Join us for this revealing conversation as Sandra Payne and I discuss our healthcare workers’ well-being, especially our nurses.

Podcaster, Adrianne Behning, sits down with her first Canadian guest, former NICU nurse and certified wellness coach, Sandra Payne.

Watch the video of the podcast below.

I don’t know about you but I’m so tired of thinking about and hearing about this damn pandemic.  It’s uprooted our lives and ripped apart so many visions and expectations people held.  I’m angry, i’m frustrated, i’ve devastated, i’m overwhelmed, and i’m scared, and I know I’m not alone.

The thing is that all of these feelings and more are normal, we are all feeling them as we watch the world fall apart around us, as we live with so much uncertainty.  Even the bravest and the strongest of us is STRUGGLING!

BUT… I also feel peace, calm, encouraged, inspired, and excited.  Yea I know, seems crazy but I am excited for the new beginning that’s coming.

Change is an inevitable part of our life, uncertainty is the theme of everyday, we cannot control the external world, we can only control ourselves and how we move through change and difficulties.

If you’re feeling stuck and unable to see the light here’s some tips to help guide you.

1. Give yourself permission to FEEL.  Feel everything, embrace all your emotions, don’t fight them, don’t hide them, give them a seat at your table. As you feel, take a moment to identify where in your body you feel your emotions, and the thoughts that are playing in your mind.  Guaranteed when you are feeling a negative feeling and experiencing a physical discomfort or pain YOU ARE playing a negative fear based story in your mind.

2. Find compassion for yourself if you’re struggling, be as understanding as you would be to your best friend who was having a difficult time.

3. Forgive yourself.  This is not the time for shame, blame, or complaining.  Forgive yourself and love yourself.

4. Practice Presence & Gratitude.  Take multiple moments each day to just be still and recognize everything that you have in your life.  Times of crisis it can be easy to become narrow focused on the negative and the fear.  Having gratitude and being in the present moment is a quick way to open your perspective.

5. Write a new story.  No matter how “out there” this may seem, try writing first all the negative fear stories you have and then writing a new positive love based story.  Then practice telling yourself this story every time you catch those heavy ones coming back.

6. Meditate.  Even if you think it’s hokey and you’ve never done it before JUST DO IT.  This is one of the most powerful ways you can reorganize your energies, let go of fear and doubt, and embrace peace and love, and find connection with yourself and surrender to the guiding universal light.

Use these tips any time you are feeling like you’re stuck and struggling with stress and overwhelm.  You have the power to let your light shine through in this dark time.  Change and difficulty is an opportunity for us to learn and grow in so many ways if we can shift our perspective.

Be Sure to register for the upcoming FREE LIVE workshop on ZOOM “Navigating Change”  https://zoom.us/meeting/register/vpAkcumgqTwvIqXRoc60UbmeBdzXpFsB-g

Enjoy this LIVE recording of an inspirational anthem I wrote.

Lots of Love to you all

It’s been a while since I’ve written, but that’s not for a lack of inspiring thoughts about what I’d like to write about, more so about finding balance with my time… something I think we can all relate to in this busy life we all lead.

But here’s the thing I’ve been thinking a lot about lately.  This word BUSY.

It is like the go to answer for people when they are asked “How’s it going”.

It makes me curious why we answer the question that way.  Is it so that people think we’re out there putting the ax to the grind, working hard, doing all the things to get ahead, to be successful? So people will see us as accomplished? So we won’t appear as lazy or unmotivated? Is it that we don’t want to feel like a failure so we claim busy as our badge of honor?

It’s interesting right? Why do you think people say they’re sooooo busy all the time.

OK you might be thinking, Sandra, it’s because I am busy.  I’ll give that to most of you because this life is freaking crazy at times.  Between work, family, kids, obligations, commitments, and all the in between’s that need to get done life can feel way to fast.

Is it Really the Busyness That’s the Problem?

But… sometimes it’s not really the busyness of our life that’s the issue.  It’s not that we have all these things on our plate and we can’t manage them and that’s why we feel exhausted and burnt out.  Because there are many people in this world who lead very busy and full lives but don’t feel exhausted and overwhelmed every day.  So what’s the difference?

It’s the fact that we are going about doing all these things in our life carrying the weight of negative energy with us.  The list of things we have to do is not the problem, rather it’s the energy we are carrying with us as we do it. That heavy weighted contracted negative energy is what’s making us feel exhausted and overwhelmed.  It’s like carrying a piano on your shoulders as you go about your day to day.  Going to the grocery store… not an overwhelming task, but if you’re carrying a piano with you, it is.  Taking your kids to their activities… not an overwhelming task, but if you’re carrying a piano with you, it is. Managing your work schedule… I think you see my point.

Where does this negative energy come from?

We need to first understand we are 100% an energetic body.  When you microscope us down to the finest point we are atoms of moving energy with a vibrational frequency. Negative energy is created when we experience situations & influences in our life that produce negative thoughts, feelings, and emotions. Negativity can make you feel heavy, contracted, dark, low energy, irritable & defensive and also creates a lens of fear & anger through which we see the world. That negative energy when not released in a healthy way become blockages in our body and prevent our positive high vibrational energy from flowing freely.  Negativity is toxic to your entire system and triggers a stress response in our body creating a whole host of physical symptoms and problems. We are actually genetically inclined in our nervous systems to seek the negativity of situations.  This historically was critical to our survival when real life or death situations were a daily occurrence.  This negativity bias kept humans alive.  But over generations our actual threat in life has decreased substantially but yet that negativity bias still exists making a pessimistic, distrustful, and cynical attitude towards life more likely.

How the Piano Get’s Stuck

Because we are naturally inclined to take a negative perspective, we naturally have predominantly negative thoughts, this creates negative beliefs programmed in our minds that leads to unhealthy heavy weighted negativity in our entire lives.  But it’s not only the thoughts that create the negativity, it’s the feelings that those thoughts elicit.

If you think about something that you’d like to accomplish in life and some form of the thought “I’m not good enough” comes into your mind it immediately triggers a negative feeling and a negative physical sensation in the body.  Try it.  Now never think that again please.

That negative feeling is an energy.  If we express that feeling it then becomes an emotional response (emotion = the energy of feelings in motion). If we don’t express it, as often is the case because expressing negative emotions is commonly viewed and judged as inappropriate or like something is wrong with you, then it does not move and becomes stuck.  3 seconds later we have another negative thought that triggers a negative feeling that we again stuff it down and it joins the rest of it’s negative buddies stuck in your body.  Over time, that becomes a BIG problem.  All that stuck negative emotional energy literally creates physical blockages to the free flowing energy of our body, it lowers your vibration making you more susceptible and causing significant physical illness and disease.

Removing these blockages takes time, commitment, and action.

My Top 5 Tips to Ditch Your Emotional Baggage

Here are my top 5 tips for cleansing this negative energy from your body and your mind to allow the positive high vibrational energy to freely flow throughout your body and experience the most amazing shifts in all areas of your life.

  1. If the word mediation rubs you wrong because you just can’t picture yourself sitting on the floor like a buddha then let’s just call it quiet connection. Some of the benefits of meditation include:
    1. Decreasing the effects of the stress response and calms the nervous system
    2. Increasing your awareness of your thought patterns, emotional triggers, and behavior habits.
    3. Shifts your negative patterns
    4. Allows you to connect with your inner self without distraction or external perceptions
    5. Brings our internal messages to the surface
  2. Moving your body allows energy to flow. Activity that is an experience of your personal expression is extremely beneficial, just as dancing.  My choice is Kundalini Yoga, which just happens to include dancing.  Don’t google it cause there’s a likelihood that you’ll be turned off.  The basis of kundalini is awakening your potential and moving our energy.  It’s powerful, extremely effective, and yields quick results.  I highly suggest my teacher, Gloria Latham, a more modern and accessible form of kundalini practice.
  3. Emotional Healing Techniques. Directly focusing our attention on stuck negative emotional experiences as well as the negative mindsets that accompany them and then using specific tools and processes to dissolve the energy that’s attached also yields extremely powerful, effective, and quick results.  My technique of choice is the Aroma Freedom Technique.  To learn more check out this link.
  4. Experiencing the high vibrational healing of nature is a powerful way to scrubt he negative energy from your mind and body. The beauty and captivating hold of nature, makes it very difficult to maintain a negative perspective. You can’t look at a majestic mountainside and think, I hate life, it just doesn’t happen.
  5. Break the Victim Loop. Life is full of challenges, it’s what makes us grow and learn and is critical to us reaching the dreams we have for our life. We are naturally inclined to slip into victim mode complaining, blaming, and shaming when we come up against these challenges.  But we need to break that loop.  Instead we can choose to look for the lesson and gift in every situation, focus on solutions, and allow the situation to evolve trusting that it will turn our better than we imagined.  NOTE: if you’re leading a life full of experiences that leave you feeling negative and miserable then it is very difficult to break the victim cycle without first changing the experiences  you’re choosing.
  6. Smile & Connect. So often do we go about our day to day trapped in our mind. Circling thoughts of what we need to do, where we need to go, thoughts about ordinary things and thoughts about our dreams and wishes for our life.  We spend so much time thinking and give far too much attention up there.  Life is happening all around us and we’re missing it.  Focus on the present, see hear feel everything around you and just breathe.  Smile at strangers, make conversation and genuinely listen to people, connect with others because at our deepest core we’re all the same.  None of us are perfect, we’ve all experienced struggle and tough times, we’re all fighting our own battles.  So next time you’re out try really seeing people and connecting your heart with theirs as we all navigate this cray labyrinth of life.

Ok there was 6 things but here’s the deal, even if you just do one of these things it will start to shift your energy, start to dissolve some of that pent up negative fire ball that’s festering inside of you.  Break it up, cleanse yourself of the poison that is negativity and start to experience life in a much more joyful way.

The next Full to Fulfilled program is starting February 24th! Not quite sure if it’s a fit for you? Read through here and book a free self discovery call with me where we can take a deeper dive into what’s happening for you and see if this isn’t exactly what you’re looking for.

The other day I was sitting with some friend and we got onto the topic of how people are so stressed out and so busy and how technology actually makes this sooo much worse.  We are accustomed to instant gratification with email, texting, multiple messaging platforms and of course social media. It led into a more discussion about this crazy fast pace of life that so many of us are living and how much that contributes to our stress and anxiety as well I’m certain many other diseases.

Being busy can be healthy if were engaged and inspired in the activity but when the activities are draining stressful and overwhelming then it’s not. Getting lost in the time warp of “Flow” is a divine place to be, in fact that all encompassing expanded feeling that comes when you are completely immersed in an activity is exactly what we need to busy ourselves with.  It’s when a majority of our life is busy and filled with activities that leave us feeling contracted, low energy, low mood, and disconnected that we find ourselves stressed out, irritable and frustrated. This is the busy that is detracting from our life and contributing negatively to every aspect of our health and wellness.

Then we add in the activities of technology that we think should lessen our perceived load because of their quickness and how it can simplify tasks, actually contribute to us feeling more busy because we are constantly on, responsive and checking in.  Many of us never take even a moment to slow down and smell the roses, and check in with ourselves.

Why do we do this?

Maybe it’s to show and prove to others that were not lazy, that we have a full life, and that were capable to doing so many things.

Maybe it’s the fear that if others see us taking a slow pace and struggling in some areas of life that we will be seen as a failure, or worse we’ll feel like a failure.

Maybe it’s that for many of us busy equals success. If we are sitting doing nothing or taking time for ourselves then we are being selfish and unproductive, again seen as a failure.

But I’ve discovered that this is so far from the truth.

What if I told you that you can experience the same and likely more growth and progress while slowing your life’s pace and starting to notice and enjoy the moments that are passing you by. That you can actually spend your time doing those energy inspiring activities, balanced with some of the less awesome parts of life with a positive twist, finished off with a healthy dose of self- care and quiet reflection and connection. That this can actually be your daily lifestyle and you will still experience success and productivity.

Just read that again.

Isn’t that what we all want for our life?

To feel happy, fulfilled, and inspired?

So how do we get to this place? Well it’s going to take some effort and some action, so let me lay out a few actionable steps you can take.

  1. Start by taking an inventory of your busy life. What exactly is all on our plates and does it really need to be there? Is this activity serving us by providing joy and inspiration? Consider even things that we might feel are important and seriously consider what it’s giving you in your life vs what you’d gain if you eliminated it.
  2. Once you’ve taken your inventory, look back through and decide which things are not serving you that you could eliminate and try to remove it for at least 30 days. Let people around you know you are doing this but be prepared that not everyone will agree with you.
  3. If there are things on your list that you would like to get rid of but don’t see how that’s possible then take a moment to ask yourself why this activity is not serving you and providing you joy. Then ask yourself, how can I make this activity more enjoyable? What would bring positivity to this otherwise negative part of my life?
  4. Practice presence. What does this mean right?? It means not being distracted or running lists of things to do in your head all day long.  This constant state of go go go is literally killing us by keeping us in that fight or flight state.  Instead let your breath be a reminder to stay present.  I say “practice presence” because that’s what it takes… practice. Set frequent reminders in your phone or on notes around your house to will remind you to pause, focus on your breath, notice your surroundings using all your senses, and give gratitude for it all.
  5. Stop trying to be and do everything. Remember you are a human being, not a human doing. We are not meant to be running 24/7 like a machine. We need to rest and refuel and focus our efforts on the things that fill us up.  Take at minimum 5 minutes a day to sit quietly, close your eye and connect with yourself.
  6. Consider a digital detox. This can look different to everyone but can be a huge step in the direction of creating a life of more ease and calm. It’s about finding a balance for you. Where you can stay connected digitally to others but also be present and connected to yourself and the people around you.

Your Choice

Remember that you are so important and taking time for yourself is not selfish.  We cannot give from an empty cup so we need to fill ourselves up regularly with activities that inspire and fill us with joy. We are all here in this marathon of life together that is filled with choices every day.  We can choose to live life excited for every day, or not, your choice.