No matter the situation, you always have a choice. Even if someone or something you loved so much was tragically lost, you have a choice.If you or someone else did something that had unpleasant ramifications, you have a choice. Why I keep repeating this phrase “you have a choice” is because it is the simplest and most powerful awareness that will have you taking control and responsibility for your life.

When you are aware that you have a choice, you will again feel empowered to make the changes that are necessary to move through any situation that you want to change.

Yet, we forget this powerful simplicity within us so quickly and instead choose to stay stuck in our lives while we go about blaming something or someone else for our state of mind and emotions. Now this maybe confronting for some, and you may already be thinking of the reasons as to why and when this should not apply. But first remember YOU CHOOSE how you feel, nobody else can choose that for you, nor can they make you feel anything that you don’t want to.

Do not give your power away by hoping someone will change the situation for you. You choose how you think and feel, realise that the great advice you give to others about ‘don’t worry, believe in yourself, you can do it’, applies to you too.

Each challenge and adversity that we are faced with offers us an opportunity to strengthen our resolve and continue forward building and creating our experiences in life how we want them to be.

Our life is a manifestation of our choices to-date and this can be difficult for some to accept at times, but the exciting and powerful thing to remember is, if you are not where you would like to be, learn from the past as this will help you to choose differently from this moment forward and then, get a different result.

This is not always easy, it does at times take the humbleness to inquire inwards into how you think and feel and get real with yourself about. While it’s not always easy, it is simple and is always very self empowering. And when you do you will be making choices from the right space, one that honours you and the actions that follow will reflect this.

Don’t give your power away by just wishing something outside of you would change, understand you and as the great Ghandi said “Be the change you want to see in the world”.

It all starts with a simple choice.

Have a great week

Donna

We all have some idea how to get fit and healthy and “build muscle” on our bodies, even if it is as simple as “lift weights and you build muscle”. When it comes to Self Worth we have realised that our clients do not understand how to BUILD THEIR SELF WORTH.

Self Worth is defined as:  the sense of one’s own value or worth as a person; self-esteem; self-respect.

The secret to building your Self Worth is very similar to the process for building muscle and getting your body fit and healthy. PRACTICE GOOD HABITS AND ONLY INGEST HEALTHY THINGS INTO YOUR BODY. Now I am sure that you are thinking creating Self Worth and building muscle are totally different but are they?

When you are training for Health and Fitness and to build muscle you must train regularly and consistently, eat the proper foods, sleep well and generally look after yourself, Self Worth is no different.

To create great Self Worth you need to train your mind regularly and consistently to think only positive thoughts about yourself, ingest only positive thoughts avoiding negativity and drama, rest your mind often and definitely look after yourself as your priority in your life.

Often we think that great Self Worth is something that just happens or that someone else can give to us by telling us we are a good person or really capable at a particular task, but in fact the key to this is in the phrase itself. SELF WORTH is absolutely determined by how we choose to think about ourselves.

If you DO NOT believe that you are worth having an amazing relationship, a great career, heaps of money, successful business, awesome health and fitness etc etc you will never be able to achieve and maintain those things.

We have used this analogy of selling a car before to demonstrate the importance of your own Self Worth and Value. If you were to advertise a car worth $50,000 for $20,000 how many people do you think would offer you $50,000 for that vehicle, I would suggest none. Alternatively if you advertise it for $50,000 the chances are prospective buyers would try to negotiate you down on this price to their advantage.  Your Self Worth is exactly the same.

If you set your own Self Worth low expecting other people around you to value you more than you do and treat you accordingly you are giving all of the power and responsibility to these other people, which may well be very dangerous. Chances are that their own Self Worth and Value isn’t 100% on track, so you are expecting them to be able to work through this fact and value you for what you are really worth.

Similarly to building muscle and being fit, Self Worth takes time, effort and consistency to grow. You need to put in conscious focussed effort on thinking positively about yourself and look for reasons that justify the high worth you place on yourself rather than finding every reason in your life why this is not true. When tough times come along you need to be unwavering in your determination and focus on building your Self Worth and maintaining that high value you place upon yourself.

If you want to be fit and healthy you train your body, IF YOU WANT GREAT SELF WORTH YOU TRAIN YOUR MIND. If you don’t want to train your mind hard to achieve this then that is OK, but never complain about people around you not treating you well or taking advantage of you because NO ONE ELSE WILL VALUE YOU HIGHLY UNLESS YOU DO.

Go out and train your mind as hard as you can to develop your high Self Worth and a great saying I heard recently sums it all up for you. PAIN IS JUST WEAKNESS LEAVING THE BODY.

Have a great week and value yourself like your life depends on it……because it does.

Donna

www.liveitupcoaching.com.au

We all have the ability to be extremely Powerful in our lives.

This is something that we are all inherently born with but as time moves on we become disconnected from our true Power. We often mistake Power for Force and try to apply pressure to something to make it change, be it a relationship, our career, our health and fitness or our money situation. We believe that the more we “do” the better off we will be but this is not necessarily the case.

When we are “forcing” something to change it takes a great amount of effort and we will find ourselves trying to convince others that what we are doing is the best option for the situation. We try to Force change in our lives and then wonder why we often end up with the opposite to what we started out striving for.

Using force is like putting two same polarity magnets together; no matter how hard you try to push them together they will always repel each other. This is what happens to any situation we try to force, it will move in the opposite direction to what we had hoped for.

Power on the other hand is a truly amazing way to achieve what it is you are looking for in your life.

You know when you are operating in your true power because things flow easily to you and it takes very little extraneous effort to achieve the changes in your life that bring long lasting results. People naturally listen to us and acknowledge our ideas and inspiration when we are operating from Power.

If we look at the examples of the people we used above it shows how Powerful people differ from Forceful people. Ghandi, Mandella and Mother Theresa all were quietly spoken, humble and very giving people in the world. They made massive change to the consciousness of humanity through peaceful and purposeful means. None of these people used any type of conflict or violence to achieve their goals and the results they achieved are still evident today. The other three on the other hand speak for themselves. None of the changes they tried to effect have had any long-lasting positive effect.

To access your own Power is a simple process. It involves you slowing down and listening to your heart and not your head. Our minds are the seat of our ego and often this is where force originates from. Our hearts and souls are the place where we house the innate wisdom and knowledge about ourselves and what path is right for us in our lives. We already know the answers to what will make us happy, all we need to do is slow down and listen to our hearts and we will have all of the answers we need.

Live Powerfully in your lives and understand that you are the author of your own story.

What do you do when you find yourself in this space? Do you fall apart and concentrate on justifying why your life is going this way or do you find the strength to stand up for yourself and find the solutions to the problems that are holding you back. Everybody experiences times like this in their life; the difference between super successful people and others is how long we allow ourselves to be caught in the negativity. I am sure that Donald Trump, Dick Smith and Gerry Harvey all have these times in their lives but I very much doubt that they let it take control of their thoughts and feelings hold them back from achieving all that they want to.

You have the power to choose how your life pans out even in the times when it feels as though everything is happening to you not because of you. When our lives get tough and it feels like we are spiralling down we have an amazing opportunity to learn about ourselves and find the inner resilience that allows us to find solutions instead of problems. Situations can sometimes seem absolutely hopeless and insurmountable but if you dig deep and find the strength you all possess then there is always a way out of the hard times. It may not be easy but there is always a way. A wise man once said “Life wasn’t meant to be easy” I would say life doesn’t have to be hard; it’s our choice how we react.

You have all found yourselves in situations in your life where you thought there was no solution to a problem and you are still here, so there was obviously a way to move forward, it may not have been the result you hoped for but it also didn’t kill you.

Always stay strong in your own belief and don’t get caught into other people’s negativity and pessimism. Your life experience is your own choice don’t let anyone or anything else drag you down and have you not live the 100% experience of your life the way you want it to be.

“When the going gets tough the tough get going” it may be a cliché but there is so much power in this statement.

Get going in your life and beat the odds to live the dream you wish for.

Make this week the best one you’ve ever had by never giving up on your dreams.

Donna

This quote sums up perfectly how fear plays a HUGE part in our lives in a very negative way. Clearly the message is that the people who built the Ark had never done anything like that before but managed to achieve great success with their venture while the people who built the Titanic were not quite so successful but would have been considered the ‘experts’. When have you let fear stop you in your tracks and prevent you from creating a great relationship, new career, awesome health and fitness, an abundance of money etc etc?

Fear is “False Events Appearing Real” We make up the fears in our minds, they are not real. The most debilitating of all is the fear of the unknown. This is where we don’t try something new because of the fear of what might happen. When we look more closely at the fear we often can’t even describe what the fear is. A good example of this is the fear of a new relationship can be because we don’t want to end up hurt and alone. The reality is if we don’t put ourselves out there for the possibility of a great relationship then feeling hurt and alone is exactly what we will create.

The key to an amazing life is to “Feel the fear and do it anyway!” Our minds will create fear to make us look closely at a situation and assess whether it is potentially dangerous for us to proceed. If we had no fear then we would walk onto the street without looking and potentially get run over. The problem is where we believe every fear our mind creates as the truth and therefore are paralysed from taking any action in our lives towards what we want.

One fantastic way to overcome your fear is to look at the possible fear based outcome, assess how “real” it is and then make a decision based on fact not fiction. In the relationship example above the fear may be that you will create the very situation you are already in, feeling alone, therefore there is no reason to not move forward and take the chance. At worst you will be where you already are, and at best you will have a fantastic loving relationship to enhance your experience of life.

Fear is our way of protecting ourselves from danger, don’t let it be the reason you don’t move forward in your life and try new things.

Embrace your fears this week, overcome them and leap forward in your life anyway.

Be your best and Live It Up.

Donna Meredith

What this tragedy has shown us is that anything is possible and achievable. Whether or not you have been directly affected by the floods, there is a very strong message for us all to take into our lives. We all have the ability to overcome seemingly insurmountable situations in our lives through our own Resilience. Whether it is a major situation, as the floods are, or a less obvious occurrence of a breakdown in a relationship, financial issues or career problems, we can all overcome anything that is put in front of us.

Over the coming weeks things will start to get back to normal and it will be easy to forget how wonderfully the community has pulled together and the unbelievable feats of strength and courage that have been performed. The better option is to never forget what we have learned about the human spirit in the past week.

Let’s remember that we all have the Resilience within us to overcome any hurdles that life throws at us.

Have a great week Be your best and Live It Up.

Donna and Shaun

What do you think is going to make 2011 better than any year you have had so far? For us there are many ways to make this happen but one of the most important keys is “What you think and feel you create”. Another way to explain this is what you concentrate on happens.

If you concentrate all of your attention on what you want to create in your Career, Relationships, Financial situation, Health and Fitness etc then you will be taking the actions that are necessary to create whatever it is you want to achieve. If, conversely, you are concentrating on what you “don’t want” to happen in these areas of your life then you are pouring all of your energy into the negative side of your life. There is an old saying “Your energy flows where your attention goes” what this means is whatever you concentrate on happens.

We all have the ability to create our reality, no exceptions, so whatever you are concentrating on will happen in your life. If you concentrate on what you really really really want to happen with unwavering persistence and attention then you will naturally become the person you need to be to make it happen. You will take all of the necessary action, develop the required attitudes and find out all of the information to create this situation for yourself.

However by being so powerful at creating our reality it also means that when you concentrate on what you really really really don’t want in your life and this is where all of your energy is going then that is the situation you will create. This means you become the person and take the actions that will create the situation you really really really don’t want.

Are you constantly worrying (therefore concentrating) about what you don’t want to happen? “I really don’t want to be in this relationship”, “I really hate the job I’m in at the moment”, “I’m really sick of having no money and struggling to pay my bills”. All of these thoughts have us concentrating on what we don’t want to create. Unfortunately this just brings more of the same into our lives. Our old favourite, Einstein’s Definition of Insanity “To do what you have always done and expect a different result” sums up the key to a fantastic New Year perfectly.

If you want to create an amazing, wonderful and fulfilling 2011 then take some time to sit down and work out what it is you DO want from your life and then focus your attention and efforts on these things with unwavering intention and you will be amazed what you will create. Look at what needs to change and CHANGE IT.

Have a fantastic 2011 and we look forward to helping you achieve all you want from the year ahead.

This is a very serious question we are asking you, because when we looked at it ourselves we realised that we are not always the ones who are living our lives.

What we mean by this statement is – are you living your life according to what you know to be true about yourself and your world? Or are you living it reacting to other people’s opinions.

The danger when we live our lives from the space of relying on others for how we feel is that we are at the mercy of everyone around us and the experience they are having. The power for ourselves in achieving what we want in our lives comes from constantly looking at where we need to step up and own our self worth and not be drawn into other people’s negative reactions or opinions about who we are or how we are acting.

How many of us leave the house feeling awesome in the morning and then the first negative experience pulls us out of this energy and into a flat, cranky or sad energy for the rest of the day? This is a great example of how we let others influence us in how we feel and how we experience our lives every day. The opposite to the situation we have just discussed is how often do we leave the house in the morning feeling less than great and remain in that energy all day regardless of how good other people’s energy may be. We are all too quick to take hold of and own the negative and depressing feelings as our own and not be swayed out of them but when we are feeling great and happy we don’t own them and let ourselves be influenced out of them quite easily.

This is not about blaming other people for what is going on because whatever is happening for them is none of our business. This is all about owning that we create our own experience of our life – both negative and positive.

When we say “Live your own Life” we are saying that to move consciously through your day, aware of the feelings and energy of other people around you, is where all of the power lies. When we are aware of what is going on around us – and even more so, within us - it is very difficult to take on someone else’s negative opinions or feelings because we know that is not what we believe.

A good analogy for when we are being influenced by other people’s feelings is like being in a canoe going down a raging river with no oar – you are totally at the mercy of the river and its flow. When we are aware of what’s going on around us and stay strong in our own self-worth and what we believe, it is like we now have a motor on this boat and we can steer where we want to go – including back up the river if that is what we choose.

Live your life for yourself every day and own how worthy you are in creating your experience to be whatever you chose it to be.

Be Your Best & Live It Up

We often go through our lives making our decisions and planning our futures concentrating on what we don’t want to happen. How many times have you taken action in your life based on avoiding what you don’t want? We make decisions about money because “we don’t want to be broke”. We behave in our relationships a certain way because “we don’t want to argue”. We exercise and watch what we eat because “we don’t want to be overweight and unhealthy” etc etc etc.

How often have you been so focussed on something not happening and it happens? For example I recently had a discussion with a client regarding her falling pregnant and her expression to me was “I’m really disappointed because I’m not pregnant yet, the same thing happens every month, I’m sick of it”.

When I pointed out to her that she was concentrating on what she didn’t want she couldn’t really see what I was saying. I explained that she was concentrating on “not being pregnant” instead of concentrating on “being pregnant”. Now this may seem like we’re splitting hairs but this change in focus will make a massive change to the end result of what we are trying to achieve.

Whatever you concentrate on comes back to you. If we concentrate on “not having money troubles” we will be provided with more money troubles. If instead we concentrate on having an abundance of financial freedom then this is what we will create.

The key is to watch what you think very carefully and make sure that it is always towards creating a positive outcome, not avoiding a negative outcome.

If you went to order a sandwich for lunch and only told the person behind the counter what you didn’t want on it and not what you did this would be a confusing situation. This sounds like a crazy example but this is what some of us do in our daily lives as a matter of habit.

Your thoughts are something that you control, not the other way around, so always concentrate on the positive goals and visions you have instead of the avoidance of the situation you don’t want. When you notice that your thoughts have strayed to a negative focus – stop them, and consciously create the opposite positive thought to what your situation is.

Go through your life concentrating on all of the wonderful and amazing things you would love to have and take the necessary action involved to achieve them and you will create whatever it is you want. There is only one stumbling block to how your life turns out and that is how you think about what happens to you and how you think about what you want to create.

Every situation, good or bad is an opportunity for growth in your life. Concentrate on what you want.

I know in the past I have sabotaged my own success by becoming “really busy doing what needs to be done” whilst distracting myself from the real action I need to take.

In our previous blog Getting Into Action! we concentrated on getting moving to achieve what we want in our lives. This topic takes this concept further to where we are TAKING ACTION in our lives, but is it the action that actually sabotages what we need to do to achieve our goals?

A common theme that I have observed in people over the years is that there are many people who are extremely busy working very long hours and coping with huge amounts of stress…and still they are not really achieving what they want to achieve in their lives. Often we can be lulled into a false sense of security by the fact that we are “doing” things. The fact of the matter is if we are not doing the RIGHT things then we may as well be doing nothing at all.

Can everyone think of someone who seems to be constantly rushing through their lives with a look of stress and concern on their face whilst they are forever trying to “catch up” on what needs to be done? Can anyone see where this may be them at times? I can.

The key to achieving REAL SUCCESS in our lives is to concentrate on the fundamental tasks that drive our career, business, relationships, money, health and fitness etc and then take the action to get these core functions fulfilled.

This will bring success.

Spending our time “fluffing around” with the exciting new brainwave ideas we have or the shiny new gadget we “need” for our situation can often leave us like the dog that chases the car….once he catches it he doesn’t know what to do with it. What I mean by this is we can easily fill our days with things that we can fool ourselves are getting us to where we want to be while actually ignoring the obvious and fundamental tasks that will get us there in the end. It is a classic example of the tortoise and the hare.

As we have expressed before GET INTO ACTION – however I qualify this by saying that you should make sure it is the right action for what you want to achieve.

Have an awesome week and feel free to comment or email us if you are looking for further information about this or any other ideas we have written about here.

Be Your Best & Live It Up