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Tag: Living Fully

Start the New Year Off Right — Chart Your Course & Follow Your Compass

Written by Maria Connolly. Posted in Dream Big - Start Small, Self-Leadership Skills.

Are you ready for 2021? The practical way mariners sail through stormy seas shows us the way to put 2020 behind us and start the new year off right. Starting a new year has great symbolic meaning for us. It’s a fresh start that usually energizes us. But if  the problems of the previous year are dragging on, you’re still sailing on troubled waters. Changing your calendar won’t ensure you start the new year off right. 

How do we start the new year off right, with enthusiasm and renewed energy?

If you’ve had a fairly good year, you can take stock of your year and make sense of your losses and victories. Look for what worked and what didn’t. See what you predicted and what you got. However, this process needs to be very different when you’ve experienced major life shifts or traumatic events.

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Is Your Master Life Plan Flexible Enough to Make This Your Best Year Yet?

Written by Maria Connolly. Posted in Life Skills, Transform Your Life.

Create a Master Life Plan so this is your best year yet!

Every December, I engage in a powerful ritual called Best Year Yet. It’s a time when I pause, reflect, and realign my vision for the year ahead. This process often reveals something profound, a shift in how I understand myself in connection with performance and potential. This new understanding is the foundation that helps me adjust my Master Life Plan. 

I created my Master Life Plan years ago with the intention that it be flexible — allowing me to grow or rest as I need. It guides me throughout each coming year, making it better than the last. Do you do something similar to get ready for a new year?

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Do You Follow These 7 Easy, Baby Steps to Success? This Process Works!

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

Learn from a real-life example showing how to use the seven baby steps to success and you’ll have the skills to make any of your Big Dreams come true.“I wish…” We do it all the time, don’t we? We learned about making wishes from fairy tales. Magically, what you desire appears, without any effort. That’s not how real life happens, however. Yet so many of our goals remain wishes. “I wish I could  lose weight.” “I wish I could write a book.” “I wish I could start a new career.” Wishing alone doesn’t make your dreams come true. There’s more to traveling the steps to success.

Yes, wishing, wanting and dreaming are quite important to our human experience. They are the genesis from which we create a desire to do something different, to be more.

I urge you to be a Dreamer and dream big. But don’t stop there. Being a Dreamer won’t make your dreams come true. They’ll eventually languish in a drawer and will never see the light of day. So what’s next?

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Soul Care — How to Practice This Deepest Form of Self-Care

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

Soul care is the profound lifestyle shift into mindful self-awareness, inner enrichment and meaningful connections that deeply nourish your well-being.I congratulate you! You’re doing very well at incorporating a self-care routine into your busy lives. You’re eating better, sleeping longer and deeper, and exercising more. And it’s paying off! You tell me that you have more energy and feel so much better. I’m proud of you.  But may I bring to your attention a trend I see? People are trying to steal a few moments to cram self-care into the busyness of life, which ultimately diminishes or negates the intention of self-care.  The result  I’m seeing is that this approach doesn’t allow space for soul care. 

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Engage a Receiving Mindset. It’s The Power Skill That Makes Life Changes Last!

Written by Maria Connolly. Posted in Change Your Life, Fearless Mindset, Somatic Coaching.

Developing a receiving mindset is more than looking for the silver lining. It’s not rationalizing, talking yourself into seeing negatives positively. Often, we think that changing a behavior means that we stop doing, or give up, something. For example, If I want to stop gaining weight, I need to stop eating sugar or carbs. However, a more positive and productive way to think about it is to engage a receiving mindset. 

What does a receiving mindset look like? You’re going to be adventurous and experiment with different vegetables and fruits and ways of preparing them. As a result, you’ll be gaining a wider variety of food that’s better for you so you feel like you want to feel. You’ll actually be eating more of the good stuff.

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