Problem: Do you feel this way? “I can’t shut off my mind”.

Bringing Awareness: I don’t think we would complain if these thoughts were filled with wonderment and joyful memories of the past or glorious dreams of the future. Let’s be honest here, not many of my clients come to me blurting out “ I just can’t stop thinking about lying on the sand in Maui” or “ I have recurring thoughts of landing my biggest gig/job/soul mate”. Please help me!!  More commonly they are filled with WH questions (What if? Why? When? How?, etc.) Feelings of fear. These thoughts are obstreperous and seemingly unmerciful.

One of the big reasons that you might feel like this is because you are JUST NOT GOOD WITH THE UNKNOWN! Sound familiar? Uncertainty? “ Yuck” you say… “ I hate uncertainty!” You HATE things that are unpredictable. You likely suffered from feelings of insecurity, abandonment, and instability in your former years.

Guess what? This is NOT normal.

Action: How to stop the constant thinking.

Method: Stop avoiding Feeling. When those thoughts are relentlessly filling your head, you need to stop whatever you are doing and face them head-on. Ask yourself “How is this thought making me feel?” This could be a physical symptom e.g. nauseous. Or it can be an emotion, such as ‘shame’ (that one is a doozy…I personally hate that one….yucky!) So where does our mind automatically go? Yes, AVOIDANCE. Why? Because it is our primal nature to protect ourselves – fight or flight! Parasympathetic nervous system kicks into gear and off we go to the races! Dang! You gotta love that built in protection system.

Sit with that feeling. Don’t worry, it won’t be long. Ask yourself why you are feeling this, in a very kind compassionate way. You may not always have the answer – and if you don’t – that is when you need to do more inner work. So, how might this look…

Analogy: You feel unsettled, anxious, irritable.

Pause and ask yourself, Why? “Because I (fill in the blank) – which you then tend to follow up with terrible hateful words towards yourself. “ I am an idiot for doing that.” “ Why would I do that?” “ I should of …” and so on and so forth.

WAIT!! Stop yourself right there and challenge that thought. Really? Are you actually stupid? Or have you overcome some real hardships in life up to this point? Have you nailed/been successful in other aspects of your life? Come on… how valid is that thought?

This is when you are winning now. You have challenged the thought and by doing that – extinguished it. For every self- limiting thought you have – you need to hit it head on, challenge it, and get rid of it!! You extinguish it simply by facing it – then challenge – then eliminate it.

Why? Because you will see, it isn’t actually valid. Were you less intelligent about a certain topic or guilty of something at one time? I am sure you were? But you likely simply made a mistake in life. You were likely younger, smaller and less experienced when you made an error. Maybe you didn’t even make the error but you were told you did and you went into shame.

The point is, whether it was valid or not, it was something that happened in the past. It is not you TODAY. So get over it! Learn from it (if there is a lesson to learn at all) and let that lesson expound you in different ways.

And hence – that is how we stop obsessing about the future. We become okay with the unknown, because it is exciting to have a challenge ahead. How boring life would be without challenges?

There are so many things that I am excited for in 2020. I have never felt so excited in my life about the decade ahead, and I want you to feel this same excitement with me.

There are so many things that I wish for all of you in the decade before us, but if I had to choose my top two it would be:

#1 Peace of Mind

#2 Letting go of [fill in the blank] a.k.a. ‘baggage’

The favorite quote that I came across in 2019 is one from Thomas Edison.

Discontent is the first sign of progress.

I had no idea this guy had more than one ‘lightbulb’ moment 😉 I should have known he was no dummy.

Back to my post….

Do not focus on how unhappy you are about BLANK. Try to see it as your first sign of progress. You should now be getting excited.

Do you see that shift already? Maybe you just had a twinge of excitement for one moment. That tingling is what will keep the momentum going.

Most of our big shifts in life begin at that moment when you feel like ‘I am falling apart’. And I specifically chose the words ‘falling apart’ because we think we should be doing ‘something’ or being ‘someone’ or in ‘some’ sort of relationship.

Who said you should be doing anything? Society? An Angus Reid survey? Hollywood? Instagram? If you truly delve into where these ‘shoulds’ came from, it is likely patterns of thoughts/programming that were developed through the past several years or decades.

Furthermore, if you are trying to justify why you should keep ‘something’ that is all the more reason to release it!

Because…if it is truly in your heart, then you should never need to justify it. Do you need to justify acts of kindness, connection, or health?

So, if you hear that LOUD mind (the one that doesn’t shut up…the one that is always going) telling you ‘I should try to retain the relationship with … Dad, Mom, daughter, son, spouse, girlfriend….’

But your quiet voice (intuition, gut, soul, heart) is resisting…

LISTEN TO IT.   Honour it.

Because if you catch yourself justifying it…release it and love yourself for doing it.

All the best to you from me in 2020.

I want to make this post brief as time is precious! The clock is ticking! But my message is very important.

All we have right now is this moment. We will never have a moment like we are having here – right now – ever again!

Honour it right now for what it is. Remember that staying in the present and allowing yourself the quiet moments just to ’think’ without the noise of the past and the expectations of the future is where we all want to strive towards in life. 

The peace of this moment is all we can ask for right now. Whether you are reading this in bed, outside in nature, in the car, your kitchen, etc. Stop and take a deep breath and show gratitude for what you do have in life (Two hands? The ability to move? A roof over your head? Freedom to to express? )

Happiness is you right now, in this present moment. You are absolutely perfect just the way you are. Once you welcome and accept this into your heart and soul, everything you desire will fall into your lap. If you want to read more about this, you can read the blog post I am writing for you to post next week entitled New Year = New You.  

Until then, please remember two things for me.

It is not when I have [———] I will be happy. It is when I am happy I will have [———].

For example, it is not when I ‘lose more weight, get the promotion’  I will ‘be healthy, feel satisfied, get the man of my dreams’… It is when I am healthy, accept myself as I am right now… ‘I will lose weight, etc. etc.’ 

As a society, we have it all backwards! You feed yourself and your soul first, and everything else you desire will come to you. 

Trust me on this one… 

Let your body and your mind do the work for you. Once you accept these two concepts into your heart and make that your intention, rather than a goal, then you will be fulfilled.  Intentions bring outcomes. Goals denote a certain level to achieve and when we get there, we get addicted to the thrill, rather than the result. So we keep on feeding that addiction.