I have found that a graceful dance between effort and ease is one of the keys to personal fulfillment. 

Sure, that is easy to write prettily in a blog post, but how do we actually live in this delicate place? To start, it is important to listen to your inner dialogue about what you want. It often sounds or feels like an inner conflict: one part of you wants to work towards accomplishing your goal and another part is hesitant or doubting.

When you listen deeply to the different “you voices” inside, you can hear their motivations, concerns and opinions. Even when the voice sounds or feels negative, at the core, this part of you is still just lobbying for your well being. Make peace with the voices you have been pushing away or ignoring because they actually have something important to share with you.

And whenever you are stuck around realizing an aspiration, you can bet that there is a conflict between effort and ease.

After you listen deeply and have clarity about the differing voices inside, it is time to dance! You see, you can’t just effort your way towards your objective (and still feel healthy and sane) and you can’t sink back in ease and wait for it to find you either. These two partners need to work together.

There are times when the right choice is action and momentum and there are times for ease and acceptance. When you are mindfully listening to your own inner wisdom, you will dance with both. If you aren’t paying attention, you will be ruled by the seeming conflict between them.

By hellokathie, shared via flickr

Birdwings

Your grief for what you’ve lost lifts a mirror
up to where you are bravely working.

Expecting the worst, you look, and instead,
here’s the joyful face you’ve been wanting to see.

Your hand opens and closes and opens and closes.
If it were always a fist or always stretched open,
you would be paralyzed.

Your deepest presence is in every small contracting and expanding,
the two as beautifully balanced and coordinated
as birdwings.

-Rumi (translated by Coleman Barks)

1. Make a list of as many of your own needs, desires and “shoulds” as you can in about ten minutes. Sort them into the three categories.

2. After you have sorted them, get curious about why they are in the category they are in. What makes one thing a need and another thing a desire? What distinguishes a need from a “should”? How do you know it is really a need?

3. Now, answer the following questions about as many of the needs, desires and “shoulds” as you would like to explore more deeply.

• If I get or do this, then I feel…
• If I don’t get or do this, then I feel…
• I attain this or make it happen by…
• I limit or block this by…
• Some of the more basic needs that underlie this are…

What did you learn?

Photo by jpstanley, shared via flickr

For me, I learned that it is very helpful to recognize the needs that feel necessary for my own growth and well being, the desires that can make life more sweet and the “shoulds” that  drain my energy. Awareness creates more choice. And choice…that is freedom!

I am delighted to be participating in the 2012 Portland Mama Makeover! This will be my third year as the Life Coach for the winning mama and it has been an enriching and inspiring experience. I can’t wait to meet the winner!

The deadline for entry is March 16th so please encourage any Portland-area mama that you know (with one or more children under the age of 6) who needs extra support and nurturing to apply! This year the total value of the holistic makeover is over $6000!

I wrote a blog post about the benefits of self-nurture for the makeover applicants. Please take a moment and give it a read and share/link it for others!

Photo by Salvatore Iovene, shared via Flickr

Over the past year, she has been gearing up to take a huge leap and leave a job that is both stable and confining. We spent many sessions focusing on her inner clarity about what she truly wanted and needed to be fulfilled and engaged in her work. The more clear she got, the more creative she became about how to make it happen.

Last week, as we were celebrating her plan to put in her notice, she said: “I highly recommend taking the fear out of change.”

Amen! Fear is the “F” word when it comes to making powerful and positive changes in your life. You can’t help but experience fear, it is a natural mechanism for survival. However, you can choose to shift your attention, moment by moment, out of fear and towards your inner clarity.

My client knew in her very bones that a different work life was right for her and she would be betraying herself if she didn’t listen.

Here is her mantra during this time of transition: “First do what is necessary. Then do what is possible. And before you know it, you will be doing the impossible. ” -St. Francis of Assisi

When you feel overwhelmed by your own change process, start so small that your fear can’t stop you and before you know it, you will be doing what once felt impossible too!

Every so often, I am awed by the utter courage of one my clients. Remember, courage is feeling the fear and still taking right action. This type of courage requires profound clarity and oodles of support (queue Jane Sibery singing “Calling All Angels”).

One such inspiring client made a courageous leap in her life this week and wrote a manifesto to declare her intentions. She has given me permission to share it! Click on the image to see a larger version.

By Zohar Manor-Abel, shared via Flickr

To begin 2012, I have a simple question for you: Who do you want to be this year?

You, like everyone else I have met through my life coaching practice, have many different selves inside. You might have a worried self that tends to agonize about money and a jaded self that feels skeptical about getting too close to people and a hopeful self that wants to have an impact on the world…and many other selves that have conflicting feelings.

The themes might be different for each of us, but the truth is clear: moment to moment, we can choose who to be.

Every action you take and attitude you hold comes from some version of your self. So, change who you are being…and you truly change your life.

The very first step is to be mindful (pay compassionate attention) to who you are being. You might ask yourself: How do I feel right now? What does this version of myself believe? What else feels true?

If you would like to explore this more, I invite you to join my next Self Nurture Women’s Group. We will practice important skills like: mindfulness, self-compassion, connecting to inner knowing and more!

His foundation, The Archimedes Alliance, is named after the Greek mathematician who said, “give me a lever long enough and a place to stand, and I can move the earth.”

By NASA Goddard Photo and Video, shared via Flickr

“I knew there were people who wanted to make a difference but didn’t have enough money to do it on their own,” he says in his on-line video. “Now, they don’t have to. I launched the Archimedes Alliance to leverage the power of the Internet and to bring together people of good intentions and limited resources and give them a voice and a means to create the change they envision.”

I just donated from my Nurture Life Coaching business account, please take a minute to send your own donation right now!

Over the years of working with my life coaching clients, I have realized something very simple, yet profound: giving and receiving both require being open.

In order to freely gift another person with your time, energy, money…you must be willing to open your hands and let go.

Likewise, to receive requires you to open your arms and heart to the gift that is being given. Gratitude is an expansive feeling.

Photo by jonathan.hadiprawira, shared via flickr

This brings to mind the beautiful poem by Rumi entitled “Birdwings”

“Your grief for what you’ve lost lifts a mirror up to where you’re bravely working.

Expecting the worst, you look, and instead, here’s the joyful face you’ve been wanting to see.

Your hand opens and closes and opens and closes. if it were always a fist or always stretched open, you would be paralyzed.

Your deepest presence is in every small contracting and expanding, The two as beautifully balanced and coordinated as bird wings.”

In other words: “When you are most yourself, who are you being and what are you doing?” In an ideal world, each of us would be doing meaningful work that is sparked from the essence of who we are. Work that we would do naturally, even if no one paid us for it. Work that we can’t help but do because it is the expression of our own form of genius. And I promise, we all have it.

Photo by em-si, shared via flickr

The process of uncovering your genius is not always easy. It is often buried beneath layers of enculturation, limiting beliefs and painful life experiences. I believe we were each born expecting to be supported in the unfolding of our own brilliance. But we live in an imperfect world and often our self-expression is thwarted.

I trust implicitly that each person who walks in my office for life coaching has that seed of genius inside. I am dedicated to shining the sunlight of clarity and the nourishment of support so that it can grow and grow and grow!

Photo by lensfodder, shared via flickr

People often come to life coaching wanting to change the circumstances of their lives: they want a more fulfilling job, better communication in their relationships, improved health, ect… In a nutshell: they want to be happier!

In our work together, they soon discover that happiness is not about what happens and that it can even be somewhat dangerous to their well-being to make happiness depend on the right job, relationship or finally achieving their health goals.

Are you wondering why? Isn’t that just what they are hiring me to help them accomplish?

Circumstances are transitory and depending on them for happiness is a fragile way to live. It can leave you exhausted and anxious from trying to hold on too tight.

In my years is supporting people in having more joyful lives, I have learned that happiness is an attitude. It is inspired, not by what happens, but by who you are being in relationship to what happens.

I have witnessed clients realizing their own strength and wisdom in dealing with some of the most challenging of situations. I have seen them shift perspective from fear to choice even when the options once felt limited. And I have been awed by how gratitude can create a lasting happiness that has nothing to do with happenstance.

And the irony is that life situations do react to our inner state of being. The more joyful and centered we choose to be, despite difficulties that arise (and they do), the more life seems to align in our favor.