Thinking back to that time, I was in a verbally abusive relationship with the man who would eventually become my first husband, our financial situation was dismal at best, and I was nowhere near achieving success in my own life.

But I knew it was coming, even though I didn’t know how.

Fast forward to almost 20 years later and I am a certified life coach, I have clients all over the world, I am successful in a career sense (my “real” job), making more money than I thought I would be at this stage of my life, I have skills and knowlege that can make me several hundred dollars (if not more) in any given month if I want to, and I still know there’s so much more to come!

And while I continue to have this belief, I know it will keep on coming!

But what if I’d not been so sure of my future? What if I didn’t beleive I was destined for more? Do you think I would have achieved what I have so far in my life? I’m thinking not!

I’ve had my ups and downs over the years. I have had two marriages end, been involved in a rocky relationship since, and have felt very lost at times. But I never stopped believing that something bigger was coming.

Do you believe there’s more for you out there?

My first impression of this book when I saw the cover, was HUH??? Here we are, supposedly spreading Christmas cheer, and a book like this is supposed to do that?? I think NOT!

Now I must start off by acknowledging the fact that 100% of the publisher’s profits will be donated to various charities, which of course is a good thing.

Another positive, is that according to the book’s website, it contains stories of courage and the will to survive. That’s great!

So why the awful title? Why is the focus on the horror and not on the beauty of human nature???

Unfortunately, it’s often human nature to choose a book titled “Flood Horror & Tragedy” over something like “Amazing courage” or “The Will to Survive”, which I find very disturbing and sad. Why isn’t there more focus in this world on the GOOD things???

It’s because of the title of this book that I refuse to buy it – I don’t want something that portrays such negativity sitting on my bookshelf. Every time I look at it and read the title, I’m feeding myself negative words! Give me something uplifting and positive any day!

What are you feeding your mind on a daily basis? Positive things or negative things??

The reason we tend to do this is because we are getting something out of it! We could be receiving sympathy or attention for the negatives in our life, or it could be just that we’re so used to the negative feelings that we feel “safer” with them than without.

You may not even know why you are clinging to these feelings too. It could all be happening on a subconscious level.

But let me tell you from somebody who’s queen of hanging on to stuff, that life is better – in fact, ALL aspects of your life are better – if you let go of the negative stuff and change your focus on to something positive!

Now here’s the challenge. Sometimes it’s not easy to change your focus when you’re sooooo invested in the negative feelings. So today I’m going to give you a tool to help you to move that focus on to something that will better serve you.

So here goes!

1. Alright! I want you to imagine a butterfly. Your butterfly can be any colour at all, but it must be a colour that makes you feel good. This site is full of butterflies, and they’re all pink I believe. That’s the colour of mine, but you might prefer yellow or blue or purple.
2. Next, imagine that you have your negative feelings all balled up next to you. You can see this ball is cold and grey and it doesn’t look inviting or nice at all.
3. In the distance, think of something or someone that makes your heart sing. It could be your children or other close family members, it could be you living your life purpose, or it could just be the thought of you sitting on a warm tropical island, sipping pina coladas!
4. Imagine your butterfly is flying away from the negative feelings, and fluttering towards your positive things. Follow your butterfly in your mind.
5. As your butterfly flutters around whatever it is you’re imagining, imagine the feelings you feel when you’re around your love ones, while living your life’s purpose or sitting on that island. Really feel those feelings!

Ok! Now how do you feel?? Better? Even a teeny bit better??

If you’re feeling exceptionally bad, you may need to do this exercise several times a day. When you go to the bathroom that would be a perfect time to really use this tool – no point wasting that time on idle thoughts, right?

Haha! It doesn’t really matter where you are, and you really can run through the five steps above really quickly if you need to. The key here is to acknowledge your bad feelings, then turn your back on them and “walk” towards your positive feelings.

I’d love to hear how you go with this exercise!

But on some conscious level you KNOW you’re better than this. You know you deserve a happier and better life. But you just can’t dig yourself out of this pit of despair.

So today’s post is about helping you to feel just a little bit better about yourself.

I’m not sure if I’ve said it here on the blog before, but if you’re told a lie often enough, soon you’ll start to believe it. So let’s start off today by telling yourself some nice “lies”!

So here’s something you can try:

• Write down at least five things you like about yourself. They could be personality traits (you’re a good person, you’re kind to others, you have a great sense of humour, you’re smart, etc) which are preferred, or they could be physical attributes, such as you have nice hair, nice eyes, you’re pretty, you have a nice figure, etc.
• Review this list EVERY day. Stick it by your bed or on your bathroom mirror. Put it somewhere so you see it first thing every day.
• As you read this list every day, even if you don’t believe it right now, pretend that everything on that list is 100% true.
• Add things to your list as you think of them.

This little task will go a long way towards helping to lift your spirits and allowing you to like yourself just a little bit more! xx

I know that you get more out of life than you give (it’s just how it is). I also know how much I absolutely LOVE to give and how wonderful it feels when I hear from a client and she’s gushing about how much better her life is, which is ultimately why I am sending you this email today.

So today I want to make a **very limited** offer to you.

I am offering 5 of my subscribers the opportunity to receive three months of free email coaching from me!

So if you’re struggling in a relationship, if you need help with boosting your career prospects, or you’re really just struggling with your self confidence and self esteem in general, then let me help you for three months – FREE!

If you are one of the lucky 5 chosen, then here’s how it will work:

- I will email you an introduction and our coaching relationship begins.
- We will work closely together, working out where you are now and where you want to be, and I may set specific tasks for you to do to move you closer to your goals.
- Once a week we will review your progress and celebrate your successes!
- At the end of the three months, we will review how far you have come and be thrilled at your progress!
- And finally, we will put together a plan to keep you on track for the future.

Exciting huh?

So if you’re interested in this opportunity to receive free coaching, and you’re prepared to give 100% during the next three months, then enter your details over to the right of this page to receive your free ebook, then reply to the welcome email you receive after doing so, telling me why you like to be chosen as one of the 5 to receive this free coaching offer! You have until October 15 before I choose the lucky winners, so be quick!

Good luck and I look forward to the possibly of working closely with you to help you achieve your goals!

What I have learned over many years now is that you attract what you’re thinking about.  So if you’re thinking negatively, then negative things will continue to happen.

Even though I’m mostly a positive person, I do sometimes fall into the “negative mindset trap”, and I know I need to snap out of it as soon as I can!

So how can you snap out of a negative mindset?

Well, firstly you must understand that it’s difficult to change your mindset instantly, but there are some things you can do to create a more positive mindset, and here they are!

1. Don’t buy in to your negative feelings.  Yep, sometimes it feels “good” to dwell on all of the terrible things going on in your life right now, and you may kind of enjoy feeling sorry for yourself.  But this needs to stop.
2. Although you can’t make bad feelings go away, you CAN replace your bad feelings with good feelings!
3. Get out your gratitude journal and write down all of the things you are grateful for right now – big or small!
4. If you have a coach, give them a call or send them an email asking for help to snap out of this mindset.
5. Do something fun!  Something you love to do!
6. Go for a walk or a run – exercise is great for a happy, healthy mind!
7. Sit down and go through your list of goals.  Begin to write action steps about what you can to do move you closer to your goals, starting right now.  This takes the focus off what you don’t want and puts it back on what you do want.
8. Hang out with positive friends.
9. Pamper yourself.  Paint your toenails, have a long relaxing bath, go and get a massage.  Sometimes we feel down because we’re not loving ourselves.  Pampering is a great way to shower yourself with love!  ;)
10. Listen to inspiring audios, over and over again – until your conscious mind gets it!

Further to point 10, I was having a bit of a hard time a couple of weeks ago, and I really did feel that the world was against me.  Now I knew things felt bad because I was in a negative mindset, and I knew I had to snap out of it quick, if I wanted to start feeling better!

So I grabbed my copy of The Power, and I listened to it over and over again, for 3 days straight!

Before the end of the first day I was feeling happier and I began to feel inspired again!  My outlook on life improved, and eventually, the negative mindset had disappeared!

So listening to audios works beautifully for me, although one of the other ideas on the list may work for you.  If one doesn’t work, try another until you find one that works for you.

To get your copy of  The Power Audio CD, click HERE.

It was during this event that I realised that I KNEW all of the stuff they were talking about – every bit of it!  And a lot of the content is what I talk through with my clients and friends regularly.

But looking back at my life, and in particular the last 12 months, I realised that I was applying only a very small number of the strategies and tools for creating a positive mindset in my daily life, and my results were reflecting that.   Even though I love my life, there are so many areas I would love to improve.

And probably just like you and those around you, while I’ve not been 100% happy with how my life’s been going lately, I really haven’t done too much about it.  Well, not enough to make a huge difference anyway!

Don’t get me wrong – I still practise some things on a daily or weekly basis, but I definitely don’t have a plan in place to really make my life great!  I’m also not keeping myself accountable to make sure I do what I say I’m going to do.

So what I realised last night was that although I am a great coach (well, that’s what they tell me), I can’t for the life of me coach myself!!  I need somebody to become a part of my team to help me to stay motivated to achieve my goals, and to keep me accountable so I do what I say I’m going to do!

So last night I made the decision to get myself a coach.  I really do need somebody there to hold me accountable in particular.  I have the power within myself to do what I want to achieve, but having somebody there who’s backing me up along the way, making sure I complete the tasks we’ve assigned for me to complete and to offer me support and encouragement that I’m on the right track, is exactly what I need.

Without a coach I know I’ll get there anyway, but I want to get there quicker, which is why I want a coach to be there with me.

I am lucky enough to have a close friend who is also a Life Coach, and we’ve agreed to coach each other, focusing initially on some short term goals, and later moving to the bigger goals.

We can only get better, right?  And having my coach right there with me along the way is going to give me the momentum I need to really make my life incredible.

So here’s to everyone all over the world achieving their dreams sooner, rather than later!

I know I’m guilty of it, and I’m yet to meet anybody who has not done this on occasion.

But what is negative self talk really doing to you?  Can it really be affecting the results you’re getting in life?

You bet it is!

Negative self talk is what happens before you find yourself in the “pit of despair”, or those times in your life where you just feel down, so you should consider this type of talk as a red flag.

So why is negative self talk a red flag?

Negative self talk is a red flag because it shows you very clearly where you’re headed.  If you let this self talk continue, you’re starting on a downward spiral until you find yourself feeling just plain “yuck”.

And what damage does this cause?  Well, if you do enough of this, you could find yourself slipping into depression!  If not that serious, it really can affect the results you’re getting in life.  Negative self talk is damaging and does you no good whatsoever!

So what can you do about it?

Well, the first thing you can do is to identify it as it happens.  As soon as you find yourself thinking negatively, stop yourself and see it for what it is – a red flag!

Next, turn these thoughts around, and here’s a few ways in which you can do this:

• If you’re saying something like “I’ll never be able to do that…”, ask yourself why not? Why can’t you do that?  What makes you so special?  Why can somebody else do it?  What’s stopping you being able to do that?
• What if you’re calling yourself every name under the sun?  Turn this around by accepting that you may have made a mistake and that you’re not the very first person in the world to do so, and what gives you the right to say these things?  If your best friend made the same mistake, would you call them all these names?  You’re HUMAN and you are allowed to make mistakes!  So think about what you can learn from what you’ve done – make the mistake worth it!
• Did you recently have a relationship end, or is your relationship on the rocks?  Now is the time to focus on YOU!  You deserve to be loved and cherished, no matter what.  If you made mistakes, learn from them and become a better and more understanding person.  If your partner cannot love you for who you are (mistakes and all), then do they really deserve you?  If you were recently dumped, then all you have lost is somebody who didn’t want you there in the first place.  That’s kind of like “losing” a serious disease! You don’t need disease do you?  You don’t need a relationship with somebody who doesn’t want to be with you either!

These are just a few examples of how you can turn this negative self talk around.

Do what you can to focus on the positive aspects of every sitaution.  Stop when you find your mind doing the negative self talk thing, and turn it into something positive.

Make the choice to look at the bright side of life – it’s a great place to be!

I remember attending events in the past which had me pumped for days, then my enthusiasm would begin to fade, or something would go wrong, and next minute I was back to where I was before the event.  I always wondered how people were able to maintain their undying passion for life for long periods of time, and today I’m going to share with you one of the secrets because now I know many of these secrets!

One of these secrets is about focusing on the positives of events in your everyday life.  Each and every day you will find yourself in situations where you will be faced with challenges.  What most people tend to do is focus on the challenge.

Positive people are more inclined to focus on a possible solution or the positives of this challenge instead.

But what if staying focused on the positives doesn’t come naturally to you?

Well there IS a way…!

Maintaining a positive attitude if it’s not something you normally do, will require a little bit of effort and it’s worth setting daily reminders so that the tool I am about to give you can be most effective.

So here’s what you can do to help you to maintain a positive attitude:

Each and every day, from the minute you get up until the minute your head touches the pillow every night, make a conscious effort to focus on the positives of everything you experience.

Buy yourself a small notebook and carry it with you.  Whenever you experience something positive, write it down.

Also, whenever you encounter a negative event, think about the positives of that event.  For example, let’s say you’re in a situation like I am right now where your house is taking FOREVER to sell.  The positives for me are that it is extremely hot here in Australia right now and this house has a pool, so if my house had sold before now, I wouldn’t have had the relaxing afternoon in the pool today!  My future house will unfortunately not have a pool, so this is a huge positive, based on the fact that we’re melting down here!!  :)

That’s just one example of a positive spin you can put on what would normally be perceived to be a bad situation, and sometimes you will need to be a bit creative, but with practise, ideas will begin to come to you easily.

Go and grab your notebook and start taking notice of the good things in life today!

Learning a new skill will bring about a sense of achievement, and will boost your confidence too.

Depending on what you would like to learn, you can either sign up for a class, or you could purchase a book on the topic and learn that way.

It doesn’t matter how simple or difficult the skill may be – once you’ve mastered the skill you will feel a little bit better about yourself!