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Continually grow as a person and find your work/life balance

Use The Power Of Community To Help You Create Your Own Path

Written by Maria Connolly. Posted in Self-Leadership Skills.

When you create your own path in life it’s vital to base your goals on who you really are, instead of who you wish you were or on what other people say.Can you imagine what life would be like if someone else made all of your decisions and told you what to do every moment of every day? To be forced to do things you hate…to be kept from expressing any of your personal likes and dislikes. Being deprived of your self-determination is a horrible injustice. Yet sometimes, you may take for granted or misuse the right to create your own path in life.

Of course, we’ll run into bumps and seemingly insurmountable obstacles on our chosen path. Sometimes it may become so difficult you may want to give up. Please, don’t, just keep putting one foot in front of the other and you’ll get past that roadblock. After all, if were easy, you wouldn’t be growing, testing the waters outside your comfort zone, and extending yourself fully.

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Keep Your Commitments to Yourself. It’s The Way to Feel Fully Alive

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

It’s often the last thing we do – keep your commitments to yourself – but it’s vital to learn these skills to live a fully engaged and fulfilled life. Keeping commitments — love it or hate it? Perhaps you know someone like Nora? She’s really good at keeping her promises to other people. The kids need a ride to the game…she’s on it! Hubby needs a tool from the hardware store, she’s rushing to get it. Never missing an appointment, she’s known for being dependable, helpful, and loving. But…there’s someone she routinely ignores and mistreats…herself…and she knows it, as her journal entry testifies:

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Feeling Drained? Discover How to Manage Your Energy and Reclaim Your Vitality

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

When you’re feeling drained, a somatic approach makes you fully aware of energy sappers and how to renew your physical, emotional, and mental energies.Don’t you just hate it when you try to use your cell phone, but the battery is dead?  Not because you’ve made so many calls, but because the apps running in the background have used up all the energy? These hidden drains on your operating system affect your ability to connect with others. Is something similar happening with your mental and emotional energy when you’re feeling drained? Are there hidden energy zappers working in the background that you’re not even aware of?

At the end of this article, you’ll find a list of 95 possible hidden energy drains. I encourage you to look the list over and identify the ones that are impacting your life right now. But for now, it’s more important to work on the skills that will help you manage your energy mindfully and intentionally. Then when you identify an energy zapper, you’ll know how to pull its plug!  

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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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