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.

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.

Principals and Benefits of Sponsorship

Written by Maria Connolly. Posted in Mindfulness.

A powerful approach to healing is that of self-relations. The primary objective of this new psychotherapy is to focus on the relationship between a person and their own self. In my last post, I shared some of my in-depth study with Stephen Gilligan, Ph.D, who came up with this approach. The idea is that each problem and symptom experienced by an individual presents opportunities for major growth, if self-awareness exists. Without that awareness, one can become mired in self-destructive patterns.

The foundation of self-relations is the principle of sponsorship. This is the commitment, or vow, to help a person (including one’s self) to recognize how to use every event and experience in a positive way by connecting the goodness and gifts of self and the world. This acknowledgement gives value to each occurrence, regardless of how injurious it may appear.

Sponsorship skills can be developed, and they are worth the effort to do so. Young children, don’t have language or other sponsorship skills for their feeling states (like being tired, hungry, or angry) leaving them to “act them out” until a caring adult recognizes their meaning. Hopefully, over time a child learns to recognize and “sponsor” their own feeling states.

Without these sponsorship skills, negative experiences or behaviors are neglected or ignored and become increasingly troublesome. If the problem or symptom is recognized and sponsored however, the person who has a positive relationship with oneself can validate the experience and build on it.

As a therapist, my job is to not only be there as a sponsor but to help my clients develop their own sponsorship skills. A balance between the following aspects of sponsorship can transform a negative experience or behavior into one of value:

The receptive aspect of sponsorship encourages openness, a safe place to receive. It enables one to be curious, while intensely listening with kindness and understanding.

The active part of sponsorship includes being attentive, giving guidance while, at the same time, setting boundaries. It challenges self-limitations.

As this relationship between a person and their own self grows, they begin to see all the possibilities that are before them. Through connectedness, their individual human value takes shape. This develops self-appreciation and strength, along with the realization of the good gifts of who the person is. At this point, healing occurs naturally.

Self-Relations -- A Powerful New Approach to Psychotherapy

Written by Maria Connolly. Posted in Mindfulness.

Self-relations focuses on the crucial relationship between a person and their own self. This approach to healing is fascinating and I’ve been privileged to study it in-depth with Stephen Gilligan, Ph.D. He came up with this new vision for psychotherapy and shared his finding in his book: The Courage to Love: Principles and Practices of Self-Relations Psychotherapy

Self- relations is so effective, I’ve been utilizing it as a foundation to my therapeutic approach. Self-relations draws upon many distinct forms of therapy and healing. Dr. Gilligan derived much of his inspiration from, Milton H. Erickson, M.D., the father of American clinical hypnosis. However, self-relations primary objective is to awaken soul and love in a person’s experience of themselves and others. I’m able to utilize other techniques, such as hypnosis or NLP, to guide someone’s process of self-awakening.

Traditional therapy often jumps immediately into practicing specific techniques to fix or eradicate symptoms. In contrast, self-relations views symptoms as a sign of something trying to wake up within a person. Gilligan describes symptoms as an awakening of the soul from a person who has in some way been wounded or scarred in the process of living. By acknowledging the purpose of a symptom, such as depression or anxiety, a person is in a much better position to seriously reexamine their life and begin the process of living with renewed purpose.

Self-relations asserts that therapeutic work should always be centered on supporting this awakening process. The therapist’s job is to be there as “sponsor,” to support this awakening by holding a safe space open for a person to enter, explore, and test out their feelings, thoughts, and intentions. I look forward to sharing the principles and benefits of sponsorship in my next blog post.

Category: Mindfulness

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

Neuroscience Unlocks the Key to Emotional Control and Business Excellence

NLP Can Help You Find Happiness and Self-Confidence

Principals and Benefits of Sponsorship

Self-Relations -- A Powerful New Approach to Psychotherapy

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