On Friday, September 6, 2019, at 1:55 pm, I lost my uncle. The man was my hero—he saved my life over 19 years ago. Since my dad died in 2004, he has been more like a father than an uncle, calling me almost daily to make sure I was ok. Whether I needed guidance for an issue I was having or just wanted to chat, he was always there for me. And now he is not.
His name was Father Bill.
The Rev. William J. Hultberg, the “drunk monk,” and a “bad-ass priest.” Everyone who knew him, and even those who didn’t, had some spiritual revelation.
He brought to God all those miscreants who the churches cast away and disposed of. He saved lives—hundreds of them—and changed thousands more. During his service, families shattered into fragments by the disease of addiction came into wholeness when they made amends at his altar.
I remember as a little girl running into his outstretched arms, as he lovingly said to me, “How’s my little Princess?” I also remember the holiday dinners, few and far between, and he would share the stories about his road to recovery. Later, when my addiction was apparent, he counseled my parents to go to Al-Anon. They would go out in the evening, and I would question where they were going, and they always replied, “To a meeting.”
After I accepted an offer from my dad to quit drinking, Father Bill would call me a “dry drunk.” I said, “No, I’m not.” He did this for 17 years, until June 5, 2000, when my mother called him in a panic. She told him I was drinking and drugging and needed help. He told my parents to drive me to Caron immediately; he had gotten me a bed in detox. It was the beginning of a new life for me—a life where Father Bill often told me how proud he was of me and the work I was doing.
And suddenly, I was lost—I felt like I fell into a bottomless pit of despair and hopelessness. The day after he passed, I sat in my garden to journal and mourn. Whether it was my intuition—the divinity within me—or Father Bill’s spirit guiding me, I somehow composed a music video. Having no idea what I was doing, I just allowed it to happen. I never heard the song before—one of over 25 I could have selected— Phil Collins’s “You’ll Be in My Heart.”
The week before his services—a viewing on Thursday, the funeral on Friday, and a Memorial Service at The Caron Treatment Center on Saturday—was, for me, one of the toughest in my life. Knowing you have to go through the grieving process doesn’t make it more comfortable, and I knew Father Bill would not want me to mire in it. After many sobbing,
and at times, wailing periods, I sat, reflected, prayed, and journaled.
And finally, my prayers were answered. Almost to the hour, eight days after making the video, after the memorial at Caron was over; I heard a young man begin to sing a song beautifully—”You’ll Be in My Heart, ” to close it out.
I sensed that Fr. Bill was telling me, “Your grieving is over. You have important work to do, now get to it!” The next week I enrolled a client into my coaching program who was paralyzed by 12 years of grief. Now how did that happen? Hmmm …
Back in 2005, Jack Canfield spoke at my company’s National Conference in St. Louis for an hour, promoting his new book, The Success Principles. I was captivated by what he shared and purchased it as soon as I returned home. The more I read, the more I felt his words magnetically pull me—they inspired something deep within my soul.
Several months later, I purchased the audiobook and listened to it every time I got in the car. Wanting to immerse myself in the principles, I inquired about Canfield’s 6-month coaching program. After a ninety-minute interview, they accepted me into it, which was great news—until I heard the cost—$3,500.
At the time, I was struggling to pay off a $50,000 debt left over from my divorce. I had managed to repay around $24,000, but I had no savings and a mere $4,000 on my Discover card. However, I knew that I needed to do this, so I went to the bank and took out a cash advance for the payment.
It was my first leap of faith.
Fast-forward to June 24, 2019. I attended Jack’s “One Day to Greatness” event in Philadelphia, and I felt propelled into action once more. This time I decided to start my day with meditation, visualization, yoga, and journaling. One of the dreams I visualized was a testimonial from Jack that I could use for my book, website, and business.
A few weeks before the event, I mailed him a copy of my book, Struck by Lightning: My Journey from the Shadow to the Light. During the VIP luncheon, I stood up and asked for the testimonial. His response was expected—he answered that he gets inundated with requests but did promise to look at my book. Fair enough.
Staying committed to my routine, I let go of the need to have things happen when I thought they should. Then, out of the blue, I received an email from Jack, himself. In the email, he asked if he could use Chapter 18—Leaps of Faith, Miracles, and Manifestations, in his book, Living the Success Principles. Are you kidding me? Of course, you can.
My visualization manifested in less than two months!
Here are a few techniques I have used in the past and have had incredible results with:
Live in the present moment. Begin a meditation and mindfulness practice if you haven’t already. If you say you don’t have time or are too busy, you’ve already lost any chance of realizing your dreams and goals. The only time you can manifest (or heal) is in the present moment.
Do your visualization right after your meditation practice—focusing on the breath and being present deepens the impact of visualization.
Read your dreams and goals out loud. Close your eyes after reading each one, and visualize and feel it as if it were completed.
When each goal is completed, let go of it and enjoy your day in the ‘now.’
2. Create a vision board. When placed where you can see it every day, a vision board is a tool that keeps your dreams at the forefront of your mind and helps you visualize your goals regularly.
Visualization is a critical factor in the Law of Attraction—everything you need to achieve your dreams is magnetized and attracted to you, whether it is people, finances, or opportunities.
Here’s how to start:
Create a list of everything you want in life—more money, a relationship, health, etc.
Find old magazines or pamphlets with fantastic pictures in them.
Pick out the ones that resonate with you or represent your dreams.
Paste them to a poster board.
Write words that inspire you and affirm how you want to feel.
Take a few minutes every day and pull the images and words into your psyche.
Doing this before you go to bed each night is very effective. Therefore, it is recommended you place your dream board on your nightstand or somewhere close by where you can see it.
3. Use index cards. My Canfield coach suggested that I write an affirmation on an index card and always carry it with me. It does work—and fast! The universe loves speed!
Three months into my coaching program, I complained to my coach that I had reached a plateau and felt I could not pay off my remaining debt. He replied, “By saying this, you are attracting more debt,” and had me write the following affirmation on a 3 x 5 index card: Money flows easily and abundantly to me.
I did as he suggested, and within eight days, I had wiped clean my financial liabilities by winning the Supre Prize Jackpot at the Borgata Hotel & Casino for $35,574!
These are just a few examples of how visualization worked for me, but the principles work for everyone; you need to apply them.
So, wouldn’t NOW be a great time to start?
For more information on visualization, schedule a complimentary 60-minute Discovery call.
Mindfulness & Meditation: The Differences, Benefits, and How-To’s
Mindfulness and meditation embody many similarities and can overlap, but they are not the same. Here’s a closer look:
MEDITATION
Meditation typically refers to formal, seated meditation practice. There are many types of meditation—those that focus on opening your heart, expanding your awareness, calming your mind, experiencing inner peace, and the list goes on. Here are some examples:
Mindfulness meditation
Loving-kindness meditation
Breath-awareness meditation
Body scan or progressive relaxation
Mantra-based meditation
Visualization meditation
Guided meditation
Meditation is an intentional practice where you focus inward to increase calmness, concentration, and emotional balance. It is all about letting go. You cultivate the power of surrender. That gives your body deep rest, and with it, the ability to heal itself.
Benefits
Here are several scientifically proven ways meditation rewires your brain for happiness, peace, and success:
Meditation Reduces Stress Through Relaxation – The Harvard Medical School has been one of the pioneers in scientific studies of the benefits and healing impact of meditation. Relaxation can change our body’s chemistry, balancing the body to its natural state with no stress or agitation.
Meditation Improves Focus – Research shows that meditation improves cognition and increases your ability to performs tasks requiring focus.
Meditation Improves Relationships – It improves your ability to empathize, and it hones your ability to pick up on cues indicating how others are feeling. Meditation also increases your emotional stability, making you less likely to be influenced by any negative people in your life.
Control of Emotions, Less Agitation – Meditation and being focused in your mind can help you better control emotions. A relaxed mindset leads to less anxiety and reduces the intensity of mood swings and anger episodes.
Meditation Increase Your Sense of Well-Being – Mindfulness meditation increases your psychological functioning and, in the process, improves your sense of well-being. Yoga and tai-chi have been found to do this also.
MINDFULNESS
Mindfulness is all about being aware, which of course, includes the practice of meditation. It’s noticing and paying attention to thoughts, feelings, behavior, and everything else. We can practice mindfulness at any time, wherever we are, whoever we are with, and whatever we are doing by showing up and being fully engaged in the here and now.
Mindfulness also releases ‘happy’ chemicals in the brain; it lowers blood pressure, improves digestion, and relaxes tension around pain. It is simple to practice and wonderful in effect.
Mindfulness and meditation are mirror-like reflections; mindfulness supports and enriches meditation, while meditation nurtures and expands mindfulness. While you can apply mindfulness to any situation throughout the day, meditation is usually practiced for a specific amount of time.
Mindfulness is the awareness of “some-thing,” while meditation is the awareness of “no-thing.”
Schedule your complimentary 15-minute Assessment today and learn how to improve the quality of your health and well-being.
If you are a yoga practitioner, you know that yoga means “yoke” or “union.” Thus, yoga is the practice that aims to join the mind, body, and spirit. The ultimate goal of yoga is to achieve liberation.
Yoga is not a system of beliefs but of techniques and guidance for living a more enhanced life. It is a set of principles for well-being on all levels: physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual.
Yoga works primarily with the energy in the body through the science of pranayama or energy control. Prana also means ‘breath.’ Yoga teaches how, through breath-control, to still the mind and attain higher states of awareness.
It is not a religion, nor does it come from Hinduism any more than gravity comes from Christianity.
The word Chakra is a Sanskrit word meaning “wheel” or “disk.” The Chakra System refers to the seven main individual spinning wheels of energy located throughout the body, containing bundles of nerves and major organs and our psychological, emotional, and spiritual states of being.
In her book, Chakra Yoga, Anodea Judith states, “As a yoke, the chakra system is a bridge between polarities: heaven and earth, inner and outer, above and below, matter and consciousness, mind and body.”
Yoga is not only a path to higher consciousness; it is also a path for bringing divine energy down into us, ultimately leading us to realize that our inner and outer worlds are one. The goal of the chakra system is wholeness and integration, and the arrangement of the chakras provides a map for the journey to awakening the Divine within you.
Chakra yoga is more about the inner world than the outer. It is focused more on the subtle energy than on the mechanics of a pose. It embraces the chakras as a profound path to divine awakening within your inner temple, which is what yoga has always been.
A Chakra Yoga workshop is about focusing your yoga practice on the chakras and how to use yoga to access your subtle energy by using postures, pranayama (breath control), mantras, imagery, and meditation. The practice and postures are categorized according to the chakras, although postures for one chakra may help open another. And many poses influence several chakras at once.
The Chakras are:
Root (First) Chakra—Root Support—Earth; Grounding; Poses: The base of every pose but especially relevant to standing poses
Sacral (Second) Chakra—One’s Own Place—Water; Flowing; Poses: Hip openers, forward bends, splits.
Third Eye (Sixth) Chakra—Perceive, Command—Light; Radiance; Poses: Sitting, balancing, inversions
Crown (Seventh) Chakra—Thousandfold Lotus—Consciousness; Stillness; Poses: Sitting still, Savasana, headstand, inversions in general
The poses start with the Root Chakra and work their way up to the Crown Chakra—this is called Liberating the Chakras. When you liberate the chakras, you can work from the Crown Chakra down through the Root Chakra—this is called Manifesting Through the Chakras—and another workshop altogether.
The point to remember is that you cannot manifest through your chakras until you liberate or balance them.
Part 1 gave you a few ideas about where to begin your journey from where you are to where you want to be—meditation, setting your intention, clearing out limiting beliefs and blocks, and discovering your life purpose.
In Part 2, you learned that you need to communicate your vision or dream and were given SMART goals to clarify what you need to say by writing them in your journal. You now need to move your idea into the world of relationships.
Part 3 asks you to write down all the things you love about your dream, as well as questions to ask yourself to bring it to fruition successfully. When you create something beautiful, it will attract love.
Part 4 is where the rubber meets the road, so continue to visualize, sit in meditation, and ask for guidance. Here is where you must claim your personal power and use it for a higher purpose. You do this by strengthening your will by following through with what is necessary to move you closer to your dream.
In Part 5, your enthusiasm takes over as you begin to see the results of putting your plan into action, and your passion ignites a fire underneath you that fuels the momentum you need to continue. At this point in the manifestation process, an essential step to truly live the life you want is to take pleasure in everything you’ve done so far.
Going With the Flow
You know, when there’s enthusiasm in a room, it’s contagious. The same is true for your passion—it also ignites others. This is where you have fun and take pleasure in the process.
Sticking with your tasks and projects from the SMART goals you set, you’ve noticed you’ve begun to move, and you see results. And when movement happens, things seem to flow with ease.
But this doesn’t mean sitting back and watching. You want to create a big splash as you swim downstream, so you must get up early and do what needs to be done on your list. Now is not the time to lay back—when there’s momentum going, it’s the time to push. Ask for what you want, and you will attract what you need to make your dream come true. Find a way to make your daily actions fun and pleasurable so you can fuel your passion to the end. You are almost to your destination.
Being, Doing, Having
Here’s where you’ve gone from being (who you have to be to create your dream) to doing (what you have to do to make it come true) to having (you have your vision in the physical world). To have your dream become a reality requires two commitments. One, you complete each step of the process in body, heart, and mind; two, you allow the time to achieve your SMART goals, which are both time-based and measurable.
By being the person you need to be and doing the things you need to do, you will have what you want and desire in life. When you complete all the steps, you have brought your vision into physical form, whether it’s a finished book, a new business, or a new home. Your manifestation is complete.
For a deeper understanding of how you can create on purpose, contact me.
Many of the ideas and steps in this 5-part series, “Are You Where You Want to be in Life?” are taken from Anodea Judith’s, Creating on Purpose: The Spiritual Technology of Manifesting Through the Chakras.
