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.

We all make mistakes!  We can and do hurt the people we love—sometimes innocently, sometimes by accident, sometimes on purpose.  Regardless of the cause of the hurt—intentional or unintentional—the damage is done.  As a relationship counsellor, one thing I know is that heartfelt apologies are essential to healing.

Unfortunately, many of us don’t know how to make an apology.  Absent apologies leave scars on relationships.  Over time, scars restrict the flow of love in any relationship—just like in flesh where the blood flow is restricted— the tissues of a relationship die over time.

So here’s the 7 Apology Essentials that restore “love” flow to hurt relationships!

1. Name the hurt you caused—give a detailed account of your hurtful behaviours and legitimate your partner’s feelings.  They’re not “crazy” for feeling this way—and you know it.  When you ‘fess up to what you did, you validate them.
2. Acknowledge your impact and the damage done—this way, you validate their resulting emotions.  The hurt person can see you understand the situation as it pertains to them—even if someone else might have reacted differently, you acknowledge your partner’s hurt.
3. Take responsibility for the situation and recognize your role in the harm—Don’t make excuses, rationalize away your behaviour, defend or justify your behaviours to try to avoid blame.  The intent of an apology is to repair the hurt heart of the other person, not to get you off the hook.
4. Care deeply about the hurt you caused—it should matter that you hurt someone you care about.  Twinges of guilt and remorse exist because we care, so experience them and the apologies will naturally flow.  However, acting like you care when you don’t will be sensed and render the apology ineffective.  Worse, a lack of empathy leaves you prone to repeat the behaviour in the future.  If you are truly unable to care, then get some professional help to access your compassion.
5. Know thyself–Your partner says, “How could you hurt me this way?”  Know your initial answer, “I don’t know,” isn’t sufficient!  You must look inside and figure out why you did what you did.  If you can’t explain your actions and have no insight as to why, how can your partner ever trust again?  You must face the truth about yourself—no matter how ugly!  You may not be able to undo the past, but you can seek to understand it.  If you have trouble understanding why or telling the truth, seek professional help.
6. Express your regret and ask for forgiveness—Slowly, sincerely, and succinctly say, “I’m sorry” somewhere in the apology.  You can ask for forgiveness but know the other is not required to forgive you, nor does apologizing imply your right to be forgiven.
7. Work to Earn Trust Back—Don’t repeat the hurtful behaviour again.  Back up your words of remorse or regret with action.  Keep your commitments to the hurt person.  Follow through with behaviours you promised to keep.

Remember, apologies heal the other’s hurt and restore connection.  But more importantly, when we hurt someone carelessly or purposely, we effectively debase our own humanity.  When we sincerely work to restore the other person’s love and forgiveness by confronting and correcting the damage we’ve caused, we restore our own honour and dignity.  The final outcome of apologizing, then, is repairing our relationship to self—becoming more fully human again!

Diane Anderson, MA, is a Registered Clinical Counsellor and Vancouver’s Love Coach.  A therapist, teacher, researcher, and speaker, Diane has worked with individuals and couples—aged 16-86—to create the healthy, vibrant, passionate love relationships they desire!

Diane addresses the surface symptoms of relationship problems but really alleviates the true root causes of people’s love difficulties.  Her post-graduate studies and ongoing clinical training honed the precise skills required to zero in on the barriers to intimacy we create—sometimes coaxing them aside, sometimes blasting them to bits (whatever it takes!)—to get to the truth about ourselves and to free us to love fully and deeply.  “The healing is in the feelings!” she says.

Diane authored 21 Ways to Win at Love–-a free 21-page downloadable booklet available at www.DianeAndersonCounselling.com.

Image credit: mozzercork

I was at a training this past week that was all about the Power in You (Do Yourself a Favor  right now and go to one of their FREE evening courses. YOUR life will never be the same again). 

Now I’m a person who works on myself all the time. I am aware of what I think and say to myself – at least as much as I can get out of my own head.  I would consider myself to be very self observant.  I also know that I don’t know everything and so I went into this training with an open mind and ready to soak it all in.

I wasn’t disappointed.  In fact, I was blown away at how much I grew during three short days and how I FELT afterwards.  This wasn’t one of those “ra ra – feel good” sessions that fizzles out after a few days.  It was absolutely life changing and allowed me to face and let go of some deep stuff. 

“Stuff” is a great technical term for all those things we carry around that stand in our own way.

I realized that The Law of Attraction works.  In fact it works so well that it’s incredible!  And the key to it is emotion.  Yes, emotion.  Knowing what you want is important too – but not as important as emotion.  The universe and your Unconscious Mind don’t care about what you want to attract – they only care about how you feel about it.  Good or bad feelings – the predominant will always win.  Let me explain.

I have an interesting life story – we all do, in fact, but I will use my own as an example.  Throughout my life I learned how to see the world, how to feel about things, how to behave in different circumstances, how to focus on things, and other “stuff.”  Now I want to be exceedingly clear that everything in life happens for a reason and I do not blame my past or anyone in it for where I am today.  Not anymore.  I used to, but that’s another post. 

Some things in my life work for me and others don’t.  In some areas of my life I attract exactly what I want and in others I struggle.  In fact, I don’t even feel very good about some areas of my life.  I don’t really know what I want but I feel bad about not having it.  These bad feelings keep attracting more of what I don’t want.  I realized that I even felt bad about wanting something different in such areas as my health and my career, and so I kept attracting more of what made me feel bad.  Whereas in my immediate family, I aways felt good about my relationship with my husband and now with my kids, and so my family life is fantastic!

So the point is that if you know what you want and you feel good about it you will get more of what you want. 

If you don’t know what you want and you feel bad about what you do have, you will keep attracting more of what you have.

If you do know what you want but you’re not emotionally attached to it, you will keep attracting more of what you have.

How do we get emotionally attached to what we want?  We have to know what gives us meaning in our life.  I’m so grateful that I know how to let past negative emotions and limiting beliefs go easily and quickly because I can now focus more on what I want.  And I can feel what I want which means that I am activating the Law Of Attraction to bring me closer to my dreams. 

So if you want to prove to yourself that the Law Of Attraction works, just keep thinking what you’re thinking and feeling what you’re feeling, and you’ll get more of what you’re getting. 

I feel like I made a quantum leap in my mindset during this course I just took and I am going to share it with the world.  I can now feel what it’s like to dream big and believe that I can achieve that dream!

FOR REAL! The Power in You is life changing!

Kasia Rachfall helps you stop letting your past to determine your future and your now. Did the above resonate with you? Do you disagree? Do you have a new insight to add? Please share your thoughts.

My brother and his wife welcomed their first child yesterday.  He arrived at a healthy 8 lbs 2 oz and with a full head of hair.  He’s quite possibly the handsomest little baby next to my own son (of course!).

We went to visit him (and the parents) at the hospital and as we all marvelled at how perfect he is, I started to think about what great things he will accomplish and who he will become in his life.  Babies have this ability to make us think of all the possibilities that exist for them.  He’s like a blank slate just waiting to have greatness and potential written on it.

As we grow older we tend to forget that we don’t actually lose that greatness and potential – ever!  We always have the ability to make our life into whatever we want.  But somewhere along the journey of our life we decide that we can’t do things or we can’t have things.  We become this product of our conditioning and life experience. 

A good friend and owner of Awakening Works once shared some guiding principles with me and they have become the cornerstones of my life and my business.

1. We are beings of Unlimited Possibilities with potential just waiting to be discovered – believe in yours.
2. Self Awareness and Self Understanding are what propels us to create positive change in our life
3. When we are committed to Excellence and make Conscious Choices every day we become masters of ourselves
4. Accountability and Self-Discipline create Momentum
5. Success and Happiness are always Psychological – when you change how you viewthe world, how you respond, and how you think you change your reality.

I encourage my kids and my clients to practice each of these until they become second nature.  My life has become richer and successful in all ways because of these ideas.

Kasia Rachfall helps you stop letting your past to determine your future and your now. Did the above resonate with you? Do you disagree? Do you have a new insight to add? Please share your thoughts.

Have you ever witnessed your child(ren) say or do something that you don’t agree with?  A situation comes up and they react to it almost by instinct – and it’s not the best possible reaction they could have chosen.  I’ve seen and heard it happen in my own family.

Where did they learn to talk like that?  Where did that behavior come from?  School? Sports? TV?  It’s possible the kids learned it from one of those places.  However, the more probable answer is that they learned it from the parent.  That’s right, from us!

As parents we do the best we can with the resources and knowledge we have.  Our own reactions, responses and behaviours form our comfort zone we fall back on them especially when under stress.  They’re also very much unconscious which means we don’t realize we’re responding or behaving a certain way until it’s usually too late.  Or until we see someone else behaving that way and we don’t like it.  Especially if it’s our kids.

You may have heard that if there is something that you don’t like about another person it’s because you don’t like that same trait in yourself.  When our children learn our traits – the good and the bad, and we notice that they are behaving/responding in a way that we disagree with , it’s the perfect opportunity to look at ourselves and notice how we contributed to their learning this. 

What’s written at the subconscious level is not set in stone and can be changed.  This is good news for bad habits and beliefs.  As parents we want our children to learn the best things – and the best way to do that is to teach them by example. 

An important skill to teach our kids is how to deal with stress in a healthy way.  Now you may think that stress is a fact of life and they just have to deal with it because there is nothing that can be done.  (That’s a belief that may be causing you pain and dis-ease, by the way).  Yes, stress does tend to crop up in modern lifestyles – so how do we teach our kids to deal with it in a healthy way?

One way is to allow them to express emotions.  Bottling up negative emotions because we believe something like big boys/girls shouldn’t cry, yell, pout, or have other reactions when angry, sad, etc, causes our minds and bodies to become overloaded over time.  Teaching children that it’s ok to feel and express emotions in a responsible and safe way is an essential life skill. 

It’s also important to teach kids that their emotions are their choices – no one can really hurt our feelings or make us angry.  We choose to react in an angry or hurt way to situations and people.  When we have an abundance of negative emotions that we feel regularly it’s easier to get caught up in feeling even more negative.  By safely expressing or releasing of negativity we let go of stress and teach our children to do the same. 

By teaching and showing your kids that you handle stress and emotions in a balanced way, you are giving your kids a life skill for how to deal with adversity and challenge in life.

Honesty is the best policy, right? We were taught this as kids and we teach it to our children. Why is it then, that we sometimes lie to ourselves? Where do these lies come from?

Dr Bruce Lipton, author of Biology of Belief, offers an explanation. He states that our behavior is based on our perception of our environment. And our perception is based on our beliefs. Our beliefs form through all our life experiences and the people who have influence over us, especially when we’re young.

When we’re born we have a fresh mind and as we grow, our mind is imprinted by people and events we experience. As children and later as adults we decide how the world works. We form beliefs about the world and we behave according to what we believe.

The struggle happens when we want to change our behaviors or achievements. If our behaviors are dictated by our beliefs – whether true or not, in order to change our behaviors we would have to change our beliefs.

Imagine living your life with one of these seven statements.

1. I’ll never amount to anything

2. I’m worthless

3. I’m not smart enough

4. No matter how hard I try, it’s never good enough

5. Money is hard to come by and hard to keep

6. I don’t deserve to succeed

7. No one will ever love me

None of them are true and yet something caused you to adopt them as your own. If you believe in #7, you will struggle with relationships. If you believe in #5, chances are you will struggle with having enough money in your life. The examples are endless.

There could be any number of experiences or people who influenced you to adopt one of these statements in your life. The reason, however, is truly irrelevant. If you’re experiencing struggle in an area of your life then likely you’re telling yourself one of those 7 lies. At some point you decided that one of those things was true for you and so it is true for you.

In order to eliminate the struggle and easily succeed in all areas of your life it’s important to identify and eliminate these lies. It doesn’t matter where they come from, it only matters that you stop telling them to yourself.

Imagine, if everyone believed in these 7 statements instead:

1. I can accomplish anything I choose

2. I am a worthy and valuable person

3. I am intelligent and capable

4. I do my best and my best is good enough

5. I easily attract money into my life and use it wisely

6. I deserve happiness and success in my life

7. I love myself and I am loved by others

 Dr. Lipton’s research and writings on beliefs point to the fact that we are in control of our own change in life. Of course there are factors outside us that we have to take into account, however, much of the struggle could be eliminated if we looked inside ourselves first and cleaned up our own mindset. Dr Wayne Dyer states that we see the world as we are. Figure out how you view the world in those areas where you are struggling…then figure out how you can view it differently to achieve what you want.

YOU hold the keys to living an empowered life in YOUR hands. When you take 100% responsibility for your choices, your actions and your inactions, your life will change immediately.  You’ll recognize the excuses and reasons you have for staying in your comfort zone and suffering through your current story, and your story will change!  You are the creator of your reality.  Dr Wayne Dyer says that when you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change. It’s true. You will see immediate results when you use this book because your mindset will shift.

Are you squeazing 36 hours worth of stuff into a 24 hour day?  You’re so busy doing things for your family that I’m willing to bet that YOU come last! At the same time you’re probably saying to yourself, “It’s my responsibility to do these things! I’m the mom!”

Do you get so run down trying to fulfill the roles that you don’t take time for yourself, and then complain about to your girlfriends or husband? 

Deep down, you know if you let go of the guilt about taking care of yourself and you stopped feeling afraid of changing things that aren’t working in your life, you would feel happier, more fulfilled, and less resentful of all those responsibilities you have taken on.

Do you feel you’ve lost yourself somewhere along the way and you’re taking care of everything and everyone else except you?  You tell yourself “someday” you will be able to find the time to enjoy your hobbies and work on your personal growth. For now, you’re going through the motions day after day — and the years slip by. 

Just because this is your life now doesn’t mean it has to be that way forever. In fact, you have the power to change it today.  Right now. You just have to choose to change and give yourself permission. This is very important. You can only change what you are 100% committed to changing. 

Changing your life doesn’t have to be complicated or take a long time. What it does take is commitment from you to put yourself and your needs first, to work on yourself, to be honest and willing to make whatever changes you need to make to achieve the life you want.

You must be willing to let go of excuses.  My own mentor, Fabienne Fredrickson, always tells me: when you’re interested, you do what’s convenient; when you’re committed, you do whatever it takes.  This John Assaraf quote is now a favourite of mine.

There are three requisites to creating change.  First you must focus on what you want.  Then you must clear out the negativity, limitations, and other mental and emotional gunk and sludge that is keeping you stuck.  Third, you must maintain your focus and take action.   You have the keys within yourself to unlock the door to endless possibilities.  

This book is divided into three sections.  Begin by working through the first section on getting clear on what you want.  Choose a key that you feel comfortable with and work on it for a one-week period.  Once you master the key, choose another one. While some of these suggest actions, others are simply concepts that involve making a conscious choice.  Practicing the actions will help you make them automatic. This process will take some time, and it is meant to . . . the purpose is not to overwhelm you.  I recommend first choosing the keys that speak to you the most or the ones that you know you can commit to easily.

Commit to yourself 100% and don’t waiver — no matter what anyone says.  These keys will light your path to your transformation into an empowered and fulfilled woman, a woman who has reclaimed herself and is now better able to not only fulfill her role as mom, wife, and professional, but also as a woman and a citizen of this world. You’ll become a woman who knows that the world is a better place because she is living and walking this earth.

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What You Don’t Want

You’ve probably heard it said that what you think about expands. What does this mean exactly? It means that wherever you put your focus and attention, you get more of that. Think about it this way: in the area of your life where you have everything you want and it’s working like a finely oiled machine, your focus is very likely not on all the things that make it not work. It’s on those wonderful things that make it such a great part of your life! If you’re a healthy and fit individual that is in great physical state then you don’t go around worrying that you’re going to lose that. Just like if you have a meaningful, close and loving relationship with your spouse you don’t spend your days thinking about how to avoid the next fight or argument. You don’t have to worry about such things because they are not part of your life. Because you don’t think about them or focus on them, they don’t come into your awareness. You focus on being healthy and on loving and respecting your spouse. And that’s what you get more of!

Now, in the area where you don’t have everything you want you probably spend a lot of your day worrying and thinking about how bad things are. If you don’t like your current job you focus on all the ways in which you don’t like it. Or if you’re battling your weight you focus on all the ways in which your body doesn’t behave or look like what you want it to. And you get more of the same! Even when you try to change something you are stopped by all sorts of fears that come up for you.

We can look at this from the scientific perspective too. Your unconscious mind doesn’t process negatives. Your unconscious mind is also the goal getter, it’s where your values, motivation, behaviours, beliefs, and attitudes are encoded. (This is why this System focuses so much on working with your unconscious mind – because that’s where the change must occur for it to last.)

When you think about what you want in your amazing relationship your unconscious mind helps you get more of that because you’re thinking about it in positive ways. For example, I want respect and love and closeness.

When you think about not wanting to be heavy or not wanting that job you hate, you think about it in the negative. For example, “I don’t want to be heavy and unhealthy” or “I wish I wasn’t so tired all the time” or “I don’t like this job.” Your unconscious mind can’t process “do not want” or “do not like” and what it hears you saying and thinking is “I do want” or “I do like.” And that’s what it helps you get.

“You can’t not think about something without first thinking about it; think about that.” ~Dr Matthew James.

The good news is that you already know what you don’t want. Once you clear all that out you can begin to focus on what you do want so that you get more of it in your life. Worksheet #2 will get you started listing all the things you don’t want.  Sometimes you need to empty yourself of all the negatives in order to be able to focus on the positives.

I’m in New York City for a few days this week and also in Stamford, CT, for a few days at my mastermind meeting.  NYC is a busy city – the busiest I have ever witnessed.  Even Vancouver, which was busy during the Olympics, pales in comparison to the crowds and traffic of NYC. 

What struck me while we made our way on the subway to Manhattan and also while walking around, sightseeing, is the types of people that would speak to or interact with us.  We had to ask for directions a few times and we also bought food and a couple little things.  The people, for the most part, were friendly and helpful. Some of them were annoyed and some extremely passionate about what drives them crazy.

Dr Matthew James teaches about perception is projection.  This is a concept that most people who are familiar with the NLP field will know about.  It means that the world outside of us is a projection of what’s inside of us.  It means, that those people I meet who are negative and focus on what they don’t want are at some level reflecting back to me what I still feel deep down.  

Some people are negative and that’s their stuff and as much as we are all beings of energy and we live in a holographic universe, we still experience the physical world around us.  So people have their own stuff and they love to share it.  I love to share my stuff too!  I strive to focus on the stuff that empowers and inspires me.  I don’t complain about things that are within my control to change – most of the time.   I also tend to attract people who are kind, positive, and have high energy about them.  And sometimes I interact withe people who are the opposite, it’s inevitable.

So where am I going with all this?  Well, that no matter how much releasing and self work we do, until we enlighten, there will always be bits and pieces of ourselves to work on.   The people we interact with will keep reflecting back to us what we project out there.  And this is a good thing!  Because it gives us a gauge of where we’re at.

Now that I am working within my true purpose here and building this business to empower others, I keep meeting more and more high energy people who pull me forward.  Which means that I am projecting out there more and more of what I want and more of the details of what’s possible for me.  I’m fortunate – so very fortunate! – that my husband, my kids, and some other members of my family understand what I want to build and support me so deeply in my pursuits.  It means that my projections to the universe have always reflected the things that I wanted to achieve, even before I knew about them.  And to me this is a comforting thought. 

It’s important for all of us to keep focusing on what we want and to be relentless about this.  The more we do, and the more we release our limits and self imposed ceilings, the better the world will reflect positive changes that we’re creating.  That’s the beauty of perception is projection!   There are so many awesome and easy tools to help release these things – all it takes is commitment and desire to do it.  Then we see what’s possible and we begin to understand the steps that we need to take to get what we want.  (Now, knowing how to know what you want – if you don’t know how to do that – that’s another blog post.)

After the Mindset Retreat in Miami with my awesome coach, Fabienne Fredrickson, a lot has changed for me.  I learned a ton and had some transformational aha moments even though I knew a lot of what she was talking about.  I went to the retreat for me and so I stayed open to the information.  After all, I was definitely struggling with my mindset in my business and I wanted relief from that.

It became clear to me that I wasn’t allowing myself to receive from the universe and I also was afraid to speak my truth.  I didn’t even realize that I was putting the brakes on in my own business by acting this way.  It wasn’t until a few very intuitive people and Fabienne told me specifically that I was standing in my own way and exactly how I was doing it too.  I needed to learn to receive and to trust myself.  It just goes to show that you can only be your own healer and therapist up to a certain point.  It takes others outside yourself to catch what you say and increase your awareness. 

I realized two big walls that I had built for myself that were blocking my success.  One of these was that I didn’t allow myself to be open and vulnerable about the struggles I was experiencing in my business because I thought I had to have it all figured out.  I mean, who would want to work with someone who doesn’t have everything figured out?  The truth is, I realized, that no one has everything figured out.  Not even the best coach in the world.  All they do is share what they know and help others to the best of their ability.  They are open to learning and continue to grow and develop themselves so that they can help others even more.

The second one was that I was afraid to speak about spirit/universal source/god or whatever you want to call it as being an important part of the work that I do because I didn’t want to be perceived as doing “woowoo stuff”.  In fact, I was afraid to even say that I believe it’s THE most important aspect of our life.  NOT in a religion sense but in a trusting that there is something bigger than ourselves sense.  I learned at the retreat that manifestation and attraction work and are scientifically proven to work  and you need spirit to make them work.  Not to mention, you need your spirit and your intuition in your life to guide you to live your highest purpose. 

Once I forgave myself for being imperfect and I truly accepted my own gifts I became comfortable with my work and how I talk about it.  I am ok with it if someone thinks I do “woowoo stuff” because I no longer feel I need to justify what I do or what I know.  I KNOW what I do works without a doubt and it’s not my purpose to convince anyone or defend my knowledge and my skills.  This powerful knowing that I now have is something that I wish to help others find.  And in order for them to find it, they need to be open to spirit and forgiveness and thinking differently about things they already know.

The most humbling and exhilirating result of all of this learning and release work that I did is that my business has shifted completely.  People are responding to me differently and I actually have clients! I built a solid foundation during all that time that I was hiding behind my fears and that’s the good thing that came out of all of that.  Now I really got out of my own way and let things take flight. 

I urge you to consider what beliefs and rules do you have that are stopping you from mkoving forward in your business or in your life?  Does it feel like you’re driving with your brakes on?  Be honest with yourself and be ready to let these beliefs go.  It will transform the way you experience your success.  You will feel free and you will prosper. 

If you don’t know how to identify or let go of the limiting beliefs that you know you have then schedule your free Strategy Session to find out if a Breakthrough Session is the right process for you.  It gets you where you want to go in record time.  The world needs what you have to offer.  Don’t hide behind fears and struggle – take action now.