Category: Mindfulness

Mindfulness provides access to powerful inner resources so we can change the way we see and ultimately experience difficult situations. We’re empowered to participate in these situations – and interact with the world at large – as we work with what arises instead of trying to escape.

Choosing Gratitude – The Recipe for a Happier, More Meaningful Life

Written by Maria Connolly. Posted in Health and Wellness, Life Skills, Mindfulness.

“When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you.” ~ Lao Tzu

Your feelings are your choice. You can choose to feel down or you can choose gratitude, which opens your world to peace, happiness and health. Gratitude means being continually mindful of how much you’ve been given. To say you’re grateful doesn’t mean everything in your life is great all the time. It just means you can see the goodness. Yet, because our brains are hardwired to track danger and potential challenges, we aren’t primed to notice the beautiful things around us. Instead we take things, ourselves and others for granted.

It’s easier to be grateful when things are going well. But it’s harder to stay open to gratitude during depressing times, tragedies and challenges. (When the attack on Paris happened I felt so sad and powerless against the enormous tragedy. At the same time, I felt deep gratitude and blessing for how the world came together to show solidarity toward France).

What happens when you withhold gratitude?

You’re more subject to depression and affliction.
You experience greater wear and tear when life brings challenges.
You naturally focus on what’s bad and hard.

On the other hand, what are the benefits of choosing gratitude?

Gratitude shifts your focus from what you think your life lacks to the abundance you already have.
Gratitude makes you happier and more resilient.
Gratitude strengthens relationships.
Gratitude improves your immune system and your health.
Gratitude reduces stress and depression.
Gratitude increases determination, optimism and energy.
Gratitude makes reaching your personal goals more attainable.
Gratitude puts situations into perspective so you don’t complain or stay stuck.
Gratitude lessens panic and opens up your thinking of new solutions as you see what’s still working for you.
Gratitude helps you learn to love and accept yourself as you are.

Feeling gratitude is good. Expressing gratitude is better. Dr. Emmons, author of the book, “Thanks! How the New Science of Gratitude Can Make You Happier” found that practicing gratitude can increase your happiness levels by 25%. This means your natural happiness set-point becomes, and is sustained at, a higher level regardless of outside influences.

What’s the first step in becoming more grateful? First you must learn to recognize what you’re grateful for. Try this gratitude exercise: 1) Imagine losing the things you take for granted – your home, a relationship, your senses such as hearing and seeing, your ability to walk. How does that feel? 2) Now, imagine getting each one back again. Fully experience the gratefulness wash over you.

Next, learn to acknowledge and appreciate the goodness in your life by daily journaling a gratitude list. Here are 12 suggestions for how to do that…

Open your mind by attaching appreciation for everyone you contact daily.
Get a beautiful journal and pen to record your special gratitude list.
Commit to a regular time each day to write in your gratitude journal.
Write 10 different things you’re grateful for and describe how they make you feel.
Close your journal and breathe deeply as you center yourself in your feelings.
Be amazed at all the goodness you’ve been taking for granted.
Reframe every negative into a positive.
When something bad happens, think, “What can I learn? When I look back on this moment, what will I be grateful for?”
Give one genuine compliment daily by specifically saying what you appreciate about someone or about what they’ve done.
Ask someone to share your appreciation. For example, “I think this sunset is gorgeous, don’t you?”
Cultivate humility to let gratitude in…accept that you need others to make your life complete.
Allow yourself to be human. If you miss a journaling day, do it the next.

Gratitude is a powerful emotion for both the giver and the receiver. Yes, you must receive gratitude from others, as well as, give it. In doing so, you gift the giver with feeling capable, needed and valued.

It doesn’t happen over night but you can learn to become aware of and acknowledge everything you receive, whether good or bad, with gratitude. Contact me if you’d like to work with me in person or over skype to learn to live a more grateful and embodied life.

Supercharge your Power of Concentration by Learning How to Focus Better

Written by Maria Connolly. Posted in Controlling Stress, Health and Wellness, Life Skills, Mindfulness, NLP, Private Practice Advice, Somatic Coaching.

Are there times when you struggle to focus on the task at hand? Perhaps that’s because there’s too much going on in your attentional field. What’s that? It’s a term used to describe everything within your attention span – your thoughts, emotions, physical sensations, sights and sounds around you. Right now your attention is on the website reading this, but you may at the same time be distracted by other things like the mug of tea you’re sipping, the sound of your child or pet in the background, the thoughts of a deadline looming later today.

Focus is the ability to attend to internal cues (what’s going on inside of you, your feelings and thoughts) and external cues (what’s going on around you, like the knock on the door) in your attentional field. In all areas of life, whether you’re giving a presentation at work, having an important conversation with your spouse or training for a marathon, in order to excel you need to be able to focus.

What can you do to learn how to focus better? Here are two main skills you’ll need to master:

In order to tap into the tremendous power of concentration, determine what the relevant cues to the task at hand are and learn to focus only on them. We learn to selectively focus on or block out cues every day, otherwise the background noises and activities would drive us crazy.

Think about a star ball player. He must be in tune to his technique, his opponent, the score, the referee, the coach, and time remaining on the scoreboard, to name only a few cues vying for his attention. What would happen if his focus shifted to the pretty girl in the bleachers? He, in all likelihood, might miss the ball flying towards him. Hence at this point and time, that pretty girl would be considered a performance-irrelevant cue that must be ignored.

So the second skill for achieving better focus is determining what the performance-irrelevant cues are so you can ignore them as you strive to excel. These would be anything that would hurt your performance when you must accomplish a task.

There are two types of harmful cues that you’ll encounter:

Interfering cues are those that directly hurt your performance such as negative thoughts, anxiety, and concern over what others think.

Irrelevant cues are those that distract you from an effective focus including what restaurant you’ll go to tonight, the project that you must finish by tomorrow, or that pretty girl in the bleachers.

Each of us has a different dominant focus style, which is what we default to under stress. We pay attention in two distinct ways. These two focus styles are…

Internal-focus style. These people are totally and consistently focused during a specific activity like a presentation, a practice session or a competition. They need to keep their focus narrow, thinking only about their performance all the time. The down side of this intensity is that they also tend to be easily distracted by their surroundings.

External-focus style. These people only focus on their specific activity when they’re about to begin the event or competition. They function better by taking their mind off of the activity at all other times, because they tend to over-think, becoming negative, critical, and anxious. For them to excel, they must focus on other things when they’re not actually performing.

Neither approach is right or wrong. The important thing is identifying your focus style and utilizing it to improve your powers of concentration. If you’re trying to force yourself to adopt a style other than your own, you’ll find that under pressure you’ll revert back to your normal style and that could really throw you off your game.

Would you like assistance in utilizing your personal style to excel at everything you do? We can work together in person or via Skype. Please contact me and I’ll be happy to help you identify your weakness and learn how to tap into your strengths.

A good place to begin is by taking my 7-Point Wellness Assessment. You can download your free copy by clicking here.

How to Improve Self Image and Fitness with Cutting-Edge Mental Strength Training Techniques

Written by Maria Connolly. Posted in Controlling Stress, Fearless Mindset, Health and Wellness, Life Skills, Mindfulness, NLP, Somatic Coaching, The Feldenkrais Method®.

“A strong, positive self-image is the best possible preparation for success.” ~ Joyce Brothers

Did you know that how you see yourself in your own mind has a great impact on your fitness level? Scientists and sports coaches have found that when you imagine yourself as fit and healthy, the brain believes it, which encourages you to make choices that consistently support your self-image as a fit person. To reinforce this positive shift you can definitely benefit from mental strength training.

That’s right! To improve your physical fitness you need to strengthen your mental fitness. Why? Because mental strength training will help you shift your self-image so you are empowered to reach your potential. Imagine how your fitness will improve when you can…

Focus and deal with distractions. Rather than having a result-oriented focus, you’ll be able to focus on the present moment rather than becoming self-conscious.

Gain self-confidence. You’ll be able to overcome doubts as your self-confidence increases.

Develop a fearless mindset. You know that one event doesn’t define you as a person so you’re not afraid of embarrassment or failure.

Control your emotions. You’ll be able to deal with setbacks and errors as you stay composed under pressure to perform.

Replace perfectionism with competence. You’ll be able to accurate assess yourself without unrealistic expectations or being overly critical.

Improve endurance. You’ll be able to perform at your peak for a longer period of time when you are able to work in the “zone”.

Adopt a healthy belief system. You’ll be able to identify irrational thoughts and replace them with a healthy, positive way of thinking.

Find your true motivation. You’ll be able to deliver your optimal performance because you’ll be doing things for the right reasons.

What mental training techniques can you use to create a better self-image and boost your fitness level? Here are a few techniques I like to use with my coaching clients:

Relaxation: Calming your mind and body relieves tense muscles, which is essential to allow your muscles to stretch without tearing or pulling your skeletal frame out of alignment. By relaxing and contracting mindfully through all of your muscles groups you create deeper mine/body awareness that allows you to move more freely.

Visualization: Imagine yourself enjoying the benefits of reaching your goal. Do you want to reduce one size? Visualize how great that feels…how much better your balance is…how much stronger you are…how much more stamina you have…how well your clothes fit…how happy you are with the renewed energy to take that mountain hike or play ball with the children. The more engaged you become in this, the more your brain actually believes it to be true.

Anchoring: An anchor is a preset response to a specific stimulus. To help you feel like working out, recall a time when you had an awesome workout. Visualize the experience fully, and at the peak moment set an anchor or cue that makes your brain relive this feeling each time you employ the anchor.

Reframing: Identify your unhelpful thoughts and replace them with positive statements that support a positive self-image. Remove the phrase “I should” from your vocabulary. Instead use “I can do X now, which is so much more than when I started.” Also, get rid of the all-or-nothing mentality by refusing to personalize or over-generalize each event. One event does not define who you are as a person.

Mental editing: Whether you perform an exercise routine or only picture it, you activate many of the same brain connections that link what your body does to the controlling brain impulses. It also stimulates the sympathetic nervous system, which increases the heart rate, breathing, and blood pressure. For example, Jack Nicklaus excelled because he practiced each shot in his mind before taking it.

You’ll get the best results if you enlist the assistance of a trained coach who can teach you how to do each of these techniques correctly. Mental strength training is all about taking you from where you are now and enhancing your fitness and self-image incrementally until your mind/body health transforms you into a top performer. Contact me and we’ll schedule an appointment so you can get started on your path to an excellent self-image and improved fitness.

Four Ways to Make Meal Planning and Good Eating Habits Easier

Written by Maria Connolly. Posted in Health and Wellness, Life Skills, Mindfulness.

Often people say they don’t have the time to eat healthy. Our busy work schedules and family demands can make it difficult. But it is not impossible – if you have a good reason for doing so.

Why wait until a health crisis, such as a heart attack or diabetes, forces you into making changes. The risk of permanent damage isn’t worth it. How much better it is to make proactive, mindful decisions that support you in building an excellent life now. The evidence indicates that proper nutrition plays an important role in the prevention of various physical and mental health problems. A balanced mood, sustainable levels of energy and feelings of wellbeing can be cultivated by ensuring that our diet provides adequate amounts of protein, complex carbohydrates, essential fats, amino acids, vitamins and minerals and water.

So, what is your WHY? Why do you want to improve your eating habits? To prevent disease or needless pain? To have more energy so you can participate more fully in life? To see your children and grandchildren grow up? To look more attractive? Whatever your reason is, hold onto it. That vision will keep you motivated.

Once you have your reasons for improving your eating habits firmly in mind, here are four easy steps to make meal planning simpler. (Preparation is the key to success!)

1. Commit! Just decide you’re going to do it. Involve those who eat with you by asking what they do and don’t like to eat. Even children as young as five or six can be included in this discussion. When you can factor their preferences into your plans, you can avoid discouraging, negative feedback.

2. Make a cheat sheet for your shopping trip. List plenty of veggies, fruits, and protein that you want to always keep on hand in the kitchen. This list will keep you from being distracted by the candy and chips aisles at the store. It will keep you on the outside aisles of the store where the healthy food is. And remember, don’t shop when you’re hungry. The money you save by not buying junk food will allow you to splurge on more varieties of healthy food. Don’t be afraid to try something new.

3. Prepare your meals for the week on Sunday. Plan two or three recipes for dinners and use the leftovers for lunch the next day. Cut up your veggies and fruits and put them in the fridge in see-through, separate containers. This simple step makes it so much easier to build your salad, have a quick snack or prepare an easy side dish.

4. Pre-make your breakfast. Breakfast IS the most important meal of the day! You can save a lot of time by preparing yours ahead of time. Did you know you can make a big batch of green smoothies and freeze them in mason jars? The night before simply move one to the fridge and it will be ready for the next morning. Give it a shake or a stir and you’re good to go. Or you can make little egg-veggie muffins for a quick bite when your meeting is at 7am!

New habits are formed one baby step at a time. As the book, The Power of Habit, points out, often it only takes one pivotal action to interrupt the habit cycle in our brain thereby allowing us to form new habits. (If you haven’t read this book, I recommend that you do because it’s very insightful. And it’s fun to read.)

If you haven’t you received your free copy of The 7-Point Body Wellness Assessment yet, download it right now. It will help you determine the pivotal action that you need in order to create real change in your life.

Best Diet to Lose Weight? Embrace Food as a Friend Not a Foe

Written by Maria Connolly. Posted in Health and Wellness, Life Coaching, Life Skills, Mindfulness.

“When I eat with my friends, it is a moment of real pleasure, when I really enjoy my life.” ~ Monica Bellucci

Food should be a friend, not a foe. But perhaps you know that you should lose some weight. You know it will improve your health, your energy and your self-esteem. What’s the best diet to help you lose weight?

The best diet is not dieting at all. Don’t even think about dieting! Rather than dieting, you’ll be so much happier if you replace unhealthy food choices and habits with a healthy lifestyle that you enjoy and can sustain. As every engine needs the best fuel to perform efficiently, so the human body needs healthy food to repair and reinvigorate itself.

According to the Boston Medical Center, “45 million Americans diet each year and spend $33 billion annually on weight loss products. Yet, nearly two-thirds of Americans are overweight or obese.” It’s clear that traditional dieting isn’t working.

When someone says, “I’m going on a diet,” it implies that for a limited amount of time he or she is going to alter the way they eat. And if they go ON a diet, they will just as easily go OFF the diet and go back to their old eating habits that caused their health concerns to begin with. This on again off again approach is called Yo-Yo dieting. The weight goes on. The weight comes off (with ever increasing difficulty). And then the weight goes back on with more than before.

Instead, purposefully choose a healthy way of eating you can stick with!

According to The Journal of the American Medical Association you need to know this basic information about the food you eat. We spend so much time eating food we might as well understand what it’s doing to us. We need vitamins, minerals, good fats, and fiber to function well. And the best way to get them is by eating wholesome foods that supply this nourishment. By educating yourself on the basics of healthy eating choices, you empower yourself to create the life you desire.

Just as important as knowing what to eat is knowing how to eat. I’m not talking about how you hold your fork. What will enable you to make lasting change is to eat mindfully as you savor your food. Food is not the enemy. It’s something to be enjoyed.

A major problem is that we multitask as we eat. We’re working at the desk and stuff food in our faces so we can reach a deadline. We’re grabbing something quick because we’re too starved to take time to fix something from scratch. We’re sitting down in front of the TV mindlessly dipping our hand into the bag of chips until suddenly the bag is empty.

What are some ways you can introduce and embrace mindful eating into your life? It’s all about making conscious choices. Here are fifteen tips that you can incorporate right now…

Remove unhealthy food from your house.
Snack on vegetables and fruit. Baby carrots or celery sticks dipped in salsa is much healthier than chips.
Put healthy snack choices on the counter or in clear containers in the refrigerator so they’re easy to see and grab.
Eat slowly, chewing thoroughly as you savor each bite – paying attention to the color, texture, aroma, and flavorful seasonings.
Unplug from technology – TV, phone, iPad – when you eat so you can think about how the food is nourishing your body and enriching your life.
Sit at the table and reconnect with people you love as you enjoy good conversation over the meal.
Use smaller plates and portion out food before you sit at the table to eat, which will keep you from eating too much.
Don’t starve yourself, and make it a goal to eat several small meals throughout the day.
Eat a moderate amount of carb-containing foods such as fruits, grains, pasta and bread as you increase the number of veggie servings you consume daily. This combination knocks down the level of the hunger hormone ghrelin, which will keep you from binging later.
Sleep at least 7 hours each night or you’ll increase the amount of your hunger hormone ghrelin.
Eat enough protein to stave off hunger pangs as well as keep your metabolism revved up.
Keep a food diary for 3 to 5 days. Eat and drink what you normally consume and write it all down and see your weak areas so you can improve them.
Compare your portion size to what’s on the nutrition label. One package may contain many servings.
Learn nutritional information for what you eat. (You can get the total calories, grams of carbohydrate, protein, and fat from smartphone apps, computer programs, or the USDA database.)
Identify your problem areas and make adjustments in your choices and daily routines.

Do you see several areas that you can improve on? One of the most important keys to making successful lifestyle changes is to focus on one thing at a time, taking baby steps until it become your newly ingrained habit.

Many people have found that having someone coach them and keep them accountable makes this so much easier. If you would like to work with me, in person or virtually, give me a call and we can schedule an appointment. We’ll create a plan that supports you as you achieve your desired goals. I’ve got time-tested tips that you’re going to love!

Category: Mindfulness

Choosing Gratitude – The Recipe for a Happier, More Meaningful Life

Supercharge your Power of Concentration by Learning How to Focus Better

How to Improve Self Image and Fitness with Cutting-Edge Mental Strength Training Techniques

Four Ways to Make Meal Planning and Good Eating Habits Easier

Best Diet to Lose Weight? Embrace Food as a Friend Not a Foe

Let's get started with 30 free minutes

How to Step Forward to a Future You've Created

DOWNLOAD YOUR FREE INTRO TO STEPPING FORWARD TODAY!