by Dr. Heléna Kate | Nov 27, 2017 | Dr. Heléna Kate's Blog
Ready to make your life what you always dreamed it could be? We don’t get there by accident. We get there by living an intentional life. In fact, the more effort that we put in the more likely we are to see amazing results in any aspect of our life. If you are ready to get started, or want to get back on track, here are some tips for living a more intentional life.
Morning Practice: The cornerstone of the intentional life. A morning practice is a way forcing a good start for your day. Virtually anything can be a morning practice. It can be a meditation, reading your priorities, saying an affirmation, or anything that fits with your personal lifestyle. By putting first things first, your morning practice shows you, and life itself, what is truly most important to you.
Develop your Vision: To create the life that you want, it is important to know what it is that you want. If you do not spend time getting clear about the direction and vision you want for your life, you won’t know if you’ve ever gotten there (and you’ll be hard pressed to make much progress at all). It is important to consciously reflect on your life and take stock of your desires for the future during regular intervals in your life, like one time per year.
Priorities: In addition to envisioning the way that you would like your life to be, it is important to be clear about your priorities for any given amount of time. We have daily, weekly, monthly, and even yearly, priorities. When we identify priorities in our life, everyday decisions become simpler and they reinforce our vision. When out priorities win out,we are certain to get what it is that we want from our life.
Create time: Literally. Living a more intentional life doesn’t mean living a busier life. It is important to block out times for “nothing,” so that your life does not become overly full. When life is too full we get stuck in the business of it all and can loose our hold on being more intentional. By making sure that there is space in our life to recharge and regroup, we avoid going off the rails and we can stay on track.
Pause: Before you take your sip of coffee, make a phone call, or do any other activity in your day, pause. Bring your attention to what you are doing and how you want to do it. Applying focus to every experience will help you in living a more intentional life. Even just the act of pausing and taking a nice deep breath will change your experience.
Declutter: Too often we are doing too much, getting lost in a sea of activities and responsibilities. Notice if you are spending too much time being social or taking care of others and begin to shift how many things you are saying yes to. Living a more intentional life is about making sure that the things your are saying yes to are in line with your priorities and your overall vision for what you want to create. Just as your time needs to have some empty space, so does your environment. Make sure that the things you are tending to are in service of what you truly want.
Gratitude: When we express our gratitude, it makes us aware of what we already have. Not only do we feel happier when this is the case but we also set a more positive tone that encourages us to stay on track with our intentional living even more.
Take care of yourself: You are at the center of your intentional life. It is virtually impossible to function in an intentional way without excellent self care. Taking care of yourself first will allow you to steer your life in the direction of your choosing.
Awareness: Whether it is meditation or the latest self help book, having a regular tool that helps you become more aware is helpful in creating a more intentional life. The more aware we are, the easier it is to both know what we want and identify obstacles to that goal. Work to see more of who you are so that you can better see your path.
Perhaps most important is this final question: Why do you want to have an intentional life in the first place? What will it provide you with? When you know why you want to be intentional then you will have the motivation that you need to put the building blocks in place to make it happen. Click here to learn how LifeWork Community can help you define your intentional life.
by Dr. Heléna Kate | Nov 27, 2017 | Dr. Heléna Kate's Blog
While finding your life purpose may not be a panacea for all of your problems, there are four giant ways that your life changes when you find your purpose and start to live by it. These shifts can radically upgrade your life from just getting by to feeling like a super-star.
Finding your Life Purpose means that you feel good with the way that you are situated in the world and your actions in it have a sense of meaning to you. It does not mean that you have suddenly discovered that you are going to be the person to cure cancer (although that is a possibility). Our purpose is, more often than not, not one act or one career, but a greater sense that our inside self and our outer life are in alignment.
No matter who you are and how skeptical you might be that you have a life purpose, I can assure you, you have one. It may not be quite as you imagined it, but it is there. As you identify your life purpose and get more on track with living it you will see radical change in how you feel on a regular basis.
We get a lot closer to living our purpose when we stop thinking and start feeling. Step out of your head and stop trying to construct what your life purpose looks like. Instead, start feeling what feels good to you. These are the breadcrumbs that lead us to our purpose. The things that feel good to you are the components of your life purpose. As you claim them, little by little, your purpose begins to take shape. When it does you will notice the following seismic shifts in your life.
Ways your life changes when you find your purpose:
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- More Engaged: When you find your purpose and start living it, you start feeling more engaged in your life. While some things may no longer interest you, the things that are in alignment with your purpose will become that much more dynamic. It will feel like you just woke up and there is a party going on that you didn’t even notice was there. If you used to wait to do things, you may find that you are now first in line. If you used to let others answer the questions, you may find yourself center stage with a host of answers.
- More Energy: As a result of living your life purpose you will feel much more energized. It will be easier to get up in the morning. You will find yourself looking forward to what you have to do and, at the end of the day, you will be less likely to crash yourself down in front of the TV or whatever numbing agent of choice you like to use. You will find that you have more energy to do more things in your area of interest. You will also be able to make more happen each day with seemingly less effort.
- More Opportunity: Living your life purpose shifts the way that you look at the world. Instead of it seeming like your goals are impossibly out of reach, you will begin to experience synchronicities that connect you with what you need to get the job done. As you continue to move in the direction of your life purpose, you may even start to see that the obstacles that you do encounter are more like markers that are guiding you in the right direction.
- More fulfillment: Even if you are living your life purpose, you will still notice that there are times that are challenging. The ups and downs of life do not go away just because you have started living your life purpose. However, you will notice that even when times are tough, you feel more satisfied overall with your life. When times are good, you will also benefit from a deeper, more fulfilling satisfaction than when you were not living your life purpose.
Think about what your life would be like if you felt fully engaged and energized, if you saw it as full of opportunity, and if you felt a deep sense of fulfillment, regardless of whether your day-to-day went well or not. The giant changes in the way you experience your life are worth cashing in on through a little investigation of your life purpose.
by Dr. Heléna Kate | Nov 21, 2017 | Dr. Heléna Kate's Blog
Being sensitive to the thoughts and feelings of others is the gift and the plight of the empath. If I had a nickel for every time someone said to me that they struggle in their life because of how empathic they are, I could open a bank account. Many empaths choose to isolate themselves because they do not know what to do to take care of themselves when in community. While some temporary isolation can actually help solve your problems in the short term, isolation is not an adequate long term solution for how to survive being an empath.
If it is challenging for you to take care of yourself because you are an empath, here are some tips that will help make it a bit easier.
Strengthen yourself: The stronger that you are, the less likely you are to take on other people’s stuff. Absorption of lower energies –the stuff you feel from other people that makes you feel less than optimal— happens more frequently when you are operating at these lower frequencies yourself. The less you are taking care of yourself, or the more unresolved stuff you have, the more likely you are to be overcome by other people’s stuff. Build yourself up and you will see that you can more easily work with what comes your way.
Do you really need to take it on: Empaths are built to intimately experience the world and people around them. This design comes with certain tendencies to process the feelings of those around them. This is not an imperative. Instead, you can learn not to take on EVERYONE’s stuff and begin to protect yourself from what does not serve you. As you start to learn to put a layer of protection between you and some parts of the world, you will likely notice how often you feel drawn to energies that do not serve you. This is its own teaching.
Can you take it on differently: It is worth asking the question, “Is there another way to do this?” Perhaps ingesting and processing things for other people is less than optimal. Maybe you could choose to actively support them in their journey, rather than sympathetically absorb their experience. Maybe you could ask for more support in processing what you are coming in contact with. In some cases, I have recommended that empaths begin to officially work with people in a healing capacity to start to develop structure and skills around what they do naturally.
Clean and clear regularly: If you are going to operate in the world in an optimal way then you will need to keep yourself clean and clear. If you are an empath you should have a toolbox of cleaning and clearing techniques to support you in being healthy and happy. Every time you start to feel heavy, low, sluggish, cleaning and clearing should be your first step.
Take some personal time: Yes, I did start this article talking about how to survive being an empath without isolating yourself – with good reason. However, some well placed, intentional alone time can do wonders for you. It is helpful to define a specific amount of time for your personal time so that you learn to move in and out of your personal time, without isolating.
Learning how to survive being an empath is about taking care of yourself with consistency. Newer, better, or fancier tools to work with are less important than good ones that work for you and which you apply regularly. If you are feeling the push to isolate, start putting some of those good tools into practice. Click here to sign up for Conscious Creative Magazine, our collaborative art piece that brings you inspiration, guidance, and resources – right to your inbox – every month.
by Dr. Heléna Kate | Oct 30, 2017 | Dr. Heléna Kate's Blog
Understanding how to use personal power to reach your next spiritual level is the key to achieving this transition. According to writer and theorist Ken Wilber, development is a continuum of processes that takes us from psychological “growing up” to spiritual “waking up”. Growing up refers to our personal development, while waking up refers to our spiritual development. In other words, our individual development of personal power allows us to reach our spiritual enlightenment.
Your personal power is central to your spiritual growth. The key component of this empowerment is recognizing that you are “at cause” for everything that happens in your life. In other words, the common denominator in each and every situation you encounter is you. Taking responsibility for your life, in a loving and compassionate way, will launch you to your next spiritual level.
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Here are a few action steps you can take so that you can learn how to use personal power to reach your next spiritual level:
Eliminate Blame:
It takes two to tango. Yes, the person you’re in conflict with may not have done right by you, but before you go on the offense, figure out the ways you have contributed to the conflict situation. The time you spend thinking about your own contribution to a conflict is not meant to assuage guilt from anyone else, but it will help you see your own role and help you be as constructive as possible with your feedback. Be honest with yourself.
Be Constructive:
How to use personal power is often about looking for ways to create more of what we want. If you do not like the way a situation — or even your whole life — is going, you can choose to create more of what you want. Spend less time discussing, arguing, or even engaging with what you are trying to get rid of, and start to focus your efforts in the direction you want to go.
Communicate Clearly:
Clear communication finds its ground in your personal power. It is from the place of clarity and responsibility that we find in our personal power that we are able to constructively interact with the world around us. From here, we are able to let others know what we truly want, and negotiate the details of how it comes to us. The clearer that we are with our communication, the easier it is to create and co-create our vision for our life.
Set Intentions:
Our spiritual development is grounded in our ability to be intentional. What do we want to create in our life? How are we showing up to each moment? Being intentional is a sign that we are effectively using our personal power. It is a sign that we are connecting to ourselves and what the deepest part of ourselves wants.
Be Gracious:
What good is a sense of personal power if we leave a wake a disruptions behind us as we claim our place in the world? A sure sign that you are using your personal power effectively is that you are able to be gracious in most situations. This ability to be responsive, kind, and supportive will ensure that you have less to clean up as you change your life and will allow you to take your next steps more easily.
I help women step into their personal power and gain control of their life. To learn more, click here to sign up for my newsletter, or here to learn how my Personal Breakthrough Intensive will help you reach your next level.
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by Dr. Heléna Kate | Oct 23, 2017 | Dr. Heléna Kate's Blog
It\’s ok if you haven\’t always known how to change your life story, or even what your life story is. At 15 years old, I was a mess. I was exceptionally miserable, smoking, drinking, and dabbling in drugs. Perhaps, some of you can relate? For me, on any particular day I could be sobbing in the bathroom, cutting myself, contemplating suicide, or just being plain reckless. I wish I could say that the despair started at 15, or ended then, but if I go back in my mind I can find it starting in my early childhood, and it lasted years later.
There are many ways that pain like this gets categorized: The histrionics of an adolescence, an uncommon experience of an unfortunate individual, growing pains (*rolls eyes*)… However you define it, my 15 year old self could not cope. For me, my pain became the story that guided the first part of my life. Learning how to change your life story is a skill that takes practice and it\’s something you need to truly want. Here’s what I learned from my own experience of channeling my awareness to wake up and change my story to one of happiness, abundance, and purpose.
How to recognize the problem
The first question is how did it happen in the first place?
What happened to me happens to many people. Repeatedly and systematically, I was told that my instincts were wrong, that my emotional responses were bad, that my way of being was unacceptable. I was told I needed to think a certain way to be smart. I needed to feel a certain way to be good. I needed to talk a certain way to be accepted. My life became a series of acts, transactions, and obligations. I was disconnected from my own truth.
My experience is not unique and this was not done to me out of cruelty. In fact, sometimes it was done by people who were trying their best to be loving and supportive. Collectively, we lack the broad knowledge of essential tools that help people create a personal experience that truly serves them. Instead, we default to a misguided status quo as if every individual would be fulfilled by meeting cookie cutter expectations and norms. It is very rare that anyone tell you, in the midst of your formation, that you can learn how to change your life story.
Unfortunately, by the time most people have reached the end of their childhood they have little idea of who they are, negligible emotional intelligence, and a profoundly deep belief that they need to be another person to be loved. We feel this way at the culmination of our “formative years.” We learn to compensate for what we have come to believe are our shortcomings and weaknesses – we act the part to get by. Most of us forget that there is an alternative.
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How to change your life story
Our limiting story has to be put into place.
Our first step in using awareness to change our life story is to begin to wake up to what is meaningful and enjoyable to us. It starts by pursuing a life where details large and small are things that are meaningful to us. We define what is “meaningful” through a process of personal inquiry into who we truly are. Giving ourselves this approach to life is a sign of love and respect.
As we begin to live in a way that feels right to us, we begin to uncover our own gifts. Often, these gifts have been covered over by the conditioning of our earlier lives. Many times, when we unpack what we thought was our fatal flaw we discover a powerful gift and a major part of our contribution to the world.
Our actions help us become more aware, they shift what we believe about ourselves and what we think is possible.
It is in this way that so much of who we are goes unrealized and our potential power to create our own wellbeing and positive change gets lost. Some of our seemingly meaningless quirks have a productive and positive application, we just need to wake up enough to begin looking for it. When we do, we feel better about ourselves and we begin to make a more positive contribution to the world.
ACCEPTANCE AND FORGIVENESS
Practicing forgiveness and acceptance is the key to changing our story. Acceptance and forgiveness are for both for ourselves and for others. It only takes a few trips to a therapist or an in depth writing exercise to become aware of our story. It takes a little more time to see how we keep ourselves on the hook and to begin the process of giving self-acceptance and self-forgiveness. Many people never develop this foundational respect for themselves and instead mask it with things like accolades, egoism, or bitterness.
Likewise, we cannot truly move forward until we have accepted the events of our lives and forgiven the people who we believe have hurt us. If we can become more aware of where we are holding onto past hurts, we can release them and liberate ourselves to create an entirely different narrative.
SELF-LOVE
The third awareness tool for changing our story is self love. As we become aware of what true self-love looks and feels like and learn to live it more in each moment, we begin to see our story differently and to envision an alternative story that better suits us.
When our self-love is strong enough, we are able to face the painful challenges of life. We are able to learn from what is happening and apply it to our life in a way that makes us stronger and more ourselves. As a result, we change the narrative.
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Next Steps
Apply the wisdom that gets developed when living life from a place of self love and acceptance.
This wisdom can be applied to every moment of our lives. Our developed ability to hold ourselves in a place of love and take affirming action in the face of opposition has the power to transform our world. If we no longer negate ourselves or feel the need to justify and rationalize our pain, if we are able to act constructively when faced with the obstacles of life, if we are able to remember that we are the critical change agent of each moment, then what we can accomplish individually and collectively is without parallel.
Each day holds countless moments in which we can shift things in the direction of the positive, in which we have the opportunity to leave the past and create something powerful and new moving forward. I did it and I can help you if you want to learn how to change your life story. To learn more click here to sign up for my newsletter.
