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Author: Maria Connolly

Empowering Everyday Rituals for Life Are Mindful, Meaningful & Mighty

Written by Maria Connolly. Posted in Life Skills, Mindfulness.

Empowering everyday rituals simply give secular activities deep meaning that makes you feel in control, confident, and focused on what you value most. I was recently asked by a women’s empowerment leader, Dr. Christie de la Gandara, to share how everyday rituals can empower at-risk women. She’s deeply committed to fighting the current femicide crisis in Latin America — the killing of females because of their gender. She also included my contact information in her pamphlet of resources for these women at risk, which she shared with women leaders from 23 countries meeting at a recent conference. This is a huge honor and privilege for me. And I highly commend her for her hard work on behalf of these women!

But I ask you…would you have picked the topic of everyday rituals as being helpful for women fighting for their lives? Doesn’t it give you a clue as to how powerful ritual can be for our everyday well-being?

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3 Ways to Control Emotional Dysregulation — Restore Balance and Peace

Written by Maria Connolly. Posted in Emotional Intelligence, Life Skills, Self-Leadership Skills.

We can learn to control emotional dysregulation in moments of stress, more importantly, we can expand our resources to prevent emotional dysregulation.Wouldn’t it be cool if we had an on-and-off switch so we could control emotional dysregulation? We feel ourselves losing it…click…we turn it off and reset. Well, I’m going to share with you three tips that work to get emotions under control quickly and effectively, like turning a light switch off, so keep reading…

Emotional dysregulation is something we’ve all experienced. Situations happen that push our buttons and we experience out-of-control reactions and responses. You see it when people fly off the handle, lose their cool, or can’t resist an urge. Their responses are disproportionate to the situation at hand. We struggle with regulating, controlling, managing our emotions. What can we do?  

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Set Yourself Up for Success — 6 Simple Strategies You Can Use Daily

Written by Maria Connolly. Posted in Change Your Life, Self-Leadership Skills, Stepping Forward.

Set yourself up for success by using my 3-step system, plus 6 simple strategies that give you a firm foundation for making any kind of lasting change.Are you energized to face each new day? Or is it starting to feel like “the grind” or maybe even like a meaningless “rat race”? Many people have learned to be satisfied with the status quo, but if you want to set yourself up for success, be willing to do some fine-tuning now and then.

You can set yourself up for success by following some really simple, yet surprisingly powerful daily strategies. These are especially effective if you’re a service professional juggling the demands of a private practice with your personal life.

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The Goal-Setting Process: The Best Checklist Answers These 10 Questions

Written by Maria Connolly. Posted in Life Skills, Stepping Forward.

This goal-setting process gives you a fail-safe way to determine if a goal is what you really want and if it’s doable by answering these 10 questions. Have you ever been in a conversation like this… “What do you want?” “Well, I’m not sure, but I know what I don’t want!” If this discussion is about dinner, then it’s not a big thing. But if it’s a conversation about life, this indecisiveness is serious. Some people actually live their whole lives without ever identifying what they want out of life because they haven’t discovered a fail-safe goal-setting process that helps them make decisions they won’t regret. If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you know I’m all about mindfully developing processes and systems that make life easier.

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Your Mind-Body Connection – 5 Simple Ways to Reduce Static and Tune In

Written by Maria Connolly. Posted in Somatic Embodiment.

Empower yourself with a strong mind-body connection, because once you understand how it works, you can change your body to change unhelpful emotions.Are you listening? Too often we’re so busy looking outwardly that when we try to tune in to our inner selves, all we hear is static. The good news is that you can train yourself to listen to yourself. How?  Develop a deep awareness of your mind-body connection. This involves not only identifying physical sensations but also discovering how you feel emotionally about what’s happening at any given time. Don’t just live. Learn to experience your life moment by moment. 

A somatic approach to wellness teaches us that your emotional, physical, and spiritual health are inseparable. The thing we haven’t been taught is that our emotions are experienced and stored in our bodies, and they’re manifested through body sensations.

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