Tuesday 24 September 2013

Are You Reading The Signs?

It occurred to me this week, as I was driving, that many of the surprises of the road had been removed for me. I guess that's a good thing. It does allow me more time to look around at the scenery which I love, and to be ready for the real surprises. 

My GPS tells me where I am headed and what roads to be on to get me to where I am going. The road signs tell me exactly what to do or to expect along the way. It is meant to be for safety sake and I get that. It works there. But what if your life's road was that well laid out for you???



Well, actually it kind of is. You just have to learn to read your own unique (and sometimes invisible) road signs, instead of relying on what has been posted for you by someone else. 

On the road there are signs that tell you when to stop, slow down, turn left, bend to the right, or to not enter. In a similar
fashion, you have your own inner guidance system working to keep you safely moving forward in your life. You were given this gift when you were given your emotional side. Emotions really are there to guide you. To keep you safe. To give you that knot in your stomach that tells you to stop, to slow down, to change direction completely or to bend to the left and then come back right. They also give you that loving rush when the road ahead is clear and you can comfortably let your momentum build and pick up speed. 

Road signs are universal to all of us drivers and are meant to give us each the same safety and directional guidance as we travel.

The signs on YOUR road are your signs and are unique to you. They may not even be visible to another but that's because its YOUR life,YOUR Road. What feels good to me may not feel good to you. And that's OK. That's how you know that what I am doing may be great for me but what you should be choosing to do for you may be very different. You have to read and follow your signs.


When we are children we follow our signs with ease. We don't think about what others are doing or what another thinks we should be doing. We simply do what feels good.  As we grow up we learn to think about others and are introduced to the rules of adulthood. That's when many of us learn to ignore our internal road signs and instead to look to others for direction. It often isn't until we are feeling lost or confused in our lives that we go back to re-learn our own personal systems. 

When you are feeling good while making decisions you can be assured that your "road crew" is telling you that you are on an open road and safely headed towards a goal or destination as you have set it in your GPS. Sometimes you will slow down and look at the options that are being laid out in front of you. If you follow your gut you will safely turn left, bend right, follow the detour and stay on course. 

When you are out driving and you run into a bend in the road or a detour or a dead end street do you stop and just sit there?? Do you give up and call that place your new and final destination?? No, you follow the signs. You back up, turn around and find a new way. The same thing is important to remember in the rest of your life too. 

Like learning the rules of the road, learning to read your emotions may take a little practise. It took you some time and some practise to learn to drive and you gave yourself that because the end result was worth it. Give yourself some time to practise this way of living too. The end result is worth it. I promise.


Your turn.  As always I would love for you to share your thoughts and or experiences. Sharing helps each of us to connect, to grow and to inspire one and other.  What kind of signs do you get from yourself that help you to choose a new direction?? How did you go about learning to trust those unwritten signs?? Please feel invited to comment here or over on Facebook, and then to share this (or any) post. What resonates with you will be what is most likely to also be enjoyed by the people in your circles.  

Safe driving my friend. 

Tuesday 17 September 2013

Your Good Stuff is There, Hiding in The Details


I am not sure if its the modesty of the Canadian or the young girl part of me that feeds that quiet and wistful feeling that I used to get while watching others (to be real, sometimes I still do get that "I wish I had ____", but in the last few years I have really begun to truly love my life so I wish to be someone else a whole lot less often these days). Or if it is because I am like so many in my generation who are simply afraid of so many things that we aren't as quick to be our real selves as we would like to be. 

This generation seems to be afraid of almost everything. And not in an "afraid of the dark" sort of way but more of a "damned if I do damned if I don't" sort of way. We are afraid of failure and also of success. Afraid of being alone and of being in a relationship. Afraid of staying in one place and of change. Afraid to try, and afraid of not doing. Afraid of blending in yet afraid of standing out. Without being grounded in any way, or sure of where you are right now, moving forward feels like the shaky steps of a child. Shaky to stand still and shaky to step forward. Tough one. 

Too afraid to talk about it (afraid to be the only one who doesn't have it all figured out and equally afraid to be a part of a whole generation that doesn't have it all figured out) many of us find ourselves "faking it".  And where does that take us....????  To a place where we are afraid that someone might find out that our confidence is more smoke and mirrors than anything else. That we aren't who they think that we are.  And so we continue to be actors in the Play that is our lives. 

So now that you're here, acting in this leading role, how do you find that piece of your character that is real??  I say, start small. There is no reason to let this feel so big and over powering. Small is where it is at.  The magic and the miracles are hiding in plain sight. You will find them in the details. You just have to take a moment to look and you will find them. I promise. (There are not many things that I will promise to an open audience but I promise, that if you look in the details, you will find at least 1 something awesome hiding right there is plain sight) 

Your starting place....???  Keep that part simple too. Start with what you take for granted. 

Here is one of those email poems that has maybe made its way to your inbox too. I don't always even open these types of notes, but this time, do yourself a favour and read it to the end. 


Today, upon a bus, I saw a very beautiful woman and wished I were as beautiful.
When suddenly she rose to  leave, I saw her hobble down the aisle.
She had one leg and used a  crutch. But as she passed, she passed a smile.
Please forgive me  when I whine. I have two legs; the world is mine.

I stopped to  buy some candy. The lad who sold it had such charm.
I talked with  him, he seemed so glad. If I were late, it'd do no harm.
And as I  left, he said to me, "I thank you, you've been so kind.
It's nice  to talk with folks like you. You see," he said, "I'm blind."
Please  forgive me when I whine. I have two eyes; the world is  mine.

Later while walking down the street, I saw a child I  knew.
He stood and watched the others play, but he did not know  what to do.
I stopped a moment and then I said, "Why don't you join  them, Dear?"
He looked ahead without a word. I forgot, he couldn't  hear.
Please forgive me when I whine. I have two ears; the world is  mine.

With feet to take me where I'd go. With eyes to see the  sunset's glow.
With ears to hear what I'd  know.
Oh, God, forgive me when I whine. I've been blessed indeed, the world is mine.


Could you see yourself as the poet on the bus, buying candy or talking to the child, taking your blessings for granted??  It's not uncommon for many of us to look at someone else and wish we had what they have, when really we have no idea what package we just wished for. Often it's because we only see the part of that actor's Play that they allow us to see. Likewise, I am sure that though perhaps unbeknownst to you, there are people out there who have wished to be you.

To me that doesn't feel like a very productive use of anyone's creative and magnetic energies. 


Instead I invite you to look at what is filling your glass even if it's just to half full. What is it that you have got going on that rocks?? What do you have figured out for real??  What do you take for granted??  Start there. Say a Thank You for it. Because there is someone out there wishing that they had that very thing. 


You really have been blessed with things worthy of your attention. And by giving your attention to those good things your life begins to fill with more and more things that feel as good. That part isn't magic, its the way the Universal Laws work. And because Fear and Love live in the same space within us each, if you are filling that space with love, there is no room for fear. That my friend, is when you will find yourself no longer acting but confidently living as the real you, and making real and meaningful wishes.


Your turn.

Do you sometimes catch yourself looking at someone else and wishing to trade them spaces??  

When you look at your details, what is 1 blessing that you can find that is worthy of your attention??

I'd love to hear what you think. Maybe it's your comment that will be what inspires another to look at their own details. Use the comments section below or come join us over on Facebook.

Thursday 12 September 2013

Let Me Introduce to You.....


As written by Martine Metaxa - Law of Attraction Life Coach

Kate Lindsay, Life Coach – the 68 Second Expert

Kate Lindsay Life CoachKate, a nature lover and country girl at heart, grew up in Southern Ontario, Canada. She definitely had the taste for travelling, but after 10 years in Toronto and a brief spell in Iowa, USA, she is now back living in a country environment where she has always been happy.
As most young women of her time, on the quest for finding happiness and meaning in life, has had her fair share of life experiences and disappointments, been in and out of love and gone through heart ache of breakups.
I met Kate through a closed Facebook group for the Quantum Success Coaching Academy™ where we are/were both students. She is 6 months ahead of me and graduated earlier this summer. I remember her excitement and pride in her achievement.
In fact it was that vitality, energy and excitement that I saw and felt in Kate that gave me the idea for this Life Coaches Interview Series. Here was yet another “ordinary” person who had managed to turn their lives around just by following a training course! Sounds too good to be true, but it is.
Kate was more than happy and eager to share her story with me and she fully understands that the lessons, hardships and even depression she has experienced along the way were to give her that background and wisdom needed to help others.
In 2012, she was working in a truck plant. Unfulfilled and thinking of going back to school for training, she was accepted into a college program but she was not happy about it and was dragging her heals accepting the position. A nasty ear infection kept her at home for a few days. With time on hand she went through her bookmarks and stumbled upon Christy Whitman’s QSCA Life Coach Certification course site.
Very excited, she watched the Life Coach training online free videos and realized that she already possessed several coaching skills. What she was missing were the deeper and inner understanding of mastering specific coaching techniques and processes.
She then felt like a path was unfolding right there in front of her and she understood, from the little she knew about how to use the Law of Attraction, that becoming a life Coach was her passion and purpose. There had to be a reason or message for her in finding the training and Coaching Academy.
Kate told me how she had to juggle her time when she started her Life Coaching Certification with Christy Whitman’s Coaching Academy in May (2012) as she was working a 6 day week. As monotonous and tiring as her job was on the assembly line, whilst other colleagues were listening to rap or rock ‘n roll, she listened to class lesson recordings and particularly to the abrahamhicks audios while a truck was passing in front of her every 60 seconds.
This helped her practice one of the many coaching techniques taught at the (QSCA), a specific Law of Attraction one, the 68 seconds Process. The idea behind it is that if you focus on a subject for 68 seconds the vibration is powerful enough to begin manifestation of that desire. She had many opportunities to practice. I now call Kate the 68 Second Expert!
As she progressed through the five modules of the QSCA lessons, she started understanding the great value of this coaching training. She liked the fact that it was presented in such a way that even someone unfamiliar about how to use the Law of Attraction could work right alongside with an experienced Life Coach who had a much greater understanding of the way the Law of Attraction works.
She felt as though she was going through an exciting growth experience and it was incredibly helpful to have the classes set up the way they were. It just fitted in nicely to what she already had going on.
She didn’t wait to quit her job to start coaching people. She knew that she needed 70 coaching hours of recorded sessions with clients using specific coaching techniques and processes for her coaching qualification with the QSCA. So, as early as October 2012 she had started making the time to coach people and build up her coaching practice.
This was just as well, because in March 2013, she was laid off from her job. This had to be the Law of Attraction in Action working to the Full! Perfect timing all round. The message from the universe was crystal clear telling her to “go fly little bird, go fly!”
Her course was finishing in May, so she now had the time to concentrate on her studies and complete her Life Coaching Certification course at Christy’s Whitman Coaching Academy by early summer. What was seen by the other workers as a very bad time, she saw this as the opportunity it was.
A new talent that Kate discovered, or unleashed was writing. I’ve been following Kate’s inspiring Blog – “Get to the Good”. She admits that she wasn’t even an English major, but when she finds something that resonates with her, she loves telling her story from her personal point of view about the way everything has come together for her. She writes like she is speaking to you. Reading her posts is like you’re sat having a coffee with her overlooking her lake!
Kate had been diagnosed as “clinically depressed” for several years, and is comfortable about sharing that with others. She knows what it is like to be lost and without a clear view in life. With conscious work on her part she has overcome the dark times and has changed her old habits and patterns of thought. A quote I like from her blog is “there really are so many ways in which we can root through all of the grey and get to the good”
In just 3 years this young lady has managed to change her life in so many wonderful ways. From being homeless and having to move back to her parent’s basement, an ended long term relationship, no job, she now finds herself living in the countryside she so loves, beside a lake, in a strong relationship with a wonderful man, and has been through an amazing transformational journey.
“I’m so blessed because I changed my habit of thought, my mindset.  A powerful thing. I see that QSCA Coaching Academy really helped develop that in me.”
“I said to my family when I started the QSCA that even if these lessons do not create life coach job opportunities, what they’re doing for my life already will suffice. It’s so worthwhile; it’s just the best thing ever.”
Kate is now working full time as a certified QSCA Law of Attraction Life Coach and as she says about her Discovery Session “the first 40 minutes are on me!” Apart from building her new website and blogging, she is developing several coaching programs and hopes to have ready in the fall a 3 week online home study coaching program for people to work at their own pace and see how coaching can work for the before committing to a one to one coaching relationship.
You also find Kate on Facebook at her page: Kate Lindsay – Life Coach
Kate’s Website: www.katelindsay.ca
Make sure to watch the other Life Coach Interviews too!
- See more at: http://martinemetaxa.com/becoming-a-life-coach-and-certifed#sthash.fyhw4B9h.u6pPtbOC.dpuf


Tuesday 10 September 2013

The Funny Thing About Time

It's funny how time changes things, heals all wounds. I guess it's not really time that does any of that but it's what WE do in that time to alter our perceptions that does the changing of things.

It was two and a half years ago now that my world fell a apart.  Not for the first time. I have spoken of this before and won't bore you with details but the Cole's notes of it is this.... I found myself, very suddenly, single & broken hearted and without a home or a job. I had given up my apartment, sold or given away all of my household "things" furniture, dishes etc., quit my job and followed a path that I thought, at the time, was exactly right (kinda sorta exactly right anyway - but that part I'll come back to another day).  

What's a girl to do??  Say a prayer of gratitude for having been born into the family that I was that's what.  I went home. At age 32, after having lived 10+ years on my own in the big city, I moved back home.  I was miserable about it and determined that it would be short term.  I didn't want to put a dresser in the room because there was no need for me to unpack more than the utter essentials.  My friends were in Toronto and I was figuring out how I could get myself back there ASAP. 

But I am not going back. 

In the past two years I have grown and changed in ways that then, I had no way of even imaging. My core desires have not changed but the details sure have.  What I had wanted then was to go back to all that was familiar. That's not a bad thing. I still see that as quite logical and I understand my wanting that.  After all in a time of need, having your friends too far away for an impromptu Ben & Jerry's date or a tall "Jules Cobb Styling" glass of wine made an already tough time feel lonely too. I was afraid of starting from scratch.

I tried and tried and tried to see having nothing and no ties as a new beginning. I wanted to feel that having no ties to any city or any job meant that I was free to be or do or become anything. I wanted to feel that way but I was s-l-o-w to get there. I had a lot of crappy beliefs about myself that were standing in the way of feeling excited. I was in my 30's after all geesh. I was supposed to have so many of these details already figured out. I should have a career and an "independent from my parents" home. I should be in a great relationship and be at least talking marriage and babies. I was the furthest from any of those things that a girl can be. But slow and steady prevailed again. 

It took real effort to learn to be OK with where I was. But I did it. It seemed like a bit of a cop out to be taking it "one day at a time" but that's what worked for me.  It was tough work letting go of what I thought I had wanted and figuring out what it is that I really DO want. But I did that too. That part is on-going and is turning out to be a whole lot of dreamy fun.

This week, I collected the last few things from that bedroom in my parents house. And as I finished vacuuming the floor putting it back as I had found it 2+ years ago I felt a huge rush of emotion run through me. So huge that I had to just sit for a min and just stare. I was sad to be leaving this room. I had been sad to come to it and now I was sad to be leaving it. What had once felt so uncomfortable about this space had transformed into something so different and I hadn't even really taken notice. That space helped me to heal my wounds and was now sending me back out into the world.  

Over time my perceptions of not only myself but of the big scary world out there have changed. My broken heart has healed and everything looks different. I am seeing through these same eyes but time has helped me to refocus them. 



"The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes 
but in having new eyes." ~ Marcel Proust



It's so interesting to me to notice how the very same room that I walked into, with the very same furniture and the very same not-my-style bedding could now look so very different to me than it did when I first came home. 






What do you look at now and see so differently than you did once before?? How have your perceptions changed over time and altered the ways in which you feel about a space, a situation or another person??  Did you realize right away that nothing outside of yourself had really changed?? Are you able to see how your personal perception of a thing, space, situation or person is a powerful reflection of what you have going on inside?? Do you understand that with a little effort and some time you can change that perception and feel whatever way you want to feel about anything??  





I would, as always, be both happy and grateful to have you share your thoughts and experiences either here in the comment below or over on my Facebook page. I invite you to connect and inspire or be inspired by each other.  It's wonderful to be independent and able to do it on your own, but it's even better to know that you don't have to. 

With loving light and a warm smile,
Kate


Tuesday 3 September 2013

12 Lessons Worth Learning


It's time to go back to school, and with the end of a summer holiday season I can't help but look back on the fun of the last few months (only the good stuff deserves any of my focused attention)  I can't believe how quickly the calendar has flipped to September.  The old adage about time flying when you're having fun rings true for me today especially.  

I had a totally different idea to share with you today but there has been a last minute change of plans as it's these thoughts that seem to be begging to be re-shared.  

A few months ago I shared a list of 12 life lessons that I had learned while hanging out with a 4 year old. These same ideas popped up a number of times over the past weekend as I was blessed to spend time with kids who were quite a bit older than 4 years. These pre-teen and teenage kids seem to have one foot planted firmly in their childhood while with the other foot, they are testing the waters of the grown up world.

It was interesting to me to watch them embrace, at some moments, many of the traits and habits they formed in their younger years, while at the very same time becoming more reserved and more aware of those who were watching or perhaps passing judgement now. As an observing adult who is consciously embracing my 4 year old habits whenever I can, it felt important to me to nurture both the kid and the grown up in them (as I do in myself). I kept thinking how great it would be if at 35 they didn't have to go back and try to find their lost younger self. 

Children, as "new" and "unknowing" as they seem, really have figured a lot of it out. We are born knowing our Source connection. And as children we haven't had time yet to learn the new behaviours that will grow us up. For instance...



A child's connection to Source is pure and unaltered by experience. As an adult I have learned so many things that make many of the behaviours of a 4 year old inappropriate in my day to day. I am not suggesting that we all act as children. But what I am suggesting is that the simplicity of the 4 year old be something we keep close and not bury too deep in our complicated adult worlds.  

Spend some time with your 4 year old self and rediscover the connection to Source that was once so pure. Your connection isn't and never will be gone, but it may be hidden under some learned behaviours.

Is there a way that you can have it all? Can the adult you and the 4 year old you share your life or parts of it? What do you think? How do you find the balance? I'd love for you to share your thoughts and ideas either here in the comments section or over on my Facebook page.