step at a time. She speaks to your heart, puts you at ease, and makes letting go and moving forward with life easier than ever before.

Do you know someone who could benefit from uplifting messages? Please share Lightarted Living with them. If you or someone you love is interested in learning more about closing the gap between where you are now and where you want to be, join the FREE Lightarted Living mailing list.