The rides at Disneyland are so fun! And what I noticed about them is that getting to the ride is as much fun and exciting – if not more – than the ride itself. The Indiana Jones ride, for example, is so realistic! You get to walk through underground dungeons and pathways, creepy tombs, and jungle-like forests. Then you get in a jeep and it rattles you around for 45 seconds while you escape bandits and snakes. I actually came out of that ride feeling a little sick to my stomach from all the rattling around.

But I was really profoundly moved by the whole experience – and unexpectedly so. Here I was having crazy fun with the family and taking in all the surroundings and my unconscious mind was taking it all in at a whole other level. I realized that I really enjoyed having fun and that it wasn’t hard at all! I don’t know why I forgot to have fun in the first place.

Enjoying the “getting there” and not just the ride was only one of my realizations. After spending 6 hours drawing in the sand and playing in the waves at Laguna Beach I realized that fun can be so simple. It doesn’t require fancy anything really.

I really connected with the kids and with myself on our trip – and I had so been longing for more connection.

Now we are having conversations about how we keep that relaxation and fun at home. Sure I would love to move to the beach and spend the next two years sitting there and listening to the waves beat the shore. But I don’t believe that I should have to uproot everything just to relax and have fun. So we’re making a family plan for fun. I’m really excited!

The Elephant In The Room Series: Making the Uncomfortable Comfortable is a series of articles that bring you expert knowledge on uncomfortable topics that you may be avoiding.  Our intention is to bring light to these topics and make them more approachable to talk about.  Awareness, not avoidance, is the only way change for the better will take place within you, your family, your community and the world.

Overweight children, is our parenting to blame?

Being a good parent is one of the hardest jobs.   Parenting would be much easier if there were an all telling parenting handbook that offered a step by step system to turning out healthy, well adjusted children, but there isn’t.  Probably thankfully so, but this means we may not always have the knowledge, tools and awareness needed to deal with all of the parenting challenges that arise.  One area in parenting that is drawing plenty of attention is the seeming epidemic of children who are overweight.  Is our parenting to blame?   Yes, it is a multifaceted problem but ultimately parents need to take responsibility and understand that providing appropriate nutrition for their children is their job, and an important one at that.  Unfortunately, parenting around food and eating is often based on our own personal experiences growing up which can often do more harm than good!  So how do we help our children be at a weight that is HEALTHY and right for them without making them feel like they have a problem?

Create a positive eating environment

1. NEVER tell your child that they are fat, can’t eat what their (leaner) siblings eat, need to go on a diet, to exercise more or stop eating so much
2. Don’t talk about food as a way of controlling your weight or shape.  Instead, talk about food as fuel for their bodies so they can be healthy.  Teach them that it’s important to eat healthy food because it gives them energy to run and play, builds strong muscles and bones, helps them learn and is good for their heart.
3. Don’t bribe, soothe or reward children with food.  We don’t usually use carrots as the “treat” which means we teach our children that we should reward ourselves with “treats” when we do something well or are feeling bad.
4. Don’t force them to eat ANYTHING.  Offer quality foods regularly but ultimately let them decide whether or not to eat them.  In time, they will learn to like a variety of foods if you don’t pressure them.

Optimize their food intake

1. Follow the 80/20 rule. Offer healthy foods at least 80% of the time and less healthy foods 20% of the time.  If you are not sure what constitutes a healthy food, make it your priority to learn.  Canada’s Food Guide is a simple resource that tells you which foods to focus on more often.  Limit pre-packaged snacks and meals and foods that list fat, sugar and salt in the first 3 ingredients on an ingredient list.
2. Offer fruits and/ or vegetables at every meal and snack
3. Limit juice and other beverages like pop, ice tea and energy drinks, especially between meals.  Offer water and milk as the primary beverage options
4. Feed children 3 meals and 2 snacks and do not let them graze on food or drinks other than water in between times

Incorporate regular physical activity

1. Get them doing activities they ENJOY regularly!  Have a rule that they have to be involved in at least one extra- curricular physical activity at any given time
2. Get active as a family.  Go for walks, bike rides, swimming, hiking, a play at the park or any other activities that you all enjoy and do it often.

You will know if your child’s weight is right for them if they are tracking consistently on the same height/weight curve and you are following the recommendations above. (Remember, don’t underestimate the power of genetics too.)

The very best thing you can do as a parent to positively affect your children’s eating and activity habits, whether you are concerned about their weight or not, is ensure that you are being a good role model.  Get YOUR eating and activity on track, it will benefit you AND your family!

This Week’s Elephant Topic Expert:

Andrea Ferguson  – Life Designs Fitness & Nutrition

Andrea Ferguson is a Fitness and Nutrition expert who works with women who are ready to be healthy and fit, struggle with sticking to healthy habits and need lasting solutions and a fresh perspective on shape management that will empower them to become healthy role models for their family.

Using her expertise as a certified Nutritionist, Personal Trainer and Health Coach and her life experience as a business owner and mom.  Andrea has a wide range of training and experience that she uses to create REALISTIC, health centered classes and programs for women as well as added services for her to help her family.

As a result, those who work with Andrea look and feel younger, healthier and more energetic and are better able to handle life’s demands, such as parenting.  Best of all, they get lasting results, faster than on their own and that benefit the whole family.

You Can Reach Andrea at – Life Designs Fitness & Nutrition -  www.life-designs.ca  – 604-868-8587

Photo Credit: Joe_13

The Elephant In The Room Series: Making the Uncomfortable Comfortable is a series of articles that bring you expert knowledge on uncomfortable topics that you may be avoiding.  Our intention is to bring light to these topics and make them more approachable to talk about.  Awareness, not avoidance, is the only way change for the better will take place within you, your family, your community and the world.

The subject we skirt most when talking about the arrival of a new baby is how often things don’t turn out quite as expected. I wasn’t very good at fine detail when baking my buns in the oven, so it’s a topic I’ve been forced to read up on quite extensively, yet the stats for how often things can go awry still shock me. Most of us expect to give birth to a ‘perfect’ baby, yet amazingly as many as 1 in 33 babies are born with some kind of birth defect*.

That’s not to say all those birth defects are serious – of the more than 4000 known birth defects many are treatable; fixable. Doctors can do so much to repair the glitches that happen in utero, but no parent ever wants their child to require an operation, least of all to hand over their brand new baby to the operating team.

Having been parents for only five months we anxiously waited for the longest two hours of our lives as our first baby had her first patch up operation for her cleft lip. And at age one our son was wearing some very attractive, very noisy ’corrective footwear’ for 22 hours a day to encourage his feet to grow straight after our pediatrician diagnosed Metatarsus adductus. And we certainly weren’t the only parents dealing with not-so-perfect babies. In my small circle of friends we’ve had five operations on babies in their first year of life. We’ve had babies born with wonky eyes, wonky feet, hernias, laryngomalacia, and cleft lip and cleft palate (two different children). We had a preemie in NICU for weeks (1 in 8 babies are born prematurely*) and most tragically the birth of a baby who didn’t make it to see the dawn of her first day.

As a parent of a child with a birth defect, an important thing to remember is ‘you’re not alone’. Personally I didn’t want to be part of any ‘cleft groups’; however I find myself eager to ‘compare notes’ with parents of other cleft children when I meet them. Mixing with those in the same boat as you can be comforting and supportive.

The horrible thing is (and I’m sure any parents of a child born with a birth defect would say the same) you can’t help thinking ‘why?’ specifically, ‘why us?’ Why is it that all my friends have perfect babies and mine is flawed? Why is it that I wasn’t allowed to properly enjoy the arrival of my firstborn? And you can’t help blaming yourself – feeling guilty for inflicting this on your baby. What did I do wrong? What did I eat/drink/what didn’t I take? Are my genes defective?

Having a baby is a lottery. We have no idea what hand we’ll be dealt. We never found the answers to the questions “why?” or “why us?” It’s simply a fact of life and it turned out to be just one small bump on the roller coaster ride of parenting. And after a very short time those questions were no longer important. After a very short time as you gaze at your baby’s face you no longer see the imperfection. After a very short time the disappointment that everything wasn’t perfect is overridden by a feeling of how lucky you are to have such a special little person in your life.

(*N. American stats taken from The March of Dimes)

This Week’s Elephant Topic Experts:

Erica Wells and Lorraine Regal

Authors Erica Wells and Lorraine Regel are real moms who have experienced the everyday ups and downs of new motherhood. Fed up with parenting resources that only provided basic information on what Mommy and Baby “should” be doing, in The Survival Guide for Rookie Moms the two Vancouver moms have provided information, tips and reassuring answers to every new mom’s questions with warmth, humour, and unflinching honesty.

 The Survival Guide for Rookie Moms (John Wiley, Canada, 2010) spills the dark and dirty beans on what it’s really like to survive that first incredible year of motherhood – available now in book stores across Canada and the USA or online at on Amazon.ca, ChaptersIndigo.ca and Amazon.com

Photo Credit: Lauren Elise Seibert

I’m doing a Masters in Transpersonal Psychology right now and I get to study all things mind related. In my most recent class we are focusing on hypnosis. One of my classmates said she uses her unconscious mind as a personal assistant.  She gives her unconscious specific instructions about what she wants and when – for example, the outline for a paper or a project by next Friday – and then she just goes about her day.  When Friday comes around she simply sits down and allows the requested information to flow out of her.

I gave this lots of thought because I think it’s brilliant! What an incredible way to utilize the capabilities of our unconscious mind which is so much more powerful than our consciousness. I thought about whether I am using my own mind to its full potential. Am I giving it clear instructions for what I want? And more importantly, is it giving me what I want back?

The answer is a decisive yes and yes. I always get what I want from my mind BUT I realized – my focus is NOT where I want it.

I am very self aware and I take responsibility for what I create in my life. I also have this tendency to find fault with myself all the time. I look for the next limiting belief or emotion that is standing in my way. I have great rapport with my unconscious mind and I ask it to seek out and find what else I have to heal and release in my life. But this seems to leave me feeling like there is always something wrong with me – which there isn’t! And I want to feel good about myself.

Not to say that healing yourself isn’t a worthy endeavor. It is – but not if that’s all you’re focused on. I found that I don’t spend enough time being grateful for all the ways in which I am already great and excellent. Yes, I have “stuff” to work through. But I also have a lot to be proud of and a lot to appreciate.

So, as a change of focus exercise – I wrote a letter to my unconscious mind thanking it for always giving me all the information I ask for.  I am grateful for my mind always bringing up things for me to work on. Now, however, I want to focus on all my accomplishments, my capabilities, and all the things that I already do well. If there is something pressing to work through – I’m sure I will become aware of it and take care of it.

I invite you to take a look at what you focus on most and what you ask your mind to bring up for you. Is your focus where you want it? Are you grateful for who you are and what you’ve accomplished in your life? If not, you can shift this at any time. You simply have to be willing.

Image credit.

The Elephant In The Room Series: Making the Uncomfortable Comfortable is a series of articles that bring you expert knowledge on uncomfortable topics that you may be avoiding. Our intention is to bring light to these topics and make them more approachable to talk about.  Awareness, not avoidance, is the only way change for the better will take place within you, your family, your community and the world.

How do you help your child develop a healthy body image? As a new mom, I have been reflecting on my own childhood. I recently remembered how negative comments about my body had created feelings of insecurity that began my long path of dieting and relentless self-scrutiny. As a new mom of a beautiful girl, I want to create an environment that will have her feeling confidant about herself and her body. What do you do to encourage your child be healthy, while fostering a positive body image?

When parents make negative comments about their child’s body size, many have a caring intention and ultimately want what’s best for them. They try to motivate their child to be thinner, so they don’t face low self-esteem, negative judgments from others and weight related health problems. However, negative comments about their body can cause more pain and damage your child’s self esteem and body image than you realize. I thought I’d share some simple strategies you can use to encourage your child to be fit, active and feel good about themselves.

It’s important to note that if you engage in good self-care behaviors that you teach your children to do the same. Now if you find that a hectic, fast pace lifestyle has you neglecting yourself, please don’t make this as an opportunity to feel bad. Just think about what you can do differently, and keep it simple. By practicing a positive attitude, eating nutritious food choices and being physically active each day, you show your family the skills for a healthy mind, body and spirit. Here are simple strategies you can use to teach your children to be healthy and feel good about themselves.

Healthy modeling. Try to refrain from “diet talk” in front of your children. They are sponges and learn from your behaviors. Instead, notice and speak about your inner and outer traits you like most about yourself. Teach them to notice their inner strengths, how to feel good about themselves, and value themselves beyond their physical appearance.

Get active. Do enjoyable activities together, that will create shared experiences, a stronger relationship, while role modeling healthy behaviors. They learn lifelong health habits, such as spending free time having fun with friends and how to use physical activity as a way to cope with stressors.

Buy and prepare healthy foods. Keep plenty of healthy, unprocessed foods on hand. Foods like lean proteins, complex carbohydrates and healthy fats help people increase their energy and overall health. Also, try preparing meals as a family to strengthen family bonds, while creating a foundation of healthy behaviors.

Educate about media influences. The media does a lot of harm promoting images of fantasy that young people try to emulate. In an age appropriate manner, discuss media influences with your child and the way it makes them feel about themselves. Limit exposure to gossip magazines and media sources that promote feelings of insecurity. Discuss with them healthy role models in today’s society.

Speak positive about your child’s body. Negative comments about your child’s body can make them feel bad about themselves and affect how they relate to food. Often those comments can have the opposite effect of what was initially intended. Instead, focus on how amazing their body is and all that it does for them each and every day.

Limit screen time. Limit TV, computer, and/or other screen time. Instead encourage physical activity needed to keep their body healthy and fit.  This encourages other healthy behaviors such as spending more time with friends and being connected with others in the community in a positive and proactive way.

This Week’s Elephant Topic Expert:

Tammy Humeny M.A.  R.C.C. Registered Clinical Counsellor

I am a Registered Clinical Counsellor with over 12 years of counselling experience in the lower mainland. I have an extensive background in helping people create a more positive body image, healthy self-esteem and love for themselves.

My passion for body image counselling arose partly from my own challenges with food, self-esteem and body image. I overcame my own challenges with food and self-sabotage to become a National Level Figure competitor.

My passion for fitness and competition experience, has given me the skills and knowledge needed to support others in achieving their own personal health and fitness goals. I truly understand how difficult the inner struggle can be, but change is very possible!

With knowledge, self-awareness, support and openness you can travel a different path also. It is possible!… I’ve helped many people do it!… and I’ve done it myself! I’ve learned a different way of being, of listening to my body, using different coping strategies for stress and eating intuitively. Let me help you break free from the struggle so you can enjoy the life you deserve!

How do I enjoy life? I enjoy doing activities outside with friends and family. I also enjoy activities like rollerblading, bike riding, hiking, and running, but more recently I love spending time with my new family!

I look forward to connecting with those who want to learn a healthier way of being and create lasting transformation!

www.tammyhumeny.com

Offices in the Tri-Cities and Surrey/White Rock

604-916-7642 / info@tammyhumeny.com

I read this quote from John Lennon this past week:

“When I was 5 years old my mother always told me happiness was the key to life. When I went to school they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down “happy.” They told me I didn’t understand the assignment. I told them they didn’t understand life.”

The first thought I had was…wow, I wish I had thought that way when I was a child! Because I remember those questions being asked of me and my answers back then were flight attendant and aeronautical engineer. I don’t remember ever thinking or being told that happiness was anything to strive for.

This doesn’t mean that I wasn’t a happy child. Simply that I grew up like many other children – expecting to go to school and get a job and make a living. Happiness wasn’t an expectation – more of a hope or a luxury.

Just imagine yourself as a young child being told that happiness is the key to life. How would your life be different now if you focused on living your life to fulfill your happiness over anything else? What would your responsibilities be? What choices would you have made differently? Perhaps you would have done everything the same – in that case, you really know what it means to be happy.

Not everyone knows happiness because they run through their lives expecting things outside themselves to bring them happiness. And their children learn to do the same. I know this because I know many people who do this. I used to look for happiness outside myself too – I still catch myself doing this sometimes.

So this quote inspired me to focus even more on being the type of person who is happy in life. And doing all the things that bring me happiness. And especially underlining the importance of happiness to my children. As much as I am a firm believer in being a contributing member of society and taking responsibility seriously – I am also believing more and more that you can do all these things and have incredible happiness in your life too.

How does John Lennon’s quote inspire you to live your life? You can share your comments on our Facebook page.

The Elephant In The Room Series: Making the Uncomfortable Comfortable is a series of articles that bring you expert knowledge on uncomfortable topics that you may be avoiding.  Our intention is to bring light to these topics and make them more approachable to talk about.  Awareness, not avoidance, is the only way change for the better will take place within you, your family, your community and the world.

Without a doubt, suddenly the most important thing in a rookie mom’s life is BABY. It’s her new love, infatuation, project, job and hobby all rolled into one. Does this new obsession get in the way of established relationships? Quite often, yes it does. Those who were used to being the focus of Mom’s affection and attention now have to take a back seat, at least while she becomes accustomed to a new role and gets to grips with how to juggle priorities. Number one on this list is most likely the man in her life. I’m not suggesting that new parents’ relationships are about to fall apart or be less happy than before, but there are bound to be some ups and downs and big changes ahead while you readjust to being a family. Most moms admit that relationship issues and arguments with their man increased once a new baby was around.

Let’s face it ladies: we have little choice when it comes to bearing the brunt of the parenting experience in the early days. For a start giving birth and breastfeeding are obviously down to us. It’s our bodies (and minds) that change; change again; then refuse to change back the way we want them to. It’s us that develop the hearing of bats; sense of smell of a bloodhound; eyes in the backs of our heads; and as many arms as an octopus (we wished). In most cases it’s also us that will provide the lion’s (sorry, lioness’s) share of the care giving, at least for the first year. As hard as dads might try, they can’t fight nature and it is women whose “Spidey Senses” will be on full alert for the foreseeable future to nurture and protect the baby no matter what. But this sudden shift in the allocation of duties can cause a rift. Mom can resent that Dad is able to resume a more normal way of life whereas she is literally left ‘holding the baby’.

If strains are starting to show in your relationship now that you are rookie parents, rest assured you aren’t the only ones. In “The Audacity of Hope” even the Obamas admit to problems after the arrival of their babies. They were both tired and stressed, but while Barack pursued his (admittedly very important) career, the child rearing fell mostly on Michelle’s shoulders. As a career woman herself, attempting to juggle a part time job and the children raised resentment and the complaint: “I never thought I’d have to raise a family alone”.

Here are just a few ways to address any discontent and keep those feelings of jealousy and resentment at bay:

• It’s extremely important to keep the lines of communication open. You may be resenting how much work is falling on your shoulders, but don’t assume your partner can read your mind. Keeping dissatisfaction bottled up will lead your partner to assume everything is progressing perfectly as you fume silently.
• Let Dad take the reigns as often as possible. Make sure to include your partner in the everyday running of the new family. He can’t appreciate how tough motherhood is if he’s not fully aware.

Make sure you get time off from being a mommy. From the start, try to take at least an hour a week to yourself to relax and unwind. Also, try to swing a date night at least once a month to remind yourselves you both still exist as a couple rather than ‘Mommy and Daddy’.

This Week’s Elephant Topic Experts:

Erica Wells and Lorraine Regal

Authors Erica Wells and Lorraine Regel are real moms who have experienced the everyday ups and downs of new motherhood. Fed up with parenting resources that only provided basic information on what Mommy and Baby “should” be doing, in The Survival Guide for Rookie Moms the two Vancouver moms have provided information, tips and reassuring answers to every new mom’s questions with warmth, humour, and unflinching honesty.

 The Survival Guide for Rookie Moms (John Wiley, Canada, 2010) spills the dark and dirty beans on what it’s really like to survive that first incredible year of motherhood – available now in book stores across Canada and the USA or online at on Amazon.ca, ChaptersIndigo.ca and Amazon.com

Ok, so the house cleaner coming led me to have a MAJOR control freak style meltdown. Trust me, I felt like I was crazy sitting in my office and meditating my insanity away, listening to the cleaners vacuum, dust, etc, upstairs

What had gotten me so riled up? It was my Inner Control Freak…just on a whole new, different and surprisingly deeper level. When I got home from dropping off the kids at school the cleaners were already there, busily doing their thing. I should have been grateful…instead, I was mortified when I saw that every light in the house was on.  They had loaded the 5 dishes in the sink into the dishwasher and were running it…75% empty! The scent of the supposedly “green” cleaning solution was overwhelmingly slamming itself into my nose.

Like I said. I freaked out inside. Why couldn’t I just feel grateful? Why?

I ran into my office, spread out my cobalt blue cloth, lit my candle, and meditated on my snazzy round meditating pillow.

I was pissed off at myself. How could I possibly be poking holes and scoffing at having my house cleaned for me!? Of all the indignant, ungrateful, dumb things to freak out about, I was freaking out about someone else cleaning my toilets and floors.

I decided being mad wouldn’t solve anything and so I dove headfirst into the anger, taking my control freak with me. I felt the anger fully and cried big tears. All I wanted to do was be grateful and yet here was this giant wall of out of control anger that was so big and so tall inside me!

Working through the layers of emotions I discovered that it originated from the part of me that wants to save the world and it’s precious resources. We recycle as much as possible and ensure that we do our best to conserve energy in all the ways we can at our house. So when I walked in and found all the lights on and the empty dishwasher running, this part of me went berserk.

As I continued to ask this part of me what was its highest intention I realized that it’s to lead others by example and with kindness and to help me save the world. As they say, you get more bees with honey than with vinegar. As I integrated this part into my being I calmed my control freak down and I felt gratitude.

And the solution became clear to me. I would simply speak to the cleaning company and ask them not to use the stinky cleaner. I’m happy to provide my Norwex cleaning paste instead. I would also ask them not to run the dishwasher if it’s not completely full…they can load it and just leave it for us to fill up and turn on. I would lead by example and perhaps, they would think twice before using up electricity in another home. And I realized that they needed the lights to finish the job and every light was turned off when they left.

I would not have been able to get to that place of clarity and gratitude if I had simply continued to rage and allow that control freak to reign over me. It’s what I used to do but now I’m wiser and have tools that work so much better and empower me and my family.

The Elephant In The Room Series: Making the Uncomfortable Comfortable is a series of articles that bring you expert knowledge on uncomfortable topics that you may be avoiding.  Our intention is to bring light to these topics and make them more approachable to talk about.  Awareness, not avoidance, is the only way change for the better will take place within you, your family, your community and the world.

Most people today understand that our childhood shapes how we see, experience and respond to the world around us. So much so, it’s easy to assume someone who’s subjected to a challenging upbringing is at risk for carrying unwanted protective “baggage” into adulthood. And yet, we now know that a design flaw of the brain can easily misinterpret even the most benign of childhood experiences into scary memories that can hold us captive for a lifetime.  As parents, you should understand how this works.

In the simplest terms, this phenomena is tied to a design flaw of the brain.  Children are born with a fully functional old brain at birth, which contains the primitive hardwiring for self-protection and safety. In other words, things seem scarier for little brains.  This will subside as they mature, but won’t be fully resolved until a child’s ability to rationalize is fully developed in their early twenties.

So, this natural wiring causes little ones to translate benign experiences into significant events. For a small child, a stern warning on the dangers of snakes can easily morph into an uncontrollable snake phobia by adulthood — as was the case for one of my clients. And, it makes scary events even scarier. A locked door at naptime in the child’s eye is a devastating sentence of trapped. And as the child moves into adulthood, she is inclined to make a series of decisions meant to keep her safe from ever being trapped again. I know this because another client brought this scenario to my office a few months ago, which is probably why an abrupt awakening in my hotel room just one day later seemed so poignant.

It was just 6:52 a.m. when the blood curdling screams made their way through my hotel door, “Mommy! I…WANT… MY.. MOMMY!!”

A minute passed with escalating volumes and intensity, and I knew this wasn’t an ordinary tantrum. I entered the hallway and saw a frightened little girl who couldn’t have been more than three. It appeared she had somehow been locked out of her room, which is what I surmised from her huddling body in the doorway. Her face was red with fear as she attempted to catch her breath in-between cries for her mother.

A minute or two later her mother made her way down the hallway. Her approach was nonchalant and her explanation irreverent, “I left her in the hallway to give her a timeout. Sorry if it woke you up.”

Though I didn’t ask and she didn’t volunteer, I’m sure she had some rationalization for the decision she made to momentarily leave the child: her sanity, exhaustion, ill-advice given to her. After all, I had a million “excuses” for all the poor choices I’d made, but that didn’t stop me from voicing my opinion. I was mortified, and said just as much.

After all, I was now fully aware of the potential repercussions of how this event could impact her adult life. Just like the woman in my office this week who’d spent half of her life trying to avoid being abandoned or trapped again in incredibly well-intentioned ways, the experience of this little girl has the potential to change the trajectory of her life. The chances she won’t surrender to the protective inclinations seared into her unconscious mind created in that small five-minute window will be dependent on conscious choices that will feel totally foreign and contradictory to her instincts. It could happen, but it is equally probable that she will move through life making limiting decisions meant to keep her safe from similar circumstances.

So, you see anyone who experienced a childhood is at risk for having baggage. If words of caution can grow into a phobia, then making fun of a small child for coloring outside the lines can translate into a lifetime in search of perfection. Being reprimanded for crying on your first day at school becomes an unconscious prompt to avoid any situation that could feel emotional. A brief experience of feeling abandoned or trapped becomes a charter to stay in control at any cost, because the old brain makes the scary…scarier.

This Week’s Elephant Topic Expert:

Susan Crampton Davis

Awakening Works, LLC (www.awakeningworks.com) was founded by Susan Crampton Davis.  Throughout Susan’s career she always had an unrelenting sense of curiosity about why people self-sabotage or get in their own way, give up on their dreams so easily, or struggle to embrace personal change even though it held the potential for greater success.  She even had the same thoughts about herself.

In 2005, everything changed.  Susan came to understand the power of the unconscious mind and the detrimental effects of deeply engrained disempowering beliefs and patterns of fear-based behavior born from our life experiences.  Today, Susan contributes to the growing dialog and paradigm shift that change and transformation can happen more easily.  In addition to leading Awakening Works, she speaks regularly on the topic of change, conducts workshops, and works with individuals who want more from life – faster.  She is a master-level NLP practitioner, registered hypnotherapist and uses various healing modalities to complement her coaching practice.

Prior to starting Awakening Works, Susan held various senior leadership roles in human resources at some amazing organizations, to include the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Getty Images, Staples, Amazon, and W. L. Gore & Associates, Inc.

Photo Credit: Pink Sherbet Photography

In the movie The Smurfs the main human character, Patrick, has a very demanding boss. She tells Patrick that she fired his predecessor because he gave her what she asked for – not what she wanted.  Patrick is perplexed when she goes on to say

“How am I supposed to know what to ask for when I don’t even know what I want?”

 I recently received an amazing gift to spend a lot more time with my family.  For the next several months we will have a house cleaner coming! This is what I’ve always wanted because if I didn’t have to spend time cleaning I could focus more on being happy with the kids! Yes, I’m excited and yes, I’m grateful…and…

 And I’m also faced with the uncomfortable feeling that I won’t have to fill all my time with DOING stuff. I’m good at doing stuff – I’m still practicing how to just have fun with the kids.

So I found myself questioning if I had really received something that I had wanted. You may be thinking I’m crazy that I’m even questioning this…a house cleaner is amazing! Yes, it is.

And it pushes me out of my comfort zone of doing and into the un-comfort zone of having a lot more fun and even being a bit lazy.

Everyone has a different comfort zone. Many moms settle for a comfort zone filled with so many responsibilities and “shoulds” and as a result, resentments. Yet when change and stepping out of that uncomfortable comfort zone is possible – moms can tend to think “No, I’m ok. It’s not too bad here and I’m ok.”

Once moms step out of that uncomfortable comfort zone and taste what it’s like to live how we really want, we can never go back. Conscious living is constantly redefining your comfort zone, even if it freaks you out a bit.

So if you find yourself in a place where you are asking for something...but you don’t really know if it’s what you want…start with knowing what you don’t want.

1. Write down all the things you don’t want first. Clear those out of your mind.
2. Then focus on what you do want…and make a list of those, stated in the positive.
3. Then go ahead and ask for those things!

Practice knowing and practice asking – your life will shift on a dime, you’ll see!

Image: hodgers