12/21/2018 0 Comments Hello Command Joy Family!With 2018 winding down, I wanted to say THANK YOU.
THANK YOU for inspiring me every week with your comments, words, and wisdom. THANK YOU for fearlessly believing in the right that each of us has: to Command Joy in our lives. THANK YOU for making this world a better, more positive, and happier place to be. THANK YOU for all the joy we will create, here, together, in 2019! Cheers to a happy, healthy holiday season!
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12/17/2018 0 Comments Command Joy Now with an Inner GPSOur inner guidance system has the directions to our intended destination. It is there at all times, keeping us on the right road, leading us, directing us, telling us where to go and what to do. It is guiding us in the direction of our path. It keeps us on course. It tells us the road we should be taking.
But we don’t always follow the GPS! In life, we get off course. We go the wrong way, we turn down the wrong street, we get lost. We stop listening to our GPS system. Sometimes we turn it off completely. We ask for direction. We listen to and follow the route that others tell us to go on. In effect, we turn off our compass, we ignore our directions. We go the way others tell us to go. We take the recommended safer route, putting us on a path that we were never meant to travel. It is easy to get lost and to ignore our GPS. But we can change that starting now. The way we do it is by questioning any negative feelings. When we feel or experience any negativity, we can stop. The negative feelings we are experiencing is because our GPS is telling us to go a different way or down another road. Like our smartphone’s GPS, it will tell when we need to stop, turn around, go back. We will feel it in our bodies – our inner voice will be shouting, we will feel tense, anxious, on edge. That’s how we know we went the wrong way. We may need to turnaround or re—route entirely. When we are on track with our GPS system, we will feel energized, excited, enlightened. That’s our inner GPS. Our inner guidance system, leading us, directing us, telling us where to go and what to do. It will give us the fastest, shortest route to where we need to go. Starting today, we can listen and follow our inner GPS, our guidance system that is always there for us. Tell me, in the comments below, when have you followed your GPS and where did it lead you? That quiet, small voice inside. The one that is always talking to us, yet we so often ignore. The whispering words that we so easily push away from our thoughts but that are always there. The quiet, soft spoken hum in the back of our minds, patiently waiting to be heard. We try as hard as we can to shove it aside and go on about our days, our weeks, and our years. Yet it is defiant. In life, it is so easy to get started down a path of having to play it safe. We have bills to pay, health insurance that we need, kids to feed. It is overwhelming! The stresses of life are real, and they are harsh. There is so much that we are forced to think about, deal with, and face. But despite all the cruel and unkind things in life, there is a greater force inside each of us. The whispering words are speaking to the true path that we are meant to be on, the real guiding energy. But it is so easy to push aside. At this moment in our history and society, there are real responsibilities. We can’t get away with not paying taxes, our bills, our health insurance. But to ignore the whispers means to ignore ourselves. When we push aside our true calling, the real passions we have, we can become bitter and resentful. At life, at our bosses, friends and family. At ourselves. So what do we do about it? We can start small. Pay attention to the inner voice. Get quiet. Listen to ourselves. Understand more of who we are and how we are wired. Then we can take baby steps into something we really want to do. We can take a class, attend a lecture, visit a place that we have always been interested in. It doesn’t always mean that we need money or resources. A library has tons of information in whatever topic we are interested in learning more about. When we start to follow the whispering words, we set our life in a positive direction, in line with our true guiding force. As we start to say yes to the whispering words, we will feel a sense of inner peace and contentment. Life will be easier with less drama and chaos. Things will start to unfold naturally, the way they were meant to be. Listen to the Whispering Words. It’s important. We can do it! In the comments below, tell me, how have you listened to the Whispers in your life and what happened as a result? It is so easy to go through life holding onto the past. To the things that we wish we had done. We replay the negative things that have happened to us. In our minds, over and over again, we re-live the traumatic experiences. We relive the regret. The guilt. The worry.
The problem is that when we look in the rear view mirror all the time, it takes our attention away from the good things we have coming our way! When we are so busy beating ourselves up for past mistakes, we don’t have time to look forward to the future opportunity. When are eyes are focused on the rear view mirror, on the past that is behind us, on the things that have already happened, we can’t look ahead to the future. Here’s the deal. Our past is a part of life. Good or bad, we can’t change it. So why do we keep looking back there and re-living it? The key is to not hold on to it. Recognize that re-living it is not beneficial, it’s not moving us forward. We have to shift our focus to the windshield view. We did our best at the time with the information we had, and all we can do is our best again in the future. A while back I met a friend’s grandmother at a baseball game who was 97 years old. She was dressed impeccably, beautiful with hardly had any wrinkles, and she was full of joy. As I started chatting with her, I realized she was sharp minded and funny. She didn’t miss a beat. I asked her what her secret was to living such a long, happy life. She said, "I don't worry, I let things go, and I laugh a lot". She's lived by the idea of looking in the windshield. She doesn’t hold on to past mistakes. I have to imagine that in almost a hundred years of living, people have had to have hurt her, she's had to of made mistakes, but she hasn't held on to them. She looks through the windshield window not the rear view mirror, and this has kept her young and strong. We can’t continue the mistake of looking back. If we do, we will get bitter, live guilty, with a chip on our shoulders. That's going to keep us from seeing the bright future we have coming our way. We may not be able to keep bad things from happening to us or for the fact that we will make more mistakes, but we can keep our focus forward. Instead of going through life looking in the rear view mirror, down on ourselves, living in regret, we can look through the windshield. We can't do anything about the past. But we can do something about right now. Being against ourselves doesn't help us do better. It pushes us down. Instead of looking in the rear view mirror and reliving the past, why don't we forgive ourselves? Why don't we empty out the guilt? Why don't we turn off the accusing voices? How much space are we going to give to guilt, to shame, to regret, to being against ourselves? Whatever it is, it's too much. If we give space to our pasts, to the guilt, we won’t have the confidence we need to move forward. That will cause us to fail again. It's a negative cycle. The only way we can break it is to rise up and say, "That's it. I am done looking in the rearview mirror, living in the past, focused on my mistakes, reliving my failures, beating myself up. This is a new day. I'm looking through the windshield with great expectations about what’s to come." 11/25/2018 0 Comments Command Joy Now by saying "I Hear You"I Hear You are the most powerful words in the English dictionary. These three little words carry so much meaning. When delivered authentically and with a pure heart, they can transform. They can help a frustrated person feel understood. An ignored person feel cared for. An anxious person feel loved.
Most of us are very good at talking, but not so good at listening. So when two people are talking at each other, it doesn’t make good communication. I Hear You offers validation. When we feel frustrated in life, it’s usually because we feel like our feelings have not been validated. All we really need is for someone to tell us that we are heard and understood. We want to know that what we are feeling is real and true. But most people don’t really want to listen to understand. We get so caught up in thinking about what we want to say, or trying to fix things, that we don’t try to simply figure out why someone is telling us something. I Hear You will help us with every kind of relationship. When we are talking to someone and they are telling us something that created frustration or anger for them, we can make sure we heard them correctly before trying to fix it. Saying I Hear You doesn’t mean that we agree with the other person, it means that we have taken the time to stay calm and understand. It’s as easy as saying "I hear you say _____. If I understood you correctly, you must be feeling _____. Do I have that right?" Try it today and in the comments below, tell us how I Hear You transformed your life or someone else’s. 11/18/2018 0 Comments Command Joy Now with Gratitude.She called me one day, crying hysterically. I could barely understand what she was saying, but I knew it was bad, really bad. “Erin, nothing’s going right in my life. It’s all too much. I can’t do it all. I am so over it.” This was my good friend Carol and I had never seen her like this before. Always happy, upbeat, smiling and laughing, I was at a loss for words. She was the one that always cheered me up. What was I going to say?
As I asked her what was going on, she explained how, over the last two years, she’d been so depressed. She wanted to run away. Work was overwhelming, her husband was draining her of all her energy, and she just didn’t see any of it letting up anytime soon. She sounded so sad! She was done. Broken. Over it. She said the only thing she wanted to do was run away. Live off the grid with no cell phone, no WIFI, nothing. Away. When I asked a little bit more about what was triggering this, I told her that she had to change her focus. I said, “Look at you. You’re beautiful. You’ve got a great personality. You’ve got family that loves you. You’re healthy, and yet, you’re allowing these two circumstances, this one person to steal your joy week after week, month after month.” The fact is that there are some things in life we cannot change. We can’t change people. We can’t make them do what’s right. And if we are constantly trying to get people to act the way we want them to, we are only going to frustrate ourselves. Then I started laughing…which, given the situation, didn’t go over very well. But I wasn’t laughing at Carol. I was laughing at our entire society. I mean, think about it. Our biggest problems are when we can’t get a good WIFI connection, when we have too many emails to read, and we have too much work to do. But yet, just a few generations ago, people came to this country with nothing. Just a hope and a dream. They took a chance, a leap of faith, leaving their hometowns on the other side of the world to start a new life. And more recently, women in this country were fighting hard for the rights to vote! To be able to work! And here we are, complaining and crying about it. But the pain is very real. Even if the problems don’t seem that big of a deal, the pain is. So, what do we do about it? We have to discipline ourselves to be grateful. We have to stay focused on the positive. Our minds naturally want to go toward the negative, it is just how we are wired. So it’s going to take a little bit of effort to shift ourselves to the attitude of gratitude. The thing we have to remember is that everyone faces difficult situations in life. If we were to ask everyone in the world to put their problems into a big pile, we would gladly take back our problems. When we are feeling like it is all too much and we feel ourselves spiraling downward, we can snap out of this crazy feeling. When we are overwhelmed and stressed to the max, we should have the attitude that says, 'no matter what's happening, I'm going to choose to be grateful.’ We tell ourselves: I'm not going to focus on what's wrong. I'm going to find something positive in my life. I may be sick, but, I am grateful that I woke up this morning. I may be struggling in my marriage, but I am grateful that I have a great family. I may be drowning in my work, but, I am grateful for having a good job. I may not have gotten the position I wanted, but I am grateful that I was able to see another sunrise, that I could hear the birds singing this morning, that I could smell the flowers. With Thanksgiving Day approaching, I hope we will remember the people that came here to the US, leaving the only things they’ve ever known behind. In search of a better life. As we think about the hardships and the struggles our own families have had to endure, I ask you – what are you grateful for today? Tell me in the comments below! When we feel pain, emotionally or physically, it is an indication that something isn’t right. It is our signal to Pay Attention Inward Now. It is our body’s intelligence screaming at us to pause and figure out what’s going on. Unfortunately, most of us don’t listen. Instead, we ignore it. We stuff it away. We suppress it and talk ourselves out of it.
But it’s not really our fault. As a society, we are taught that having bad feelings is wrong. When we are very young and we start crying or having temper tantrums, our parents tell us to be quiet. We get in trouble when we express a feeling, an emotion, or an action that isn’t 100% positive. If we start crying, we may get yelled at. If we say something isn’t fair or we don’t understand why we are experiencing terrible feelings, we get put in the dreaded time out. Any anger or aggression or agitation we show is met with resistance and annoyance from our parents. But it doesn’t stop there. We are taught very early on to stop the negativity. To ignore the feelings. We hear it not only from parents, but from teachers, coaches, and everyone in between. It’s in the books we read, the TV shows we watch, the movies with the happy ending. We are told over and over again that if we are just happy and positive and perfect, life will be great. We are taught that there is something wrong with us if we feel like there is something wrong. As a result, we think we are bad for having bad feelings. We are raised to behave appropriately, to stand in line, smile, and suck it up. We are told to be quiet, be good, and behave. But these feelings are our bodies natural reactions to Pay Attention Inward Now. We are feeling the pain, the discomfort, the unease for a reason. So what happens? As an adult, this translates into us doing everything we can think of to feel better when we feel any sort of negative emotion. We stuff the feelings inside. We ignore them. We tell ourselves to think positively. We try our best to shift our mindset. We grab or attack anything we can to make the bad feelings go away. The worst part is that we beat ourselves up irrationally for having these negative thoughts and feelings. We start to resent ourselves because we can’t figure out what is wrong with us. Everyone else seems to have it all together! Why don’t we? But it is our bodies telling us to Pay Attention Inward Now. Just because we are taught we aren’t supposed to feel that way doesn’t mean we don’t feel a certain way! Unknowingly, we stuff stuff stuff that negative feeling, pushing it down down down. We do everything to try and feel better. We eat chocolate, we drink wine, we exercise, we overwork, we ignore these feelings that are causing us so much pain. Instead of just Paying Attention Inward Now. Here’s the thing. This pain doesn’t go away! It doesn’t just magically disappear. What happens is that it shows up in other ways. In ways that cause much more harm than if we were just brought up to experience our emotions instead of hiding them away. Those negative thoughts, feelings, and emotions get trapped inside our brains and our bodies. All those feelings that we have been working so hard to stuff stuff stuff away will manifest themselves in other ways. They come back up as sickness. As explosive anger. As disease. The feelings that we fight so hard to get rid of become a part of us. When we ignore the bad feelings, when we push them down, sickness comes up. But it’s not obvious. It shows up in our life in different ways. It can look like overreacting to our friends when they ask us something small. We may not realize it at the time but the verbal outburst is really just the pain manifesting. The sickness is from ignoring ourselves and our feelings, from not respecting our emotions or loving ourselves enough. We judge ourselves too harshly and then wonder why we get sick. Why we aren’t perfect. Why we aren’t bubbly and happy and outgoing. We are so mean to ourselves! Instead of tucking away the pain, if we were to stop and pause and Pay Attention Inward Now, we could stop ourselves from the long term effects. So how do we do this? Here’s what it looks like. Anytime we feel a negative emotion, or feel pain, big or small, instead of running, we can sit with it. Just sit. Hands in your lap and feeling your breath moving in and out. Any PAIN we feel is just a signal to Pay Attention Inward Now. When we feel it, we can just experience the sensation. It might feel like a tidal wave coming up and over us. It might feel overwhelming and we may notice ourselves holding our breaths or tensing up because we think we can’t handle it. Then the negative voices start to appear in our minds, the adrenaline rush, the feeling that we have to do something, anything. We feel the need to act. But the best thing is for us not to act. To just sit. To Pay Attention Inward Now. And notice the sensations, feel them ripple through us- overwhelming at first and then after 20 minutes or so, a little calmer. They will subside. When we feel the negative emotion and we Pay Attention Inward Now, we can explore it further and try to identify where it is coming from. Then we can figure out how to fix it, how to solve it. When we feel PAIN and we Pay Attention Inward Now, we will start to act out of love, not fear. And that can make all the PAIN in our bodies melt away. Try it today!! In the comments below, tell me about a time you have felt PAIN and were able to Pay Attention Inward Now. “Erin, can I come over right now? I have a big decision to make TODAY and what I am thinking of deciding is a little crazy.”
This was a few weeks ago when a friend of mine had a job offer in her hand. This was something she had been talking about, dreaming about, and wanting for over a year. But it was in an entirely different field than where she had spent the last two decades of her life. And it meant that she would have to take a significant pay cut to go after it. I knew she had given considerable thought on all of her options, but she was having a hard time making the final call. I invited her over and we did a day of Personal Power review to help her get clear on what she really wanted. I reminded her that many of us underestimate the Personal Power we have inside of us. We are born with an inner strength and resilience that helps us learn and grow, but we often forget about it or take it for granted. It is our Personal Power that guides us into action. It is what allows us to build strong relationships, bounce back from adversity, and chase boldly after our dreams. Our Personal Power comes from our core, our basic instinct and intuition that guides us through this lifetime. But we often fail to recognize this Personal Power. We ignore our inner voices time and time again, to the point where the whispers are no longer loud enough for us to hear. We set aside our own deepest wishes, thoughts, and desires to satisfy those that are expected of us. We may end up in the wrong career, the wrong relationship, living the wrong lifestyle all because we forgot about our Personal Power. The good news is that we can get back in touch with it very easily. All we have to do is re- engage with our Personal Power. As I did with my friend Amanda, there are 3 easy things we can all start doing today to recapture our Personal Power.
Your Personal Power is there waiting for you to tap into. So tell me in the comments below, how are you going to get back in touch with your Personal Power today? 10/28/2018 0 Comments Command Joy Now by "It Has to Be Done"Have you ever been in a situation that you weren’t quite sure about?
Maybe it was starting at a new school or moving to a new town or starting a new job. Walking into a new place where you didn’t anyone. That scary feeling of having to be in a different environment, a new situation. Maybe you felt unsure of yourself. Alone. Uneasy. That feeling of having to put yourself out there and talk to strangers. Or going to a dance or party by yourself. Being self-conscious because you are trying to make new friends. Or that feeling when you like someone but you don’t know if they like you. You aren’t sure where they stand so you are too scared to tell them you love them. You don’t have that mindset of It Has to Be Done. Or maybe we are starting a new hobby, a new homework assignment, or a new project at work. We don’t know what we are doing. We have no clue where to begin. We feel unqualified, unprepared, unnerved. We know we have so much to learn and no time to do it. So we feel overwhelmed and insecure. We see a mountain to climb and we only have flip flops. The self doubt starts playing in our heads. We start thinking “maybe I can’t do this, maybe it is too much” And so we shut down. We don’t really try. Sure, we may give it a little bit of effort, but nothing like we could actually do. We don’t give it our all. We give it our almost. Here’s the thing. Living life on the sidelines, playing cautious, and not going all the way for it can mean that we miss out on some amazing things. When we aren’t committed to something, we can’t live our lives fully. We’ve all had times where we didn’t feel sure of something or a situation. So we dip our toes in. We hang back. We don’t want to totally commit. We are cautious. We don’t want to jump all the way in the because we don’t know what could happen. We have a mindset of “okay, I will maybe see if this is something I will like” Instead of the mindset of trying and seeing, we have to switch our minds to “It Has to Be Done” When something Has to Be Done, we just do it. We are all in, 100% committed. When something Has to Be Done, nothing can stop us. The self doubt just slips away because we are determined to make it happen. When something Has to Be Done, we know we will figure out a way even if we don’t see a way. When we live our lives with this mindset for everything we do, things start to flow. When we decide to go all in, and It Has to Be Done, our life feels more satisfying because we gave it our all. It’s knowing that we didn’t give it everything we had that cause us stress because not living up to our full potential doesn’t feel good. When we know that we could do better than we do, we quiet a part of our souls. And that causes pain. When we live with the mindset of everything we attempt of it having to be done, life just starts flowing. We feel happy, energized, inspired. When it Has to Be Done it gets done. So tell me, in the comments below, what is the one thing you will approach with It Has to Be Done in your life today? Everyone feels fear in life. But the thing is that fear is not real, it doesn’t exist, it’s not a living thing. It is just an illusion. Yet we give it so much power! We spend so much time avoiding this thing called fear.
A thing that isn’t even real!! It’s all a façade. How silly is that!?! Usually when we feel fearful of something, it is just the thought of the experience, not the actual experience itself. The fear builds up the more we think about the experience or event, and it can get bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger…until it shuts us down completely. It gets so big that we will avoid the entire fearful thing altogether. The funny thing is that it’s not the actual experience or event that we fear. Think about it. How many times have you felt fearful or anxious before you did something… and then once you started, you were just fine? Maybe it was a public speaking event that you were once frightened of. I have talked to so many people that will do whatever they can to avoid having to get up in front of people and speak. Yet, when they finally do it, guess what? It’s fine! They didn’t pass out, they didn’t have a heart attack. No one laughed at them or threw anything at them. They were fine. It was okay. Not the end of the world. Maybe the thing you fear is asking the person you have a crush on out on a date. Maybe it’s walking up to bat in the 9th inning, bases loaded. In our lifetime, we will be in so many fearful situations. And guess what? They will all end up being okay. We will be just fine. It is the anticipation, not the actual experience, that causes the fear. The good news is that we don’t have to let fear outdo us. We can train ourselves to not run away when we feel the fear, but to feel the fear and take action towards it anyway. It only takes 20 seconds. Yep, just 20 seconds of courage. It only takes 20 seconds to…
Each of those things only requires 20 seconds of courage. That’s It! 20 little seconds. We can do anything for 20 seconds, amIright?! There are so many things that we feel fearful of that we end up missing out in life. But the thing is that we would actually be okay. We don’t have to avoid those situations that may make us feel fearful. We can get over our fear in 20 seconds. When we feel the fear rise up inside, we don’t have to avoid it. We can take a different approach. We can close our eyes, breathe deeply, get centered. Then when we open our eyes, we can go straight for that fearful thing for 20 seconds. We can run right into it. Only 20 seconds. Think about the breakthroughs we can have if we just gave it 20 seconds!! 20, 19, 18, 17, 16, 15, 14, 13, 12, 11, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1…that’s it! In the comments below, tell me, what is the fearful thing that you are going to spend 20 seconds running towards today? |