Real Change

You might be saying, "Wait. I'm not addicted to my emotions. That's crazy." 

Here's the thing: If rehearsed over and over again, our emotions become ingrained within us and then become a part of who we are. We begin to identify ourselves with these emotions. 

When we try to change, our bodies kick and scream because it's not getting its way. Your body is actually wanting that chemical rush that it expects when you feel anxiety, sadness, frustration, anger, etc. It's used to it, and it wants it right now!

And, because you don't like this feeling, and because you don't like the unknown of the new feeling, you give into those old emotions to settle it down. The cycle then continues.
You can't get off of this merry-go-round until you deliberately choose to. No matter how much kicking and screaming is going on in your internal world, you will need to consciously steer yourself back to your focus, and tell yourself you are making changes that will make you better for it. 

It's like keeping a child focused on a task. When their attention veers to something else, you bring them right back to the task. This is retraining yourself to think and feel differently. This is where true change begins. 

PS: Want to go deeper? Soul Love Warrior workbook and website coming soon! I promise! 

www.soullovewarrior.com
www.tamarahanson.ca

Rebuilding the Relationship with Yourself

If you’re like me, you more than likely have given all of yourself in a loving relationship--working hard at compromising and understanding one another; making it work on the days where you just don’t seem to be getting along. Giving of yourself to a point where you are spent and have nothing left to give anymore. 

And, while they say that working at a relationship is key to a long lasting happily ever after, I say that there are other factors involved: one is alignment and the second is making sure that your needs are being taken care of.

Sometimes, we give so much of ourselves that we lose ourselves in the process. We become someone else for someone else. We do everything for another person leaving very little to give to us. This depletion leaves us tired, resentful and angry.

The key is to rebuild (and maintain) the relationship with yourself. You are an integral component to your loving relationship. You will be with yourself for the rest of your life, and need to dedicate yourself to you as well. How do you dedicate yourself to yourself? 

1)      Find out what makes you happy and make a promise to do those things.

2)    Do loving things for yourself. 

3)    Do something that will take care of you. 

4)    Talk to yourself as if you were talking to someone you absolutely loved. 

5)    Do these things on a consistent basis.

While we always wish the other person in our relationship would change, the fact is we

can't make anyone change, we can only change ourselves. 

The only relationship that really matters is the relationship between you and You: The

relationship with yourself. When you are more loving toward yourself, more respectful,

more dedicated, choosing that your happiness is key and only you can make you

happy, then your relationships will reflect this for you. Honour who you are and what you

are made of because you are important and you are worth it. 

Stay true to yourselves, lovely friends. 

PS: Want to find out how you can love yourself even more? Join me and Michelle Ponto for a Women's Wellness Weekend in July. Click here for details.

Owning Your Bullshit Story

I love this quote by Elizabeth Gilbert so much that I had to do a blog post on it. It resonates deeply to how we tend to get caught up in our own bullshit story... and it usually is all bullshit.

We love to tell the story of what happened to us, why we can’t do things, how we can’t get ahead, or can’t get better. Maybe you are in a relationship out of convenience, wearing the mask that everything is awesome, but really it isn't and you've created nothing but smoke and mirrors.

We say things like ‘life is a struggle’, ‘my life is crappy’, ‘my relationship sucks’, 'I don't really need to love deeply,' or 'I can stick it out in this mediocre relationship for the next 20, 30, 40 years', or something similar.

On top of all that, we usually blame someone else for our problems. If only that person could be better, do better, act better, then things would be perfect. Unfortunately, you can’t control how others act, but you can control how you react.

As hard as this is to swallow, we are in charge of every aspect of our own lives. Unfortunately, many of us feel unworthy, undeserving, or incapable of creating what we want because we don’t believe we have the power to make our lives better. 

What it comes down to is this: If your relationship sucks, then do something about it. If the other person doesn’t want to make it work, then shut that door and allow another door to open. Another door will always open...if you want it to.

You cannot go through life wishing things to be different when you already have been given the power to make things different. Don’t relinquish control to someone else because no one else is in control of your happiness but you. If you are unhappy, then decide to make yourself happy. If it means moving forward and leaving others behind, then so be it.

Some of you might say, “Easier said than done” or “Ya, but it’s difficult.”

It may be difficult but it’s not impossible. You will always have to put effort into something that is important....especially when it comes to your happiness. 

Ask yourself these questions:

Where is my focus?

Am I focused on the bullshit story I’ve been telling myself for a very long time?

Am I focused on making my life the way I want it?

Abraham Hicks says not to think about something as a future thought, that it ‘will ‘ happen, but ‘become’ what you want in this moment. What does this mean? It means if you want love, feel that love right now. Become it, because the energy you send out is what you attract back to you.

Dear beautiful friends, do not fight for your limitations, because nothing is impossible.   

Namaste.

PS. Soul Love Awakening supports worldwide charities. Find out how: www.prairiegirlpress.spreadshirt.ca 

Standing at the Threshold

As the holiday season approaches, most of us become more reflective about our lives, taking the time to slow down and determine what we truly want.

The other night while watching Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol, I realized something with regards to what the ghost Jacob Marley said to Ebeneezer Scrooge: "I wear the chain I forged in life. I made it link by link, and yard by yard; I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it.”

Now, I don't believe we carry these things into the afterlife only because we return to pure positive energy when we do croak; however, I believe we carry these chains right now, and we add to the link the more we carry anger, resentment, regret, fear, and unhappiness. And it's always our choice to carry it or not. 
The good news is we are not alone. Most of us carry these chains because we have lost touch with who we truly are. We choose to bind ourselves with negativity, making it a form of protection, and not realizing that this is what is strangling us. The sad thing is, we are doing it to ourselves.  
Eckhart Tolle would say that these chains are ego-based. We hold onto these negative emotions for numerous reasons, including to feel in control, or feel we need to struggle or suffer to get to the good stuff. Maybe we feel holding onto these things will make us more aware. It won't hurt as much if we are already prepared, right? 

How can we let go when someone has hurt us, especially since we are angry with ourselves for allowing it? We can't move on because we are so busy looking back at what happened. We become paralyzed in our own negative emotion. 

Firstly, it's time to be honest with yourself: Are these negative emotions serving you? Maybe in the beginning you felt that they offered something to you for a short period of time. But, right now, in this moment, do you feel they serve you? No. They aren't. They are binding you, just like they did to Jacob Marley. You can't control other's actions, you can only control your own actions and reactions. 

When you come to this realization, that's when you start to feel the chains dropping away. 

The second thing to do is, when you feel like you are ready to react to a situation, which is all ego, send love to that person. Immaculee Ilibagiza, author of Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust, said that when she came face to face with Hutu tribe members who were killing all Tutsi tribe members, she envisioned sending love to them, and discovered that they backed down, letting her pass to safety. If Immaculee can send love to people who had killed the majority of her family and friends, you can send love to someone you feel has wronged you. 

Dear friends, we are standing at the threshold of a new year. It's time to let go of the chains that bind you. 

Namaste.

Our Greatest Teachers

Who are your greatest spiritual teachers? 

They don’t have to be the typical ones that we commonly think of like, Buddha, Gandhi, or Jesus.

Actually, they can be those who have brought you the most pain.

I know this seems a little ‘out there’, but we can gain a lot of knowledge from those people who have treated us not so kindly and with derision.

Last week, I watched an interview with Shirley MacLaine and she was asked this very question. Who were her spiritual teachers? She said that her greatest spiritual teachers were those who have caused her the most pain.

Taking a step back from this, you’d think that the woman enjoyed being mistreated. However, this wasn't the case. What she was saying was that those who have caused her the most pain were giving her more clarity of what she didn't want to bring into her life.

Being mistreated, disrespected, not getting the love that you want, or being treated unkindly by these people can help us to grow and evolve into the human being that we want to be.

There have been many times where I have been mistreated or that I hear of others showing disrespect and I think, ‘I don’t want to be like that. Be a better person. Always strive to be a better person.’

But, it also comes back to how we treat ourselves. If another person is mistreating us and we are putting up with it, and have been for quite some time, this is an opportunity for us to look inward and understand what we are bringing to the situation. It's time to ask those hard questions of why are we choosing to stay when the relationship does not serve us for our highest good.

However, if you have gotten out of a relationship, and still harbour resentment or bad feelings, take a look at how the relationship has served you. What new knowledge have you garnered from that relationship?

Take that experience, take that new understanding, and realize that something even better will come along. It always does. 

You Complete Me

"You complete me." -Jerry Maguire

There is a belief that we need a person, thing, (fill in the blank), to complete our lives and to make us feel whole.

The fact is, we need to feel whole first; to complete ourselves first. Everything that we want is within each of us already: Love. Abundance. Joy. Happiness. Passion.

Those things we are searching for in another person are already within us. We need to realize that we are already whole and we already have whatever we need and want. We are searching for the feeling that the other person gives us, not fully aware that we have had it in us from the beginning.

What do we do then?

We love ourselves a little more. We treat ourselves with more respect and kindness. With gentleness and appreciation. We realize that what we want and need is within us already. We realize that what we want and need is important as well. We realize that we complete ourselves.

“We search for happiness everywhere, but we are like Tolstoy's fabled beggar who spent his life sitting on a pot of gold, under him the whole time. Your treasure--your perfection--is within you already. But to claim it, you must leave the buy commotion of the mind and abandon the desires of the ego and enter into the silence of the heart.” -Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love

The Past Has No Power

Photo Credit: Tamara Hanson

Rick Warren, author of The Purpose Driven Life said, “We are products of our past, but we don't have to be prisoners of it.”

We tend to trap ourselves in the past hoping that if we replay it over and over, the outcome will change. 

But, it doesn’t.

We then proceed to chastise ourselves for making the decisions that we made, and continue to beat ourselves up, never resolving anything. It doesn’t matter what it is: it could be choosing a relationship that ended in heartbreak, or headache; or regret over the wasted years with the wrong person, and, if only we could get back that wasted time. If only time travel was possible!  

They say hindsight is always 20/20. If only we knew then what we know now, things would be different. Better choices would have been made. Happier choices.  

Or, maybe, we have been the person doing the mistreating and disrespecting, and the memory of this plays over and over in our minds. No one really means to hurt another; it usually means we are wounded ourselves.

Whatever it is, we feel replaying the past is helpful. But, it isn’t.

If you have to look back at the past, at least do it with loving eyes. You were making choices based on what you knew at the time and where you were in your life. Know that the past is in the past and has no power in the present…. unless you give it power. If you hurt someone, send them light and love. If someone hurt you, send them light and love. And then send light and love to yourself. Realize that the past doesn’t dictate the future, and these past events happen to offer us contrast. The more we know what we don’t want, the more we know what we do want. These are the lovely moments of growth.  

Past events should evolve us into a better person, and help us to become clearer at what we want in relationships and out of life. These life moments are where we begin to respect and love ourselves more.

An excellent article you might want to read is called Bargaining With Your Past Creates Regret in the Present by Suzanne Lachmann.

“People are all over the world telling their one dramatic story and how their life has turned into getting over this one event. Now their lives are more about the past than their future.”

― Chuck Palahniuk, Invisible Monsters

Happiness is an Inside Job

Photo Credit: Tamara Hanson

I heard this one time: Happiness isn’t the purpose in life. Too me, this is a false assumption. Isn’t joy and happiness part of what we want out of life? We want to be joyful and happy…. Who wouldn’t? Why would you want to be miserable?

Happiness is not something that comes when things are going well… although it helps. Happiness is a choice. Just like every other emotion: sadness, anger, love …it’s all a choice. We get to choose how we feel.

Although it may appear that the people in our lives are supposed to make us happy and, if they don’t, well, then what’s the point of them being around? When we are in relationships, many friends or family members might ask us what it is that we love about that person, and many of us will answer that he or she makes us happy.

Firstly, asking what it is that we love about someone is based on conditions that they need to act a certain way and then they will be lovable enough.  

Secondly, no one can make you happy, complete you, or make you feel anything. That feeling already exists within you. It’s already there. When someone gives us their undivided attention, showers us with love and devotion, they are only bringing out what exists inside of us.

We are already joyful and happy. Don’t rely on someone else to bring it out in you. They don’t bring you that emotion since it is already there, present in each and every one of us. All they are doing is enhancing it.

When you rely on someone to make you happy…or complete, you are giving your power over to someone else to provide these things to you. Only you can provide it.

When you are unhappy with someone’s behaviour and you feel that they are being selfish for acting or doing a certain thing, and then ask yourself if you are being selfish because that person isn’t making you feel better.  

Happiness and joy begins with you. When you really understand this, you will never again allow the actions of another to sway these positive feelings. And, as always, respect yourself enough to leave a situation where you are not being respected and cared for. You deserve better.