My Daughter: My Great Teacher of Strength of Will
The other night after I was thinking about ways we can strengthen our wills to achieve our dreams, I went into my daughter’s bedroom to give her a kiss goodnight and make sure she hadn’t kicked off all her blankets. She had, as usual. As I was gently pulling up the blankets again, I realized that she has a lot to teach me about strength of will. About a lot of things, but the will part is what I was thinking about at the moment.
She has a very strong will. I’m a person who might have had that kind of strength of will at some point but I lost touch with it along the way, and I’m endeavoring to re-cultivate that wonderful quality within myself now in a positive way.
Hm… Why Does This Upset Me So Much?
My daughter’s strong will used to really trigger me, though. When someone else really upsets us, it’s usually a sign that we’ve repressed some aspect of ourselves to “be acceptable” and the other person is just revealing that repressed part of ourselves to us in all its glory. So, when I have the presence of mind to do it, I take the time to tap on my feelings until I feel better and I can come to a new place of understanding and healing about the issue. Usually, this turns out to be some variation of allowing her to be who she is and allowing myself to be who I am.
Look Around You For Your Best Teachers
As I often say, life is a great teacher of what we need to let go of in order to live in unconditional well-being. And the people we love the most are often our greatest teachers. Lili has been a great catalyst for a lot of good EFT tapping and healing for me over the years. She’s taught me to honor what feels right to me, to take action as I am inspired, and to never give up on something I really want.
She Acts as She is Inspired
She just turned ten. She has always been the kind of girl who gets an idea about something that she wants to do and takes action immediately to do it. I have to be careful sometimes about things I say at the dinner table because if it inspires her, if it gives her an idea of something she wants to do right now, then she’ll get up and enthusiastically start doing it and it takes a lot of effort to get her to wait and eat her dinner first. But I do love that about her.
She’s always been that way; that’s just her natural inclination and who she is. And it does take a lot of strength on my part as a mother not to squash that. Of course there are limits and things I need to say no to, but I do my best to honor her will and support her in doing the things that she’s inspired to do as much as possible.
Keep Breathing and Tapping
I remember a time very clearly, back when she was little and she was getting very upset because things were not happening the way she wanted them to right away, I had this powerful realization that the power of her will was going to take her far in life if I was able to preserve it and honor it and help her channel it in a positive way. This has been a challenge because, for the most part, our culture doesn’t really approve of or support children or adults in having strong wills. We’re finding our way through and doing the best we can, as always. Although we may falter at times, we do pretty well overall.
The Beauty of a Strong Will
Now, at ten years old, Lili is continuing to grow and blossom into a wonderful, compassionate, creative girl who has a vibrant, strong sense of herself and what’s right for her in her life. Her natural tendency is to be clear about who she is and what she wants and to take persistent action until she achieves it, enjoying the process the whole way, knowing instinctively that that’s a key part of living a happy life: enjoying the journey.
Yes, she has a lot to teach me. And I am learning more and more each day.
.
Live your dream with the Your Inspiring Life Program
The Five Steps to Living an Inspiring Life
In the Your Inspiring Life system, there are five key steps to follow each day that will really help you live a life that inspires and fulfills you on every level of your Being.
Step One: Affirm
The first step is to affirm what you want. However, before you can do that, you need to be clear about what you really want. It’s important to take the time to really explore what would truly fulfill you in your life and set a goal that inspires you and fills you with a feeling of joy as you think about achieving it. You want to phrase your goal in a way that will help you feel enthusiastic and motivated to really go for it. To affirm your goal, simply say it out loud to yourself.
The full Your Inspiring Life program helps you get clear about what you really want and helps you phrase your goal in a way that really inspires you.
Step Two: Clear
In the second step, you first discover the negative beliefs that have been holding you back from fully committing to your dreams. By saying your goal out loud, it’s likely that some of the negative beliefs you hold about achieving your goal will get triggered within you. Just write them down then use EFT to release these negative, limiting beliefs completely.
The reason that most of us haven’t achieved our heartfelt dreams up to this point in our lives is because we have a whole set of negative beliefs about ourselves and our potential and about how we think the world will react to what we have to offer. In this step, you take a few minutes each day to free yourself of these negative beliefs with EFT.
The full Your Inspiring Life program includes 20 EFT recordings to make it easy for you to release a variety of common issues that arise when we stretch ourselves to reach for a goal that inspires us.
Step Three: Envision
Once you have released the negative emotions that came up when you affirmed your goal, it’s time to envision what you want. In this step, you first create an inspiring vision statement, a wonderful story of you achieving your heartfelt goal. In this story, you imagine that you have already achieved your goal and you describe all the wonderful changes this makes within you and in your life.
The full Your Inspiring Life program guides you step-by-step to create your inspiring vision and includes a special recording to help you easily envision what you want and attract it to you with power.
Step Four: Center
In this step, you will take a few minutes each day to connect with the unconditional source of well-being within you. We often mistakenly think that we can only feel good if the right circumstances are all lined up perfectly in our lives. This kind of conditional well-being creates a fear that our good feelings can be taken away. But that is not true. In this step, you reconnect with the unconditional well-being within you so that you can have a direct experience of it yourself. When we know that our well-being is unconditional and doesn’t depend on anything outside of ourselves, we can release all fear and feelings of vulnerability. We can stretch ourselves to try new things because we know our well-being doesn’t hinge on our success or failure. My two favorite methods for feeling this state of well being are EFT and meditation.
In the full Your Inspiring Life program, I show you how to come back to your natural state of unconditional well-being in a matter of minutes with EFT. There are also two guided meditation recordings to help you easily feel that state of unconditional well-being within yourself as well.
Step Five: Act
In this step, it’s time to take inspired action. Once you clear away the negative beliefs about yourself and your potential, you will naturally find that your enthusiasm and inspiration begin to well up within you. You’ll know when you’ve done enough tapping on an issue when you begin to feel excited about taking the next step to achieve your goal. In this step, you will want to create a useful Game Plan to map out your journey to success at your inspired goal. This is also a good time to connect with your inner wisdom to get answers to any questions you may have.
The Your Inspiring Life full program guides you through creating your Game Plan and there are two special recordings to help you connect with your inner guidance and feel gratitude for yourself and all that you have accomplished every step of the way. There is also an EFT recording for fear of taking action.
So, to sum up, you will simply take the following five steps each day:
- Affirm what you want.
- Clear the negative beliefs and feelings that get triggered by this with EFT.
- Envision what you want as if you have already achieved it.
- Center in your natural state of unconditional well-being.
- Take inspired action to achieve your dreams.
Once you get into the rhythm of it, this process will probably not take you more than 20 minutes per day. It is absolutely worth it to take the time to follow these five steps each day. You will feel so much more inspired and enthusiastic about achieving your dreams when you do. And you will really feel wonderful at the end. You will discover that you are feeling better in every area of your life as you follow these five steps faithfully. Plus, you will find yourself taking action each day to make your dreams a reality. By taking just 20 minutes a day to follow these simple steps, you will soon find that you are living a life that truly inspires and fulfills you in every way.
For More Help with the Five Steps
Go up to the right hand corner of this page to sign up for my free eCourse, The Five Steps to Living an Inspiring Life. In the eCourse, you will learn EFT and get a lot of additional tips and ideas for following the five steps to creating a truly fulfilling life.
For more information about the full Your Inspiring Life program, click here.
What is EFT? A Powerful Tool for Fulfilling Your Dreams
One of my favorite resources for achieving our dreams is called Emotional Freedom Techniques, or EFT. I’ve been studying and exploring different approaches to personal growth and fulfillment for over twenty years now, and I have to say that I have found EFT to be one of the best methods to easily, gently, and quickly free ourselves from negative beliefs and emotions that have been holding us back from living lives that truly inspire and fulfill us. When you use the simple technique of EFT on a regular basis, it really can help you let go of limiting beliefs and negative emotions and move you forward in the direction of your heartfelt dreams.
What is EFT?
EFT is a powerful but little-known technique that has the potential to truly transform your life. Although EFT represents the cutting edge of psychology today in my opinion, its roots reach back five thousand years to Chinese Medicine acupressure techniques. Chinese Medicine has meticulously mapped out a series of energy channels in our bodies called meridians. When these channels of energy become constricted or distorted, disease and disharmony are the result. With EFT, you simply tap or rub on a series of nine key acupressure points on your face and body in order to activate each of these meridians. When these points are stimulated in this way, the energy channels in the body open and your natural, healthy flow of energy is restored.
The key concept that EFT brings to psychology and Chinese Medicine is the pairing of an emotionally painful idea or memory with the tapping of these points. Whenever we have a negative emotion, it is a sign that our energy channels have closed down. Often, a negative idea or belief will trigger this constriction in the flow and a negative emotion will result such as anxiety, sadness, anger, etc.
How EFT Works
To use EFT, all you do is think about something that normally upsets you or takes you out of a feeling of well-being while you tap on the EFT points. As you do, you will be retraining your nervous system to let go of the constriction and stay open while you think about that painful idea or memory. As a result, you will feel a wonderful feeling of well-being quickly replacing your anxiety, sadness, anger, fear, self-doubt, and so on. EFT helps you easily and gently release those old, unwanted painful emotions and beliefs in a very short time.
EFT Helps You Feel Your Natural State of Wisdom and Well-Being
EFT reprograms the nervous system to release the intensity around any problem and lets your innate well-being and wisdom flow. Once the intensity decreases sufficiently, you will suddenly become aware of wonderful healing insights and/or feel a deep sense of peace, understanding, compassion, love, and acceptance related to the previously upsetting belief or memory. It is truly wonderful.
EFT Helps You Reach for Your Dreams
This deceptively simple yet powerful tool will be invaluable to you as you stretch yourself to reach for a dream that truly inspires you. Because at each step, it’s likely that you will have issues, fears, negative beliefs, and emotions of all shapes and sizes emerging from the shadows. When you decide to take a big step forward toward something you’ve always wanted to achieve, it is very common for such issues to get activated within you. The reason why you haven’t followed your dreams up to now in your life is that you’ve had these negative beliefs hiding at the back of your consciousness, holding you back from taking action. EFT will give you a powerful floodlight to look those issues square in the eye and release them. As you do, you will be freeing yourself to follow your dreams with passion and enthusiasm.
Thanks, Gary
I gratefully acknowledge Gary Craig as the originator of this simple yet profoundly effective process known as Emotional Freedom Techniques. He is retired now, and I feel so blessed to be able to spread the word about EFT and teach people how to use it to change their lives.
Learn How to Do EFT Right Now
To learn how to do EFT and discover for yourself how it can help you achieve your dreams, you can sign up for my free mini eCourse version of the Your Inspiring Life program, EFT and the Five Steps to Living an Inspiring Life, in the upper right corner of this page.
In this free eCourse, you will learn the simple EFT procedure, a process that has the potential to truly change your life. You will also learn the five key steps that will help you to live a live that truly fulfills you on every level of your Being. As soon as you sign up, you’ll get the first lesson in your email inbox.
Live Your Dream Now
The Your Inspiring Life full program includes 22 EFT recordings that help you let go of a whole variety of negative beliefs and painful feelings that have been holding you back from reaching for and fulfilling your dreams. Each recording then helps you replace your negative, limiting beliefs and ideas with new uplifting, empowering thoughts. All you have to do is listen and follow along. There’s also an eBook and five more recordings to help you feel your natural state of well-being, connect with your inner guidance, and more. You can learn more about the program here:
How to Strengthen Your Will: Embrace Your Inner Veruca Salt
I say, Veruca Salt rocks. In case you need a reminder, she’s the “spoiled brat” from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. You can read my blog post about what I like about her here: So, What’s So Bad about Veruca Salt?
As I’m sure you can tell from that post, I think she’s a great example to follow in lots of ways. Plus, her story shows us how we have all been trained to believe that wanting and demanding that you get what you want out of life is wrong and makes us a “bad person.”
Strength of will, and by that I mean knowing exactly what you want and demanding and expecting it of the Universe and not giving up until you get it, is the key to getting whatever you truly want out of life.
And Veruca has that down.
How to Strengthen Your Will
So, here are some lessons to take from Veruca:
- Forget living to please other people.
- Do what you want to do.
- Demand that the Universe give you what you want.
- And don’t take no for an answer!
Remember that “no” is just a thought, just a word. There is no “no” when you are fully committed to something that you really want with all your heart.
You Can Do It from a Positive Place…
Of course, we can have a strong, vibrant, powerful will in a more positive way than Veruca Salt. We don’t have to rely on other people to be the sole channel for the things that we want. We’re not children anymore. We can focus our wills on what we want and take consistent, inspired action until we achieve our heartfelt goals.
But like Veruca does: we don’t have to take no for an answer. Let yourself discover what you really want, be persistent, and don’t give up until you get it. And that’s how you will build that will muscle so it will be something you can rely on to help you get what you want out of life.
Here’s an Exercise That Will Help
Think about a goal that you want to achieve. And then, let this be your mantra for the day: This is what I want and I WILL get it! I want it NOW!
Say that a few times to yourself and see if you can feel your will getting stronger, your resolve to live a life that truly fulfills and inspires you getting more powerful. I can feel it, can you?
For More Help Building a Strong Sense of Will
I created my Your Inspiring Life self-help program to help us all overcome the inner barriers to achieving our heartfelt goals and help us focus our wills with clear intention and passion on whatever we want to experience and accomplish in our lives.
For me, when I follow the five steps of the program each day, I can absolutely and instantly feel the change it makes within me. With every step, I can feel the strengthening and enlivening of my will to achieve my heartfelt goals.
When I keep on tapping with EFT until I feel my thoughts and feelings shifting to a better-feeling place and I begin to feel inspired to take action, it transforms my experience of myself. Every time I do this, I am freeing myself from another layer of what has been holding me back from embracing the next step on my journey with a strong sense of purpose and will to succeed.
I know from experience that the Your Inspiring Life program really works. It is a great way to develop a strong sense of will so you can live a life that inspires and fulfills you and I really encourage you to check it out and see if it feels right for you.
You can sign up for my free 7-day mini eCourse version of the program in the upper right hand corner of this page.
Thanks for reading. Let me know what you think by leaving a comment below. Have a wonderful day and remember to let your inner Veruca shine through a little bit more each day.
Peace and blessings, Laura
What Happened to the Strong-Willed Two Year Old We Used to Be?
When we were two, we knew exactly what we wanted. We felt an absolute sense of entitlement about everything as well: when we wanted something, we knew instinctively that we had the right to want it and we expected to get it.
So What Happened?
Unfortunately, as we grew older and were socialized as children and adults, we learned the opposite of this. We were taught to deny our wills for the most part and as a result we lost touch with a powerful part of ourselves and our ability to create the lives that we want. We were taught to defer to others: our parents, siblings, teachers, friends. We learned to give up on what we wanted in order to please and pacify others. In order to be loved. In order to be accepted. In order to fit in.
And so, we got confused when later in life we were expected to suddenly be self-directed and know what we wanted to do with our lives and have the strength of will to achieve it.
I Think This Explains A Lot
No wonder there are so many unhappy people in the world doing things that they really don’t want to. Most people have learned this lesson so well that they don’t even know what they really do want. That will muscle hasn’t had much exercise. They’ve got a good strong “please other people” muscle, but that doesn’t get you very far when you spend eight hours or more a day doing something that doesn’t fulfill or inspire you.
We’ve gotten really good at jumping through other people’s hoops and then distracting ourselves from the still small voice within by watching TV or surfing the net with the time we have to ourselves. We seem to have lost the ability to create and choose and command and commit to a path and follow it until we achieve it.
What Can We Do About It?
We don’t have many resources for being trained in developing our wills in this way and it sure isn’t common in our culture. But the strong-willed passion of our two-year-old selves is still there. It may be buried, the muscle may be weak, but it can be cultivated and encouraged to get stronger once again.
In my next post, I’ll give you some ideas that will help you reconnect with that strength of will and begin to re-build you ability to know what you want and to get it.
Subscribe to my blog here and get notified when I post new stuff. And feel free to leave a reply below and let me know what you think. Thanks!
Live Your Dream with the Your Inspiring Life Program
So What’s So Bad about Veruca Salt?
Do you remember Charlie and the Chocolate Factory? That was one of my favorite books as a kid. As I’m sure you remember, there’s a little girl in the story named Veruca Salt who is supposed to be a cautionary character, illustrating a terrible character trait for a child to have which is this: she knows what she wants and she demands that she get it. As soon she discovers that she wants something, she demands that it be hers. In our culture, as the book illustrates very clearly, we call a child who does this a “spoiled brat.”
What I Realized
But, I had a powerful insight last night. I went to bed, feeling a deep feisty determination to achieve an important goal that I have. I thought: I want it now! Universe, give it to me now!
And then, I realized I sounded just like Veruca Salt. I realized that in our lives and in our culture overall, we have been taught not be like Veruca. That being like her is BAD. As a result, many of us feel like our strength of will is not as strong as we would like it to be. For myself, I am capable of getting very inspired and I am absolutely open to my heart showing me new wonderful ideas that I would like to experience and master. However, at times, I find myself losing steam, even on ideas that truly inspire me. Particularly before I learned EFT and meditation, I would let those horrible negative beliefs take over and drown out the inspiration and the will to achieve whatever my heart had been calling me to do.
Which brings us back to Veruca Salt. That girl knew how to get what she wanted.
“Don’t care how, I want it NOW!”
Imagine having that kind of strength of will. I’m telling you, when that girl grows up, she is going to get what she wants in life.
Seriously?
Oh I know, on the down side, there’s that part of her that epitomizes the potentially never-ending feeling of need and dissatisfaction, the seeking outside of ourselves for happiness and well-being. Okay, if that’s part of what she was feeling, then she needs to deal with that in order to be truly, unconditionally happy. (And I can help her with that with a little tapping. 🙂 )
But you know what? I remember that Veruca Salt really enjoyed herself in that chocolate factory. She ran through the Chocolate Room, eating and playing with the rest of them. It’s just that when she wanted something, she expected to get it.
And I know that the book and movie show her wanting lots of material things, which of course we all do. That’s a whole other can of worms… our negative beliefs about whether it’s okay to want lots of “stuff.” What I say is that we are physical beings and it’s wonderful and fun to have things that are beautiful and enjoyable in our lives.
She Shows Us the First Step to Get What We Want
I imagine that Veruca’s also got a strong sense of herself and what she wants to do with her time and her life. I doubt that she would compromise on her vision for her life and she would never take no for an answer. Imagine what she’d say to someone who told her she couldn’t do what she dreamed of with her life. And could you see Veruca Salt spending 30 years at a job that bored her when she grew up? Not likely.
So, what negative beliefs come up when you think about Veruca Salt?
How about some of these to start:
- She’s a spoiled brat.
- She’s mean to the other kids because she pushes to get in first.
- She’s always asking for what she wants and it annoys other people.
- She can’t just be happy with what she has.
- She keeps asking her father for what she wants and she knows he will give her anything if she is persistent enough. And she usually doesn’t even have to be very persistent to get it.
- She is willing to do whatever it takes to get what she wants.
- Willy Wonka and the others don’t like her because of this.
Icky. Those are some icky beliefs. If you take a step back, can you see what effect beliefs like these have on us collectively and on each of us personally?
Here’s what I say: knowing what you want and being determined to do whatever it takes to get it is GOOD.
It’s not a bad thing.
We have to be willing to be Veruca Salt! I’m serious. We have to learn to demand what we want, expect it to come to us, and not give up until we get it.
If you feel a lot of resistance to that idea, it’s is time to use EFT to get rid of your limiting beliefs. If you’re not familiar with EFT, I encourage you to sign up for my free eCourse where I’ll teach you how to use EFT and the five steps to living an inspiring life. You can sign up in the upper right corner of this page.
Give yourself permission to demand that the Universe give you everything you want out of life, just like Veruca does. You deserve it.
What’s Next…
In my next couple of posts, I’ll go over what happened to us and what we can do to strengthen our wills. You can also subscribe here to my blog to get notified of all my new posts and videos as they go up.
Thanks for reading. And please feel free to leave a comment below and let me know what you think of Veruca Salt.
Live Your Dream. Your Inspiring Life
Why You Have Not Yet Followed Your Dreams and Three Steps to Change That
So many of us have dreams in our hearts that we have wanted to pursue all of our lives. So, what is it that holds us back from reaching for those dreams and doing everything in our power to achieve them? I think I have the answer and I know what can be done about it.
I truly believe that we each have the capacity within us to achieve whatever we set our minds to. We are never given a dream without also being given the ability to achieve it.
However, what happens too often is that we let ourselves get pulled down by our fears and negative beliefs about our abilities and our potential. We have learned to protect ourselves from being hurt by disappointment or failure. Unfortunately, this fear often leads to avoidance of the very thing that will bring us the most joy and fulfillment in our lives.
Think about this: The very thing we are most afraid of, failing to succeed at our heartfelt dreams, is exactly what we guarantee will happen if we don’t try.
Our hearts do guide us. We get flashes of inspiration, thoughts of how wonderful it would be to do something that sounds like it might be fun and fulfilling. But then, the negative beliefs kick in. And they go like this: “Yes, that would be nice, but…” and then we proceed to remind ourselves of all the reasons we can’t do what we really want to do. And there goes the dream, buried again beneath a pile of negative beliefs.
So What’s the Solution?
The negative beliefs that arise when you think about pursuing your dreams are simply this: thoughts. And you can change your thoughts. Here’s a simple method to get you started on this:
Step One: What are the Negative Beliefs?
Write down the negative thoughts that come up when you think about following your dream. Just write them down and get them out of your head. Sometimes, this is all you need to do to recognize that the thoughts in your head are not the absolute truth. Writing them down gives you a chance to step back and look at your habitual patterns of thinking more objectively.
Step Two: Are They True?
Read over the negative belief you wrote down and ask yourself this: Is this really true? Then, make an effort to challenge the negative belief. Write a response down that begins like this: Well, that’s just a thought and it’s not really true. Here’s why: And write down at least three reasons why that negative belief is not absolutely true for you.
Step Three: You Can Do It
Next, write down the goal that you would love to accomplish and then write: I can achieve this dream and here’s why: Then challenge yourself to write down at least three reasons why you can succeed. I think you’ll find that the more you write, the more positive you will feel about your goal and your ability to achieve it.
Try this once, and you’ll discover that your feelings become much more positive and hopeful as you do. Your feelings follow your thoughts. Change your thoughts and anything is possible. With practice, you’ll be able to change those negative thoughts in your head as soon as they arise.
EFT Really Turbocharges This Process
Of course, if you know me, you know that I think EFT is the quickest and most effective way to release those negative beliefs and replace them with new, empowering beliefs that motivate you to really follow your heart and succeed. That’s why my whole Your Inspiring Life self-help program uses EFT as the foundation for letting go of those negative beliefs that have been holding us back from following our dreams.
Remember, you can try my free EFT recording and sign-up for my free eCourse right here on my website. Both of these resources will teach you EFT and show you how to use this powerful technique to free you from those negative beliefs that have been keeping you from really going for that dream in your heart and make it happen.
For the free recording, go to the home page and scroll down to the free recording. For the free eCourse, just sign up on the sidebar in the upper right corner of this page.
After you try them out, I’d love it if you would leave me a comment here on my blog and let me know what you think. Thanks!
Lesson 7: Gratitude and Planning Session and the Five Steps to Living an Inspiring Life
Lesson 6: Inspired Action, Your Game Plan, and Inner Guidance
Lesson 5: Center in Your Unconditional Well-Being
Live Your Dream
Clarify what you truly want
Release the inner barriers to achieving your dreams
Move forward with passion and enthusiasm
27 recorded mp3 processes
282 page eBook
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