by Dr. Heléna Kate | Feb 12, 2014 | Dr. Heléna Kate's Blog
Today I made an important decision. It may not seem important but as some one who wants to live connected to community, it was an important decision for me. I decided to delegate a work task so that I could go spend a weekend at the lake with my friends.
That seems like a no brainer right? The reality is many times it’s emotionally easier for me to choose work, a night curled up with a book, or good activities to really spending time with people. I have a wall in my life.
In the quest to have good boundaries, we can easily confuse what we think are boundaries in our life with what are actually walls that we have put up.
I spent years working in ministry and much of that time leading various teams. Anyone who leads, particularly in a ministry setting, knows that situations are bound to arise that will hurt you very deeply. Sometimes I have processed those hurts well and other times I have let them build up walls in my life. In my particular situation, I never had the same team two years in a row – for eleven years! That’s a lot of people coming in and out of your life.
I realized lately that I have a wall that tells me not to get invest too deeply in a group because next year it’ll require the emotional energy to start all over again. That’s a wall – it’s born out of past situations that were hard and it sets me up to protect myself in unhealthy ways.
So how do we know the difference between boundaries in walls in our lives? The difference can be subtle. I try to think of it in this way:
Boundaries help us define ourselves. They define who we are and who we are not. They help us move toward healthy relationships because we have a healthy sense of ourselves.
Walls on the other hand are built up to protect us. They are an unhealthy response to hurtful or emotionally exhausting situations. Ultimately they will move us away from healthy community in some way.
So I would encourage you to look at your boundaries and examine them. Are they a healthy boundary or a damaging wall. If it’s the latter, what steps can you take to break down the wall and move toward healthy community.
Kathryn Taylor is a non-profit consultant and blogger. Read more by Kathryn on her blog http://projectspace.in/work/project/katelive/
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by Dr. Heléna Kate | Feb 9, 2014 | Dr. Heléna Kate's Blog
Plain and simple, the reason that we put up a defense is because we have been hurt by something similar to it before. In fact, research is showing that these past hurts stay lodged in our genetics and even get passed down the family line. Knowing what is safe and what is not safe is essential to our survival.
Unfortunately, it is also often in the way of our happiness.
I actually don’t recommend that anyone tear down all their walls. However, I think it is very important that we learn how to dismantle them or at very least build a door in them. So, what does this look like?
The number one way that you can create more intimacy is to foster an attitude of curiosity. It is so easy to assume that we know exactly what is going on, what someone’s intention or motivation is, what they were thinking, how it is supposed to affect us. As soon as we do this, we have left the present moment and we are making decisions out of all of our past experience.
To cultivate curiosity in your life and with others it is also important to cultivate trust. We need to be able to trust ourselves in order to be curious in our lives in general and we also need to establish trust with others in order to be able to be curious rather than guarded with them.
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by Dr. Heléna Kate | Feb 7, 2014 | Dr. Heléna Kate's Blog
So many people don’t see the patterns that keep them stuck in their love life even when they are right in front of them. To discover what is truly in the way of your ideal partner coming into your life, you can look at other areas and how you relate to yourself and others that give a huge clue.
One place to start is with your relationship with yourself and others when doing personal development. Every workshop, teacher, coach or class you interact with is a reflection of you and how you do relationships. When I coach with someone personally, I actually get a feel for how others react to them in their love life. I can sense how they are acting with me and the process which gives me the insight to share with them HOW they are being so they can see where they are stuck.
If you don’t have a coach, here are some examples of how you do personal development and how it shows up in dating and relationships:
- The passive one. You aren’t making an effort, always looking for some quick fix with minimal emotional involvement. You may even feel afraid of looking deeper or invest too much in yourself because you doubt that anything can help you. You never really try so you can justify why you don’t get anywhere in love.
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- How it shows up in love: You meet people who won’t go deeper either. You wait passively for divine timing or when your astrology says the time is right. You think that love isn’t meant for you anymore. You got hurt too many times and you just want to wait and hope for things to change. But… they never do.
The Extremist. You go full-on into every workshop, coaching program, class you take. You get really excited and hopeful each time you try something new. You jump from program to program hoping that THIS will be the ONE. You do the work to GET the man without valuing the journey. You get caught up in fixing yourself so you can reach the finish line but you end up feeling worse. You are trying too hard and getting the opposite result because as you do the programs you hold fear and anxiety and forget how wonderful you already are.
How it shows up in love: You jump into relationships and try SO hard to make them work. Every NEW person is “the one” for you and you try to force it to a commitment. You are filled with fear and anxiety when you meet someone. You lose your ground and feel if you can just get him/her to commit, everything will be okay. You may tend to attract men/women who do the same to you. They try really hard at first even when they hardly know you. They are in love with the idea of finding someone/anyone more than seeing you.
The Half-Committed. You jump in with full force and give up quickly. It takes you a long time to make a decision and then you change your mind frequently. You have a hate/love relationship with the process. You love it when things seem to be going your way and you easily give up when the first obstacle arises. You blame external (the workshop, life, the coach, the teacher) instead of looking inside. When faced with deeper issues, you run away. You resent having to do personal development work and you doubt if anything will help you because you keep looking outside for results before they have time to manifest.
How it shows up in love: You change your decisions often about whether someone is good for you or whether you should go back to your ex. You get angry easily at the universe and the men you date. You believe life isn’t fair. You aren’t clear of what you want and if you can consciously create your life. The men/women you attract are half-committed too. They just can’t seem to make up their minds about you or whether they want a relationship.
Solution: Design your ideal relationship (not the ideal persona of who you want to attract). Describe how you want to be treated, how you want to feel and how you want to live. Then, approach everything in life (your work, your friendships, your personal development process) as YOU want to be treated yourself. If you want a commitment, then commit to yourself, if you want someone to make an effort with you, then make an effort for yourself. As you make this shift in your mind and behavior, you will start to see others mirror back to you how you deserve to be treated.
You always get back what you put out. That is the law of karma. So, what will you put out today?
Debi Berndt and Dr. Robert Maldonado are the co-founders of Creative Love™, a personal development company that helps people attract, master and teach love. They’ve worked with thousands of singles across the world to find true love and their Creative Love™ Process is now taught in 13 different languages.Learn more here.
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by Dr. Heléna Kate | Feb 5, 2014 | Dr. Heléna Kate's Blog
It’s 2025. At your routine physical, the doctor takes your blood pressure, checks your cholesterol level, and asks a standard health question: How’s your love life? Sound too personal?
In the future, it may be common sense. It seems that some of the best medicine for good health doesn’t come in a pill. It comes from love. “When we have love in our lives, we get sick less frequently and recover more quickly from illness,” says Steven Dubovsky, M.D., professor of psychiatry and internal medicine at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center in Denver. “Just as we require food and water, we need affection to be healthy human beings.\”
Just how does love get into the body and influence biological processes? Because research in the field is very new, doctors admit they don’t yet have all the answers.
One thing is clear, however. While love is undoubtedly the granddaddy of all emotions, it is a physical wonder as well, resulting in concrete metabolic and biochemical changes. And many of these changes have health-boosting benefits. Just about any kind of deep devotion and caring will do. From the heady high of a new romance to spending time with treasured friends and family members, here are the newest findings about how this crazy thing called love can help keep the doctor away.
6 Ways to Boost Love’s Benefits
Try these tips to get the optimum wellness rewards from your relationships.
- Get touchy-feely. Hugging, cuddling or holding hands lowers stress hormones and elevates oxytocin, a hormone that appears to improve cardiovascular health.
- Make each day Valentine’s Day. Don’t wait for a holiday, birthday or anniversary to offer gifts of love. Giving romantic cards, flowers or heartfelt presents, as well as saying words of endearment, positively impacts the body’s metabolism.
- Seal it with a kiss. Planting a kiss on your sweetheart, child or even close friend awakens nerve endings and releases health-boosting oxytocin.
- Resolve conflicts with kindness. It’s human nature for us to occasionally argue with people we love. But hostile spats can cause blood pressure and heart rates to soar. Discuss problems calmly. If things begin to heat up, say something nice. You’ll be amazed at how soon would-be fights fizzle and a feeling of relaxation returns.
- Take part in child’s play. Pitching in with the school play or peewee soccer team helps you feel closer to your child and expands your social network. Children are a wonderful ticket to meeting new people, which benefits psychological health.
- Pet your pooch. Stroking and talking to animals has a calming effect on the body. Studies show that pet owners have lower blood pressure, stress and cholesterol levels.
Reblogged from jansheehan.com
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by Dr. Heléna Kate | Feb 2, 2014 | Dr. Heléna Kate's Blog
I recently had a bout with jealousy. I started to compare myself to someone else and just kept coming up short. Everything this other person excelled at was something that was in my wheelhouse but not my gift. I started to feel the pain of being “less than.”
I know that there is a way out of this bind. So, I spent some time and got some support in coming back to a place of love. Because, in this place of love all the rest gets put in perspective.
This time of year many people think about the state of their relationship, their love life, and the like but love is much more than dinner dates and flowers. It is much more ever-present than your last crush or even your long term relationship.
Love is quite simply the most powerful tool you have in your toolbox. Because, love can burn everything else away –everything that does not serve you that is.
I think that it is a force more powerful than any other. Mystics have spoken about it throughout time. They have tried to teach us that if we can connect to our hearts and return to this space of love then we have the ability to move mountains and part seas.
But, what does this mean for you and me?
When you are faced with a situation –maybe it is a coworker, a lover, or a friend—where you are at odds with someone else, see if you can return to a place of love. This might seem like a foreign concept to many people. It might bring forward thoughts like, “How the heck do I do that?” So, here is one way you can do it:
Take a few minutes for yourself. Get comfortable. Close your eyes… Actually, no!! Scratch that. That could be a method but I think it is time to approach things from a new angle!
What secret negative longings do you have? Take an inventory. If you can figure out your negative intent then you can clear it. When you clear it it is that much easier to return to a place of love.
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by Dr. Heléna Kate | Jan 25, 2014 | Dr. Heléna Kate's Blog
The time has come to write. I feel this on an almost cellular level. Why? Because I\’m sitting in my writing chair, wearing my writing glasses, chewing my writing gum. Now, I could sit in this chair, wear these glasses, and chew this gum while knitting tea cozies, juggling jelly beans, and husking corn (just not at the same time). But I wouldn\’t. See, I write at home, and I\’ve learned the hard way that unless I strictly divide my writing time from everything else, my work bleeds into my home life. Then I can never relax, because, just like an ax murderer in a horror movie, my work is always lurking.
These days almost all of us work at home to some extent. Maybe you spend evenings brooding over spreadsheets from the office. Maybe you\’re in the house all day doing the hardest work imaginable: caring for the young, the old, or the ill. Or maybe, like me, you have a job—sort of—but no official physical workplace. All of which is to say that when I talk about \”home\” versus \”work,\” I mean the activities that replenish your energy versus the ones that drain it. In an age when bleed-through is the new normal, it\’s more crucial than ever to separate the two. Here are some strategies that help me.
1. Establish a replenishing inner \”state of home.\”
Some people spend years in an office cubicle without ever feeling the energetic involvement of real work; others do brilliant, inspired work without ever leaving their bed. This is because both work and home are first and foremost states of mind. So to begin separating your work life and home life, we\’ll concentrate on creating a mental \”state of home\” inside your head.
To do this, focus on memories that feel relaxing, nourishing, replenishing—in a word, homey. Remember baking with your grandmother, or talking with your sister, or snuggling in bed with a loved one (fabulous sex is an excellent way to feel at home, as is cuddling with your beloved collie—just not at the same time).
If you don\’t have many homey memories, your mental state of home may feel tepid at first. Persist! Remember the most comforting times and places you can: the branches of the tall tree where bullies couldn\’t reach you, Uncle Joe\’s bomb shelter, the warmest corner of the prison yard. (Ideally, you\’re looking for a sense of joyful replenishment, but happy relaxation is nearly as good, pleasant neutrality will do, familiar boredom is better than nothing, and defensible concealment—well, you get the idea.)
Once you come up with three memories that qualify, hold in mind the feelings they bring, while silently repeating, \”Home. Home. Home.\”
Read step two in tomorrow\’s!
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by Dr. Heléna Kate | Jan 23, 2014 | Dr. Heléna Kate's Blog
You have 1440 minutes between right now and this time tomorrow. Only 1440 minutes. How will you use that time? One percent of that time is about 15 minutes. What, you ask, is so important about 15 minutes? It is a block of time that\’s small enough to make room for and large enough to get something significant done.
My most important strategy to get more done every day is simply to always be ready. When you are ready, you have what you need when you need it. This means you can use \”found time\” productively to move your business forward.
I can hear you asking: \”What is \’found time\’\”? Have you ever been to a meeting that didn\’t start when planned? Far too many meetings start several minutes late. When you are ready to use those \”found\” 15 minutes, you can effectively make a dent in all you need to get done each day.
For example, when I have magazine articles I want to read, I tear them out of my magazines and carry them with me for a day or two. Then when — not if — \”found time\” appears, I use it to read those articles. This helps me stay in touch with what\’s happening in my industry, making me more effective with my clients.
In my experience, many people use \”found time\” to check their email. While this may seem productive at the moment, it doesn\’t always move you forward on your long-term goals. When you really look at your goals, there are often tasks that would help \”get you there\” that take between 15 to 45 minutes to complete. Get clear about what tasks you can accomplish in 15 minute chunks. Then, always be ready with what you need to accomplish that task. You will immediately become more productive.
A good exercise is to make a list of 20 to 30 tasks you can accomplish in less than 15 minutes. I keep and update this list in Evernote all the time. This is not a list of to-dos, but rather the extras. Then set yourself up with the supplies or information you need to complete those tasks. Make sure the needed items are with you when you go to meetings, leave the office or otherwise suspect you might have a bit of extra time. By being ready, you can take advantage of these windows of opportunity.
One of my favorite uses of \”found time\” is to write thank you cards. Watching for people to acknowledge and thank also makes my day better. Plus, thank you notes touch people in a unique way. In fact, I write at least one thank you note each week. This means I send a minimum of 52 hand written — yes, always by hand — thank you notes a year.
Of course, I accomplish this by always having note cards, envelopes and stamps with me. When a meeting is late, I can quickly jot a note of thanks, pop it in the envelope and send it off. Expressing gratitude is a fabulous use of \”found time.\” Plus, saying \”thank you\” makes the recipient feel valued, sets you apart from the crowd and leaves you feeling good.
So my favorite strategy to being more productive is to always be ready. Take time to figure out how your day is likely to unfold and make sure you have the supplies you need with you. When you are always ready, you can truly get more done each day.
Jason W. Womack is founder of The Womack Company, a productivity-training firm based in Ojai, Calif. He is author of Your Best Just Got Better: Work Smarter, Think Bigger, Make More (Wiley, 2012).
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by Dr. Heléna Kate | Jan 21, 2014 | Dr. Heléna Kate's Blog
When it comes to being successful, high achievers have a number of habits in common. But that doesn\’t mean you can\’t be right up there with them.
Here are three qualities all successful people share and how you can make them your own:
1. Say \’no\’ to distraction. Every. Single. Time. Successful people make better use of their time because they are disciplined goal-setters. I’m referring to those high performers who experience no down-time. Sure, there are vacations and time spent with the family, but that comes after success has been achieved.
Successful people have that same list of tasks to accomplish as anyone else, but the difference is they make time to get them all done with no excuses. They may not enjoy it, but that is irrelevant. What matters is that it gets done. They are disciplined in planning their work and sticking to their plan.
Even when you’ve achieved that level of success, the work doesn’t stop. I am always on the lookout for a great, profitable investment. I might be out with my family, but my brain is always aware of business opportunities around me. I don’t just shut it off when I’m not at work.
2. Read something new everyday. Successful people read constantly, find mentors who can teach them and value new information that can help push them forward. Whatever field you are in, you have to learn before you earn. Learn your product, customers and competition. And then: keep learning.
3. Flaunt your failures like a champ. Fail as many times as you can. Everyone fails. It’s part of life. Too many people take failure as a sign it\’s time for them to give up. Those people don’t get very far. What sets successful people apart is the ability to get up and give it another go with a better plan for how to be successful the next time around.
If you want to embrace the habits of successful people, you’ve got to make the change within yourself first.
Reblogged from Entrepreneur Online.
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by Dr. Heléna Kate | Jan 19, 2014 | Dr. Heléna Kate's Blog
I don\’t know who you wound up hanging out with in high school, but it seemed to me that the Artists were heavy on imagination, vision, and dreaminess while the Jocks were about results, goals, and action. As I look at the people I work with now, I can see this classic high-school saga play out — the vast majority of either group rolling their eyes at the other. The Artists are weird. The Jocks are stupid.
Truth be told, I work with more artists than jocks. Artists tend to dream big and forget to wake up, get a cup of coffee, and take some action. Quite honestly, some artists get lost on the way to the coffee pot, never to be heard from again. When I start to talk goals or plans with them, all of a sudden they look at me like I\’m in an athletic uniform on the other side of that cafeteria — like I just don\’t get them or I am not one of them. In their mind, Artists do not work that way.
Jocks, on the other hand, might be very successful in their lives, but they feel empty on the inside. They got the job done, they scored the goal, and their team is giving them praise, but it just isn\’t giving them the same thrill it used to. When I start talking about vision, dreams and life purpose with them, they start noticing that I am dressed a bit funny and think that maybe I am a little too flaky to help them out.
However, what rarely happened in high school needs to happen in our lives. The Artists and Jocks need to hang out together — and even enjoy hanging out together. This needs to happen or we are not going to be able to bring our dreams into reality. If we have vision and no action, we eventually have frustration. If we have action with no vision, we also get frustration. When the Jock and the Artist figure out that they really make a great pair, we have some of our favorite high school movies — satisfaction.
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by Dr. Heléna Kate | Jan 16, 2014 | Dr. Heléna Kate's Blog
OK, so I cannot spell. You must have noticed by now. That, and I have several other learning disabilities. I have heard my entire life how sloppy, stupid, or unprofessional I am because of these difficulties. I can\’t say it hasn’t stung from time to time but it has been a great teacher.
Which brings me to the idea of perfectionism, a topic that was repeated again during the last session of my Serious Success 2 Business program. We discussed the importance of moving forward rather than getting stuck in the idea with a false belief that things, at some point in time, will be perfect. They won\’t be.
There was a point in my life where a mistake like what I just mentioned would\’ve caused me physical pain. I would have cringed at the idea of people witnessing such an \”obvious\” oversight. However, at this point in time, a mistake like that only reminds me of my humanness — something I have to say I\’m becoming very good friends with. I have learned that compassion with myself is a vital part of my success.
I\’m going to recommend that you become friends with your own limitations, shortcomings, and oversights. Not because we want to devalue our work or lessen its impact but because, in order for the world to change — and in order for our lives to change — we need to move forward, take action, and make a difference. If we are doing that, the mistakes along the way will fade and our successes will become that much greater and more memorable.
I am grateful that I do not need to be perfect. I will, of course, try my best, but doing my best truly is good enough, and makes the work and the challenges faced that much more enjoyable and deeply fulfilling.
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