by Dr. Heléna Kate | Jun 26, 2017 | Dr. Heléna Kate's Blog
If you’re wondering how to find your purpose in life and achieve it, YOU ARE NOT ALONE! Whether you’ve struggled with this question before or are just embracing it for the first time, it can be daunting to get started on the path of development. The tips below will support you in your personal journey. You can also check out my article “What Nobody Tells You About Finding Your Purpose.” Regardless of where you are in the process, these nine steps will help you get on track and stay there.
1. Uncover: It is challenging to uncover our life purpose when it is buried under unresolved past issues. This junk of the past can conceal our motives for our current interests and actions, making it hard to tell which direction to even face when starting down the path towards our purpose. The first step of finding your life purpose is working through the personal emotional baggage and false beliefs that were developed prior to this stage in your life.
2. Discover: After you begin to resolve the past, who you really are begins to emerge more clearly. You begin to notice more of your strengths and natural inclinations, and spend less time getting caught up in the stories of your. Although you have been there all this time, this phase of finding your purpose can feel like a stage of discovery.
3. Strengthen: Once you have made contact with your deeper self it is time to build and strengthen that self. This step includes both continued self-discovery work and letting go of any unresolved business from the past. It is a good time to nurture the skills and traits that are associated with your true self.
4. Pretend: You may or may not feel ready to step in more fully to your life purpose at this point in time. Let your imagination guide you. Try on different hats and approaches. Give yourself the opportunity to explore outside of whatever box you have been accustomed to.
5. Enjoy: Our joy helps to guide us to our true purpose in life. Pay attention to where your enthusiasm and your joy are. Identifying these reactions and what causes them will help you find your way to your life purpose. It will also help you stay on track with your purpose as you get further down the road.
6. Practice: Just because you are meant to do it does not mean that you know how to do every part of it. There are skills that need to be developed for you to achieve your purpose in life and take it to the next level. Learn what they are and begin to practice them in any way that you can.
7. Refine: It is very unlikely that you will be 100% clear and on track with your life purpose from the start. It is important to pay attention throughout your process. See where your energy levels and enjoyment go up and down. Notice where your natural talents shine. Make adjustments so that you are more on track.
8. Support: Manifesting your life purpose requires support. People who understand and believe in you are essential to your ability to find your purpose in life and achieve it. Pay attention to who supports you and who does not. If you do not have these people in your life already, begin to look for them. No dream is fulfilled in isolation.
9. Master: Keep learning and developing what you have now determined is your life purpose. Do not worry if it does not have a label. Allow yourself to focus on the many aspects of what you are undertaking and develop each of them to a whole new level of mastery. This advanced skill level will give you what you need to overcome new levels of challenge and reach new levels of personal fulfillment with your life purpose.
by Dr. Heléna Kate | Jun 5, 2017 | Uncategorized
Understanding why personal power is important to your spiritual development begins with understanding that personal development and spiritual development are interdependent, mutualistic processes. The idea that each of these processes is separate and strictly secular/spiritual is a misconception that will prevent us from truly claiming our personal power.
Personal development resources take many forms, but they often manifest on one of two paths: a spiritual path or a secular path. In my experience, people in need (or in hope) of developing themselves turn to their spirituality or they turn to therapy. Each of these paths boasts many strengths, and some shortcomings. Neither is inherently “better” than the other, but both tend to leave out some of the valuable components of the other.
the importance of each path
Having a toolkit of personal development skills will help you go deeper in your spirituality. Likewise, your spirituality will help keep you grounded and centered as you work your way through personal development practices. Each of these paths offers value that will enable you to reach a level of personal clarity beyond what can be found by just pursuing a single path alone.
why personal power is important to our spiritual development
In the same way that spiritual development provides a firm foundation from which to begin personal development, personal development is part of the essential groundwork that spiritual development is built on. Our personal power, or our empowerment, is a critical component of our spiritual development. Here is why.
Spiritual Development Demands Humility: The more that we grow in our spiritual power, the greater the problems that can be created by our unchecked egoic needs. Because of this it is essential that we are humble and true.
“Please let me say it loud and clear, the more you powerful are, the more your actions will have impact on people. The more responsible you are to act humbly. If you don’t your power will ruin you and you will ruin the other.” — Pope Francis
Without a sense of personal power, one is subject to the whims of the ego. One uses power to cover up for their limitations. Personal power is not power over. It is the power of choice and being right-sized. It allows us to know our limitations as well as acknowledge our greatness. It provides the foundation for being humble and therefore worthy of our spiritual development.
Spiritual Development is Challenging. There is not a single person on a spiritual path who goes untested. The tests, both successfully met and not, are means by which wisdom, impact, and spiritual capacity are gained, much more so than the peak experiences and other epiphanies we might be lucky to have. Each test that comes our way is an opportunity to learn and to grow by recognizing our role in its creation.
“Swami Veda says that whenever he gets sick first he thanks the Lord himself that he has the opportunity to close himself and he goes into silence. So each time he has pain he just closes his eyes and he thanks that now I have an opportunity to look within more.” — Pandit Hari Shankar Dabral
Personal Power helps us to be strong enough to ask the important question, how have I helped to create this problem? Without a toolkit of skills developed in our personal development work, we are unable to do this in a healthy way. We may blame the other party or situation or we blame ourselves when we ask the question. Either way, our spiritual development is curtailed.
Spiritual Development Requires Effort. To develop ourselves spiritually, we need to maintain continued focus and applied effort. There are no spiritual gains made by sloth or inactivity. Our outcomes are the direct result of the effort that we put in. This continued effort is the act of devotion. Devotion yields powerful results on our spiritual journey.
“That’s exactly it. True devotion only appears when we have just one desire and feel that we will die if we cannot realize that desire.” — Paulo Coelho
Without developing ourselves personally, we are unable to act from our adult self on a consistent and regular basis. This inability gets in the way of any sustained effort on our part. The ramifications of being unable to sustain our efforts is larger or smaller based on the place we are in our spiritual development. Some people have spiritual awakenings that are not in balance with their personal development, throwing them into experiences that challenge their mental health.
Personal development and spiritual development have many areas of overlap. However, they also provide some unique skills, techniques and insights that support us in becoming our full self. I encourage you to dive into both!
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Looking to capitalize on the work you’ve done in your personal and spiritual development? Sign up for a one-day Personal Breakthrough Intensive with Dr. Kate Siner. You’ll use extensively researched and highly effective emotional and mental release techniques, combined with values work and strategic planning, to root out your limiting obstacles and eliminate them. Create space for your growth! Learn more →
by Dr. Heléna Kate | May 22, 2017 | Dr. Heléna Kate's Blog
Our personal power is the key to our wellbeing and personal effectiveness. Personal power is the empowerment of the true self that exists in all of us. It provides us with strength, courage, and compassion throughout all life’s ups and downs. By learning how to improve personal power, we facilitate this life long pursuit of empowerment that encompasses every area of our life.
As you learn how to improve personal power, it is important to differentiate between true power and ego inflation. If I did a good job, and it makes my ego feel good, I might feel powerful. If I am praised, and if makes my ego feel good, I might feel powerful. While these things might help us feel powerful, real personal power comes from internal, not external, motivations. True personal power makes our ego’s grasps at power look like what they are –feeble. Below are 8 steps you can take to improve your personal power. The kind you really want — the real kind.
HOW TO IMPROVE PERSONAL POWER IN 8 STEPS
1. Learn what is in your heart: We are bold in our actions when we are connected with the trough of our heart. The word courage –a form of personal power — is formed from the Latin word cor or heart. When we are aware of the contents of our heart and we know its truth, we are more powerful than we previously might have imagined. Think of the powerful rebellion of Ghandi. When we use our heart as our guide, we become clearer and more resolute. Our confidence is no longer the confidence of superiority but the confidence of devotion.
2. Love and Acceptance of who you are at your core: You are completely perfect and infinitely flawed. Learning to truly love and accept yourself, while still holding yourself accountable for your actions, is a powerful skill that helps you maintain perspective, even as you are being tested and stretched by life’s circumstances. When you find a part of yourself that you are having a difficult time accepting, try asking yourself how this part of you is productive or helpful. Learn to see that there is always a flip side and that, often, negativity or positivity is just a matter of use of that part of yourself, rather than an inherent goodness or badness.
3. The recognition that you have the power to change: A lot of people believe that they have the power to change over the course of their lives, but don’t give themselves the power to change in the moment. You do not need to hold onto something that does not serve you any longer than you want to. Let yourself be at choice in each moment as much as you possibly can. When we truly recognize our choice in each moment is when we truly feel our personal power. Click here to read more on embracing your power of choice and how to change your life when you feel stuck.
4. Take action: When we take actions to create positive outcomes in our lives, we feel more powerful. When you see an opportunity to move things forward, seize the moment. This can be as simple as picking up some trash off the ground or saying something kind to a stranger. It is also important to take action to put boundaries in place for yourself and to give clear feedback to others when things are not going well.
5. You are instrumental in shaping events: Your love, kindness, care, and compassion can sculpt any moment. You have the ability to shift the tide when you see things moving in an unpleasant direction, or add more to things moving in a positive direction. Begin to recognize your contributions to the unfolding of all the events that you experience and you will unlock a giant piece of your personal power.
6. Work with the pain: As much as we want life to be pain free, it is not. The teaching is in the pain. This does not mean you should become obsessed with focusing on the pain of life, but pain does serves as a cue that we are going in the wrong direction or that we are not quite on track. Next time you are feeling this challenge let it remind you to refocus on what it is that you are trying to create.
7. Be with discomfort: Another teaching that helps us step into our personal power is discomfort. Trying to push away all the hard and uncomfortable things in life does not work. When things are hard, it is sometimes necessary to be willing to just let it be hard. Have your anger. Have your sadness. And THEN, move on. Difficult emotions will pass on their own, if we do not hold onto them.
8. Celebrate: Celebrate yourself. Celebrate others. Celebrate your life. Gratitude for all that we have is critical to feeling empowered. When we look at our life or ourselves and see that our efforts have yielded more love, more happiness, more abundance, and we take time to acknowledge these successes, we naturally feel more powerful and more right in our own skin. Find ways to acknowledge you for all of your efforts and gain even more personal power.
by Dr. Heléna Kate | Apr 24, 2017 | Dr. Heléna Kate's Blog
Whether you lost your job because of a company cut back, a major mistake, or a personal issue, losing your job can cut to the core of how you feel about yourself and can seriously affect your ability to carry on with life as usual. As with any difficult time, it is incredibly important to take action that affirms who you are and allows you to regain personal power after losing your job.
This list of practices will help you figure out how to regain your power after losing your job, but it isn’t only that! This is a list to keep someplace you will see it every day — to remind you to keep doing things that will help you stay on track, pick yourself up, and move on with your life after challenges.
How To Regain Personal Power After Losing Your Job
Give yourself a moment to breath: Like any loss, grief is a healthy part of the process of losing your job. It is all too easy to move on too quickly and not give ourselves a moment to feel the impact of what has happened. When you bolt from pain like this it actually holds you back later on in life. Taking some time to grieve now will mean that you will be less likely to get really off track when you start moving forward.
Focus on what you did right: Without being defensive or negative, remember that even if you lost your job, there were many things that went right for you and that you did, in fact, do right. Take stock of how you were successful and effective in your job. This will help you to feel better and to better represent yourself when looking for future work.
Learn from your mistakes: Again, without being defensive or negative, take an honest inventory of where you might have done better or what you might have done differently. Any “failed” situation provides us with new insights into how we might change our behavior to get better results. Yes, there are situation that are totally out of our control, but it can never hurt to consider how you might do things differently going forward.
Get support: You will need support in many ways to continue to move forward: emotional support from family and friends, professional development support in getting yourself ready to get back in the job market, networking support in contact the right people, and so on. Independence and self-isolation are not the same thing. You cannot do this alone and it is counterproductive to your empowerment and happiness for you to try. Embrace the resources around you!
Take action: There is a time to pause and a time to take action. If you want another job, you will benefit from creating an action plan and strategy for getting a new job and moving forward. When you take action you will feel more powerful and capable in your life. This will result in both short and long term gains.
Reframe: Is the sudden increase in your free time after the loss of your job a benefit or a detractor from your life? Is it possible that losing your job is actually freeing you to find something better? These are the kinds of reframes that empower you to take action and make change. As bad as things are, try to open to the potential positive impact of every situation. Ask yourself, what is the good that will come out of this?
Keep your Perspective: There is no doubt that losing your job is a life experience that most of us want to avoid. Nevertheless, it is an experience that many of us do have. If you find yourself in this difficult situation, it does not mean much of anything about who you are or what you are capable of. Keep your self-talk framed around “I lost my job, now what?” instead of “I lost my job, I am worthless.” Avoid making this experience mean more than it does.
Stay the course: If you have a difficult time finding work after losing your job, keep practicing this list of suggestions. Each of these practices will keep you feeling more powerful in your circumstance. Do not worry if you have a bad day. Just get back on track as soon as you can.
by Dr. Heléna Kate | Sep 24, 2015 | Dr. Heléna Kate's Blog
Let\’s face it – even though sex is everywhere these days, most of us are not comfortable talking openly about our sexuality and desire. And this is not necessarily because we\’re shy or we self-censor. When it comes right down to it, free-expression about the sex you have or want to have is still incredibly taboo in most cultures across the globe.
Yet, a healthy, expressive sex life is an essential part of a healthy, expressive life!
To help me start a conversation about sex, I\’ve invited my friend and Sexual Empowerment Coach, Amy Jo Goddard, to share her thoughts with us in this week\’s article.
So much of Amy Jo\’s work is about encouraging people to say what they desire. Often times, the desires we keep secret are the ones that hold the greatest potential to bring us the kind of fulfillment and satisfaction we seek. It takes courage and a willingness to be vulnerable to say what you want out loud. Yet, when you find your voice, you\’ll have a better chance at finding your pleasure.
UNDERSTANDING YOUR SEXUAL VOICE BY AMY JO GODDARD
I’ve struck a chord with my dialogue on “Finding the Sexual Voice.” Some people feel like their sexual voice is stifled, and always has been. Others are completely out of touch with it. And, many want to know how they can shift their sexual voice to authentically get their needs met. In any case, to understand the sexual voice, we first have to break it down.
The sexual voice is two-fold: We all have an internal voice and an external voice.
INTERNAL
Your internal sexual voice is the way you talk to yourself about your sexuality, the way you treat your body, the way you think and what you think when you are having sex, the stories you have believed and continue to tell yourself about sexuality, your desirability and your sexual life and desires.
In my Women’s Sexual Empowerment program we focus on the sexual story and herstory in our first weekend retreat and we do a powerful exercise that allows us to look at our collective sexual story. It opens us up to seeing what kinds of stories women are carrying, how they are viewing themselves and defining who they are, and what they have held onto. It’s so powerful. I wish everyone could have that experience because it can allow us to see that we are not alone, that others have had similar experiences or stories about themselves and we can develop a deep compassion for ourselves when we are witnessed in our stories.
Your internal story is what you carry around with you all the time. It’s the way you frame your sexuality and what happens to you inside. There are always embedded beliefs in the sexual story we carry internally. Things like, “It’s not normal that I don’t have orgasms, there must be something wrong with me.” Or “I’m not attractive enough/sexy enough/sexual enough/exciting, etc.” Or “I’ll never heal from my sexual abuse.” Or “I’m too old for sex…”
Hopefully we have positive beliefs about our sexuality that we carry: “I am totally lovable.” “I’m capable of amazing orgasms and pleasure and I feel good about my lack of inhibition.” “I love my body and it’s abilities.” “I’m a sexually desirable creature.”
Your internal voice impacts how you feel in your body, in your relationships, how present you are in sex, how much you enjoy your sexuality, how inhibited you are, and how you express your sexuality on a daily basis. It is essential that you do some work around your internal voice, stories and beliefs so that you can have a healthy outlook and framework for your sexual life.
EXTERNAL
Your external voice is how you talk about your sexuality and your body, how you flirt and approach people, how you put yourself out there, how you ask for what you want, and express your desire.
Your external voice will mirror some of the internal stories and your internal voice. Your level of positivity or negativity about sex, your insecurities, your frustrations, your healthy view of yourself, and your confidence all stem from that internal voice and are expressed verbally, emotionally and energetically.
Most people get really stuck in finding their external sexual voice for a variety of reasons. I can remember when I was younger the way a frog would get stuck in my throat when I wanted to express something in a sexual situation. If I wanted to make a request or ask for an adjustment it could feel like the hardest thing to do. I know many people struggle to tell a partner they want something different or to offer any instruction because then maybe their partner will get discouraged or think they are doing it wrong, or maybe it will hurt their feelings.
There are many ways the external voice shows up during sex. How do you communicate in the moment? How do you ask for what you want when you are in the throws of it? How do you shift gears? How do you make inviting requests?
There is a larger conversation that must happen around sex, and when you establish it with a partner, it becomes much easier to offer this kind of feedback: talking about what is working and what is not, talking about new desires and wishes, and discussing how to improve or build your sexual relationship.
Nothing builds deeper and more meaningful intimacy than learning to talk about sex in a way that feels empowered, exciting and fun. And even when it’s hard, it brings you closer. This is why I work with people so much on how to have these conversations and how to set up their sexual relationships for success and intimacy.
Now that you understand the dichotomy of the sexual voice, you can start to notice your patterns and responses within each aspect, and gather tools to break through to your authentic, empowered sexual voice.
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As a Sexual Empowerment expert and thought leader, Amy Jo Goddard has guided thousands of people towards the wholeness and fulfillment they want, sexually and in other aspects of their lives. She earned her Master’s degree in Human Sexuality Education from New York University and has 20 years of experience in the sexuality field. As a renowned speaker and teacher, Amy Jo travels to colleges, communities, and conferences teaching classes and offering keynotes that help people to connect the dots around sexuality and money, expand their creativity, grow their confidence and learn to be bigger in their relationships, in business, and in the world.
She delivered her TEDx talk “Owning Your Sexual Power” in March, 2014 in Napa Valley, was named one of GO! Magazin’s “100 Women We Love” in 2010 and one of Kinkly’s ”100 Sex Blogging Superheros” in 2013.
Amy Jo is also the author of the upcoming book, WOMAN ON FIRE: 9 Elements to Wake Up Your Erotic Energy, Personal Power and Sexual Intelligence.
