by Dr. Heléna Kate | Apr 20, 2015 | Dr. Heléna Kate's Blog
Like many of the personal development terms that have become common in our vernacular, life purpose is something that many people talk about and feel they should have and often times wonder how they would know if they had it.
While some people might think of life purpose in terms of fate or destiny, I prefer to think of it in terms of the expression of your whole self. In other words it is less important that we know it and more important that we are it.
In truth that is a little bit of a stretch, there is no way for us not to be our purpose. However, we can feel more or less connection and pleasure from it. And, that is the reason for us to “find” our life purpose.
In my Make It Happen Guide, I write, “Whatever you want or dream of you can have it. It is in you. You are the one you have been waiting for.” One of the problems with life purpose is that people go looking for it. Then because they are looking for it they feel perpetually disconnected from it. It becomes something beyond themselves that they must find instead of a natural expression of who they are.
So, connecting with your life purpose is really about connecting the deeper and truer aspect of who you are and to do that you can do the following.
- Pay attention to where you feel connected, excited, passionate, of positive. These are clues to deeper truths about yourself and therefore your life purpose. Do more of what makes your feel good.
- What if bad things make you feel good? Sometimes people get stuck because what they feel they want to do is destructive or negative. If you feel this way, you might say, “if I did what I wanted to all the time then I would ____.” Fill in the blank with some negative outcome. But even your negative pleasure can lead you in the right direction if you approach it in the right way.
- Honor your dreams. They are with you for a reason. The hints that you get along the way from your fantasies can profoundly connect you to yourself and your purpose.
- Your purpose is not necessary a vocation. But, it may be able to be turned into one. Think less about what work you want to do in the world and more about what kind of impact you want to have or what kind of contribution you want to make.
I love this topic of life purpose and I look forward to talking with you about it more on my weekly radio show, Real Answers this week.
by Dr. Heléna Kate | Apr 13, 2015 | Dr. Heléna Kate's Blog
This week I want to talk about personal power and empowerment. What does it mean be in your power? What gets you there, what holds you there, and what gets you off track? When you know more about these dynamics you are able to harness really deep forces for creation and transformation.
What does it mean? The term empowerment was popularized in the 80’s. It was based on the idea of “giving to, or increasing, the strengths of other groups of people whether those are educational, spiritual or otherwise.” Personal empowerment then became a buzz phrase for when we “give” ourselves back our own power or when we feel our own sense of power without the need to hold it over another.
Like many expressions of the personal development field, the phrase personal empowerment states something in a way that helps us understand how to shift our perspective. We have the ability to do or say things that will give us more power. We have the ability to hold our power in a way that is more about our deep respect for our self than it is about holding it over or using it on another. Personal power and our own empowerment is the result of our knowing we have the ability to choose and in influence the many aspects of our life.
What gets you there? If we have the ability to empower ourselves then how do we do this? What are the practical everyday types of things that you can do to feel confident and able to move forward with whatever you want to create in your life.
From an energetic perspective, being in our power overlaps with other experiences such as being centered, grounded, connected to our self, or clear (other expressions that help us understand HOW to be more powerful.) When we cultivate these states, we cultivate a stronger sense of personal power.
What holds you there? Once we have discovered our own power, we soon find that we can just as quickly lose sight of it. To stay connected with our power, we need to put ourselves in environments that support us and learn how to support ourselves. We need to need to take care of ourselves in the deepest way possible. And, be more and more aware of the situation in which we lose touch with our personal power.
What gets you off track? Standardly, what gets people off track are the core patterns that disempowered them in the first place. Somewhere along the line, you were hurt while being in your fullness and this had you take a dramatic action to try and protect yourself. Once we have reclaimed our power we are most likely to let it go when we face replicas of these past events. You can easily find out what gets you off track by figuring out what you are afraid of or afraid of having happen.
Why is this really important? Staying connected to your personal power is foundational to being able to create the life and business that you want. Without it, we do not know how to see each situation as an opportunity and each moment as a choice. This limits what we can create and often leaves us playing the role of the victim rather than the role of the victor.
What is personal power and how can you connect to it and use it to propel your life? This week on Real Answers Radio, Dr. Kate discusses how personal power is linked to being able to create and manifest what you want in your life. From this perspective, tools for cultivating personal power are one of the most important things we can learn. Tune in to explore what being empowered really means and what you can do to step for fully into it.
by Dr. Heléna Kate | Feb 28, 2015 | Dr. Heléna Kate's Blog
The story goes like this, eighteen hours before my plane is going to leave for vacation, I discover that I cannot find my passport anywhere. I spend the next 10 hours turning my house upside down –still no passport. I was calm at the beginning. Of course it will show up I thought. It really can’t be that far but by the time I was convinced it was in fact lost and began looking for solutions to replace it, there were very few solutions and all of them were expensive and time consuming.
Still not fully convinced that I was not leaving in the morning, I went to sleep. When I woke up I gave one last search and surrendered to the fact that I would not be getting on the plane in a couple hours. This is what my day looked like. I showered, drank some coffee, jumped in the car and picked up new passport photos. I started the trek to Boston in rush hour traffic. While in the car I was talking to the airline, the passport agency, a friend at the airlines, and finding a place to print my itinerary. It seemed everything could get done but not in the order it needed to get done so I kept wiggling the pieces to try and get them to fit to get on the plane the next day while driving down the highway in stop and go traffic.
Um, yeah, stressful…
There were some things that helped me navigate this situation and remain relatively unstressed but more than anything what this situation reminded me of what how important it is to remember that stress is not an essential part of the equation and to use the tools that I know work!
Remember that stress is optional: Somehow we collectively came to the decision that if things are not going the way we want them to, stressing out about it is the right thing to do. While a small amount of stress can increase our focus and performance a large amount of stress has a very clear detrimental effect. When things are spinning out of control the only thing that is in our control is how we feel as we go through it. If you find yourself getting stressed, you can ask yourself if that is how you want to feel. Believe it or not sometimes we are hooked on our negative states and we are reluctant to let them go. It can be helpful to accept the desire to be negative and find out why it seems so important to hang onto. Maybe it is a form of self-punishment or maybe it is a desire to get support or attention. If it feels too important to let it go then awareness is all you need to do. When you are ready, you will be able to choose to put down your unnecessary stress regardless of the situation.
Ask yourself if it can be easier:
One thing that can slip our minds when we are stressed out –as I said being stressed out is not good for our decision making- is to remember to make things as easy as possible. So, stop, take a breath, or maybe even three. Look at the situation. Aside from your mood, what can be done to streamline or simplify things? Do you ever find yourself getting ready to go on a trip or prepare for some event and all of a sudden you add in a bunch of other things to get done? For example, it is your kids birthday party in a few hours and you decided to clean out the laundry room all of a sudden? May sound crazy to some but I know plenty of people who have done it. Finding a smoother and easier way to do things is usually possible. Like I said, stop and take a breath and then ask yourself “What can I do to make this easier?”
Focus on what you want:
When things start to go wrong it is so easy to start to focus on everything that goes wrong. Every little bump becomes another stress and every potential bump is seen and fixated on well before it has even arrived. The purpose of stress is to make us hyper aware so that we can solve the problem at hand. However, while that makes sense evolutionarily, it only gets us to baseline –we can only prevent bad things from happening we don’t have much of an ability to make good things happen. By switching our focus to the outcome we desire in the big picture and in each moment the potential that we can create is much, much, greater.
Be nice, use your people skills, and ask for help:
When we get stressed it is really easy to share our stress with others via being curt or even aggressive. If we can take a moment and recognize that the other person has no way to understand why we are acting the way that we are and stressing them out only makes for two stressed out people, then we might be able to adjust our behavior to get more of what we want. So, remember to smile (which coincidentally will help your mood!) and use please and thank you! In addition, it is easy for some of us to go it alone. Remember that people are out there and can help you through this challenging stretch so if you know someone who might be able to help, ask and make your life a little easier.
Is stress an issue in your life? Tune in this week to Real Answers Radio. I will be hosting Grace Dulude, integrative therapist and yoga instructor. Grace and I will be sharing special insights on how to make each moment of your life more stress-free.
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by Dr. Heléna Kate | Jan 25, 2015 | Dr. Heléna Kate's Blog
We all have flashes of inspiration. Sometimes they appear as quiet whispers in the night, as fleeting thoughts in the morning shower or as huge \”a-ha!\” moments. The question is: Are you giving enough attention to the clues that your inner voice is sending? How can you get more attuned to the inner directives? Here are three ways to get started.
1) Knowledge Is Power
Socrates said it best: \”Know Thyself.\” This includes understanding what makes you feel alive, what captures your imagination, and also what comes naturally to you. Knowing your strengths is a huge advantage. If you have a great sense of humor, creativity or an ability to communicate easily with people, then you can build on those qualities to create your best life. By focusing on enhancing your strengths rather than trying to make up for your weaknesses, you can move more quickly in your desired direction and have fun in the process. Ask a few friends what they see as your strengths, and do the same for them. You may be surprised!
2) Get Into The Flow
Have you ever been so caught up in an activity that the hours fly by in what seemed like minutes? This is called being in a flow state. According to Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, flow can happen when you\’re totally immersed in what you are doing and feeling both serene and connected. This buoyant state can happen many ways, including when deeply focusing on a sport, writing a paper or even playing music. Yoga and mindfulness are reported to increase flow, but it can occur anywhere your skill level is equal to your challenge and you get totally absorbed in the activity. When athletes say they were \”in the zone,\” they are talking about flow. When artists refer to the music, art or inspiration flowing through them, it is the same state. Think of times when you were engrossed in something: your attention was heightened and you felt that everything was aligned. What if you made the choice to make more time for that in your day to day?
For me, yoga is where I experience flow. Although I never set my sights on being a yoga teacher, I noticed (and happened to pay attention to) an ad in the paper about a yoga teacher-training course. After checking into it, I decided to go for it. The course was one of the most fulfilling experiences I have ever taken on – every class was like immersing myself in flow. What are some ways that you can incorporate more flow into your daily life?
3) Embody What You Believe In
Once you know your strengths and where you experience flow, you can consciously tweak your life to include more of that. By stepping into your authenticity, you automatically come into greater alignment and a peace that serves not only yourself but others, as well. Gandhi stated that \”[h]appiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.\” Don\’t underestimate the importance of your own fulfillment and happiness; it ripples out farther than you may know. Rather than rocking the boat by being who you are, you actually give other people permission to do the same. Listen to the clues. By being on the lookout for directives, you will start to see them everywhere.
Steve Jobs has an interesting quote:
\”Your time is limited, so don\’t waste it living someone else\’s life… Don\’t let the noise of others\’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.\”
If you can tap into your intuition and inner wisdom to direct your passions, you can use that in your own life, as well as to serve others. Then, you will easily embody what you believe, and your authentic happiness will shine the way for others, too.
What are you passionate about in your life?
Randy Taran is the founder of Project Happiness, a non-profit that empowers youth to create greater happiness in their lives and in the world. She is the co author, with Maria Lineger, of the Project Happiness Handbook. Programs which grew from the book, make the best of positive psychology, neuroscience and mindfulness accessible nationwide and in over 80 countries.
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by Dr. Heléna Kate | Jan 13, 2015 | Dr. Heléna Kate's Blog
On the topic of intimacy many people might say, “What do we really mean by intimacy anyway?” Intimacy is both a familiarity with and a deep knowledge of another person. And in fact, the first person that we really need to be intimate with is ourselves. Our capacity to see and relate to another person is supported or diminished by our capacity to know ourselves. Therefore, I recommend that the following statements for increasing intimacy also be applied personally.
Ask questions: One of the surest ways to block intimacy is to forget to see the other person as a vast landscape that will never be completely discovered and instead through the limitations of your own curiosity turn them into a small and familiar backyard. George Bernard Shaw writes, “First love is only a little foolishness and a lot of curiosity.” When we first meet someone it is easy to be enamored with them and intrigued by the person who has provoked such powerful emotions. However, most people forget to continue this level of curiosity and instead turn to telling the other who they are. This is a serious block to intimacy. At the point when one person thinks they “know” another person completely they have stopped the flow of intimacy.
Learn how to listen: Of course asking the questions is just one half of the equation. You also need to be able to take in the information and learn how to give it back so that the other person feels heard. Listening techniques abound. Carl Rogers, a Humanistic psychologist, was considered a powerful contributor to the art of listening with his concept of active listening. In active listening, all of the listener’s attention is on hearing what the other person is saying and giving it back to them in a way where they feel heard. Unfortunately this is not what we do the majority of the time we are listening. More often we are formulating a response or determining how we feel about what they are saying.
Suspend judgments: When you are listening to someone you want to be closer to, it is important to learn how to suspend judgments. Once we start to feel more comfortable in relationship we often begin to dissect what we like and what we do not like about the other person. It might be as superficial as what they wear or as deep as their spiritual or philosophical beliefs. As soon as we move into judging another person, we have put a divider between them and ourselves.
Differences are good: Frequently, we do this because we think that if someone we are close to holds a different belief than we do then one of us has to be wrong. This is a very common misconception that blocks people from being close to each other. While there are situations where people choose not to be close to each other due to differences, it is often more than possible to love and accept differences as simply this other person’s experience of their world. Why would we ever think that it would be the same as ours?
If you want to hear more on this topic or get your questions answered. Join me on my Radio Show Real Answers where I will talk on these topics more in depth as well as discuss additional skills for creating more intimacy.
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