Top Ten Ways to Create Overwhelm

Before I started my painting project, I had no idea Sherwin Williams alone boasts having over 15,000 colors “for every mood, space and project“. And it doesn’t end with just one color because there is the ceiling and the trim and the woodwork and the shelving and the fireplace and the accent wall and the…

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The Wisdom of Patience

Jon Kabat-Zin says patience is a form of wisdom. It is being completely open to each moment, accepting it in it’s fullness, and acknowledging things unfold in their own time. Patience is remembering you can’t push the river—which I sometimes try to do when in unfamiliar or uncomfortable territory. Like when I am forced to…

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The One Thing You Need to Be Authentic

On the mountain

When I first started speaking professionally, almost 20 years ago, I wanted to be just like all the great speakers I experienced, such as Jeanne Robertson, with her side-splitting humor, Les Brown, with his engaging intensity, and my beloved coach, Lou Heckler, with his heartfelt ability to connect. Great speakers are polished and passionate delivering…

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Surprise Yourself this Holiday

I decided not to put up a Christmas tree this year. Not because I was bitter or in protest, but because I just couldn’t face spending the 4 days it takes to get the decorations out of the crawlspace, go through them, make room for them, and then clean up and put them all away…

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Practice Compassion

Compassion is the desire to alleviate suffering by expressing fundamental loving kindness toward yourself and others. We need compassion because life is hard, unfair, and impermanent—for all of us. There are now studies confirming practicing compassion improves health, well-being, and relationships. Compassion makes us feel good by activating pleasure circuits in the brain. It can…

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Do You Mind What You Eat?

Do you mind what you eat? In other words, are you mindful, (awake and aware) of what, how much, when and why you are eating? In these busy and stressful times, many of us are not. We can find ourselves “grabbing something” between meetings, soccer games, or conference calls and what we “grab” is usually…

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Its Not Too Late!

I was interviewed last month for the Healthy, Wealthy, and Enlightened Success Telesummit and one of the questions asked by Sylvia Coleman was, What would you tell your younger self about success and mindfulness that you know now that you didn’t know then? My immediate response was to enjoy the ride, the ups and downs,…

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You are Not Your Brain!

Last month I attended a mindfulness retreat, (which was part of a class I took in January and kept postponing because I was too busy). We spent the day in silence with various mindfulness practices of yoga, body scan and meditation. At lunch, we were encouraged to go outside and maintain our silence while practicing…

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Top 10 Reasons to be Mindful

Mindfulness, being awake and aware in the present moment is so powerful because it is the only place we can decide, create, listen, act, and live. When we cultivate the kind of awareness that comes through mindfulness practices, we have the opportunity to pause and choose how we respond to the inevitable triggers and stresses…

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Bring RAIN to Your Spring

Spring time here in the Rockies can give a real challenge for deciding what not to wear or if the weather is severe enough to cancel events (as I did last week). But I find the unpredictability and extremes of our weather patterns this time of year also leave me unsettled and ungrounded with feelings…

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