Nicola Walker Coaching

Reignite Your Joy, Align with Your Deepest Desires

presence

Making Peace with Now, Even When What You REALLY Want is Different

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Stepping stones across stream“You don’t have to have an ideal life, which appears to be the pinnacle of perfection. You are also not a failure if you don’t yet have the life you really want. You just want to be creating the life you really want.”

If you are focusing on what you really want, it stands to reason that you don’t have it now. So why pin yourself to the wall with an imaginary knife, twisting it round saying, “How could you have landed up in a marriage where you still feel lonely?”, “How could you have taken so long to be doing work that’s deeply fulfilling?”, “How could you be once again starting over, trying to find your way?” or “How could you still not be doing what you really want to be doing?”

Here are 3 enriching practices to make peace with your current reality, while creating what you really want: [Read more…] about Making Peace with Now, Even When What You REALLY Want is Different

How to Rediscover Life’s Magic – Part One: How Present Are You?

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In my last post, What Happened to Life’s Magic?, I wrote about how I suddenly lost my sense of magic in life. Everything became very flat, and to my alarm, simple things that used to give me pleasure didn’t seem to do so anymore. Fortunately, I turned to my inner wisdom for help. The first thing that I was directed to focus on was my attention. Where was it?!

I realized that my attention was focused on my worries and concerns. The challenges and problem solving I was facing at the time led me to focus more on my concerns than simply being present in the here and now. My energy was caught up in my head, with my thoughts, instead of being present throughout my body.

It may sound like a subtle distinction because we all face challenges that we need to deal with. But all you need to do is set aside time to deal with whatever’s bothering you, then let go of it and return to enjoying the present moment.

Here are a few questions you can ask yourself just to see if you do let go of your challenges:

How much time do you spend feeling flat and uninspired?

Are you someone who often replays past events, cringing because of something you said, or fretting about something someone said to you?

Do you sometimes find yourself impatiently counting the days, months or years until a certain longed for event happens?

When you focus more on the future than the present, or more on the past than the present, you have a strong sign that you need to put your attention on finding life’s magic again. Now.

Magic happens in the present, and you need to be present to enjoy it.

Here are three steps you can take to step fully into the present:

1.         Slow down and take some deep breaths.

2.         Feel your feet on the ground and feel the ground beneath your feet for at least a minute.

3.         Move your awareness into your body, your legs, your pelvis, your tummy, your chest, your shoulders, your neck, your head and your back and your arms and hands.

Notice how being present feels different to how you were feeling before you took this three steps.

When you slow down, you feed your soul.

You create your future from what you think and do in the present. So the present moment is truly sacred. To experience true inner happiness, you need to be present and to embrace the present.

In my blog post, next Tuesday, I’ll talk more about feeding your soul.

How To Be With Emotions

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Emotions are to be embraced. Why? Your emotions offer you invitations to live more deeply and fully. Emotions can arise because it’s time to let go of something – a limiting belief, a habit or pattern, a situation, a perception or attitude. If you get lost in the emotion, then you don’t receive its message, until the next time you get another opportunity. You become stronger and more authentic when you face your emotions with wisdom and awareness. Maybe the emotion has a message for you. Find out what it is.

It’s easy to resist emotions as they are uncomfortable and often arise just when you don’t want them to — the start of a weekend when you want to relax and have a good time, while you’re at work or with someone you want to impress. The more you try to resist the emotion, the more embedded it becomes. It’s the law of attraction in reverse – when you focus on something you don’t want, the more it happens.

So if resisting emotions keeps you in an emotional hotbed, the easiest escape is to embrace the emotion. Look the tiger in the face. Be 100% present with yourself while you feel what you feel. Presence is actually very enjoyable, because you let go of the tension of resistance and judgment. There’s nowhere else for you to be except in the present moment, being with what is. Presence is about being with an emotion with awareness as opposed to losing yourself in the emotion.

Here are five steps to being with any uncomfortable emotion:

1. Breathe deeply and fully.

2. Become aware of the sensations of the emotion in your body – such as tightness in the stomach, aching in your heart or your ribs, tension in the throat.

3. Become aware of any sensation that is not part of the emotion – focus on both your body and the energetic field all around you. You may start to notice a peaceful sensation or part of your energy that’s not caught up in the emotion.

4. Become aware of your thoughts. Breathe as you listen. Make room for your wisdom. Notice what thoughts start to lose their grip on you. What thoughts appear like imposters, with messages that aren’t really true?

5. Be willing to let go of any thought that doesn’t really serve you. Ask your inner wisdom to guide and help you. Listen to your inner guidance and follow what it tells you.

Emotions are an integral part of life, so it’s wonderful to know how to be with them, so you can receive and grow through their gifts. Knowing how to be with emotions is a huge key to inner happiness and creating positive changes in your life.

Let me know how helpful this information is to you by entering your comment in the comment box.