Author: Maria Connolly

The Best Life Management Skills Don’t Focus on Feeling Better

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

“Our feelings are our most genuine paths to knowledge.” —Audre Lorde

Do strong emotions like shame, anger, guilt or worry hold you back from living your life to the fullest? Do you often find that you consciously or unconsciously avoid “feeling bad” for fear of “being swallowed” by painful and difficult feelings? You’re not alone in feeling that way; however, there is a way to live a more meaningful life.

To begin creating a richer life experience and better management skills, you need to understand this vital truth:

There’s a difference between disliking unpleasant emotions, yet riding through them because you accept they’re an inevitable part of life versus experiencing unpleasant emotions as unbearable and needing to get rid of them.

Often people are convinced that they “can’t face”, “can’t bear”, “can’t stand”, or “can’t tolerate” emotional distress. Being intolerant of experiencing emotional discomfort can actually produce a whole set of other problems, as it interferes with living a fulfilling life and can worsen any emotional discomfort you might be experiencing. If you recognize that you have difficulty facing your feelings or tolerating distress, then read on to learn ways to overcome this pattern.

Here’s another truth you must embrace: There’s a big difference between feeling better and doing better. When we focus on feeling better we’re consumed with wanting to get out of an uncomfortable feeling, NOW! When we emphasis doing better, we focus on learning to tolerate the feeling, being curious and learning that there are a lot of hidden gifts in staying present with what’s difficult and painful.

When you experience difficulty in facing your emotions, here are five simple truths to remember:

Difficult emotions are necessary and useful. They’re also universal. Every human being experiences these types of emotions.
No emotion is permanent or unchanging. Emotions tend to come and go like waves in the ocean, rising and falling in time. Sometimes it can feel like your rage, guilt or sadness will last forever, but it won’t.
You can never hope to eliminate unpleasant emotions, and in most cases, trying to block these emotions intensifies your problems.
Though you can’t block undesirable emotions, you can learn to experience these emotions without feeling such distress and without having to react impulsively.
When you learn to be with difficult emotions, you discover hidden gifts, messages from your body about your external circumstances.

It’s a misconception to think that if you could only get rid of negative emotions you would solve all your problems. Life is too unpredictable. Life happens. You can only begin to tap into your internal power when you realize that you’re a spiritual being having a human experience. This allows you to peacefully embrace every one of your human emotions as part of your daily occurrence.

We are never done with learning how we relate to our world, others and ourselves. This CAN be a fascinating journey or a dread depending on your attitude. Doing better means that, in spite of what happens in your life you have the life management skills and resources to navigate it in an attentive and sensible way. Often it’s beneficial to have an objective professional guide you through this process. If you’re ready to do so, please contact me and we’ll unlock your potential for excellence together.

Neuroscience Unlocks the Key to Emotional Control and Business Excellence

Written by Maria Connolly. Posted in Controlling Stress, Mindfulness.

How do you feel when you see a top-performing athlete play a perfect game? Or when a motivational speaker holds an audience in the palm of his or her hands? Or you see a husband and wife still in love after 50 years of marriage? Don’t you admire them greatly and wonder to yourself, “How do they do that? I wish I could do that. Oh sure, they were born with the gift and they’ve practiced a lot to get it right. But I could never do that.”

Why not? Why shouldn’t that be you…performing excellently in your field or creating powerful and supportive relationships that last a lifetime? “Because, Maria, I let my emotions get the better of me. My mind keeps telling me negative stories about what I can or can’t do. And there are people in my business or family life who know how to push my buttons. I just can’t seem to control what I think or say and how I react.”

I’ll let you in on a secret… These successful people know a technique that taps into the way the brain works and the natural processes for becoming more effective. Jim Fannin has made this technique famous – The 90 Second Tool™. But people have been using it for years and you can too.

Neuroscience, the study of how the brain works, has discovered three vital ways the brain functions when processing our emotional responses:

Your brain is made of two hemispheres. The left hemisphere is where we process the present. The right hemisphere is for connecting to the past or to the future. (I’ll share more about how this applies to emotional processing in a future blog post.)

Your brain believes what you think, whether it’s reality or not, if you replay it or visualize it long enough. Do you doubt me? Well, remember a time you heard a noise late at night and you thought there was a criminal in the house. The more you thought about it the more your brain believed it and made your body become defensive, the heart beat quickened, the muscles tensed, all in preparation for attack. When in truth, if you attach a true meaning to the sound – the furnace came on – you can go back to sleep.

The hormone, cortisol, is released in stressful circumstances. And it triggers the fight or flight response. But here’s the thing…cortisol only stays in your system for 90 seconds. How you react after those 90 seconds is really on you – the choices you make and your thinking process. You can ward off that emotional loop of fear, anger, frustration, by using those 90 seconds effectively.

Can taking 90 seconds to calm your mind and visualize a positive outcome really make that much difference? Absolutely! Remember, your brain doesn’t know the difference between something real or imagined. What you visualize becomes its reality!

Want to change your reality by harnessing your brain’s power to create a more satisfying life? Contact me and I’ll show you how to do it, so you can excel in business and in your relationships, too.

NLP Can Help You Find Happiness and Self-Confidence

Written by Maria Connolly. Posted in Mindfulness, NLP, Somatic Coaching.

“Happiness is not a matter of intensity but of balance, order, rhythm and harmony.” ~ Thomas Merton

Daily we use verbal language to communicate thoughts and feelings. If we’re observant, we can also understand others by the body language they use. If you’re good at it, it’s almost as if you can read someone’s mind.

Could it be that you’re actually tapping into their brain language?

Does the brain really have a language? Think back to a time when you were extremely happy… Did you consciously tell your lips to spread into a wide smile, your eyes to shine and your body to relax? Of course not. Your brain is sending signals, or speaking to those parts of your brain in response to the situation you’re in. Its chemical and electrical interactions are telling you how to position yourself. That’s a powerful language skill! And people who can read your body language can also read the language of your brain. They know, “he’s bluffing” or “she won’t back down”.

What if you could teach your brain to speak differently to your body, so you could choose to be happy and confident all the time? NLP and Somatic Coaching can help you achieve that.

What is NLP?

NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) is an approach to communication and personal development created in the 1970’s. The name refers to a connection between the neurological processes (“neuro”), language (“linguistic”), and behavioral patterns that have been learned through experience (“programming”) and can be organized to achieve specific goals in life. NLP Coaching services aim to find ways to help people have better, fuller and richer lives. By paying close attention to the language we use, as well as becoming more aware of the nonverbal patterns in our environment we can become more deliberate and purposeful in our thinking and actions.

NLP presupposes that the mind and body are part of the same system. I spoke about the integration of mind/body/spirit earlier in connection with Somatic Coaching. When you recognize this connection, you can use NLP’s set of guiding principles and techniques to change, adopt or eliminate behaviors as you desire. It also gives you the ability to choose your mental, emotional, and physical states of wellbeing. It teaches you a new mind/body “language”.

Sometimes you may feel like something is broken inside. Yet NLP reveals that nothing is ever broken or wrong. Instead you just need to find a process that enhances your strengths. All humans come equipped with an exceptional sense of inner intuition, a sense of knowing that is intimately linked to your physical experience.

Unfortunately, due to upbringing and life experiences we often disconnect from that in order to adapt and survive in our environment. When we have a ritual, which NLP and Somatic Coaching can teach you, you can reconnect with your own inner experience embracing whatever arises within, with peaceful awareness and clear intention. Then you can fully experience and process each emotion – joy, grief, anger, amusement, pain, energy, etc. And often, you’ll discover the strength of developing and cultivating an attitude of patient, loving presence that allows the emotions to flow according to your own natural rhythm.

Are you ready to discover new ways to update yourself and function at higher levels in relation to your surroundings? My approach is best described as integrative. Contact me and I’ll bring together a number of therapeutic approaches, one of them being NLP, and unify them into a unique working model just for you.

Discover a Creativity Model That Makes Magic Out of Chaos

Written by Maria Connolly. Posted in Creative Thinking.

“If you can dream it, you can do it.” ~ Walt Disney

“I never finish what I start!” “I’m not creative!” “I am a big procrastinator” – does this sound familiar? If those beliefs stop you from pursuing your dreams, it’s time to adjust your thinking.

Many people stop themselves from dreaming big, or dreaming at all, for fear of failing or finding out that they aren’t good enough. But giving up on the creative process is a mistake because self-expression is known to reduce stress, boost the immune system and increase happiness and personal satisfaction.

You are already a creative genius. The trick is to translate untapped creativity into methodical implementation!

One of the main co-developers of NLP, Robert Dilts studied the creative thinking techniques of Walt Disney. He noticed that Disney had three distinct phases in his creativity strategy – Dreamer, Critic and Realist. By modeling Disney, Dilts developed a simple but powerful process to help individuals and teams create and implement new ideas.

I’ve found this strategy very useful not just in my own personal and professional accomplishments, but in coaching people as well. It’s helped me understand that, in following their dreams, people are not ‘unrealistic’, ‘indecisive’, or ‘skeptical’. They simply lack key perspectives on the creative process.

Often the biggest block to creativity is the tendency to shoot down new ideas before they get off the ground by pointing out all the reasons why they couldn’t work. Internally we have an inner critic whose job is to protect us from failure. If you’ve ever tried to do something new, you will be familiar with how the inner critic rapidly shuts down your imagination and your willingness to move forward.

Of course, when imagining new ways of doing things, there are no bad ideas. The apparently least practical idea may, by association, inspire the eventual solution. If new ideas are criticized too soon they can’t develop, and creativity is stifled.

The Disney Creativity Model involves exploring new ideas from three different perceptual positions: the perspective of a Dreamer, the perspective of a Critic, and that of a Realist, and then integrating these three different perspectives into one practical, successful plan. When each of these three different kinds of thinking is understood as crucial, utilized, and blended together at some point in the overall process – it works! This was one of the important aspects of Disney’s brilliance: To create magic out of chaos!

The Dreamer
This is the part of you who dreams big and is not afraid to do so. Everything is possible, and anything goes. There is no censorship and the sky’s the limit.

The Critic

This is the part of you who is considered the downer, always shooting down plans and ideas. But essential because she knows how to spot the holes in the plan so you can fix them. She takes everything apart and points out anything that might not work or might go wrong.

The Realist

This is the part of you that gets things done. She knows how to get everything planned and scheduled, she’s the organizer who understands the details and can implement by creating small methodical steps.

So, are you ready to let go of any fear and dare to dream big? Just as Walt Disney mentored a great team of artists, I’m here to mentor you and give you a new perspective as we use these creative thinking techniques and more. Contact me and together we’ll explore the hidden possibilities that are right in front of you.

Marketing Your Private Practice to Create a Steady Stream of Ideal Clients

Written by Maria Connolly. Posted in Spirituality.

“Where do I start? What do I do first?” Have you been asking yourself those questions as you think about marketing your private practice? I remember how thrilled and apprehensive I was when I began. There is so much about running a practice that we’re not taught in schools, especially marketing.

Your private practice will only grow if you get the word out that you’re available. I’d like to share with you some key ways to market your practice.

Successfully marketing your private practice begins with the proper mindset.

Marketing is all about being open to the possibilities before you and being intensely interested in the people you want to serve. When you approach it with a feeling of abundance and can use every event and experience in a positive way, you’ll naturally attract your ideal clients. So more than anything, you must create within yourself a safe place to receive the attention that marketing will bring you.

Remember, without marketing you won’t have clients and without clients you won’t have a private practice for very long. It can be hard getting your foot in the door when you’re new to a community. In all likelihood, if you don’t have a sound marketing strategy, you’ll be spending most of your time calling doctors and community centers looking for clients, trying to pull them in. What I suggest is that you create a strategy that ATTRACTS your ideal client to you. How can you do that?

Marketing Your Private Practice through Community Connections

Reach out to your community by creating collaborative relationships with schools, community centers, religions organizations and the like. Some ways you can do that are:

Offer educational classes or speak publicly to showcase your professional skills. Think deeply about what you have to offer. Can you present classes on creating the ideal work/life balance to business owners and professionals? Can you provide a workshop that trains either staff or members of the community about mental health issues or services where you live? Is there a community college that you could teach a class on stress management or communication skills? Can you speak on a local issue such as drug and alcohol abuse, compulsive disorders, domestic violence and so forth? Even if you start by providing these services for free, it’s a powerful way to market your practice, gain name recognition and get client referrals.

Offer expert advice in trade magazines, newspapers, and online websites such as PsychCentral.com and Psychology Today. Writing a professional article that is interesting to readers is another good way to market your practice. It increases your name recognition and establishes your professional credibility when prospective clients see you contributing your expertise to publications and websites that they trust. These venues often list their writing requirements on their website.

Start an online or community group. Have you thought about starting a support group at a local community center, church or business so you can share with them non-therapy life tips? You can also start an online group via Meetup or Facebook.

Become a business consultant. Many businesses would welcome ongoing training in non-therapy topics such as stress management, productivity skills, communications skill, life/work balance, and so forth. Think creatively and offer specialized consultations to specific trades. Perhaps offer relaxation methods to tax preparers at tax time or meditation tips at a weight loss clinic. Look around your community and see what is needed and offer it. The beauty of it is that you can tailor it to showcase your strengths.

Marketing can create stress, especially when you’re new at it. Are you ready to address the self-limitations that are holding you back from building a successful private practice? Often it helps to have an objective coach who has already been there, done that, and can guide you through it. Feel free to contact me and we can discuss one-on-one coaching options so you can build a strong and healthy practice.