How to overcome the pain of bad decisions

During my monthly session with my spiritual mentor, I shared with her the excitement and fun I’ve been having from working on an upcoming talk I’m preparing for, but also the emotions this work has brought up by forcing me to dig deep into my childhood memories.

As a speaker I know how important it is to connect with your audience through personal stories. So when I first sat down to write the draft of this talk, I ventured into my memory vault in search of fitting memories for the subject I’ll be talking about. It’s incredible what we can remember when we sit down and intentionally try to. Very soon a number of fun and happy memories surfaced, some of which were so perfect for my talk that I immediately decided to include them. But when it comes to the thoughts that pop into our minds, as you’ll probably know, we’re not always in control. So with the fun memories that surfaced, a plethora of not-so-fun memories made their way back into my mind as well.

Painful experiences, moments of despair, accidents. And bad decisions. Aching, heart wrenching, stomach twisting bad decisions.

Before I would have ignored them, buried them back deeper than where I’d found them. But that’s not me anymore. I love myself to much to do that now. I’m too curious about who I am, and too eager to learn more. So, instead of pretending I wasn’t feeling anything, I decided to open myself up to what those bad decisions desperately seemed to be want to tell me…

The first thing I came across was regret. A universal feeling when it comes to bad decisions: the regret of a missed opportunity, of a chance we didn’t take. Or worse of a chance at something great that we turned into a failure, something that we’re ashamed of even to think about.

So with regret for bad decisions often comes shame. Because a bad decision reminds us that we’re not perfect, that we’re flawed. Most of us don’t like this part of who we are. And would can blame us? Everywhere we’re bombarded with messages about our flaws, and how to fix them. No wonder we feel shame. Or a heap of other negative emotions.

Which brings me to guilt. Another emotion that quickly made it’s way into my heart when I remembered the bad decisions from my past. I felt guilty for the people that I hurt in my life, but also for allowing others to hurt me. Like when I stayed in toxic relationships for too long, knowing they weren’t good for me, but unable to make myself stand up and leave. There’s no such thing as not making a choice. Doing nothing is always doing something. So in my book that counts as a bad decision too.

Once I’d gone through this whirlwind of emotions, and thanks to the beautiful conversation I had with my mentor, I started to look at those bad decisions in a different light.

Bad decisions are part of life. Just like we’re not perfect, our decisions can’t be of service to us all the time. We’re bound to make mistakes, and in fact it’s what makes life so worth living. But what interested me most was to find ways to make the pain go away. I wanted to get rid of the heavy weight that I felt pressing on my heart.

First I met the obvious: you can’t change the past, so why feel bad about it. An absolute truth, if truth there ever was. But in my opinion useless knowledge when you’re trying to relief your heart from sorrows from the past.

So what if I cannot change what happened? That doesn’t change how I feel about it now.

I believe that only transformation can do that.

In order to change an emotion, or to accept the parts of ourselves that challenge us, a transformation needs to take place. We cannot simply convince ourselves that there is nothing more we can do so that we might as well forget about it.

I used to be really good at doing that. But last week those memories resurfaced. I guess I wasn’t all that good at it after all.

So how do we overcome the pain of bad decisions?

First we forgive ourselves. We face the guilt, the shame, the regret and we accept what we’ve done. This is a true act of self-love in which we’re not only accepting that part of us that is “flawed” but also accepting ourselves for all that we are. We do that by saying to ourselves: “Yes this is me. I’ve done that. But I love myself just the same. And I forgive myself.”

Then we allow ourselves to expand. A turning point in my life has been when I decided I wasn’t going to ignore the hurtful parts of me anymore, but that instead I was going to incorporate them into who I was. Which is precisely what I’m talking about today. Growing means expanding. It’s not just about nurturing the good parts of you, it’s also about allowing you to experience the human condition in all of its aspects, including it’s more painful parts. We do that by saying: “Yes this is me. I’ve done that. But that’s how I grow. And expand as a person.”

And finally we make up for it. Once we’ve forgiven ourselves, and expanded by integrating our bad decisions into who we are, we can finally give back. We’ve learned something, Been through something. Felt something. We looked deep into the eyes of our human condition. We can help others because we understand. We’ve felt their pain, we know their shame. What a gift this is.

That’s all I wanted to share today. If you have a heavy heart right now, or know someone who does, I hope this post will help you move through it. And in the comments below, feel free to leave me a note, and let me know how you’re doing. I’d love that.

5 mindset shifts to help you stop being a good girl (and harness your inner badass instead)

Over the past few months, as my coaching business has really started to take off, I’ve found myself coaching and mentoring more and more women to help them go for what they want in life, and grow their businesses. While I’ve witnessed the incredible results these amazing women have created for themselves I’ve also taken note of what I believe is a deeply ingrained pattern common to almost all women: our need to be good girls. Something I believe is holding many women back from going after their most cherished dreams, and creating amazing lives for themselves.

I know this pattern very well because for the biggest part of my life I was a good girl too.

When being a good girl sucks

Whatever the situation, I would always be more concerned about the well-being of others than my own, worrying about what other people thought of me but certainly not about what I really thought of them! I would feeling inadequate, never good enough, and I would put myself under exhausting levels of stress by setting unattainable standards of perfection for myself.

As a result…

• I lived a big part of my life for others and not me,

• I struggled with severe anxiety, worry, and fear,

• I missed out on a lot of things I wanted to do,

• I attracted the wrong people into my life,

• I didn’t love myself.

Good girls are bad for business

But those are only a few of the many issues I experienced from trying to be a good girl all the time. Because to be a good girl you’re forced to suppress your authentic self, and your desires there are many more downsides to it. Like losing sight of who you really are, of not having any boundaries. And that’s without counting all the struggles I had in my career, and my businesses. And that perhaps you’re experiencing too. Like:

• Earning way less than my equal male counterparts because I simply didn’t ask for more,

• Letting interesting contracts slip my fingers because I didn’t want to look greedy,

• Unhappy clients because I failed to set clear boundaries,

• Hiring mediocre team members because I believed I didn’t deserve better,

• More than 15 years building a career, and businesses I didn’t really like.

Whether you’re struggling with being a good girl in your private or professional life doesn’t really matter, at the end of the day trying to please everyone never works, and it will end up making you feel miserable.

There’s an inner badass in all of us

It’s hard to chase your dreams, and go after what you want when you’re always putting other people first. It’s even harder to build a career, or a business. Believe me – on all accounts, I know. I’ve been there. Being a good girl keeps you from having what you want. That’s why it’s time for a mindset shift so that you can harness your inner super woman instead. She’s the one you want making decisions in your life, because she’s the one who has your back, isn’t afraid to speak up, and knows what you truly want.

So in what follows, I list the five main mindset shifts I made to go from always trying to be a good girl to become the much more at peace, self-loving, and self-confident woman I am today.

With those mindset shifts I became much happier, and fulfilled. Absolutely. But they were also instrumental for my career, and business success. Through them:

• I fell in love with myself, and my message,

• I created new, heart-centered, and profitable businesses that work for me,

• I attracted the right people in my life,

• I set strong and clear boundaries both in my private life, and in my business,

• and I became very clear about who I am, what my desires are, and what I stand for.

Mindset shift #1:
Turning not feeling good enough into I am more than enough – and stop the hopeless strive for perfection

When you’re a good girl, it’s easy to feel like you’re not good enough. In fact, that’s precisely what being a good girl does for you. You have your own dreams, and desires but the world keeps telling you to be a totally different human being, with wants and needs that are not your own.

The truth is, we all think we’re not good enough sometimes. It’s one of the most basic fears we all share – women especially. A mindfulness teacher once told me that I am not my thoughts. An absolutely liberating concept for me, that’s been helping me to put things into perspective ever since.

So first recognize that what you think does not define you, a.k.a. that you are not your thoughts! Accept that you have desires of your own, and that you are worth pursuing them. Then try to shift your focus outward instead of keeping it on you. Whatever it is your undertaking, think of what good it will bring into the world, the people you’re helping with it, the difference you will make instead of thinking you might not be up for the job. What you’re creating is the proof that you’re more than enough just as you are. And finally, choose progress over perfection. If you wait for that absolutely perfect moment where you’ll feel totally ready before doing anything, you’ll end up waiting for it your entire life. That moment will never come, simply because perfection does not exist. We all know this, yet we have such a hard time acting on it. But once you do you’ll have a much easier time believing you’re more than good enough, which in turn will help you overcome your need to be perfect all the time.

Mindset shift #2:
Moving from yes into no – and finally have a clue about healthy boundaries

When you’re a good girl, it’s hard to know where you start, and where you end. For a long time I didn’t have a clear set of boundaries. Not in my private life, and not in my businesses. The result of that was that I often pushed myself outside the limits of what felt comfortable for me in my relationship with others, and that I accepted way more than I should have. In my personal life this caused a lot of heartache, in my business it was exhausting, especially with demanding clients.

Once I embraced saying no rather than saying yes, really became clear on the things I would not accept, my life became so much easier, and my businesses really took off.

Mindset shift #3:
Ditching your fear of conflict for a passion for collaboration – and finally stop being afraid to upset anyone

When you’re a good girl, conflict is the last thing that you want. Because if anyone is mad at you, that means you’re not being as good as you’re supposed to be. So you try your hardest to avoid upsetting anyone, even when it goes against your own best interest. But because of this you’re not living up to your own dreams, and certainly not getting what you want.

The point is that all relationships you’ll have with other people will at some point include conflict. We’re all different, and come with our own set of beliefs, values, things we want to achieve. So when you’re looking after yourself, upsetting someone else is bound to happen at one point or another. The trick is not to avoid conflict (like I tried to do for so long), but to embrace it, then transform it. To do that you need to show up as your authentic self. Because when you come from an honest, authentic place, meeting the other person in the middle, there’s a much better chance you’ll both get out of it without being upset.

Of course this is not something you’ll learn to do overnight. But the more you practice standing up for yourself, and expressing your needs, the more it will start to feel a natural part of you, and the less guilt or shame you’ll feel when stepping out of the good girl persona.

Mindset shift #4:
Transform putting everyone else first into becoming your own champion – and never putting yourself last again

When you’re a good girl, it’s easy to forget your own needs in favor of the needs of everyone else on the planet. No wonder, since that’s exactly what being a good girl is. The problem is that by always putting yourself last, it becomes much harder to achieve anything. Because there simply isn’t any time, or energy left to do so.

Rita Pierson gave a beautiful talk about why every kid needs a champion. I totally agree with her. But I also believe that every good girl needs to be her own champion as well. Good girl Uni teaches women to care for others, but not for ourselves. It tells them to root for the success of everyone, except their own. Or worse, to find satisfaction in the success of others, but not their own. The only way for good girls to abandon that mindset is to start championing themselves.

Learning to give yourself the attention, the care, and the love that you so freely give others is essential to harness your inner super woman. Again, she’s the one who’ll help you reach your goals, and achieve the success you want. Not the good girl.

Mindset shift #5:
Going from never expressing what you think to saying what you really want – and finally knowing what that is   

When you’re a good girl, you learn early on that saying what you think is a big no-no. You’re thought that there’s things to say, and things not to say. That accommodating others is more important than expressing what you really mean, because you don’t want to offend anyone right?

So the final mindset shift I want to address might well be the most important one: saying what you really want. Even if you set healthy boundaries for yourself, learn to say no, believe deeply that you’re good enough… if you’re unable to express what you really want you won’t actually get it. I know that saying what you stand for, expressing your thoughts can be really scary, especially if you’re used to being a good girl. It took me a long time to get there, and I still struggle with it sometimes. But I’ve come to believe there’s not really any other way to be, if you want to harness your inner super woman. It takes practice, and a bit of courage too. But the more you do it the better it will feel, and the more rewarding it will be.

That’s it for this one. Now it’s your turn. In the comments below let me what mindset shifts have made a difference in your life, and career or business. What big a-has do you live by? I’d really love to know.

How to set healthy boundaries and stop being a pushover

If you’ve stopped by my blog before you might know I’m a highly sensitive recovering people-pleaser, topped as a recovering perfectionist. Yes, I know! A cocktail of traits that is now one of my biggest strengths though, even if it wasn’t always like that. In fact as a child, and quite a bit into my adult life too, these traits were a real pain, and turned me into a gigantic pushover.

Defining personal boundaries

Before taking you down pushover lane, I want to frame a few things. First, let’s look at what being a pushover really means. According to the online Cambridge dictionary it’s someone who is easily persuaded, influenced or defeated. Now let’s define boundaries. According to the same source a boundary is a real or imagined line that marks the edge or limit of something. A personal boundary then becomes a guidelines, rule or limit that a person creates to identify reasonable, safe and permissible ways for other people to behave towards them and how they will respond when someone passes those limits. That’s according to Wikipedia.

What life looks like without personal boundaries

My personal history is full of pushover stories. In fact, before I realized how problematic my personal boundaries where – or that one could actually define them, it was the only way I knew how to be. It’s not that I didn’t have a meaning about things, or that I didn’t have desires, but something always made me go for someone else’s wish, I was always persuaded that someone else’s idea was better than mine, and practically everyone I encountered had influence on me.

When I talk about this pushover past with people today, most of them are surprised. If you’ve ever spent time with me, worked on a project with me, or been at one of my workshops, you might be surprised too.

I’m not really the pushover type… In fact, I’m sort of strong-willed, I definitely know what I want, and I pretty good at taking action towards it.

Why was I so easily influenced? What did I do to change? Those are the questions I want to answer with this post. Because working my way to healthy boundaries changed my life entirely.

Before… I would want to go see a romantic comedy with a friend, and end up in the cinema watching the latest Van Diesel shoot-em-up.
Before… I would plan a relaxing spa weekend with the boyfriend, and end up at adventure camp for 3 days.
Before… I would long for a delicious vegetarian meal, and end up at Buffalo Grill.

… yes, I know… that’s what life looks like without personal boundaries.

From the examples above you can clearly see that the problem wasn’t in the wished or desires. Deep down I’ve always known what I wanted – as I believe most pushovers do, and also sort of articulated it. The problem was with the boundaries. They were too weak to withstand other people. As soon as someone had a different idea they would bend or break.

I mentioned a few of the typical scenarios that were my life above, but there were others – far less pleasant ones. A lack of personal boundaries can get you into the most annoying, and frustrating situations (if not worse!). Believe me, I’ve been there:

• Doing things I didn’t really want to do just because someone asked me to.

• Spending time with someone I didn’t want to be with just because that person showed up at my doorstep.

• Pretending I agreed with others just because they had a different point of view.

• Doing someone else’s homework just because they’d asked me to.

• Letting someone kiss me that I didn’t really like just because that person wanted to.

• Not being able to leave the office late at night, when I was exhausted, just because someone asked me to stay.

• Not eating healthy just because everyone was else decided to order pizza.

• Not doing what I really wanted to do just because someone wanted to do something else instead.

How to set healthy boundaries for yourself

I’d love to tell you that all at once, one beautiful morning I woke up with healthy personal boundaries. But it didn’t go that way. In my case – and in the case of many of my clients – the first step is awareness (isn’t it always?). In order to be able to set healthy boundaries for yourself, you have to start by recognizing there’s a problem. And the way you do that is by asking yourself the right questions:

• Did I really want to do this?

• Am I really happy with my friends asking me to do that?

• What would I have done if I was the one in charge? (this is a big one, believe me!)

Then, when there’s awareness, you have to figure out what you really want (so this would be step two). A great question to ask yourself to get clear on your own desires is this one:

• If I could have it all my way, what would I really want?

When you’re aware, and you know what you want, it’s time to decide where you’ll draw the line. This is the step where you set your boundaries. Imagine you’re sick and tired of always ending up watching the wrong movie in the theatre. You could set a boundary that states that whatever happens you’ll stick to your choice of movie. Because why else would you go there in the first place?

Do this with every area of your life, based on your answers to the questions above, and you’ll have a set of very healthy, and beneficial boundaries to call your own. Before ending, there’s one last – pretty important – thing I want to address.

How to enforce your boundaries

It’s all good, and well to set boundaries, know what you want, and be aware of what you need. But there’s a whole world out there of people, of which the closest ones to you won’t be used to you being so clear, and firm about what you want.

At first specifically, your boundaries will be fragile, and the opinions of others (how well intended they may be) will make you doubt yourself, and falter. To help me enforce my boundaries, I’ve come to rely on three things:

• My values: I’ve become really clear about what I stand for, and believe in. As a result, I’m able to safeguard my boundaries much better than if I wasn’t quite sure what I believed in, or stood for. When someone tries to convince me to go for Buffalo Grill now instead of delicious vegetarian food. Well… no!

• Self-love: Nothing helps you safeguard your boundaries better than self-love. The biggest issue with being a pushover is often that you’ve become accustomed to coming last. What you want, need, or desire isn’t as important as what someone else is asking for. By focusing on self-love you’re essentially focusing on yourself, and making you your number one priority.

• Trusting myself: I saved the best for last. If you want healthy boundaries I believe you need to learn to trust yourself. At least that’s how it went for me. Whatever choice you’re faced with, there’s always the voice within, and the voice outside. Pushovers trust the voice outside, people with healthy boundaries trust the voice within. You know why? Because it always knows best.

Now tell me, how do you maintain healthy personal boundaries? Let me know in the comments below, I’d really love to know.

How to beat overwhelm, and cultivate resilience

A lot of my clients talk to me about feeling overwhelmed: at work, in their business, with the kids, when trying to marry all their passions, and move forward with what they want for themselves… I know, believe me, I’ve been there. More times than I can remember. In order to achieve the things that really mattered to me, I had to learn how to deal with overwhelm, and find inner resilience instead.

So here’s a short how-to guide for anyone who feels overwhelmed, and wants to find inner peace, wellbeing, and resilience instead.

What you’ll find below are my five main lessons from years of learning how to overcome, and banish overwhelm. Hopefully they’ll help you as much as they’ve helped me.

#1 Slow down

One of my business mentoring clients told me how overwhelmed she felt last week, after having set some powerful business goals for herself.  By digging through the overwhelm together, she realized that it wasn’t the goal that was the issue, but the time she had given herself to achieve it. This is true for a lot of us, and many of our goals.

If you’re feeling overwhelmed about something you want to achieve, take a good look at when you’re expecting to reach that goal. Chances are that that’s the problem, and not the goal.

As an experiment mentally push that goal to the end of the year, and give yourself permission to feel great about not achieving it before that time.

The same goes for other things too. Let’s say you promised someone to help out with something this week, but you’re schedule is absolutely full, and you’re overwhelmed. Now imagine pushing that commitment two weeks into the future, when you have a few days off from work, and time to actually do it.

How does it feel? Still overwhelming? If not, it’s time to slow down. Not only will it get rid of overwhelm, it’s a great way to stay motivated, and build resilience by setting healthy boundaries for yourself.

#2 Think like a microscope

Another recurring culprit that keeps us overwhelmed is focusing on the big picture too much. You set a goal for yourself, let’s say to reach the finish line of a marathon this year, but from day one you focus on the enormity of the distance you’ll have to run to achieve it. While – of course – being totally out of shape. It’s pretty safe to assume that this would overwhelm even the strongest among us, don’t you think so?

The alternative, and a powerful way to not let yourself get overwhelmed, is to think like a microscope. Focus on the absolute smallest task or thing that you can do right now to move forward, without looking at the bigger picture. This has worked successfully for me in many situations, and with all sorts of goals (big or small), and I guarantee it will work for you as well. When we take the hugeness out of something, we often take the overwhelm out of it too.

#3 Don’t take anything seriously

This might sound obvious to you, but I had to do a lot of work to get it. As a recovering perfectionist, and people-pleaser I spent the bigger part of my years trying to live up to unattainable expectations. A sure-fire for overwhelm. But even if you’re not a perfectionist, taking things too seriously might keep you stuck.

The truth is, almost nothing is serious to the extent that you should feel overwhelmed because of it. Instead, be playful. Enjoy what you’re doing (that’s the whole point anyway!). Progress today is better than perfection tomorrow. So what if it’s not entirely like you envisioned it? It never is anyway…

Cultivating this mindset will alleviate more than overwhelm. It will help you get rid of guilt, and stress too along the way!

#4 Let go, and ask for help

So far we know that overwhelm is triggered when something is too much too soon, when it’s too big for us to handle in one go, and when we think our lives depend on it.

But there’s more.

Overwhelm often shows up when we want to control everything. Why? Because it’s impossible to do so! And very often those that want to stay in control also have a hard time asking for help. They believe that it is their duty to do it all. To build resilience while avoiding overwhelm you do the exact opposite. You let go, and ask for help.

#5 Keep moving

Finally, however overwhelmed you feel, whatever your circumstances are my advice is to stay in action, and move forward. Nobody ever got anything done by thinking about it. The same goes for overwhelm. It’s not going to go away on it’s own, it requires of you to do something about it.

Like implementing the tips above, or doing anything else that works for you.

Now do tell me, what helps you to move past overwhelm? How do you build resilience? Let me know below.

7 easy things you can do to release anxiety (immediately)

In the past years, I’ve worked really hard to overcome my anxieties, to stop the worry chatter in my head. Along the way, through my coaching practice, I’ve also helped a lot of women overcome their anxieties, fears, worries.

Through this work, I’ve learned that anxiety can be lessened, sometimes even cured entirely, but that to do so you need to change one or more aspects of your life.

What Is Anxiety?

Anxiety is a terribly unpleasant feeling of fear, worry or even panic. When we’re anxious we feel stressed out, our heart pounds in our chest, our breathing changes, our mind goes into overdrive, with what seems like millions of thoughts per second. Or we’re so focused on one fearful thought or experience, that we can’t get it out of our head, as if it was haunting us! We get up with it in the morning, we go to bed with it at night. This can last for hours, days, weeks on end. Believe me, I know, I’ve been there many times.

The thing is, everyone experiences anxiety sometimes. We all inevitably worry about ordinary, day-to-day issues, such as health, family, work, money. That’s perfectly OK.

When Fear Or Worry Won’t Let Go

The problem starts when you can’t seem to shake a fearful, negative thought or when – even after a particular experience has ended – it remains in your mind, and you still worry about it. Another expression of anxiety, one that I struggled with for a long time (still do sometimes) is worrying about all possible, negative scenarios concerning an experience (past or present), a person, or a thing.

Most of the excessive worry is irrational, yet the fear or worry won’t let go. Unpleasant to say the least, often difficult to live with, anxiety can be mild or strong depending on a number of factors, ranging from higher emotional awareness, sensitivity to stress, family history, trauma, or even genes.

Your environment, what you eat, the amount of sleep you get, the people you surround yourself with… all of these things can also have an impact on your level of anxiety.

7 Easy Things You Can Do To Release Anxiety (Immediately)

Throughout the years I’ve learned how to deal with my anxiety, and worry much more efficiently. The good news is, there are simple and effective ways to get rid of big chunks of anxiety, calm the brain, relax the body, get back on track with your life. Some start working right away, while others need more practice, may help lessen anxiety over time.

1. Get Enough Sleep

Women often don’t get as much sleep as they need or don’t sleep well. But sleep is designed specifically to help control stress. It’s something you should never skip on purpose.

Go to bed at the same time each night and wake up at the same time each morning (even on the weekends). Try to schedule a full seven to nine hours of snooze time every day.

When I don’t get my eight hours of sleep I’m not just tired, I’m more anxious too, I even get a tat depressed (another symptom of anxiety to some people).

2. Eat Well-Balanced Meals

Give the body the support it needs. You should limit your intake of rich, fatty, or spicy food, especially during your evening meal.

Try to eat more products that contain vitamin B, omega-3s, healthy whole-grain carbohydrates.

A morning glass of green juice can get you on the right side of calm. You can try this recipe (which is one of my favorites) for a guaranteed mood-booster: combine one banana or green apple, sliced ginger, a bunch of kale, one lime, cucumber slices, a few ice cubes, a cup of water to a blender or juicer. For more protein add an egg, yogurt, nuts, or protein powder.

3. Get Rid of Clutter

A messy workspace or home can make it difficult to relax. Make a habit of keeping things clean and anxiety-free. Take 10 minutes to tidy up your living space or work area every day. I don’t do this nearly enough, but when I do the feeling of bliss that comes over me when things are neat and tidy is incredible.

If you have too much stuff cluttering up your living or work space, try this quick hack for instant clean-up madness:

• Choose just one drawer, cabinet or closet to clean out

• Take everything out

• Categorize the stuff you don’t use (I usually get rid of anything I haven’t used for four consecutive seasons) by making three piles for items to throw away, to donate, to sell

• Only put back the stuff you use

• Get rid of the throw-aways immediately, mark your calendar for the ones to donate or to sell

4. Meditate

Meditation or mindfulness training can help you learn how to better cope with stress. One aspect of anxiety is racing thoughts that won’t go away. Meditation helps with this part of the problem by quieting the overactive mind. Or it will teach you how to not let yourself be affected by your thoughts, which is my case.

Give yourself the gift of serenity, start the day with 10 to 20 minutes of solitude and positive energy.

I’m a big fan of transcendental meditation. It has helped with my anxiety tremendously, amazing results from a practice of two times 20 minutes a day.

5. Hold Your Breath

Yoga breathing has been shown to be effective in lowering stress and anxiety. There is a classic yoga breathing technique “The 4-7-8 Breathing Exercise”, also called “The Relaxing Breath”. This was one of the first breathing techniques I was every introduced too, long before I was practicing transcendental meditation, or any other effective anxiety-relieving method, I was using this technique successfully.

One reason it works is that you can’t breathe deeply and be anxious at the same time. How great, right? To do the 4-7-8 breath:

• Sit comfortably in a straight up position.

• Exhale through your mouth, making a ‘whoosh’ sound.

• Close your mouth, inhale quietly through your nose for 4 seconds.

• Hold your breath for 7 seconds.

• Exhale through your mouth, making a whoosh sound for 8 seconds.

• This is one breath. Now inhale again, repeat the cycle three more times for a total of four breaths.

6. Get Hot

Heating up your body reduces muscle tension, anxiety. One of the symptoms of my anxiety has always been muscle stiffness. When I get stressed, my muscles contract without me realizing it. This puts a lot of pressure on my body.

Take a long bath or hot shower, you may find that your anxiety decreases right away (it does with me).

Warming up may be one of the ways that exercise – not to mention curling up by a fire with a cozy cup of tea – boosts your mood.

7. Create a Vision Board for Your Anxiety-Free Life

If you believe that positive things are going to happen, they usually do! I’m a big believer in visualization. One way to enjoy the benefits of visualization is to create a vision board. This is a type of blueprint for the kind of life you’d like to create for yourself.

It’s important to make sure that your vision board not only holds the vision you have for your life, but also reflects the feelings you want to see come forward when you’re actually enjoying that life, looking at the board.

When it comes to anxiety, your vision board should be about things that calm you down. Sounds crazy, I know, but it really does work!

You can also try to make an e-vision board using Pinterest for some Pinspiration. Keep this vision board within your reach. Look at it with love, know that each time you see it, you’ll feel grounded, happy, calm.

Remember, life isn’t something to take too seriously. Often when we worry, that’s all we do. Everything is so serious, so scary, so fearful. When I’m working my way through anxiety, I try to remember to make time to do something I truly enjoy: read a book, talk to a friend, craft, learn something new.

Especially when your anxious, it’s important to find balance in your life focus on the good things that surround you.

Looking forward to hearing from you below. So do tell me, what works to reduce your anxiety? How do you deal with worry?

FREE MEMBERS: DOWNLOAD YOUR FREE ANXIETY WORKSHEET

Did you know that free members of The Sisterhood Collective get access to my free resources library? To become a member, and download your free anxiety worksheet, simply click on the picture below.

How to overcome your fear of conflict

For as long as I can remember, I hated conflict. Until well into my adulthood, I was unable to confront anyone about anything in a more or less decent way. I would keep things bottled up for as long as I could, until there wasn’t any room left to bottle any more. Then, everything would come out. In those moments I’d change from a nice, and understanding woman into a nasty, and irrational version of myself.

After a confrontation had taken place, when I would calm down, my opponents would tell me that I couldn’t handle criticism, that there was no way to reason with me during those phases of anger. And of course they were right.

Fear of conflict is a complex issue

It took me a long time to see that I had an issue with conflict. I thought I was good at it, strengthened by the fact that I had almost no conflict in my life. Until I understood that it was not diplomatic skills, or perfect negotiation abilities that made it so, but rather that I did everything I could to avoid conflict. Always. Everywhere. At all costs.

As a recovering people-pleaser, and a highly sensitive person, I’ve come to believe that my fear of conflict shares its origin with my people-pleasing, and perfectionistic tendencies. In fact, I’ve been able to pinpoint four factors that greatly contributed to me being so afraid of conflict:

#1 I’ve had to deal with conflict growing up

Throughout my childhood, I’ve been witness to, and victim of conflict, mostly because of the recurring, often hurtful confrontations between my parents. So my childhood didn’t feel safe. In fact, I grew up in an environment where emotions weren’t dealt with properly, where anger wasn’t allowed, where anxiety was all around. As a result, I’d become totally conflict averse, and have not learned to stand up for myself in a healthy, positive way.

#2 Unresolved conflict shaped me as a people-pleaser

Because conflict was never resolved at home – just suppressed until the next outburst – early on I started to internalize this conflict anxiety until I believed all of it was my fault. I became a people-pleaser as a means to try and solve the recurring conflicts. Of course other events, and experiences helped shape my people-pleasing behavior, but consistently being exposed to lingering conflict at such an early age definitely played a big part in it. Trying to please everyone became so important to me, that I couldn’t stand the idea of someone being mad at me. So I became even more afraid of conflict. How ironic, right?

#3 People-pleasing led to perfectionism

Trying to please everyone all the time quickly led to perfectionism. As much as I hated the idea of anyone being mad at me, I hated the idea of losing self-control even more. Still in an effort to resolve the conflicts at home, through people-pleasing trials and errors that led me nowhere, I developed a cruel version of a perfect self. I convinced myself that once I’d be that girl, all would finally be well. But because that girl didn’t get angry, was always composed, accepted everything without complaining it became impossible for me to stand up for myself. By this stage I wasn’t just afraid of conflict, I’d also rationalized why it was imperative to avoid it at all costs.

#4 Avoidance of conflict hurt my self-confidence

Growing up with unresolved, lingering conflict, and developing people-pleasing behavior, I wasn’t able to build a strong foundation for self-confidence. When you keep on trying to fix something that is not in your power to fix, and keep blaming yourself for it, you’re like Sisyphus, eternally trying to roll a rock up a mountain. I felt something was deeply wrong with me, otherwise why would this situation persist? This only made things worse. I wasn’t just afraid of someone being mad at me, or of shattering the picture-perfect image of myself. Because of my low self-confidence I also became terrified of the result of confrontations. Because of my lack of self-confidence, the potential retaliation was unbearable to me, a source of much of my anxieties. Having never witnessed conflict being resolved in a positive way, I was terrified by what the other person would do when I stood up for myself by confronting them.

How to overcome your fear of conflict

In my case, the healing process started when I understood the underlying dynamics that caused me to fear conflict so much. By doing that work I was confronted with my lack of self-confidence, self-worth, and self-love.

Having worked my way through understanding fear, overcoming fear, and helping my clients get through their fears, I believe (as Susan Jeffers so beautifully said in her magnificent book Feel The Fear And Do It Anyway) that all our fears come down to one and the same thing: we’re all afraid we won’t be able to handle it. That we’ll be all alone.

What if I told you that from now on until the end of your life, whatever comes your way, good or bad, you’ll be able to handle it. Would you be afraid of anything?

Probably not.

But when you lack self-confidence, self-worth, and self-love like I did, it’s hard to believe that you can handle anything, let alone conflict. So you’re afraid of it. Like I was. And you don’t engage in it, desperately trying to avoid:

• people thinking bad of you,

• people not liking you,

• people seeing through your picture-perfect self,

• people retaliating,

• and so on…

… so that you could finally be loved, because you’ve convinced yourself you’re not lovable to begin with.

The way out of fear is through self-confidence (and self-love)

Conflict is unavoidable. You’re not alone on the planet, there are people all around you at work, and at home. You’re a social being that interacts with other social beings. So you’re bound to run into things that are unpleasant, and that you need to defend yourself for, or confront another person about. And that’s OK. It happens every day all around the world.

Some people are actually pretty good at handling conflict, and resolving confrontations in a positive way. What differentiates those people from how I used to be is their level of self-confidence.

When they confront someone, their self is not in jeopardy. Whatever comes out of that conflict will not dictate how much people love them, or more importantly, how much they love themselves. By believing in themselves first, and having a healthy dose of self-confidence, self-worth, and self-esteem, these people can work their way through conflict in a healthy way.

Self-confidence means trusting yourself

Whatever your level of self-confidence today, you have the ability to work on dealing with conflict more easily. And it all starts with trusting yourself.

The more you believe in yourself, the less you’ll be affected by:

• what other people think of you,

• by people not liking,

• by not being perfect all the time,

• by how people might retaliate,

• and so on…

Or, as Gary Vaynerchuk says (slightly paraphrasing here Gary, hope that’s OK), they put zero weight into anyone’s opinion about themselves, because they know exactly who they are.

What a powerful statement, right? Bathed in a tremendous amount of self-awareness, self-confidence, self-worth, and self-love. And that’s exactly what you need to focus on to overcome your fear of conflict.

Now it’s your turn. In the comments below, let me know what your biggest fear is when it comes to conflict. How do you deal with it? What’s been helpful when you needed to stand up for yourself?

How to recognize false confidence and what to do about it.

If you’re a little familiar with my blog, you probably know that I’m currently entangled in a rather large financial issue that wrongfully landed on my shoulders.

So far, I’ve been good at dealing with the fears, and anxieties that usually result from such unpleasant affairs. That is, I’ve been good at dealing with it until last week, when the first correspondence about the case made its way into my mailbox, and I was confronted with an account of events that absolutely didn’t match my reality.

I’ve worked hard these past few years to achieve inner peace, and a chatter free mind. And I thought I was on top of it, that I nailed it big time. I even wrote about it a few weeks ago.

Then Friday I get an email. And all of a sudden I’m not so sure anymore. Where I can usually stop the chatter in an instant, my inner voice now lingers on. Instead of quieting down, she becomes louder and louder. That night, I don’t sleep. I can’t keep the voice out of my head, I’m anxious, and afraid.

And I don’t understand why. Then I remember.

I’m a recovering people-pleaser.

For the biggest part of my life the only thing that I wanted was for people to like me, to tell me I did a good job. I spent most of my waking hours trying to look like the perfect picture of myself.

When I was a people-pleaser I dreaded criticism like it was a deadly disease, something I had to avoid at all costs.

Whenever someone would criticize me, it felt like I was dying inside. Being anything short of perfect was unbearable to me. Of course, it was living that way that was unbearable, not the criticism. Trying to achieve perfection in every aspect of my life was so time-consuming that it kept me from focusing on what actually mattered: what I really wanted.

The thing is, I thought that I was over that. I thought I had learned to deal with it, and that I’d become confident enough in myself that I didn’t need that external validation anymore. Until last Friday.

You’re never at the end of your journey

These past few days, I’ve been questioning myself and my so-called confidence, wondering how I could find myself in such a shitty spot again, after having worked on myself for so many years. That’s when I came across a beautiful article about the confidence of visionaries that my fellow BYCA coach, and online buddy Victoria posted on her blog a few weeks ago. In it she talks about what true confidence looks like, and how that differs from what she calls false confidence.

After reading her article it all started to make sense to me. I’m not afraid of the outcome of the issue (I’ve come to terms with that, it’ll be what it’ll be), and I’m not anxious about the process (a very masculine, and structured system with well-defined steps).

No, what bothers me about it is the fact that someone on this earth might think that I’m not perfect after all. Because if I indeed was perfect, so my inner critic tells me, then I wouldn’t be bothered with this issue to begin with, even if I have nothing to do with it, like it’s the case now. Yes I know, total craziness right there! But that’s unfortunately how people-pleasing works.

This is where the concept of false confidence comes in. In her article, Victoria has a beautiful way of putting it. She talks about false confidence as acknowledging and owning your “good” parts, but not your “unacceptable” shady parts. Those parts, as people-pleasers know, are the ones we work so hard to hide – our flaws, weaknesses, and insecurities, afraid that all hell will break loose if anyone ever found out that we’re not perfect after all.

What happened to me last Friday was the harsh reveal of my false confidence. A big slap in the face, yet also one of the most important lessons I got to learn this year (and I do learn a lot of lessons!).

Aversion to criticism leads to aversion to conflict

Being able to recognize this false confidence as the hiding place of my “cured” perfectionism, that only lasts as long as this picture perfect of myself is not being threatened, is very powerful. Add to that the aversion to conflict (in direct connection with the aversion to criticism) that most people-pleasers suffer from, and you can imagine why being wrongfully for something I have to defend myself for, but have nothing to do with, turned out to be the catalyst of this painful realization.

This is the heart of the issue. I was stripped of my false sense of confidence because I was forced to defend myself. Because I’m conflict averse, and have been avoiding conflict so much all my life, I really suck at it.

It brings so many negative feelings up in me, with all of them directed at myself. Including the healthy anger that I might have towards the people or situation putting me into this unpleasant spot.

But there’s no room for blaming others. As a people-pleaser the only one I’m blaming is me. For not being perfect. Because if I was perfect, this wouldn’t be happening to me.

True/deep/real confidence is a state in which we’re all-accepting of ourselves. A state in which we’re not trying to be anything other than we are, and know that – however flawed we may think we are – deep down we know we’re just fine. This doesn’t mean we believe that we’re perfect. We’re all human, remember? What it means is simply that it’s all OK. There’s no perfection to be attained, no rules on how to being human, no external validation to aim for.

In the end there’s only you

When I reminded myself of this, a new sense of calm came over me. The fear, the anxiety that had suddenly showed up subsided. Why? Because they can only exist, and persist in the realm of the imperfect. The realm where you think you need fixing, or aren’t good enough.

As soon as I became all accepting of the fact that I’m not – and will never be – what other people think of me, and that in fact, I am who I am and that’s just fine, my inner critic went to bed. And I was able to sleep again.

If you’re a (recovering) people-pleaser, or you’re on a journey similar to mine, I want you to know that:

• You’re doing great just by recognizing how you operate, and actively working on yourself,

• You’re doing great, even when you think you aren’t, because this is a journey filled with lessons,

• You’re doing great, because people-pleasing or not, you’re fine just the way you are…

I hope these words help you to find more joy, and happiness in your life. In the comments below, let me know what your take is on false confidence. I’d love to hear your story.