“Having leftover drugs around the house is a significant safety risk and, in some cases, fosters prescription drug abuse and fuels black market trade.  However, throwing drugs away in the home or flushing them down the toilet can result in water contamination.  A 2002 U.S. Geological Survey study of 139 bodies of water in 30 states found that over 80 percent of the water samples were contaminated by personal care products, including prescription drugs.”

“This Saturday, September 25, Wisconsinites can safely dispose of their leftover and unwanted prescription drugs at one of over 85 collection points throughout our state as part of National Take-Back Day.  National Take-Back Day will provide Americans with a safe and effective way for getting prescription drugs out of their homes, where they can pose a risk to children and families.”

“To find a collection site near you, go to http://www.deadiversion.usdoj.gov/takeback/ and type in your zip code.”

–Excerpts from a note this week from Wisconsin Senator Herb Kohl

Do you want to leave the world a better place in a big way?  Want to help others more and more effecively?  Looking for daily inspiration to personally help you reach your goals? 

Get that and so much more in your annual membership in the Global Institute for Awakening! http://GIAwaken.com/benefits

** 10-part Training Program.  Join our member Life Mastery/Healing Mastery program and build 10 awakened habits/year.  It’s one thing to understand spiritual principles.  It’s another to live them.  Let us help you make it easy.

** Guest Interviews.  Get 10 insightful interviews with teachers who have accomplished what you long to do. 

** Enjoy our FREE workshop: “How to Find What You’ve Been Missing”

** Posters!  Be inspired, and strengthen your understanding of life mastery by three “I Am Awakening” posters of powerful positive statements!

** Map!  Gain daily perspective and guidance with our color map to the 7 tasks of Awakening.

** More!  To get more details or to join and save $50 today, go here:  http://GIAwaken.com/benefits

Karen was born a healer and is so full of wisdom specificaly about healing and healers, we could talk all day!  Do join us — it’s free, all you have to do is register, and you can listen to past audios any time.

“Raise your vibration” by listening to these gurus who have mastered living a meaningful life to the fullest and giving back.   Click here to register for the free series.

Healer #3  |  20 August 2010
11am Pacific / noon Mountain / 1pm Central / 2pm Eastern US time

Karen Lamark Wilson  ~  International Academy of Intuitive Entrepreneurs (IAIE)
Professional Healer, Author, Visionary, Spiritual Mentor

Internationally known spiritual teacher and energy healer Karen Lamark Wilson was born a healer with a mission.  Since her childhood instruction by a native healer and her early adoption of Eastern medicine in the early 70s, Karen has been on the cutting edge of expanding humanity’s capacity to live fully.  She founded IAIE to help its members cultivate direct inner knowing and expanded consciousness in their businesses and lives.  Karen has two grown children and lives in Paradise Valley, Arizona, with her wonder dog, Koko, a furry white American Eskimo.

When you want to succeed at anything, the best advice is to find someone who has already succeeded, and do what they did!  Transform yourself by resonating with each of our guests for 30+ minutes. We are pleased to announce our first two Healers are Bee Jimpson and Sheri McConnell!

Live your life from a mindset of possibility like our guests are doing.  Let this new series further awaken your powerful innate ability to solve problems, think outside the box, operate authentically from the heart, and create BIG positive change on the planet!  

Sign up now to access all the live calls and the recorded audios:   http://GIAwaken.com/100Healers

Yes, this series means we are officially launching our membership Sept 1!  Your chance to save $50 ends August 31 and will not be repeated.  Make 2010 the year you expand your mindset and lifestyle to live with meaning, possibility, and joy.  Check out our life-changing benefits here: http://GIAwaken.com/benefits, and sign up ASAP!

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Healer #1  |  13 August 2010, 8am Pacific / 9am Mountain / 10am Central / 11am Eastern US time

Bee Jimpson  ~  The Next Sense
Professional Healer, Intuitive, and Intuition Teacher

Bee was raised in a culturally mixed home (Egyptian, Spanish, European and Quechua) in Argentina where traditional or folk healing was commonly used.  It wasn’t until much later in her life, however, that she stepped into her own power as a healer.  Today Bee travels the world to mentor other healers (including me) and teach people how to accept and truly use their intuition.  Join us to hear about her powerful journey!

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Healer #2  |  13 August 2010, 11am Pacific / noon Mountain / 1pm Central / 2pm Eastern US time

Sheri McConnell  ~  Smart Women’s Institute for Entrepreneurial Learning
Author, Millionaire Business Coach, and Mom of 4

Sheri helps women start and grow membership-based businesses to attain financial independence, so they can make powerful life decisions from a place of abundance and balance, not from a place of poverty, fear, doubt, and “what if”.  As you might guess, she has recovered from being in that position too many times herself.  Today, she is the author of  Smart Women Know Their “Why” – A Guide for Discovering Your Life Purpose While Owning a Business So You Can Create Positive Change in the World (and Make Big Profits!)  Join us to hear Sheri’s powerful story of healing and how she helps others today.  (P.S. She is my business coach this year for the Institute.)

Speaker:  Daria Boissonnas, Founder, Global Institute for Awakening

“Be not afraid of greatness: some are born great, some achieve greatness and some have greatness thrust upon them.”
–William Shakespeare, 12th Night, Act II, Scene V

I would rewrite that quote to say “Awakening” instead of greatness. Do you have intuitive, empathic, psychic or healing abilities that were almost thrust upon you? Do your abilities seem strange or make you uncomfortable? Do you feel different from others because of how you experience life? What can you do?

First of all, you’re not weird, you’re Awakening. But some of us are definitely thrown on our path by accident, illness, life crisis, or the development of psychic or healing abilities. Join us for this call and hear what Daria has to say after 12 years of working with folks like you (and being one herself).

Download the audio file (mp3)

We have many more calls coming up through the end of the year, including a surprise series starting tomorrow! Check our calendar page now:  http://GIAwaken.com/calendar

Mastering life — and therefore mastering healing and problem-solving so you can live a great life you love — is all about understanding attachment and detachment.  It’s about letting GO appropriately.

Imagine you are a complex electronic device with a zillion cords coming out of you.  Your entire spiritual journey is about deciding what to plug into, and what to detach from.  And when. 

That’s the bottom line.  This activity actually defines who you are and what you can do in the world.  It definitely affects how yummy it is to live your daily life!

Your life’s journey is about deciding what is appropriate to be connected to, and what is harmful to connect to.  For example:

• What beliefs you should plug into
• What moment in time you enjoy attaching to (“now” is highly recommended by sages)
• What friends and colleagues to surround yourself with
• What issues you should let go of, repair or strengthen.

To do that well, it helps to learn how to easily sense or judge what connections will move you forward on your spiritual journey, and which ones are holding you back and even causing you pain. 

This month, our members are focusing on exercising that exact spiritual “muscle”!

Our member training right now is to focus your spiritual or self-improvement practice on recognizing harmful attachments and letting them GO.

Since we humans easily numb out to our pain, letting go is a crucial skill to have in your spiritual toolbox! 

The more easily, perceptively and sooner you can let go, the easier your life’s journey — not to mention you can save great emotional and financial expense as well as time along your way!

What Is Attachment?

Attachment is a natural energetic process all living beings do in order to exchange information.  In 12 years of energy healing, I’ve seen that conscious, living beings create energy bridges to communicate.  (And let me tell you, a heck of a lot more information goes across energetic connections than verbal or visual ones!) 

After you connect to another form of consciousness, whether a person or idea or system, then repeated communication builds a stronger connection.  Over time, energetic connections are built on many levels.  They become so complex they can be difficult to break.

Yet, after the communication is over, for instance after a relationship ends, these connections naturally fade.  They may be painful at first.  We have to adjust to them not being there.  We must change our habits of thinking and being to create new energy bridges that function similarly.  It’s hard.  But this fading process is natural and one of the reasons for the adage, “Time heals all wounds.”  

Sometimes, however, for reasons we may or may not be aware of, we hang on to a connection or energy bridge inappropriately.  The time has passed, the other person has moved on, or the belief is no longer appropriate. 

When we hang on to something beyond its expiration date… it starts to stink.  (Hadja noticed?)

In order to artificially halt the natural fading of this energy connection, you have to feed it energy, sometimes LOTS of daily energy.  You might use negative emotions to charge up that connection and keep it alive!  Ouch.

When we hold an attachment inappropriately, several things can happen, none of which are health- and happiness-inducing in my opinion.  Practicing letting go can help you eliminate this sort of thing from your life:

• Negative drama
• Fatigue
• Environmental clutter
• Physical clutter (energy of illness, toxins, parasites, cysts…)
• Emotional clutter
• Mental clutter
• Spiritual clutter (do you know exactly what you are here to do?)
• Repeating lessons and not learning
• Expense of time and money as you run in circles
• Not fully supporting yourself
• Poor finances

Let’s Let Go, Together

That’s why an important part of spiritual traditions involve exercises or practices to break the older, outdated attachments while creating and strengthening positive, life-enhancing attachments.

Please join us this month — join us as a member and save $50 through the end of August — and work on mastering this valuable skill.  Practicing letting go will contribute to the amount of grace and ease you can experience via your health, happiness and daily life.  Our program makes it easy, and we don’t tell you what to believe.  Let’s practice cutting those old attachments together!  You can do this.

“How poor are they that have not patience! 
What wound did ever heal but by degrees?” 
— William Shakespeare

Do you seek success?  Do you have a dream? The good old dictionary says success is the favorable end of an effort.  It means reaching a goal or finishing a task.  In a nutshell,
done = success.

Done won’t get you your dreams, however.  Sure, completion is  important, but if all I did was finish the tasks my busy life demands — paying bills, going to work, doing the laundry (woohoo!) — would I be a success?  Would I have truly succeeded at life?  What is missing in this equation?

I personally learned the answer the hard way.  In my early 30s, I followed the dotted lines and achieved everything a girl could possibly want.  My life was picture-perfect.  I was dripping in success.

But I felt miserable and stuck.  I was missing something BIG.  I was missing True Success.

Success Comes in Two Flavors: Temporary and True

Most of the time I say “success,” I mean an idea more like the dictionary’s second definition:  the attainment of wealth, achievement, position, bliss, fame, honor, etc.  This is more than finishing a task.  It goes beyond reacting to your life, beyond just getting by, and beyond coloring inside the lines.  It’s not the kind of success you have to repeat to keep moving forward, like doing laundry is.

This kind of success is an achievement!  It takes you to a new level.  Not only do you finish something, but it is bigger and different than what you had before.  Maybe you want to find the love of your life, live your ideal lifestyle in style, heal yourself of pain and bad habits, or achieve a big goal like making a million bucks before you turn 40.  True success does this in a meaningful, permanent way.  What does your heart desire?

To qualify as True Success, an achievement must have three traits:

1. It came from inside YOU. It began as a decision, a dream, or a choice.  You didn’t follow or just “go along” with someone else’s example or dictates.  You chose to reach for this, and you chose to take steps to implement it.

2. It’s a new direction. True success takes you off the path, out of your well-worn habits of thinking and doing.  You change the direction you would have gone, had you kept doing what you were doing.  Your trajectory changes.  Wonderful things happen you’d never expected or asked for.

3. It sticks. Something shifts and you can’t go back.  You don’t lose it again.  Spiritually, you have “realized” it, really gotten it on all levels in a way that changes who you are.  From there, you can easily help others achieve something similar.  That’s true success.

That’s what we teach you to achieve, right here at the Global Institute for Awakening!

Because true success happens naturally when you advance in your life’s journey of Awakening. True success and Awakening describe the same upshift, the same expansion.  Actively walking your life’s journey means leaving the old ways behind and rising in an upward spiral to greater and greater Potential and possibility — for you, your life, and your loved ones around you.

When you don’t reach for true success, you have temporary success. Whatever you just did, you will likely need to do again, or something similar, over and over.  You will stay in about the same place or advance slowly.  If you do achieve  what looks like True Success, it will slip through your fingers again. 

If it doesn’t stick, it wasn’t True Success.  You didn’t shift.

What to Do to Truly Succeed

True success flows naturally from our true nature, which grows, expands positively, loves, serves, and evolves into higher and higher Potential ways of being.  When you learn how that process — the spiritual journey — works, you can reach for the True Success and lift all of us up into a better way of being.  I believe the world could use a whole lot of this right now!

Whatever your goals, this process requires the 7 tasks of Awakening.  (For details and a list of suggestions for each step, get a free copy of our ebook and visual map of the steps in the header bar above.)  They are:

1.  Know Yourself

2.  Build Your Base

3.  Explore Possibility in the World

4.  Be the Change (Practice/Train)

5. Move Beyond Doubt

6. Let Go of Resistance

7. Step It Up (make the next Decision)

So ask yourself:  Do I want to get by?  Do I want to succeed in doing what I did yesterday… again?

Or do I want to dream and move forward into new exciting territory that has a higher Potential for wealth, wellness and wisdom for me, and through me for others?

THAT is the core result of Awakening.  You can’t uplevel without Awakening.  Awakening creates true success.

Are you ready to learn how to shift into true success, over and over, in ANY situation in your life? Make sure you’re working in all 7 tasks, ablove.  If you want help, join as a member to declare your goal to the Universe that you are creating True Success in your life over the next 12 months!

We know you have it in you.  You have a valuable gift for the world to share.  Your nature is to grow and expand and help others.  You can do this!!

Many, many blessings to you on your personal journey of Awakening and true success!

What would you do if the solution you were looking for — no, an even better one you hadn’t thought of yet — was waiting for you on the other side of an unlocked door?  You’d open the door and walk through, right?

Of course.

Like this door, the process of Awakening brings new solutions into your life.  It allows you to see beyond your current troubles and zap those limitations.  It gives you the steps and the tools you need to expand into your greatest Potential to live a meaningful life and make a difference. 

All you have to do is step forward and open that door.

It can be a bit tricky, however.  Sometimes that unlocked door looks like a difficult task, one you might even label “impossible” at the time.  You may need to let go of something or change your tactics.  It can be stressful, and you may tend to avoid taking action.  But simply by understanding a few facts about your spiritual journey, you can recognize new doors to magical new solutions in your life, and step through them.

Once you understand that it is much easier to allow Awakening and this type of change than it is to resist it, and once you come to trust this fact through your experiences, you will be much better able to push yourself through those doors and into your dreams.  Lots of doors!

Solve the Human Struggle

We’re human.  Our brains are actually hard-wired to be afraid of change, to fear the unknown.  We are wired to prefer predictability and routine.  If we did it yesterday, it will suit today, even if it is painful.  We tend to worry about the future, numb ourselves to pain, and resist change.  You can change this by Awakening.

Most of the pain and struggle in human life comes from resisting our spiritual journey.  It comes from hanging on to things better let go of, ignoring “lessons” and insights, or refusing to change our habits after we do learn a better way.  We suffer when we refuse to get help or ask questions, when we demand that others change first, or we say it doesn’t matter when it does.  That’s our hard-wired, culturally-strengthened human stubbornness, fear of change, and fear for the future at work.

In contrast, our higher or spiritual nature is hard-wired to grow and expand.  It is a powerful force within us that naturally uplifts us into a higher Potential for joy and helping others.  It longs to help, empower, enable, inspire, and heal.  And it shows us new and better doors and solutions all the time, though we aren’t so good at seeing these doors for what they are. 

Awakening means shifting out of our brain’s fear and doubt reaction into an expansive, can-do mindset.  You can do this in your life by learning about the process of Awakening, testing it, trusting it, and practicing stepping forward.  (It does become much easier with practice.)

Are You Spiritually Bound and Tied?

For a thousand years in China they used to bind women’s feet, starting in childhood, to keep them tiny.  Like your higher nature and Life itself, however, is the nature of children’s feet to grow, and it is essentially impossible to stop this growth.  The binding itself was severely painful and so were the resulting deformed feet.  This practice was deemed cruel and finally outlawed in 1911. 

Yet I look around me and see people who have bound themselves spiritually.  Is this not cruel, too?  They restrict themselves with other people’s tiny ideas of how they should be, or they hold back from following their dream.  They do what they did yesterday.  And in doing so, they have stunted their spiritual growth.  This is extremely painful, so they do their best to numb out. 

As humans, we naturally grow and expand spiritually and psychologically our whole lives.  We learn, let go, and move on to learn more.  When we get stuck in our routines, we bind our souls with limitation.  It is painful.  (It distorts your perspective on life, too.  The world seems an ugly horrible place because for you, spiritually, it is.)

On the other hand, when you trust the process of your higher nature and step into that Awakened mindset of expansion, you learn you can create anything you want, now or in the future.  End of fear and worry.  You begin to see there are unlocked doors and solutiosn everywhere.  You just hadn’t noticed before. 

And by trusting the process and opening those doors, over and over, you learn that even when there is some work or temporary pain involved in opening that unlocked door, it is much better on the other side.

It is easier to allow your Awakening process than to bind it in a small-thinking, small-living life.

The human struggle is built into us: an eternal, internal tussle between our greater spiritual nature of possibility, growth, and “yes”, with our limited physical/mental nature of doubt, worry, ”not enough”, and “what if…”  

Neither side is ”good’ or “bad”, it’s how we are.  The truth is simply this:  to live a happy, productive, meaningful life we must each learn to harmonize our spiritual and physical natures.  We must get them working together.

When we don’t have a process for growth, the suffering can get worse.  Do you know someone who has been thrust on their spiritual path not by a desire to explore their greatest potential to make a difference, but by sudden and devastating loss of some kind: an accident, illness, relationship breakup, natural disaster, death of a loved one, or financial loss?  This type of trauma foces us to look at the areas where our spiritual growth is stunted.  We are forced to figure out what ‘s important in life, to admit we were unhappy, and to find a deeper, more authentic source of joy.

Pain and suffering forces us to make progress on the spiritual journey of Awakening.

Allowing Your Awakening Sets You Free

By starting today to understand and walk your spiritual journey, however, I believe you can avoid potential pain and suffering in the future.  What you need is some basic information about the journey and a daily spiritual practice to keep you moving forward.  (Grab our free ebook in the header above to start, no obligation!  Membership offers a non-religious spiritual practice focus each month.)

Clients and spiritual teachers tell me stories all the time about how it was easier, in hindsight, to move through some challenge that shifted them into a more expansive way of being than it was to stay small and suffering.  It was easier to let go of the avoidance and fears, though they felt no solution was viable at the time, and step onto the path of personal Awakening.  I know this from my own challenging spiritual journey, too!

Walking your spiritual path lets you out of your cage.  Awakening creates healing in your life, even in your body and mind.  Awakening allows you to forgive,  to forget, to stop being so angry or so sensitive, to stop needing ice cream or alcohol or another vacation or that other thing to soothe you.

The natural process of Awakening transforms not only your pain into healing and joy, but helps reduce the struggle of those around you, too.  You become an example for them, a role model, even on an energetic level if you never discuss it with another person. 

I hope you too can see now that it is, in fact, easier to allow your Awakening than to struggle against it.  You are a valuable human being, a work of art in my opinion.  I wish you all the best in unfolding your greatest Potential through Awakening.  Go open that door!

Tomorrow:  Fact #4  Your Awakening is calling to you… can you hear it?

I was raised in a meat-and-potatoes household.  In fact, I learned to worry about my health if I did not get meat with meals.  Today, we eat vegetarian a couple times a week.  Visitors have told us we eat much smaller portions of meat than your average household anyway, so I was intrigued when a friend wrote “flexitarian” on facebook this week.

Are you a “flexitarian” — veggie sometimes, and sometimes not?  Are you an ovo-lacto-mom’s-roast-beef vegetarian?  Or are you a purist, who says being semi-vegetarian is like being semi-pregnant?  Newsweek covered the eat-less-meat movement and the book, The Flexitarian Diet : The Mostly Vegetarian Way to Lose Weight, Be Healthier, Prevent Disease, and Add Years to Your Life
by Dawn Jackson Blatner (McGraw-Hill, October 2008, ISBN 0071549579, $16.47 on amazon) in an article you can read here:  
http://www.newsweek.com/id/161559

How have your eating habits changed over the years?  Let us know in a comment, below.

Facet #2 of the spiritual journey, Build Your Base, includes mothering yourself.  It means letting go of anything you found insufficient in the mothering you received, and caring for yourself in exactly the way you need NOW.  The past is in the past.  How can you take a step to do this today, in honor of Mother’s Day here in the U.S.?  How can you birth your full self?

Since you are mothering yourself, I will share a mother’s day gift with you:  a poem from my oldest daughter about the moon, often a symbol of the nurturing power of mothers and grandmothers. Enjoy, and happy self-mothering day. 

Dancing on the Face of the Moon
By Ariane Boissonnas

Dancing on the face of the moon
I see how Earth looks from space
I laugh and smile at the stars and sun
          And I reflect

Dancing on the face of the moon
I think how puny my speck of joy is
I expand it to fill the universe
          And I reflect

Dancing on the face of the moon
Some call me a goddess
But a goddess would be more graceful
          And I reflect

Dancing on the face of the moon
I dream of the cosmos
I write things in the moon-dust
          And I reflect

Dancing on the face of the moon
My feet move as if not my own
I dance with amazing intricacy
          And I reflect

Dancing on the face of the moon
I grow the courage to do what is right
I slow my steps to a stop
          And I reflect

Dancing on the face of the moon
I return to Earth to set things right
I snuggle down in bed
          And I reflect

(c) 2010 Ariane F. Boissonnas

My four-year-old took me out for a walk today.  She rode her scooter (no brakes–what were they thinking?!)  I kept up on foot. 

After finding my MP3 player in my jacket pocket, I popped in an earbud and pushed play blindly.  Ah, Timothy Ferriss’s The 4-Hour Work Week, a book that straightens out all your bad ideas about working for work’s sake and letting your job walk all over you.  I’d had it on “fast”.  Matched my pace.

Nothing is not spiritual.  We all walk the same spiritual journey, though we choose different words to describe ourselves and what we find.  Whether your approach to life is random, religious or atheistic, it’s the same journey, same experiences, same tasks, same discoveries. 

Chapter 15 of Ferriss’s book is quite spiritual.  After he spends most of the book curing you of your job and a lot of limited, passive thinking, he is then almost obligated to help you answer to one of the hardest, scariest questions on the planet: 

“If you had all the time and money in the world, what would you DO all day?”

Think about it.  (Oh c’mon, could you really do that for more than a month without getting bored?) Where would you live and how and with whom?  What would you do to make a difference?  What’s your favorite issue or personal mission?  This book is full of resources to help you really do that.

If you’ve made enough spiritual progress to get a sense of yourself and what you were made or meant to do, then check out this book for laughs if not for perspective.  It’s a fun read.  Get a copy here through my amazon affiliate link (thank you muchly):

BOOK:  The 4-Hour Workweek, Expanded and Updated: With Over 100 New Pages of Cutting-Edge Content (Hardcover), by Timothy Ferriss.

CD/Audio: The 4-Hour Workweek, Expanded and Updated (CD Audio), by Timothy Ferriss.

And send us a postcard.

Another Valentine’s Day, another day of chocolates, roses, and love, love, love!

Whether you already have all the attention, respect, and unconditional love you want, or you think there’s nobody on the planet that has what you’re looking for, I assure you: there is ONE person in the world who will always be there for you, always… well, if you can find them. (I’ll tell you how in a sec.) 

• This person loves you from the moment of your birth to the moment you leave the planet.

• They support whatever you do with loud applause (no matter how mediocre YOU thought the results were).  Whatever you do is just peachy with them, because YOU did it.

• They love, respect and honor your personal preferences, eccentricities, scars, whims and tastes.  They love how you think.  Whatever or however you think.

• They love and appreciate every cell of your body, your shape, your attributes and your so-called ‘flaws’.  They know you are beautiful and handsome and every adjective you want to be, no matter what anyone else says.

Intrigued?  I’ll warn you now: The trick is finding this person.  Many of us have lost track of him/her, but I’ll help you find them right now.  Then it’s up to you to invite them to play with you and declare their love.  To do this, you need to take a very honest and honoring look at yourself.  Do NOT look at yourself through others’ eyes, which you’ve been likely doing your whole life!

Ready?  Do you know who your biggest fan is?

It is YOU.

Now, now, no grumbling!  When you truly become your biggest fan, you open ALL doors to success and happiness (and charisma!)  I’ve seen it happen.

Unfortunately, we haven’t been encouraged or taught how to love ourselves, how to be our own biggest fan.  We’ve been warned against it: ”don’t let that accomplishment go to your head” etc.  Too many wonderful healers go to great lengths to cut themselves down and get in their own way.  We hate the image in the mirror (or that certain portion of it).  We sabotage our divine brilliance, get stuck in fears about what others will think.  We attract attention by failing. And we suffer under the lashes of our own inner critic.

Silly us.  (Silly you!)

HOW CAN YOU allow yourself to love, honor, nurture and support yourself exactly the way you are?  Ask yourself this question right now because when you ask a question you generate the answers. Now all you have to do is find the answer you like (and there are millions to choose from.)

You are a divine being, with a unique message to share with the world, based on exactly who you are and aaaaaaaall your life experiences.  And when you let this message out, when you step into your highest calling, it heals both you and the world.

Best of all, there is NOTHING you need first to fulfill your highest calling.  You are ready right now… because you are perfect, lovable, and delightful (OK, maybe a little cranky sometimes, but even that is cute) just the way you are.

So Happy Valentine’s Day from the one person who loves and supports you the most: YOU.  ♥ ♥ ♥ 

How can you start to love yourself back a little better, starting now?

© 2010 Daria Boissonnas

Counting calories may not be the key to losing weight. Calories is what happens to food when you put it in a machine and burn it, not a body.  This video also offers good info on un-sugar sweeteners like corn syrup. They are best avoided.

How can you take one, just one step to improve your diet today?

Yesterday, while seeking a book on my shelves, I glanced into my birchbark bowl (say that fast 10 times), and a quartz crystal I’d been ignoring for about 10 years caught my eye.  It’s smooth on one side, and has lots of tiny crystals on the other.  Suddenly, I wanted to pick it up. 

So, I did.

Then I wanted to hold it against my chest. 

So, I did. 

It felt good, like that was the best thing to do.  I felt gently whole, somehow.  Mmm. 

Over at my desk and trying to read the book one-handed, I put the stone down next to my computer.  This morning it kept catching my eye, so I finally moved it squarely in front of me. 

I asked it, “Why do you keep grabbing my attention today?”

It didn’t say anything, of course.  But I picked it up again and examined the jumble of tiny crystals on one side.  A sparkly mess, each tiny piece at odd angles with the others.  I flipped it over and felt the smoothness of the other side again, not polished, but naturally grown that way, impressively smooth.

Then I got it.  It was the same crystal, from either side.  Depending on how you looked at it, you could see an angular chaotic mess, or an easy, wide, natural surface.

Think you got problems?  Feel chaos in your life?  Here’s the lesson:  it’s only because of the way you’re looking at those problems.  They appear chaotic because of your perspective.  Underneath, that “problem” is innately as smooth as glass… and maybe, dare I suggest, not even a problem.

How can you reexamine your situation, flip it over, to see the natural perfection and ease in it?  From what other viewpoint could you see your challenge as a mere blip, a trifle, nothing to get worked up over? 

If you are reading this, you can apply it in your life.  How can you use this insight to improve life on our fair planet: your life?

You are a healer, and you know it…. you can feel your spiritual mission drawing you, pulling at you, calling.  You’ve taken healing and helping classes, and created a business card.  But even though you hand out your card as often as you can, you can’t seem to make the business work full-time.  Can you feel the pain of other struggling healers like you who have told me:

• I’m stuck at the hobby stage and can’t figure out how to make this a real healing practice.

• I do several techniques well, many of which I’m certified in, but don’t know where to find clients or how to keep them.

• Practically everyone can benefit from my help, but they don’t seem to know it, or understand what I can do for them, or they can’t afford my services.

• I’ve tried everything, but I can’t seem to make enough to quit my day job!

These stuck places are all too familiar to me, too.  They are natural stopping points in the early stages of the healer’s spiritual journey.  It’s easy and all too common to get stuck here, even for a very long time. 

What holds you back is missing one piece of information, a spiritual truth:

When you are doing what you came to this planet to do, 
    when you are expressing your unique gifts and skills,
       when you are putting your value-added services out into the world,
          then the world will fully, abundantly, and even opulently support you. 

It will in fact return your value to you, multiplied.

Who better than healers to earn money?  I know we are not comfortable with this idea, but stop cutting yourself off from the natural abundance of the Universe.  Who would you like to look up to as an example of properly living on and respecting this planet: a healer who has succeeded, or a resource-exploiting, short-term-thinking corporate type? 

Who better than those with healing, helping missions to decide how money is spent, invested, and best donated in the global economy?  I’d rather trust you than many of the folks who run the economy now…

Think about this:  What would you do or have if only your healing practice was prosperous and successful?  Is it something like buying a fancy car to show off to your neighbors, or is it more like:  Eating 100% organic?  Buying an organic farm?  Traveling to holy sites?  Building a green healing clinic?  Founding a transformational retreat center?  Helping more people?

The Universe helps those who help themselves.  And I’ve found that the first step to both financial and spiritual success for healers is figuring out and knowing who you are as a healer.  You are a powerful healer with a unique healing message for the world, a specific set of people who are waiting for you to help them, and a way you came to do that.  

Your success doesn’t have a thing to do with your healing technique or the products you sell.  It has to do with you.  It has to do with remembering who you are and how valuable that is.  It has to do with genuinely and freely expressing your divine value, which truly is priceless, out in the world.

Understanding until you know how you are here to create healing in the world is your first step to prosperity.  (I went down a million blind alleys myself without that key, so I’m delighted to share what I’ve discovered with you.)  Prosperity for healers is founded on a two-way, mutually respectful and loving exchange where your client benefits disproportionately from your work, and so do you.  That’s fair exchange.  (In fact, when you fail to step into the abundance of what you can do… are you holding your clients’ success back too?)

How can you know who you are, and begin to express that in the world?  Take yourself out for a long walk in nature, or go on retreat, or think about it on the bus or train, or discuss it with a healer friend:  what is it you love to do, whom do you love to work with, and how do you want to help people?  Within those answers lies a prolific seed to your success, a seed that can sprout a forest of healing for the world and allow you to model an exemplary, joyfull, stress-free, financially comfortable healing life.

Now go heal.

Hello, Healers!  As we finish our tax returns here, this has been a powerful time for me to reflect on the many past money mistakes I've made in my healing practice.  For too many years to admit, I mismanaged and misunderstood my income and expenses.  I had no money management systems for figuring out what was working and what wasn't, or even for dealing with money.  Today, I give you three stress-busting tips to heal your money systems.

Money is a flow of energy and information, and like all other energy, money loves to be loved.  Take a look: how do YOU love money in your practice?  Here are a few practical tips I've implemented over the years that really helped me:

(1)  Welcome money with an attractive, organized way to collect receipts.  If you hand a shoebox of receipts off to an accountant, decorate that shoebox!  If you have a tray or bowl for new, unprocessed receipts, make it beautiful.  Some traditions suggest red and gold to build money, others like green.  What is the color of abundance and wealth to you? 

I now keep my receipts in a golden 3-ring binder covered with glittery holographic stars, separated by 12 monthly tabs you can buy anywhere.  Bank statements have bank recepts paperclipped on.  Small cash receipts for the month get taped by date to yellow sheets of 3-hole-punched paper.  Receipts for trips get taped to and notated on blue sheets of paper.  When I collect all the receipts on a statement, I staple them and remove the paperclip.

(2)  Welcome money with an Income Received sheet.  When my practice was small and growing, I struggled to remember what went into my deposits.  Then one year a chiropractor showed me her Income Received sheet.  Every check or credit card charge she received was jotted on the sheet, and the month tallied.  I bracket the items I deposit together and date it.  My form had these column titles:

Date  -  Amount  -  Check/Cash/CC  -  Services Rendered  -  Notes (Client Name)  -  Deposited

Don't forget to print your sheets on a pleasant color and use your favorite font.  Make it fun.  Enjoy writing down the income you receive!  Fill it out after each client appointment if you can, or else the end of the day.  What a great system to give incoming money the attention and gratitude it deserves.  You can even jot a prayer or heartfelt thank you at the bottom of the sheet. 

(3)  Welcome money with an organized way of processing your bookkeeping and receipt-organizing.  Put bookkeeping time in your schedule every week — and I mean SCHEDULE IT and treat it like a client appointment, healer!  Keeping this appointment is a key to your accounting freedom.  Sit with your receipts each week and organize them, catalog your car mileage, and/or enter everything in Quickbooks or your spreadsheet.  After two insane years of leaving 100% of my bookkeeping to do at the end of the year, I now do these tasks weekly.  It's amazing how little time is needed to keep on top of everything!

Want a really good reason to systematize like this?  It will save you money and time.  You will write down income and expenses you would have forgotten if you'd put it off.  You will save on your accountant's hourly charges if you are more organized.  And you will have SO much more peace of financial mind. 

Systems like this make your practice run smoothly.  Try it out and let me know what you think.

Do you have any other money systems that have really worked for you?  Please share with us in the comments!  And let me know if you have any more questions about healing your money mind. 

If you’ve had a healing, coaching, or counseling practice for a while, I’m sure you’ve heard a client say about coming back or taking the next step, “Sorry, I don’t have the money for that right now.”  It kills the conversation about future care instantly.  What do you do?

Recognize a few things:

(1)  It’s not true.  The universe is abundant.  If you promised them $1 million back to come up with that money, they could and they would.  Something else is up.  Something big and scary to them.  What to do about it:  Let go of your need to fix them.  Let go of your healer’s ego that says you know better than they do.  Love and appreciate them for where they are in their journey and the intrinsic beauty of human coping mechanisms.  And bless them for helping you let go of one more tiny sliver of that ego.

(2)  They are uncomfortable speaking their truth.  Have you ever sold something on craig’s list and heard people who clearly don’t want your item after they see it say, “We’ll think about it and call you.”

Your client may be claiming no money instead of discussing another issue with you, eg. “We are moving too fast.”  “It scares me to get better; it’s unfamiliar.”  “I don’t see what these sessions are doing for me.”

Sometimes what they are trying to communicate is buried so deep they aren’t aware of it.  Things like “I don’t want to to get better and lose the benefits and attention I’m getting from having this condition.”   or  “Really truly deeply healing scares the bejeebies out of me.”  or  “I’m not sure I’m this valuable and I’d rather give up than try and fail.” 

In any case, what I find is helpful is to let go of my need to fix them.  Let go of my healer’s ego that says I know better than they do.  Love and appreciate them for where they are in their journey and the intrinsic beauty of human coping mechanisms.  Bless them for this opportunity to get rid of one more sliver of my healer’s ego.

(3)  This potentially frustrating exchange is a gift to you.  If you recognize stubbornness or fear or unwillingness to move forward in them, then you have some of your own in your life.  Take a look.  You can only perceive in the outer world that which you have in your inner self.  That’s how energy works.  Take a good honest look, especially on those weeks when you have a FEW clients pulling this one on you, hmmm. 

When you find this energy inside you, honor it and thank it for protecting you in its way.  Ask it to help you learn to cope consciously with the issue it’s protecting you from.  When you do, your clients will stop exhibiting this tendency, too.  And that will be a very nice coincidence.

On top of that, you guessed it:  Let go of your need to fix your clients.  Let go of your healer’s ego that says you know better than they do.  Love and appreciate them for where they are in their journey and the intrinsic beauty of human coping mechanisms.  And bless them for helping you let go of one more tiny sliver of that ego.

Do you give yourself recharging time or rest time on purpose?  How about play time — or are you one of the majority of adults who are deficient in play?  Did you know that spontaneous play actually recharges and regenerates the body and significantly contributes to your quality of life? 

I’m thinking about this question after this amusing reminder channeling yesterday with new guides who said:

“We are here to help you should you feel stuck, but we are not here to do it for you.  You can contact us every day in the morning first thing if you like and check in with your focus of the day.  In this way you can work most efficiently, provided that you listen to us.  Sometimes we will tell you to take a break and you will not listen, but things will go more smoothly if you do listen.  There is a season for everything, including love-making.  You are all that you need.”

Like many, I was raised to believe that idleness was the devil’s playground.  But it’s not idleness to rest, recuperate, repair, and knit up that raveled sleeve of care.  As a healer I’ve seen how vulnerable to damage people become when they don’t have enough play/fun time or rest time.  They are two different things, and we need both to live well and easily.

How can you honor the natural cycles of life, which include quiet times of ingathering, and schedule such time into your day, week, month and year?  Saving it all up for a vacation doesn’t really work… or had you noticed?  So far I’ve changed my Mondays to studying and resting days instead of “oh no the week is starting and I have so much to do” days.  I’m thrilled because I have a thing with Mondays anyway, and am challenged to be productive.  I also have a 3-year-old at home.  Studying to me means no results necessary.  Play with my daughter, listen to talks, read books, nap.  I can feel the relief already!

The MOST crucial part of scheduling play or rest time is going into it with a 100% intention to play or rest.  No sneaking work or even thinking about it!  You must let go completely, or it truly won’t be play or rest, and you’ll need more without understanding why.

How about you?  Let me know what you come up with.  I wish you all the blessings of a happy, well rested life.

Deep inside, you know you’re here to serve others, to help, to support, to change life on this planet… even if you don’t mention it very often to your “normal” friends.  Maybe you even have a specific dream — art, music, teaching, massage therapy, preaching — but for now you “need a regular income”.  Maybe to save up for nursing school, or to rent that office space on the corner, or another lofty goal.  

The big question is: Are you still fulfilling your life purpose?  Are you still in spiritual integrity with who you are?  Are you still in harmony with the Universe?  (Ok, that was three questions, but you get the idea.)

Splitting your intent or your energy, actively going both towards who you are and away from it, can be one of the most painful, detrimental, and un-healing things you can do to yourself, period. 

So how can you stay in integrity with your heart when you feel the need to hold a “day” job unrelated to the reason you came to this planet?  I’d suggest you answer “yes” to both of these questions:

(1) Is your job compatible with who you are becoming?  Is it harmonious or at least neutral with your spiritual faith, the way you see the world, your goals and your dreams?  Then it’s not inherently anti-you, and such a job is most likely temporarily OK. 

The end of my own corporate day job in financial marketing began one soul-searching day after I had to publish a report that I didn’t believe in, highly recommending a company that I knew used unfair labor tactics and environmentally abused the planet.  It was the last straw in a job that was draining me anyway because (I see now) it went against my spiritual ideals.  My heart had been out of integrity, and my mind finally clued in and said: ”I REFUSE.”  What a relief.

(2) Are you taking action towards expressing your life purpose in the long run, even while you temporarily hold this job?  Are you honoring who you are by supporting it outside of this job?  If yes, then again, a day job is fine as a temporary or semipermanent option.  And by “taking action” I mean actively doing something along the lines of what you will do.  If you are an artist, do art for at least 30-45 minutes a day, even if you have to draw on a napkin at a party.  If you are an energy healer or intuitive, meditate, practice, or write marketing matkerials for a time several days a week.  If you’re here to serve, volunteer at a retirement home, animal shelter, or hospital.  If you want to uplift, join toastmasters and practice your inspirational speeches.  If you’re a writer, write. 

For a long time when my children were small and I worked full time, I had one or two healing clients per week, that’s all.  I also studied, worked on my family and friends, and played with energy often.  It was the seemingly small activities towards my goal that kept my eyes on the prize and the momentum going to where I am today.

The bottom line is your intent.  Are you genuinely supporting yourself in becoming the healer you really are?  …Or are you still trying to squirm away with seemingly-related distractions and seemingly reasonable excuses?  Only you and your heart can know for sure.

We already know that those of us truly addicted to certain experiences don’t get any satisfaction from them.  That’s because they are not what we are really craving.  The use of addictions is either to numb us out to our longings, or an attempt to recreate them with the next-best thing. 

We are creatures of pleasure.  Pleasure, love and connection is our natural state.  We are spiritual beings of infinite love, the pleasure of God, yet we find ourselves imprisoned in a challenging physical existence and locked into the progress of time… at least that’s how it feels.  So we long to be who we really are, majestic cocreators of infinite power and wisdom.  And we long to be connected to everything like we are at the level of our infinite true nature.

So we seek pleasure and love.  But empty pleasure doesn’t work.  What we really want is this deep spiritual connection, not cheap imitations!

Go for the real thing.  The next time you feel the urge for your favorite crutch, give yourself 5 or 10 minutes for this exercise.  Sit quietly where you are safe and comfortable.  Watch your breath for a minute and let your body relax.  Then ask yourself how you want to feel.  Comforted? Safe? Secure?  What are you seeking in the experience you just considered having?  You want to be truly loved as you are?  Respected?  Recognized?  Blessed?  Not hungry?  Wealthy?  Lucky?  Admired?  Loved?  And loved by whom or how exactly?

Then close your eyes and imagine it, fantasize it.  There are no restrictions in your imagination.  The mother who hated you can now love you tenderly and unconditionally.  The absent father is back home and just the way you want.  You can have anything you want.  Crawl up into the Hand of God and be safe, nurse on your
mother’s lap again, reunite with your dead partner or relative, create a different outcome, invent the romantic partner of your dreams.  But whatever you do, don’t reinforce and strengthen your habitual turning towards your addiction.  Break that habit and soar beyond it. 

When I did this exercise years ago, it took me several tries before I realized I wanted to crawl up in my mommy’s lap and nurse and be loved unconditionally.  After a couple more times, I was surprised to realize it was more than that: I just wanted to BE everything around me, that my connection to mother only reminded me of my connection to everything.  Interestingly, nursing puts both mother and child into an altered state, a state of connectivity with The All.  So I created my ideal mommy, crawled up into her adult-sized lap with her arms around me, and visualized blending with the entire Universe. 

It feels good to be whole again.  This is what you are seeking, and this is what you deserve and should have.  I recommend trying this exercise several times (if not every day to stave off cravings), and keep asking yourself “What’s behind that? What do I really truly deeply crave?” until you get to the core.  If you do it enough (or add in snapping a rubberband on your wrist every time you think of indulging in your addiction), you can completely break your addictive thought habits. 

Let me know how this exercise goes for you.  I admire you for caring enough about yourself to try it.