So many of us moms don’t love our lives because we don't love ourselves enough. We're so harsh on ourselves when we don’t live up to our own expectations. We beat ourselves up for not being perfect and amazing at everything. This lack of self-love and self-compassion is the root cause of so much of our pain and struggles. Many of us associate self-love with narcissism and having a big ego. But self-love is simply having a high regard for our own well-being and happiness.
Read MoreWe decided to work from the road the last few weeks so we could get a break form the urban jungle and integrate some nature into our life after being quarantined in our NYC apartment for the last four months. We had this idyllic vision that we’d work on our laptops while the kids played in the rivers and lakes behind the houses we had rented. Well, our kids weren’t so into our grand plan.
Read MoreWith the horrific death of George Floyd last week and the riots that have followed, my blog on calendaring didn’t seem relevant. I just couldn’t hit the send button. I believe we should be reading and following black voices and leaders, reflecting on how we can become part of the solution and taking action.
Read MoreTwenty months ago I stopped drinking (October 2018). No one would have called me an alcoholic back then, but I felt like an over-drinker. I’d generally have 1-2 full glasses on weekdays and 2-3 on weekends. At the same time, my body was screaming at me with almost daily tension headaches or migraines.
I managed my headaches by practicing yoga in the mornings, jogging, eating healthy, downloading with girlfriends, hiking in nature, and escaping from the city when I could. Let’s just say I developed a really high pain threshold over time.
Read MoreSome of us have partners or kids who do notice all our hard work and this certainly makes life a little easier, but most of the time they are busy surviving their own hectic schedules (even more so now with the extra stresses of COVID-19). If only they would say “thank you” more often and recognize our heroic efforts, THEN we’d feel better, appreciated or at the very least be less angry. Sound familiar to anyone?
But here’s the hard and liberating truth. Other people can’t affect our feelings. We are responsible for our own feelings. It’s our job to feel better if that’s what we want.
Read MoreToday I want to talk about our minds. Just like we regularly clean, organize and declutter our homes of things we no longer need, we need to do the same for our minds.
Our minds have upwards of sixty thousand thoughts per day. Most of them run subconsciously in the background unnoticed because they are repetitive and efficient. Some are positive but many are negative and don’t serve us.
Left unexamined many of us will tend to think they are true. We’ll think them over and over until they become ingrained beliefs in our minds.
Read MoreMany people think boundaries are for controlling other people’s behavior when in fact they are created as a guide for ourselves to help us delineate where our emotional and physical boundaries begin and end. It is a way of “drawing a circle” around our behavior and ourselves. Boundaries are amazing tools for self-care and enhanced intimacy with loved ones when used in a healthy manner.
Read MoreStarting to feel a bit neurotic from being stuck inside with your family?
How many of you are writing “instruction manuals” for how your loved ones should behave so you can feel better during this COVID-19 quarantine? 🤣
I’m certainly tempted to. I’d love for my kids’ rooms to be spotless instead of a collection of dirty dishes and clothes. I wish my husband would massage my sore lower back and take his two computer monitors back to his office downtown. And please God, someone tell our adorable cat to stop shedding so much hair so I don’t have to vacuum daily and start cuddling with me instead. 😝If everyone did this I’d regain a sense of cleanliness and serenity in my home.
Read MoreIn attempt to see things through a positive lens, I am choosing to believe that this global shared experience will bring the world together. It will help highlight our shared humanity, how interconnected we are, and thus our shared responsibility to take care of our planet and each other. So much beauty will come out of that awareness. And I am thinking about what role I will play in making this happen in my communities. What skillsets do I have to enable this vision?
Read MoreAre you waiting for this whole COVID-19 "mess" to go away so you can go back to your life again?
Do you feel like you are in a prison cell with your hands tied?
"One way I’m doing this is considering…what I would be doing now if I came to Earth for the first time right now and this was apparently the way things were on Earth, that nothing was wrong, that nothing had to change..."
Read MoreFeelings are generated by your thoughts. Can you trace your feelings back to the thought that generated it? Ask yourself if it is really true. And if it is true, do you want to continue thinking the thought anyways? Is it serving you? The choice is yours. There is no right or wrong answer. The idea is to bring awareness to it and be intentional about your choice of thoughts. Sometimes we want to feel sad and angry. Other times we don’t. Only you know what is best for you.
Read MoreThe lesson of “a circumstance is neutral until we give it meaning with our thoughts” was fresh on my mind from my adventure last week in Plano, TX (see my recent blog post). So I quickly switched directions, dropped those thoughts and deliberately chose to think “I’ve got this! I know exactly what to do. I can figure this out!” This generated feelings of self-confidence and determination. It fueled me to plan my day and week, prioritize what was important and start taking action immediately. These thoughts were more likely to serve me and my family than my previous negative thoughts. There was nothing wrong with my previous thoughts, it just wasn’t taking me in the direction I wanted to head in.
Read MoreI had just finished unpacking my suitcase at the Renaissance hotel in Plano, TX, and was about to grab some lunch when I got a text on my WhatsApp that read “Did you guys see that Brooke cancelled the Business Workshop 10 minutes ago?”
I had been looking forward to this workshop for months. I was finally going to meet Brooke Castillo in flesh and blood, the Master Coach I had studied and certified with last year. This couldn’t be happening!
Read MoreIt finally hit me, rather belatedly I will admit, that I was wasting my morning on something trivial. The rescheduling of our flights was a NEUTRAL circumstance until I gave it meaning with my thoughts. I was creating my own misery, not the airline. Thoughts create our feelings, not the external circumstances in our life. My thoughts about the rescheduling were ruining my morning and if I didn’t stop I would create a negative cloud over our upcoming vacation. I could continue to create drama about it or I could drop my thoughts and move on.
I decided enough negative energy had already been wasted on it.
Read MoreI swam in overwhelm when I was relaunching my career and it still crops up in my life every once in a while. But now I know the source of it and have learned how to manage it better. Thanks to life coaching I’ve come to realize that overwhelm is an indulgent emotion that doesn’t serve us in our lives. We think it comes from our long to do lists but it doesn’t. It comes from our thoughts about them. Our to do list is neutral until we give it meaning with our thoughts. Some of us will choose to think (consciously or unconsciously) “I got this...bring it on!” and others will think “This is too much...I can’t possibly do this all.” That is the difference between whether once experiences overwhelm or not. Your thoughts and how you manage them!
Read MoreMany of us think that there is something wrong with us when self-doubt rears its ugly head in our lives. It makes us question our capabilities, doubt our value and robs us of our dreams.
New flash: nothing could be further from the truth. Even the most successful people in the world struggle with self-doubt! (Take Serena Williams for instance! She is a world class tennis player but she still experiences self-doubt too.) It is a normal part of the human experience. The difference between those of us who move through it successfully and those who don’t is what we make it mean.
Read MoreThe simple act of mental noting, gently acknowledging what’s going on in my mind in very simple terms without any judgement, has been influential in reducing the mental chatter in my brain in the wee hours of the morning!
Read MoreWant to improve your productivity, concentration, and overall health with just one magic bullet? 😉
It’s called 8 hours of quality sleep on a regular basis!
My husband and I are fanatics about trying to get 8 hours of sleep every night for our mental and physical well being! 💤 The science is so compelling it will blow your mind! 🤯
Read MoreSometimes you need to take a nap…and that’s OKAY!
Give yourself permission. You deserve it.
In fact, I took one this afternoon and it was glorious. Walking my talk people! 😉
Read MoreHow does your body feel when you’re holding anger and resentment towards someone in your life for an offense or mistake they’ve made?
Icky and terrible, right? Like dragging a ball and chain around with you all day.
Ever stop to wonder why?
It's because of the negative thoughts we have about the offender. Those thoughts create feelings in our body that only we can feel. The offender only experiences their interpretation of our behavior, because they have their own thoughts that create their own feelings. We have no control over them.
So if we want to be free of the ball and chain, we have to choose the path of genuine forgiveness. For OUR OWN SAKE. Continuing to think negative thoughts only hurts us.
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