Passion – What lights you up and brings you joy? What juices you and gives you the most energy? What makes you feel the most vital and alive? Our passions motivate and inspire us to take action. Without passion our life can become mechanical and empty. Deep desire can give us the courage to take life –changing risks with determination and power in the face of fears and uncertainty.

Fulfilling Your Life/Soul Purpose – Having a sense of why we are here and what we are here to do gives meaning to our life. Making choices with a sense of purpose helps us to regain perspective when we feel confused, doubt, and fear. Our purpose reminds us of who we are when we slip into the dramas and details of our life.

Commitment to Go the Distance – Stretching beyond the limits of your comfort zone and walking through the discomfort without running back to where you were is essential. Change can be very uncomfortable and brings up a lot of different feeling and behaviors that many seek to get rid of block rather than to embrace. As you begin to spot the subtle ways you sabotage your dreams and desires and stay and don’t give in to that sabotage, you can feel pretty vulnerable and raw at times. Comfort zones give the illusion of safety; a safe haven where we can hide. If we are not moving forward, we begin moving backwards. Being able to recognize your personal patterns of sabotage empowers you to make choices that will motivate you to keep going.

Solid Support and Accountability – Who keeps you on your toes? How many times have you been excited about doing something, felt ready and committed to your goals and dropped the ball within a few weeks, days or even hours? Surrounding yourself with people who can be objective, uplifting, encouraging, and forthright to cheer you on, challenge you to be great, kick you in the butt when you’re stalling, help you stand strong when facing fear, remind you of who you are when you forget, and hold you accountable to your purpose, passions, and vision makes a huge difference in going the distance and achieving success.

Having accountability keeps you moving steadily forward with your goals/intentions. When we fulfill self-agreements, we feel in integrity with ourselves. When we break promises with ourselves, we can use self-condemnation as a means to beat ourselves up. The fact is that when we deliberately set up accountability such as buddying with someone else for a common purpose, hiring a coach or mentor, or joining a mastermind group, the probability of success goes waaaaaay up.

Over a month ago I decided to focus on making specific changes to commit to a healthier lifestyle. I had tried numerous times to eat healthier, regularly exercise and meditate with limited success and generally take better care of my body. I’d start out gung ho and in a matter of weeks, days, or even hours, I was sabotaging myself by using food to manage my stress or self-soothe.

So, I started working with an accountability buddy who also wanted to be taking better care of her health. We each decided what changes we wanted to implement and we committed to one week as a beginning point. Over 5 weeks later we are going strong. We’re raised the bar for ourselves a few times and we check in twice a day using an accountability form that state 4 intentions. We answer the first two points and email to each other every morning. Every evening we answer 3 & 4. No cutting and pasting answers so we are truly making the commitment each day

1. Today I am accountable for:
2. To accomplish this I have to:
3. At day’s end, how much did I accomplish?
4. Was there anything that prevented me from achieving my outcomes?

To receive the benefits of support, you must ask people for help. If you are usually the one who helps others and have trouble asking for or receiving help you are blocking love. To be a great giver, you must also be a great receiver. It’s a circle. Love is our natural state as spiritual beings. To deny love from others or to yourself is a way to starve your soul.

Have a Strong Self-Care Regime – Think of taking care of your body, mind, and spirit as an important element to your inner foundation. When we feel “fed” we can show up for the people, responsibilities and situations that we most care about with our best SELF. When we are depleted, over-extended, hungry, lonely, or angry, life becomes more burdensome. To check when you might be out of balance or in need of some self-care pronto, here are some common signals: taking things too personally, beating yourself up, irritability, over-reacting, resentment, anger, overwhelm, confusion, distracted, stressed, or tense. Ask yourself, “What do I need right now? What is my body asking for? What have I been ignoring?“ Then DO IT!

Attitude shifting tools – What helps you shift into a better thinking and feeling place? I’m not talking about ways you “get rid” of your thoughts and feelings so you can avoid them. Stuffing thoughts and feelings can weaken our bodies and self-esteem so that we open ourselves to potential illness, psychological problems, depression, and unhappiness. I believe it’s important to have your thoughts and feelings without “building four walls, a roof and setting up permanent residence”. Having tools to shift out of negative self-talk, fearfull thinking, ruminating about the past, worrying, anticipating problems and challenges in the future costs you a whole lot of energy and peace of mind.

My attitude shifters include:

1. Adopting an attitude of gratitude

2. Bringing my attention back to the present moment

3. Appreciating all that is right in my life including people, my cats, gifts and blessings

4. Meditation helps me get centered and connected to Source

5. Keeping my self-care strong to include fun! Am I being too serious and do I need to lighten up?

6. Doing something to help another

7. Remembering who I am, what I am here to do and experience. Asking, “What is mine to do today? How can I be of service? What gives me faith? In what do I totally trust” are questions that help to shift from feeling fearfull and out of control to a more peacefull, connected space.

Taking Inspired Action – Listening to and following your gut instinct and intuition to guide your choices and actions can bring amazing opportunities into your life. It takes courage to take leaps of faith when we are motivated by fear. Inspiration comes from within; from our Divine “inner knowing” urging us to step into the unknown with faith and trust, often without a safety net. Our mind is an instrument with the ability to reason and assess situations that support us in making logical, sound choices that can motivate us to action when things makes sense.

The key is bringing inspired guidance and logic together so that we are following our heart and making sound choices that support our dreams and desires. When we stretch out of our comfort zone and our ego freaks out, we can easily disconnect from our spiritual core if we do not use our tools, resources, attitude shifters, supports… to come back to our SELF.

Be realistic and take one step at a time. Bring compassion and loving patience as your partner in your journey. And remember to celebrate each step of success along the way. Small steps lead to big leaps!

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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