YOUR LIFE A-Z: MEANINGFUL

DO EVERYTHING YOU CAN TO CONNECT IN MEANINGFUL WAYS

MEANINGFUL

What is it that makes your life meaningful and what is meaningful to you?  This word wraps nicely around gratitude because as we think about it, the word MEANINGFUL probably brings to mind things like family, children, friendships, good health, honest values, trustworthiness, and freedom.  As you reflect further on the word you might extract valuables from the periphery of the word and realize that a piece of jewelry or art,because of the occasion or giver, is very meaningful to you. You might also remember trips in your life that were MEANINGFUL and certain milestones, such as graduation from high school, baptism, commitment ceremonies, or special birthdays that were a part of creating you into the person you are today.  In one sense of the word, MEANINFULNESS sneaks up on us and just happens but we can create meaning too.  If you are feeling lost, bored, lonely, and struggling to find MEANINGFULNESS in your life today, then get out of yourself.  Go out and make someone else smile.  Go find a homeless person and bring them some lunch.  Look online and donate to a specific cause that’s meaningful to you.  Call up some one who might like to hear your cheery voice, say, “Hey, just checking in to see how you are doing?”  MEANINGFUL moments create MEANINGFUL lives.  Don’t sit around and feel sorry for yourself.  Get out and do something to make someone else feel better.  As a result, you will feel better because you made your life count today.  Today is all you have.  

YOUR LIFE A-Z:LUSH

LET YOUR COLORS SHINE TODAY

LUSH

Do something today to make your environment LUSH.  As Merriam Webster says: “be lavishly productive.” You are the KINGFISH of your life.  Yesterday you discarded, tossed, and deleted unnecessary chatter in your life.  Today spice up you life with accents that highlight your heart. Add flowers, music, candles, and light to your space.  Be colorful in your clothes and add a special touch to your hair. Smile.  Bring the outside in to the inside of your life.  Create in ways that make your life feel fertile with expectation of change. JUMP into your life in a new way today, exploring the abundance of your blessings and gratitude, and allowing new opportunities to flourish by nurturing them.  Fertilize areas that need attention so that they can be all that you want them to be.  Dance, sing, make today count in LUSH ways that make your feel like, “Oh, yeah.  I want to be here now.  I like my self and my space.  I enjoy being alive this moment.”  This is soLUSH that I want to drink in every moment of now.  We once had someone tell us that if we tossed some green around our house that we would highlight our art.  They were right.  We finally understood what those fake green plants at department stores were for.  What can you do today to jump in and add some LUSH to your life?  Brighten up and smile.

YOUR LIFE A-Z: KINGFISH

KINGFISH

PRETEND TO BE A WIZARD JUST FOR TODAYKINGFISH

True a Kingfish is a species of fish, but used informally it means a person of authority, a person of power behind any movement or operation.  It seems to me that we often don’t reach our goals because of our internal belief system that says we are helpless, needy, and dependent on others to get to where we want to go.  We buy in to this because it is the path of least resistance, takes little energy, and we end up sitting on the couch, watching reality TV shows, while feed ourselves toxic carbs that keep us repeating lethargic habits.  

The Twenty Minute Coach is inviting you to become the KINGFISH of your life.  You are the authority, the person of power, and the go-to leader that is in the center of the action.  You call the shots.  Today, to help you get started, get rid of things in your life that do not serve you.  Delete someone who bugs you from your Facebook.  After all it is your Facebook.  Throw stuff out of your closet.  Make a list of things to discard in your personal life such as your negative self -talk and your supposed friend that never calls you or reaches out to you.  If you are the only person in that friendship that calls or initiates a lunch date, STOP NOW.  Resolve not waste your time investing in something where there is no return on your investment.  Today take action and be the KINGFISH even if it is just for today.  Tomorrow you can repeat what you did today.  In twenty-one days you will have a habit of being the KINGFISH of your life.  

YOUR LIFE. A-Z :JUMP

FUN HELPS US JUMP UP AND DOWNJUMP

I don’t know how old you are, but before you read the rest of this post, get up and jump.  Jump up and down and count to thirty while you are doing it.  If you are physically handicapped and cannot jump, close your eyes and imagine yourself jumping.  Yes, you may become sad or even mad that you can’t physically jump anymore. Therest of us may realize that by the time we get to thirty we are out of breath.  If we don’t use it we do lose it.  

Our bodies desperately need our attention.  They need us to help be all that we can be and that won’t happen without movement on our part.  Just like your habits and intentions will not just happen without your attention to helping them become reality.  Action is required in order for anything to get accomplished.  We don’t get dressed without moving our body.  Our bodies are involved in most everything that we do throughout the day. Without it, we are in bad shape.  So jump up and down as an action of attention and commitment to move forward this year.  Nothing is lost.  You can move forward regardless of what the last few days or months have been like if you allow yourself to jump into action of doing what needs to be done to accomplish that which you desire.  JUMP now and get it done. Go back and re-read the word QUICK and start moving quickly toward those INTENTIONS that you so desire.

YOUR LIFE A-Z:INTENTION

INTENTION

RITUALS HELP US FOCUS ON OUR INTENTIONSINTENTION

Intention is a word used often, especially after the book and movie, The Secret.  Intention is a powerful word but it is a word that also requires your buy-in. You have to really want it.  You have to be hungry for it, maybe even starving for it.  

Basketball is a game but the winners are those who want it more than the other team.  One game loss becomes a platform to get better, not a place to give up because you lost a game.  Intention requires energy, action, focus, and developing a taste for success.  It requires practice everyday at your intention.  It requires more than a vision board.  It requires action.  Meditation, visualization, imagery are all actions that bring our intentions to home plate.  Often meditation or prayer feels as if we are doing nothing, but in each of those actions we must invest our heart.  

Prayer is about relationship with “OTHER” and meditation is an action in “BEING.”  They go hand in hand for me.  Showing up to have tea with the Divine is a way of buying in to our INTENTION.  Showing up nurtures, feeds, enhances, tweaks, and sheds light on what our part needs for INTENTION to materialize.  Our INTENTION becomes real by us giving it legs, arms, lungs, and heart.  Our INTENTION takes us to where we want to go often effortlessly; as if it grows wings and flies into our life.  Breathe life into your INTENTION and dance with it.

YOUR LIFE A-Z: HABIT

SOMETIMES HABITS ARE INCONVENIENT TO ESTABLISH, BUT THEY ARE NECESSARY

HABIT

Habits are hard to break and they are equally hard to establish.  In order to break or establish a habit, and be successful, there must be a complete buy-in by you.  First of all you must have interest and then you must develop that interest by building steps toward your new habit.  For instance, I have never established a habit of flossing because I have no interest.  Instead, I get my teeth cleaned more often.  

The last “H” word in the TWENTY MINUTE COACH was the word “HEATLHY.”  If you have no interest in your health you are not going to do the things necessary to eat and be healthy.  If you decide to diet, you will cheat, lie, sabotage, and go back to the crap that made you heavy as soon as the scale gets to your magical number.  And,each time you promise yourself it will be different, it isn’t.  You have no buy-in of interest, excitement, or heart.  They are not aligned.  

How do you align them?  What do you want?  Establish what you want first. What are the benefits of attaining your want?  What is it about those benefits that bring you joy?  Ah yes, if I lose 15 pounds I go down two sizes in my pants!  Won’t that be awesome? And my knees won’t hurt when I run.  What picture does that create in your brain?   Find a symbol of that picture that makes you smile every time you look at it and place that symbol where you look at it daily.  Now you are building momentum toward a new habit.  When you arrive, keep doing what worked.  That is what makes it a habit and not just a “program.”  

YOUR LIFE A-Z: GRATITUDE

WHAT A WONDERFUL WAY TO START THE MONTH

GRATITUDE

I bet you were wondering when this “G” word was going to show-up?  Here it is and it is a very important word because without Gratitude, our lives become brittle; or we can become entitled selfish humans.  I believe as Americans we have a hard time with feeling entitled, somehow owed privileges that we really need to earn rather than just expect we deserve.  Being grateful or even keeping a gratitude journal where each evening you write down five things that you are grateful for during the last twenty -four hours will lift your attitude, energy and your self-esteem.  Gratitude helps us understand that life could be worse.  Gratitude helps us feel thankful for being alive.  Gratitude helps us respect our health, money, home, and other daily gifts that we so quickly take for granite.  Gratitude makes us happier people to be around and it also helps us like ourselves better.  Gratitude teaches us humility and acceptance.  Gratitude is a simple act of saying “thank-you” for another day.  Gratitude is saying thank-you to the server at the restraint that is hurried and distracted by their personal life.  Gratitude is a way of being gentle on this earth and taking our lives seriously.  Gratitude is living with a giving heart.  Today, I challenge you to name twenty-five things that you are grateful for.  Do not stop until you get to twenty-five.  Start with being grateful that you can see and read and that you have some electronic device that delivered this to your mail box.  Be specific, be deliberate, and be grateful.