5 Steps for Creating Success from Failure

5 STEPS FOR CREATING SUCCESS FROM FAILURE

5 Steps for Creating Success from Failure

Article by Nandi Hetenyi
Photo Credit: Nancy Schoenmakers
Magazine: Issue #17

Imagine for a moment how differently you would feel about your life if you weren’t afraid of failing. Napolean Hill wrote that every failure brings with it the seed of an equivalent success. 

Fear of failure. We’ve all been there. I know I have. It creates this frozen feeling, a paralysis that disconnects you from the flow of life.

Perhaps there is so much fear around failure because it reflects back your humanity, shows you where you aren’t “perfect” and makes you have to work harder and more diligently. Maybe it would be nice to be let off the hook once in a while or get it right the first time. There are countless stories of successful people who have failed a multitude of times before they tasted the sweetness of a success or a victory. It’s an impossible task to compare your insides and your “behind the scenes” to other people’s outsides.

Let’s reframe failure.  

Perceived failure often comes in the form of mistakes. Making a mistake is to understand or identify something incorrectly. This doesn’t mean anything about you, but it’s easy to attach so many stories to a mistake based on past experiences and it all gets muddled.

No masterpiece was ever created the first time around. Mistakes are an opportunity, not only to learn, but for soul growth, deeper self-understanding and re-creating. This is the cycle of life, creation – birth – generation – death. Every project and relationship we undertake necessarily goes through these cycles and mistakes are a part of it.

Success and creativity then does not exist in the perfect conception of an original idea but rather in allowing the original idea to alchemize you and your creation.

Alchemizing failure:

1| Mistakes happen.  
As the Buddha taught, life is suffering. Part of being human is making mistakes. Welcome mistakes as teachers sent to send you off on the right course.

4| Drop the story. 
You create more suffering, anxiety and self-doubt when you attach meaning, a story or future trip about the mistake that has occurred.

3| Become curious.
What is the mistake or perceived failure? What can you learn from it?

4| Create space for conscious reflection.
What happens in life is not happening TO you but FOR you to learn so you can grow nearer to what you truly desire.

5| Re-chart the map and take action.
What needs to change in your plan of action? What inner work can you do? If every failure contains the seeds of an equivalent success, examine that seed and question what wants to grow from it. Each step is an opportunity for greater confidence and enjoying the successes when they come!

How to Transform Your Challenges with Crystals

HOW TO TRANSFORM YOUR CHALLENGES
WITH CRYSTALS

Crystal Magic

Article by Stacy Stehle
Photo Credit: Victor of Valencia
Magazine: Issue #17

Holistic Living is about integrating all aspects of yourself together – physical, mental, emotional and spiritual. Ideally it is about maintaining balance and wholeness within yourself.  

As you know, life has it's challenges. Challenges are a way of helping you grow your soul by seeing them as lessons or stepping stones to move you forward. But sometimes they just feel so awful and keep us stuck at a place for longer than you'd would like. What if there was a way to transform the energy around your challenges so that you can maintain a balanced and whole state?

You can do just that through crystal magic.

It is not a coincidence that crystals are becoming more and more common in this day and age. They have been around for thousands of years and can even be dated back to ancient times for their amazing healing and transformational qualities.   

What makes crystals so magical is their ability to absorb and transmute energies. Their energy vibrations are very high. Just simply having them in your presence is enough to take your energy where ever it may be and raise it to the higher vibration of the crystals.  

As you know, challenges can pull you down and keep you at a lower energy level. It is at this lower vibration that pulls you into a state that is not balanced.  

Crystals will help raise your energy on all levels; physical, emotional, mental and spiritual to a higher state. At a higher energy state you are  balance and whole. You are aware and capable of seeing your challenges as a place of growth and instinctively move forward.   

It takes working with crystals to begin to see their magic happen. I recommend choosing a crystal that you are drawn to and begin working with it. Simply take it with you where every you go. When challenges arise, pull out your crystal, hold it in your hands and begin to breathe in the energy. Run your fingers over the crystal and connect with it while breathing and allow yourself to be taken to a higher energy state.  

Challenges do not have to disrupt your life. Allow crystal magic to transform the energies so you can easily feel balanced and whole.

How to Overcome Obstacles and Turn Them Into Allies

HOW TO OVERCOME OBSTACLES AND TURN THEM INTO ALLIES

Musical Obstacles

Article by Cymber Lily Quinn
Photo Credit: Victor of Valencia
Magazine: Issue #17

You know you want to get better at playing your instrument or singing. You know you should get back to music. But there’s something stopping you. You are stuck. What to do chica? 

Stop The Fight

Many of the old ways called for a fight, a push, a struggle as a way to overcome your obstacles. It worked if you were macho enough, but these days, I find it just plain ole’ tiring. 

Make Friends With Your Obstacles

Sounds crazy, right? Who wants to snuggle up to the snarling voices that keep telling you to make your music, and the other voices that tell you all the negative stuff. But one of the most alchemical, gentle, and transformative ways to remove your blocks and obstacles is to befriend them. Make a list of all the blocks you have, all the things that are bugging you right now. Then ask them some questions:

:: When were you created? Why? (Blocks are usually created in childhood to protect you.)
:: How old do you think I am now? (Blocks usually think you are still a kid.)
:: Are you ready to be updated for a new assignment? (Usually they are.)

Thank your blocks for protecting you, then mentally ask them to complete their work, so you can recycle them. Or throw them in the Cosmic Dumpster. 

Replacing Old Beliefs with New Ones

Once the old beliefs are gone, you want to replace them with new ones. These are new beliefs that are appropriate for where you are now in your life. 

Make a list all the new beliefs that you’d like to have...better relationships, more security, better connection with your community, and most importantly, ways back into your music, and ways back into confidence. 

Put this list where you can see it every day,  so you can retrain your mind to notice when you are experiencing your new beliefs. And when you see your new beliefs showing up in your life, make a note of that too. Changes are both slow and fast, depending on which part of your life is ready for change. 

The most magical part of this process, the most alchemical and transformative, is the process of welcoming the blocks, and understanding that they are a natural part of your life. Then you can transform them by updating them and giving them a new assignment.

Change Your Reality With the World's Most Powerful 2 Words

CHANGE YOUR REALITY WITH THE WORLD’S MOST
POWERFUL 2 WORDS

Change Your Reality

Article by Priscilla Wainwright
Photo Credit: Victor of Valencia
Magazine: Issue #17

All human life operates according to these 2 words. They control your brain and thought, both conscious and unconscious, whether you like it or not! So, these 2 words control you. They can MAKE or BREAK you: soar you to the heights or plunge you to the depths.

In the late 1800’s, the philosopher Vaihinger founded a life philosophy on these 2 words. They became the centerpiece of psychiatrist Alfred Adler’s system of Individual Psychology. Henry Ford got it right in his famous quote, “Whether you think you can, or think you can’t, you’re right.”

You’ve waited long enough! Here they are: 'AS IF'. Our brains are wired according to this principle, “We always act as if what we believe is true.” Psychologist Harold Mosak said, “Life’s all fiction. Which fiction do you wish to believe?”

He’s right, you know. We all have belief systems that develop early in life that serve as filters through which we process and interpret everything we experience. Therefore, we never experience “reality” as it actually is. It becomes for us what we subconsciously make it out to be. We’re not consciously aware that we’re doing this, so we think and act that what we perceive our experience to be is the actual reality, the real truth.

Now, here’s the kicker: Whatever we have learned, we can unlearn!

You want a new reality? Change your beliefs! Doing so will give you more control over your life. You will consciously and subconsciously act in new ways that will create a new “reality” and give you different results.

Admittedly, this is easier said than done, but it is eminently doable. You start by creating new positive power statements. Write them out. Then live each moment inside those statements. Start acting “AS IF” they are true. Then you will come to believe them.

3 Steps to Staying Positive

3 STEPS TO STAYING POSITIVE

3 Steps To Staying Positive

Article by Antiqua Lisha
Photo Credit: The Luxe Travelista
Magazine: Issue #26

This past week, I was thinking about this article and then a friend I met at the social Facebooked me with this question, and I thought if they are feeling this question bubbling within them, then I bet a lot of us wonder how to stay positive, after we have been hurt. 

The question: How do you stay so positive?

How does one change their focus in life when they feel like the odds are stacked against them? 

The problem: When they feel like they would just be better being alone then with other people because they are afraid of being hurt by people like they have in the past so many times.

My answer for them and you: 

This is challenging, I know, and what I do goes against the norm when it comes to HOW I stay positive even through life and people have hurt me in the past. 

Honestly, I like many of you stayed on this marry-go-round for years looking outside myself at the situations, people and patterns that kept me (like my clients) thinking I was less than or in need of change. 

Do you know that we are all showing up for one another like mirrors? We hear what we believe and attract who we are. That is not so easy to swallow, but it is powerful to digest. 

To stay positive and change your focus, start by asking yourself powerful questions: What about the people in the past hurt you? Then turn this question around and ask yourself where are you holding a false belief about YOU being that way. Every negative situation has an equal positive it's the law of polarity. 

Once you discover the gem in the patterns, people tend to totally disappear and new people show up – and you can put these 3 steps to defining yourself into action with ease: 

1| Decide who you want to be. (Do you agree with what your past showed you, or now that you see it do you want to reinvent a new way of being.)

2| Discover new ways of being.  We don’t know what we don’t know.  If you want to be happy, then discover WHAT makes you happy and put these habits into action. 

3| Listen to or hire someone to help me reprogram my belief systems and new situations.

News Flash, You are God. Here's Proof!

NEWS FLASH, YOU ARE GOD. HERE'S PROOF!

News Flash, You Are God. Here's Proof!

Article By Jentana Lee Dabbs
Photo Credit: Dasha & Mari
Magazine: Issue #30

Did you know that you, my friend are actually a God? Ok, not a full on God or the walk on water and cause the tides to roll and lightening to strike from the sky type of God, but you are a small miracle, earthly, mortal type of Co-Creating God.

Before anyone starts criticizing me as being evil or tries to put me in a straight jacket, let me explain what I mean. Have you ever bought a book for someone in the past and even though that person may not have needed it right then, a few months or even years later that friend of yours was able to reach for the information at a time when she was in enough pain to need it and use the information? Then she reported to you how that book really helped her issue? Or maybe you wrote an article or posted a message or link on FB that may have pulled someone out of a dark place, put someone on the right path, or perhaps even saved a person’s life. What about the times someone has been there for you or given you information and answers that you had been praying or wishing for? Either you or they were guided to provide what was needed for the circumstance of the person and situation that either is greatly needed or will be greatly needed in order for that person’s state of mind or circumstance to change for the better.

Small Miracles

If a person has some sort of belief, then chances are they are either praying, meditating, visualizing, or wishing in some way for answers to come their way, get some help, guidance, or some sort of sign. However, many people don’t really notice the small miracles that happen around them, because entertainment portrays miracles happening in a much more dramatic way such as the wind starts blowing hard, lightening striking from the sky, an angelic being showing up or either George Burns or Morgan Freeman showing up in front of us as God himself in person to help us out. Because of that many people have the expectation that the answers and guidance are going to come to us in more profound and dramatic ways.

Accepting the small miracles

Did you ever hear the story about the guy on a roof? One day, a flood happens and a man is trapped on his roof as the floodwaters are rising. The man begins to pray and pray to be saved and next thing a helicopter shows up to rescue him and he says, “no thanks, I’m waiting for God to help me.” Then a big boat comes by and again he tells them to leave. Then a boy scout and his dog on a raft finally pass by as the water is almost completely over his roof and about to go over his head. The man tells the Boy Scout to go away and then he drowns. In heaven, he says to God, “I don’t understand, I’m a man of huge faith and I prayed to you over and over again and yet, why didn’t you save me?” God then says, “I tried to save you 3 times, I sent a helicopter, a big boat, and then a boy scout and his dog on a raft to save you and all 3 times you rejected them, so after the 3rd time, I figured you didn’t want my help after all!”

Even though this is just a cute made up story, it’s a great example of how what we ask for or really need at the time often shows up in the form of average people, who just somehow are drawn to provide it. This includes the many times you have been drawn to provide a small miracle in someone else’s life, whether you knew it or not!

When you really think about it, not only would it be beneficial to begin paying attention to the small miracles that show up in your life from outside sources and other people, but most important begin to pay attention to how often YOU are a small miracle in some else’s life and then just begin to feel and drink in the positive power you really have in the realization that you are actually someone else’s higher power and a co-creator of God. 

In addition, take a moment to also come to the realization that if you have that much power to positively change and affect someone else’s life as a higher power, then what can you do in your own life with the power you have to co-create, with the knowledge that you now have that you truly are a small part of God in some way! 

Overcome Your Fears In 5 Minutes

Overcome Your Fears

OVERCOME YOUR FEARS IN 5 MINUTES

Article By Ling Wong  
Photo Credit: Halley Elefante

We all have fears. It's part of being human. But we don't have to be controlled by our fears.

We can be aware of them, acknowledge them, and release them. It's not a one-time magic pill kind of thing. Releasing and taming your fears takes willingness, awareness, and stick-to-it-ness.

Our deeply rooted fears don't even come up as "scary" kind of feeling. They just hold us back or make us take on self-sabotaging behaviors such as procrastination, feeling unworthy (e.g. you discount and undercharge), playing small etc. Building a business is by far the best way to see these fears in their "glory" - so much $hit reveals itself when YOU are on the line.

When you know how to identify your fears, they no long have a grip on you. When you become more aware, you cannot do things that don't serve you.

Here is a process that will take you 5 minutes, it will help you see your fear from a different perspective. You will be able to address it and move onto doing what you need to do without having one foot on the gas and one foot on the break:

1. Visualize It

Visualize your fear in your body - Where is it? What color is it? What shape is it? What is the texture? Is it big or small? Does it make a sound? Does it move?

2. Objectify It

See if you can take it out of your body and hold it in your hands. Examine it, see if it shows you anything.

3. Name It

Now look at this fear - either outside or inside of your body, and say 3 times (aloud or in your head): "This is just my fear of rejection." Naming it cultivates the awareness what your feelings and emotions are being triggered by.

4. Frame It

With this fear as an object that is separate from your being, look at it again and declare 3 times: "I am NOT my fear." Framing your fear allows you to deal with it from an objective perspective.

5. Have a Chat With It

Then ask the fear: "What do you want to tell me?" Listen. Then ask: "What do you want me to do, and why?" The fear may tell you to do things that it *thinks* will protect you from harm (or at least, something that worked in the past but no longer does) yet does not serve you or what you want to achieve. Thank your fear, tell it that it's been heard and you appreciate the concern. But you are a "big boy" now (a lot of our fears came from our childhood) and you are going to go ahead and take the action.

6. Tame It

Repeat your empowering mantra* 3 times, aloud or in your head.
* You are going to come up with an empowering mantra that works for you. You can have multiple mantras based on the different fears you experience.

5 Simple Ways to Getting Back on Track

women entrepreneurs

5 SIMPLE WAYS TO GETTING BACK ON TRACK

Article by Marlo Wright  
Photo Credit: Nancy Schoenmakers

Often in business, and as the owner of the business, there are times -- those dark times we’d rather never speak about. Times that creep upon us during the quiet of the afternoon when no one else is around. Some thing wisps its way towards us and starts up meaningless and fearful conversations.

“Is this really working?” it asks, then all of a sudden fear has consumed everything about us, from the top of our heads to the bottom of our feet. It’s fight time! It’s time to pull out the big guns and swiftly kick ourselves in the pants --snap out of it. 

Of course it is working! There are employees, customers, and fans! So then why does that feeling come? Why does it seem real? Often times, our emotions are under attack, and our responsibility becomes self-preservation. Most of the time it’s a chance to learn something new.

Perhaps the feeling is coming because though you’ve had success at one level, a new level is in transition. The ground beneath doesn’t seem as sure as it once did. It is something that was desired [growth], but once the tectonic plates beneath start shifting, the jolts and sways of uncertainty can become overwhelming. 

Here are five helpful resources towards getting you back in a more stabilized state of mind and back on track:

1.    Recognize what’s going on around you.

Don’t take anything on as personal during this time. The worst thing is to take on something that doesn’t belong to you and waste precious time and energy. 

2.    Be careful what you ingest.

Garbage in, Garbage out is imperative at this time. Your mouth can be your greatest enemy if it comes into agreement with what fear is trying to convince you of. 

3.    Talk to the right people.

Sharing your business, personal or business, can be detrimental if shared with the wrong people. The last thing you need are naysayers polluting  your space. 

4.    Learn the lesson.

In every great struggle there’s and equally great revelation to learn from. Don’t be so caught up in the mechanics of what is going on that you don’t pay attention to the how to overcome it.

5.    Dig in deep.

Ultimately, no matter if you have your own cheerleading squad behind you every step of the way, they can’t do it for you. You have to dig deep within to win. You have to fight. You have to change your attitude and come out winning. 

Emotions are like waves, they will toss you to and fro if you allow them. You are a fighter, otherwise you wouldn’t be in business in the first place! You would have been content with a comfy, cushy job behind a desk, clocking in and out daily for someone else. It’s time to kick yourself in the pants because at the end of the day YOU CAN DO IT! You keep doing it, until you reach your goals!

Then you’re crazy enough to reach those, and set new ones! You are amazing and one of a kind! the world needs you to flourish!