|
One of the things that happens when you have cancer is that you take a good look at your life and what is important to you. As a result, I've decided that I don't want to focus a lot of time on coaching. I would be willing to take on a few individual coaching clients but very few and preferably ones who are more interested in health since that has been my specialty over the years. I plan to spend more of my time doing writing and music and artistic pursuits that I enjoy. I'm currently working on a book on breast cancer. I'm actually retired so want to spend time on things I am passionate about rather than "working". If this pandemic ever ends, I want to spend some time traveling and so I want to get back to studying Spanish. What this means for you, my readers, is that I will happily sell you the "Unhackable" book and can also be available to do a little bit of coaching but focus on quality rather than quantity. If you are interested in the book, let me know. 
0 Comments
 When you think about something that you want to accomplish, do you ever get a voice in your head telling you that you can't do it? One of the ways we get "hacked" or prevented from achieving our dreams is by having a self-image that tells us we can't.
If you grew up, like I did, in a home where you were subjected to a lot of criticism, you have probably internalized those messages. If you think of your brain as a computer, those messages are negative programming which, like a computer virus, prevents you from doing what you want. That is what I mean by getting "hacked". That is one of the biggest obstacles that I have to deal with. My parents' style of child raising consisted of no praise and lots of telling me what I had done wrong. In fact, my method of surviving my mother's constant barrage of negativity was to tune her out. I was so good at this that one of my elementary school teachers had my hearing tested because she noticed that I didn't know what she said. This also meant that I was reluctant to do anything that might result in criticism and that I retreated into reading. I was reading at an adult level by the time they first tested me in third or fourth grade and I read two to three times faster than other people which has been an advantage in school. But I internalized a lot of the negative messages about my ability to be successful and that still impacts me today. Can you relate? So, what are the messages that you tell yourself today? How do you see yourself? Are you still dealing with negative programming from childhood? One of the steps in getting "unhacked" is to do some re-programming to achieve a healthy self image. As a certified unhackable coach, I would be happy to work with you on that. Do you suspect that you are getting hacked? I have two free assessments you can take to see if you are getting hacked. You can find them on the home page. After you take the assessments, you can schedule a free phone call with me to discuss your results. Check it out...you will be glad you did! Know someone else who might be interested? Feel free to share this post with them.  Today I feel compelled to talk about gratitude. You see, yesterday I did my vision board for 2021 and that meant looking at all the things from earlier versions that I've accomplished and no longer need to have on the new one. I'm feeling very grateful that even though I had cancer this year that incapacitated me at times, I still achieved goals I had set; not all of them but enough to feel happy.
I keep a gratitude journal so that I make it a point to look at things I am grateful for every day. It is surprising how much better things look when you have gratitude. If I am feeling down, sad, worried or frustrated, identifying all the things I have to grateful for picks me right up and puts me in a better frame of mind. People sometimes mention my positive attitude and I believe that gratitude is the underlying reason for it. I am thankful for all that I have and open to more love, joy, abundance, creativity, opportunity and peace in my life. One of the things that I'm looking forward to in the coming year is to start coaching others to help them discover what they want out of life and how to get there. If you, or someone you know wants more information about coaching, you can find more information on this website. One of the reasons I went into the healthcare field is because I love to help others so I'm grateful for this new way to do that. Talk to you again soon. Janet For most of us 2020 was not at all what we expected. It wasn't totally without benefits as most of us developed skills for connecting with others virtually but in general, it has been a very difficult year. I know that I wasn't able to accomplish all that I hoped for but considering the obstacles and barriers I was dealing with, I did okay. Some of those things will be on my list of goals for 2021.
One of the things that happened during this year was learning skills that help me to create flawless ideas, develop the ability to focus and to achieve optimal performance by entering a super productive state called "flow". I'm going to be doing coaching in 2021 to help others develop those skills. In order to accomplish anything, you have to know what it is you want. It is easy to have daydreams about what you would like the future to be like but without having a very clear sense of what you really want, you are likely to drift along without achieving much. One of the things that helped me to determine my goals was a book called "The Passion Test" by Janet and Chris Attwood. It provides a process to determine what you feel most passionately about so you narrow down your goals. Since I have a lot of diverse interests, I found it very helpful. Besides knowing WHAT you want, you need to know WHY you want it. Your "why" is what gives you motivation. Will 2021 be the year that you go from dreaming to doing? Do you know that we make about 35,000 decisions a day? A study by Cornell University found that we make about 227 decisions a day just about food! As a person who is a food addict (yes, it really is a thing and I can direct you to a quiz to see if you are one, if you are interested), I'm sure that I can easily make more decisions than that. "I feel like eating, what do I want? No, I shouldn't eat that. How about this? Well, that wasn't very satisfying and I still want that. Should I give in and eat it?" As you can see from that dialogue, when I am in my addiction, I'm obsessing and making decisions all day long. The solution to dealing with that for me, is to automate my food decisions. What I do is to decide what I'm going to eat (according to my food plan) and to write it down in a notebook the night before. Then the next day, I don't think about food until meal time, then look at the notebook to see what I'm having. This frees up my energy to focus on other, more important things. Other things can be automated also. I have a morning routine that I follow to get my day started. I make up lists of things that need to be accomplished so that I focus my energy on the important stuff We only have so much energy and it is easy to become distracted or "hacked" so that we aren't using it to get what we really want. Addictions of various sorts are just one of the ways we get hacked. If you find that you have things you want to accomplish but are not achieving those goals, perhaps you are getting hacked. I'm a certified unhackable coach so I can help. Want to learn more? Be sure you take the assessments on the first page.  2020 has been a difficult year for everyone with a pandemic, social unrest, hurricanes and fires but I had something extra on top of all of those. I got cancer. Those are words that generally strike fear into everyone and I'm no exception. I think my attitude was more positive than most but it was certainly not something I wanted to hear. I found it myself, knew what it was and I caught it early. However, it was an aggressive type so after lots of tests, I had surgery and then chemotherapy.
I don't know if you have ever watched someone go thru chemo or gone thru it yourself but it is no picnic. It has a lot of side effects including brain fog. I already have some of that from fibromyalgia so trying to read or learn complex things or to focus on work was beyond me most days. I have completed chemo and am free of cancer but still need a couple of surgeries and a lot of medical monitoring. I am working again and feeling good about that. So, what do I mean when I say I was hacked? Getting hacked means unauthorized access to a computer or system. Well, your brain works like a computer so it can be hacked by outside influences. Mine certainly was but I am back and will be telling you more about getting hacked and how it affects you and your ability to get what you want. |