“You can gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing which you think you cannot do”. - Eleanor Roosevelt

Last month’s I wrote a post about having the courage to Say YES to your dreams and desires. If you missed reading the article, click here. I encouraged you to create your own I Say YES manifesto to use as a source of inspiration and commitment to consistently show up in intention and action.

To achieve your goals, vision, intentions, dreams… requires stepping out of your comfort zone to stretch yourself and open to new experiences that serve to grow you as a person as well as your business. Attempting to stay where you are is impossible. Change is a constant in life. If you’re not moving forward, you will begin to move backward.

This past weekend, I spent time with a dear friend at her parent’s lakefront home while they were away on vacation. I was really looking forward to relaxing, playing, soaking in the hot tub, and doing some personal transformation work together. So, when she said she really wanted to do a sweat lodge my initial reaction was less than enthusiastic. That was not part of my plans!

Several hours of sweating in total darkness with strangers and being vulnerable felt too uncomfortable! No, no, no!

And then I got very still. What if ????? I let go of the resistance (shifting from constriction to expansion thinking), sat with the idea and considered different options. I could go and support her without participating, experience part of it for a while and stop at any time, or I could stay for the whole experience and really stretch myself. Sweat lodges offer powerfull spiritual, physical, and emotionally cleansing and healing experiences. Intuitively, I sensed that doing the sweat lodge would support some healing and release work that was ready to happen. So, I said YES.

It was an incredibly wonderful experience. In fact, the whole weekend was filled with gifts and blessings as I experienced several things for the first time. Being fully present to feelings, insights, and sensations was exhilarating and freeing. Each YES opened doors for new experiences and possibilities. I’m still integrating all that happened and it’s a powerfull metaphor to reflect upon the next time I dig in my heels.

It’s easy to come up with reasons and excuses to say no when we feel afraid or uncomfortable. We have the ability to effectively rationalize and justify a point of view to make it sound and feel believable. We become adept at convincing ourselves that our conclusions are accurate. To add leverage, we collect evidence to back up our NO in case we, or anyone else challenges our decision!

Unless we look more closely, we may miss the truth: we just don’t want to do it, period, especially if the decision feels threatening, uncomfortable or potentially painful.

To achieve your goals, vision, intentions, dreams… requires stepping out of your comfort zone to stretch yourself to new experiences that serve to grow you as a person as well as your business. Attempting to stay where you are is impossible. Change is a constant in life. If you’re not moving forward, you will begin to move backward.

The strength of your NO is often a powerful signal that saying YES to moving forward in spite of the resistance is the step you are meant to take as a leap of faith. Learning to distinguish a valid no from a critical yes is an important skill and talent (intuition) worth developing.

How often does your No response come up when you feel challenged to stretch yourself.

What decisions are you facing now, that are asking for a YES?

What favorite excuses and reasons do you use to justify your position?

What needs to shift to turn your no to YES?

What are you willing to love yourself enough to do, no matter what?

What are you ready to say YES to right NOW?

What will help you stay strong so that you continue to say YES?

It’s your life… make it a great one!

Dr. Lorraine Cohen, President of Powerfull Living, brings more than 25 years experience in personal and business coaching, psychological counseling, and sales to thousands of spiritually minded business owners, entrepreneurs, and leaders from a wide range of industries. Learn more about Lorraine’s services, success products and programs.

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