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Author: Maria Connolly

Nurturing Yourself Stimulates the Power that Makes Good Things Happen

Written by Maria Connolly. Posted in Change Your Life, Stepping Forward.

A committed practice of nurturing yourself, honoring your own needs, makes you better able to honor others and can transform your world on every level.Usually, we face January with the resolve to “do better this year”. Yet, that’s starting from a very judgmental and negative space, isn’t it? What if, instead of setting lofty goals this year, we work on cultivating a more robust base on which we can build healthy systems for life? Imagine setting the intention of “nurturing yourself” as your only goal knowing that doing this will bring real improvement to all areas of life.

Making a commitment to deeply care for yourself and to engage in daily practices that come from a place of compassion, love, tenderness, and gratitude is a very unselfish thing to do. A committed practice to uplifting and honoring your own needs makes you better able to honor others. When you embrace the power of nurturing your heart, your world can be transformed at every level.

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How Trauma Survivors’ Hypervigilance Can Be Eased Through Mindful Noticing

Written by Maria Connolly. Posted in Mindfulness.

Trauma survivors hypervigilance occurs when the brain works overtime to keep you safe after a traumatic event but you can calm it through mindfulness.Because many of my clients have experienced trauma survivors’ hypervigilance, a question often comes up: “Maria, how do I distinguish between a deliberate and mindful noticing that you encourage and the hyper-alert response that I’m having from my trauma? Can a practice of mindfulness help me calm my hypervigilance? I mean I’m already noticing every little thing! How can mindfully noticing more help me?” 

These are great questions! I hope this article gives you some answers and strategies you can start using today to calm hypervigilance.

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What’s the Best Way to Achieve Your Goals? Take Baby Steps!

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

If you want to achieve your goals yet you keep getting stuck, try this easy, proven process of breaking the big goal down into the smallest baby steps.Are you feeling stuck? Perhaps you have big dreams, but  you’re like many of my clients who say, “Maria, I don’t know how to do it!” “I just can’t make myself get started.” “I want to, but I keep getting in my own way.”  What’s the thing that keeps you stuck so that you can’t achieve your goals? Procrastination? Perfectionism? Lack of confidence? Whatever the cause, the one thing that reliably works EVERY SINGLE TIME, for EVERYONE is taking baby steps. When you break anything you want to achieve into the smallest steps possible, you can do it! 

Even when we’re not talking about closed-end goals, like losing 10 pounds or giving a public talk, baby steps work. (A closed-end goal has a final destination, i.e., lose 10 pounds and the goal ends. An open-ended goal is open to change and may apply to multiple areas of life, i.e., becoming more secure. It’s not a destination. It’s a direction.)  Yes! Baby steps can even help you change your inner person.

So if you’ve ever asked, “How do I become more secure?” “How do I become more productive?” “How do I become less anxious?” This article will show you how to break these big concepts into smaller, actionable tasks.

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Become The Observer of Your Life, Then Lasting Change Will Follow

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

Like an artist, you can become The Observer in your life, to mindfully acknowledge each “brush stroke” as it transforms your “canvas”, your life.

A practice of mindfulness is priceless. Without it, we can go through life only experiencing things superficially, missing the things that bring lasting enrichment. However, when you become The Observer, taking in information without judgment, you’ll see what you want more of or less of, in your life. 

For example… how observant are you? If I asked you to identify the colors in a picture of a forest, no doubt you would say green, brown, and maybe some yellow. But an artist closely inspects each area for color or hue; she also sees the variances of shade (black added to the hue), tone (gray added to the hue), and tint (white added to the hue). Not only that, she detects the differences in intensity and value. Before the painting is done, the artist will have mixed hundreds of different combinations of paint, each one intentionally performing a specific function on the canvas. Why is this so important? Jon Kabat-Zinn explains “The best way to capture moments is to pay attention. This is how we cultivate mindfulness.”

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How Embodiment Work Can Help You Know Why You Are The Way You Are

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

Change happens when you know why and how embodiment work can help you understand yourself, explaining why you do things you really don’t want to do.Commonly, we treat the body and mind as two separate entities. We think the body is for doing, and the mind is for feeling, thinking, and being. Yet, this incomplete view of ourselves can lead to long-term consequences. That’s why it’s important to understand how embodiment work can help a person heal inner conflicts and that nagging feeling of things being off. 

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