Improbable Wonders

Stronger than a resolution, much more fun that setting goals! Make a list of what you would like to welcome onto your life in the coming New Year.

Write the title "I Welcome."  Let your imagination soar and see what happens.

Sharing all or part (if there's stuff you want to keep private) of your list gives it a boost and inspires others. I'm doing mine on New Year's Eve and will share it here. I'd love to see yours. Just click  "comments" below and we can all share your visions

Oh, and do not be reasonable.  No need for that!


Cheering you on to improbable wonders!
Love,
Mandy

How You See Me Isn't Real

I lived in Cordoba, Spain in my early twenties. In an apartment in an ugly new post civil war building, shared by a couple with one son to the right of the front door and a family with five children to the left. Mine was a room in the middle with one window that looked into a tiny kitchen I shared with the right side family.

The big family on the left often invited me sit around the table with them in the evening. The tablecloth was a heavy woven fabric, hanging long down the sides. Underneath the table a brazier with coals rested in a round cutout frame between the legs. When we covered our laps with our share of the table cloth, the coals and companionship kept us warm.

They were very kind. I can't remember the names of the parents. The children were Maria, Matilde, Aulogia, Miguel and Jose. Everyone worked at something useful but me. The girls knitted or unraveled old sweaters to re-knit the wool. The boys tinkered with small motors, or clocks to repair.

I began to learn Spanish, sharing the gleeful feeling of triumph when I finally got a simple joke.

As Easter approached, Matilde took it upon herself to teach me about Jesus, because, as she told me, she knew that as a Protestant, I believed in rocks and rivers and things like that instead of God like they did. I don't know what astounded me more. Their amazing tolerance in welcoming a rock-and-rivers-believer to their table or the idea of rocks and river worship.

In my ridiculously limited Spanish vocabulary I explained that Protestants believed in Christ too. Her eyes widened as I offered up what I remembered as a long-lapsed Episcopalian. Yo creo en Dios, el padre, y Jesus Cristo, su unico hijo.

How did I learn that, she wondered. In church, I explained. Where had she learned the rock and rivers bit? In church too, from the priests.

I wish everyone could be a stranger in a strange land at least once. I learned a lot about myself in Cordoba and a lot about Franco's Spain. One treasured lesson is that I am not what you think I am and you are not what I think you are.  We may never fully understand another human being but some times kindness shared around a table can bring us a lot closer.

As the Facebook and Twitter battles rage over our 2016 US election and many of us have taken to the streets to voice dismay, I hope we will find new ways to come together and share our ideas. Because I know I am not who you think I am. And you are not who I think you are. We're all just trying to find our way, doing the best we can with what we know and what we believe. And that can change in an instant of recognition.

Following this idea inward, I see that my ideas of my self are just that too, just ideas and their stronger cousins, beliefs. Many of my ideas of my self have been limiting and false. Each time I broke out from one limiting belief, or a bunch of them, I entered a larger playing field.

If someone had told me when I was in highschool that I would be a published author. Or a coach with successful, even famous, clients. Or live in Southern California, it would have sounded as wild as believing in rocks and rivers.

If you would like an opportunity to take a journey outward to The Netherlands and a journey inward to your self, I would love to have you join us for the Breakout Coach Training in The Netherlands next May. Spending four days with people who share a common cause (encouraging ourselves and each other to discover hidden limits and breakout to new adventures) is a remarkable experience. If you are even the least bit tempted, please check out the details. There's a big early registration discount until December 1, so go see now!

https://mandyevans.com/breakout-training/ 

Though you surely  don't have to be a coach to come, it will be an opportunity to spend time with some really good ones.

Cheering you on to happy new adventures,
Mandy

Law of Attraction Moves in Mysterious Ways

I'm not much of a ladies who lunch sort, but it's a worthy cause, so I sign up and drag myself out to the Palm Springs Writers Guild (PSWG) benefit with some thriller author -- not my genre but I think I may meet someone interesting. 

I go in to the Omni Ballroom in Rancho Mirage, check tables for place-names, don't see anything. I look around for a table with a good view of the dias and some interesting looking people. I pick table #2 and ask if it's ok to join them. We chat. I forget the name of the guy to my left so I ask again. It's Kyle. I vow to remember it. The talk turns to where people are from. Kyle is from N. Dakota. I ask what brings him here. He's the speaker. OOPS! 

Then the organizer lady comes to tell me I'm at the wrong table. This one is for special people, one of whom, according to her, I am not. I'm supposed to be at table 11. 

Warding off mortification I gather up my stuff and head for table 11. People are already sitting in each and every place there. This is not my idea of fun. I contemplate just departing but opt for sharing my predicament with the organizing lady. Since there are 4 empty seats at the special people's table, I suggest it might be ok for me to return. After I stand around for a wee eternity she agrees. 

I return for a wonderful time with Kyle Mills who has taken over writing a mega-popular series of books by the deceased bestselling author, Vince Flynn. 

You just never know who you're going to meet and how. But I note the law of attraction idea and that I set out to meet someone interesting. Now I'm going to read "Order to Kill" a Mitch Rapp Novel by Kyle Mills.  

That Law of Attraction sure works in mysterious ways.

Question Your Limits:Two Breakout Stories

Most likely all you need to thrive and be happy is inside you already. But over time we limit our own potential. How can you set it free? Here are two examples.

You can never be too successful to question your own self imposed limits. A successful coach came for an afternoon of Breakout Coaching. How successful? Try multi-gold-medal winning olympic coach!

Actually, he sort of got dragged here. The person who dragged him was upset because he did not spend enough time with her. Every time I asked him a question, she answered, until I asked her if she could let this be his time, especially since she thought it was his problem.

The man was stressed to the max, working frantically to keep a growing throng of people happy. He dreaded disappointing anyone. He believed if someone was disappointed in him it meant he had let them down. He also believed if he let people down he was a failure.

We pondered these questions. Do any of them apply to you?

• Do you control what others expect of you?
• Do you believe it's up to you whether someone else is disappointed in you?
• What are you concerned would happen if you still wanted to do your very best, but felt OK if someone else was disappointed?
• If they understood how hard you try could they feel better?
• If you love two people and one wants to be alone with you at the beach and the other wants to be alone with you in the mountains are you a failure if you cannot do both?

I watched him grow bewildered and then relax into a bigger space with more room to breathe. Then I had a question for his friend.

Can you cut him some slack. With total good will and tears in her eyes, she answered a wholehearted, yes. They left happy, with him grateful for the dragging.

What if you can't even read? One of the greatest adventures in my life has been teaching 3 adults how to read. Each one of them believed they were stupid. All three of them were very bright. Can you imagine going through life like that?

We rode emotional roller coasters together as we broke in to literacy. Richard was my last reader -- in his late 60's, in ill health, with memory problems. But he did it!

I'll be you can't guess one of the major challenges Richard encountered. As he began to really read, infomation jumped out at him from everywhere. A stroll down the aisle at the supermarket almost did him in with overload from the labels on the shelves. They used to be just colors, now they bombarded him with words, words, words!

Richard died about a year after we worked together. His obituary mentioned that he had recently learned to read.

I hope these stories demonstrate how unique each of us is. And one thing we all share in common, each and everyone of us lives within limits we hold in place ourselves. We usually don't know what they are or that we are doing it, though.

That is why I hope you will come to the Breakout Coach Training in the Netherlands in May. You may have to break out from some limits to pull it off, bu in four days you can learn the basics of Breakout Coaching. What you do with it, is up to you! Here's the link with all the details.

https://mandyevans.com/breakout-training/

Let's stage a breakout together!

Love,
Mandy

Breakout Coaching for You

Most people have never heard of it, but for me it's a way of life now. I call it Breakout Coaching. You can use it to break out from limits, especially limiting beliefs and perceptions that block your happiness and your success.

It's always an inside job, a breakout like this. The escape tools are awareness, acceptance, desire and questions. When you learn how to question your limits, you can escape from them into freedom.

What kinds of issues? How about marriage and death?  When to begin? Now.

Never too soon. A little girl grew anxious about an upcoming wedding where she was going to be the flower girl. My son, Barnaby and her mom, Sheri decided to get married after 15 happy years together, 6 of them with my granddaughter, Emery.

As I sat with her on the day before the big event I asked if she was worried about the wedding-- because she sure seemed worried to me. She said no, but I didn't believe her.

A while later, I ventured, are you more excited about the wedding or more worried? More worried, she said.

When kids worry, parents reassure them. Unless they delve into the inner source of the feelings, the reassurance will not match the fears though. Sheri and Barnaby had already discovered she does not like kissing. They assured her there would be minimal kissing involved, just like the goodbye and hello kisses they shared every morning and evening. But there was more holding that little girl in worry jail.

Here are some of the questions I asked. She answered no to all of them.

• Have you ever been to a wedding before?
• Do you know what happens at a wedding? 
• Do you know what a flower girl does?

YouTube to the breakout rescue. We spent a happy morning watching videos like 17 Kids Who Are So Done with Weddings. That one ends with a kid whacking the groom in the head as he reaches under the wedding gown to remove the garter. I really had some explaining to to -- including, what's a garter?

The next evening she danced and pranced through the celebrations and dropped those rose petals like a pro.

Never too late. When I lived in Rosendale, NY, an article about me appeared in the New Paltz paper. The headline said ...Offers New Hope for Healing. A few days later a long letter came from an elderly lady. She asked if I could help her to walk again.

I answered that walking was not my specialty, but I'd be glad to visit her if she liked. And so began weekly visits with Mabel, a demanding, cantankerous old woman. who lived in near isolation, supported with endless patience by a nun from the local Catholic church who did her shopping. She always began with a litany of complaints. When I listened (with acceptance) she began to recall happy adventures as a pretty young woman in Brooklyn.

Mable could walk with a cane, just not handle long distances -- and not about to sit in a wheelchair. She was always up and dressed with make-up on when I arrived until one day when she didn't answer my knock at the door. When I opened it and called out she answered weakly, telling me to come to her room. I found her in bed with a large bruise on the side of her face.

She told me she had fallen and been unable to get up until her sister of mercy arrived hours later. She said she was tired.

I asked if she would like me to lie down with her while she rested and she said yes. We lay there spooning with my arm round her for a while. She told me she was scared. I asked her what she was scared of. Dying alone she said.

Then I asked (the usually unthinkable) what about dying alone scares you? Mable lay quietly for a few minutes.  Then she said, Oh, I suppose it would be alright. Then she got up and asked if I'd like some tea!

Just so you know, months later she lay in a coma in Benedictine Hospital in Kingston.The nun who had cared for her so long, a brother from the church and I took turns holding her hand until she slipped peacefully away.

These days I hear people talk about the reasons for their fear and anger, the places they are stuck in their lives. They blame circumstances and events, people and things; The government ranks high among culprits. Instead of watching this endless struggle to rearrange these deck chairs on the Titanic of their lives, I wish I could give everyone these precious keys to freedom that have served me and my students so well.

Here's what I've got:
A website full of articles and free audio and video material
https://mandyevans.com

Real How-To Books in paperback or digital editions:
Travelling Free How to Recover from the Past by Changing Your Beliefs

http://amzn.com/B002ACPNXK

Emotional Options: A Handbook for Happiness

http://amzn.com/B008RBUC4S

Breakout Training Coach Training in the Netherlands in May. If you want to learn how to use these tools yourself, there are still spaces available. Join us for a breakout by the sea.
https://mandyevans.com/breakout-training/

Coming soon Never too Successful and What if You Can't Even Read?

Cheering you on to happiness and success beyond limits!

Love,
Mandy

Failure to Yield

In the spring of 1963 I worked at the Pinehurst Playhouse in North Carolina. Every week, on strike night, we took down the old set and put up the new one for the next show. One of my jobs was to make food for the crew to get them through the weary cold hours.

On my way to the Piggly Wiggly for ingredients to make a big batch of chili I noticed an elderly black man walking toward me on the sidewalk. There was a wall on my left and to the right a very steep step down into the street. Though the walk was narrow there was room for us to pass. I moved close to the wall to give him room. He was carrying bundles. As he grew near, he lowered his eyes and, with difficulty, stepped down on to the street. Reflexively, I blurted, out "Oh, no, you don't have do that!"

He froze and I saw I was just making things worse. I quietly said "I'm sorry." I walked on, but the incident stayed with me. I think about him from time to time. The life he led. The things he experienced in a time when looking a white woman in the eyes was a dangerous thing in North Carolina and failure to yield could be fatal.

When my homeland elected Barack  Obama president, I breathed a sigh and thought we were finally past those awful times. Haven't we seen too many black men killed for failure to yield? Or worse, perceived failure to yield!

As I think about the distorted, limiting beliefs and view of reality that feed racism and notions of white supremacy, I want to sweep them clean. So here is one pass of the broom. Isn't it time for black men in America to have the same right of way as everyone else? What do you think?

Breakout Training in The Netherlands with Mandy Evans

An experiential training to breakout from (usually hidden) limits that block happiness and success. I cannot imagine anything that would add more value to your life and career.

Dates: May 18 thru 21
Tuition for Dutch participants is €675 (plus tax)
Tuition for International participants is $775
Early Registration discount is €575 and $675 until December 1

Who should come? Everyone coaches someone, especially yourself!

• Experienced and new coaches 
• Mentors and managers
• Counselors  
• Teachers  
• Parents  
• Therapists  
• People in the healing professions 
• Students of personal growth and human potential  

You can learn the basics of Breakout Coaching in 4 days. The experience will last forever. When you are clear and happy you make different choices that lead down remarkably different paths from the ones you pick when you are afraid or caught in a web of life-extinguishing beliefs. Open doors you did not know you closed and enter a world of new possibilities.

Learn how to:

• Expand your ability to work in the creative space of acceptance 
• Use breakout dialogues to coach yourself and others through fear and doubt that keeps you stuck 
• Work with individual belief systems in a deep and meaningful way  
• Recognize flawed perceptions of reality that block happiness and success 
• Tap into the strongest motivation we all have (and overcome the reluctance to use it)  
• Distinguish desire from attachment  
• Make peace with the past and why it matters 
• Present yourself and your work comfortably and confidently   

This training provides:

• An accepting, encouraging atmosphere to foster growth and creativity 
•  A journal and written exercises  
• Extensive practice and constructive feedback 
• Ample opportunities to identify and breakout from issues about success, relationships, money and other important areas of your life 
• Limited class size of 24 people to assure individual attention 
• Saturday Nite Live Celebration 
• A certificate of completion  

Take advantage our early registration discount (good until December 1) and pay only €575 for Dutch or $675 for International students.

Since the training is limited to only 24 participants, it may fill quickly. Register now to secure your space. 

How to Register
Send your name and email address to Karen Gerritsen at karengerritsen@gmail.com.

International participants send $675 tuition via Paypal  PayPal.Me/MandyEvans1. You do not need to have an account. Paypal accepts credit cards and handles currency conversion.

Dutch Participants will receive an invoice for €675 plus tax from Karen

Receipt of tuition completes your registration and secures your space.

Meeting space and lodging
On the beach in Zandvoort! Zandvoort Centerparcs Hotel and Cottages is right on the beach about 30 minutes by train from the airport and Amsterdam.  It's an ideal location for home base for an extended visit to The Netherlands.You will receive lots of travel information after you register, including a discount from the hotel for us.

Read what people say about working with Mandy Evans

“I’ve been working with Mandy for more than 20 years. She is the clearest, happiest, and most effective miracle-maker I’ve ever known. She helps me get clear so I get results. I have never met anyone like her. I love her.”
–Joe Vitale, author of The Attractor Factor and way too many other books to list here.

Whenever I’m feeling stuck and convinced I’ll never get back into the flow, I turn to Mandy Evans – her deceptively simple questions are fast-acting, long-lasting, friendly and fun!
–Michael Neill, SuperCoach and best selling author of You Can Have What You Want.

Sometimes just learning more information is not enough. We need to take action- change our thinking, beliefs, attitudes and behaviors. Taking Mandy’s Break Out weekend helped me to realize how and why I was holding myself back from a fuller life, not facing certain difficulties, and to reconnect to my inner Spirit of daring and joyous living. Inspired and ‘breakout’ determined, I have now completed a huge project avoided for 10 years!  Also, by taking the necessary steps to action and believing in my core of joy.
–Laura Silva, M.A., LicMHC, Awakening Coach and Intuitive Psychotherapist

The BREAKOUT weekend experience was life changing for me personally and professionally. Mandy’s gift for teaching and practicing the BREAKOUT Method is brilliant. If something is not working in your life you can be sure somewhere behind it is a self-defeating belief. Wouldn’t you like to know what that belief is? Happiness IS only a thought away.
–Dr. Robert Edelburg, The Palm Springs Healing Center

Join us in May. Let's stage a Breakout in the Netherlands!

Free Breakout Keys. Prices Drop to 0!

Free is good! No? Being of relatively sound mind, in a burst of gratitude for the blessings in my life, I dropped the prices on the breakout material available on my website to 0. Yes, that's zero, zilch, zip, nada. Free, gratis, no charge. Well you get the point.

These are my gifts to you with my compliments and good wishes for great success and much happiness at 
https://mandyevans.com/breakout-keys/

Break out to Miracles! Video
Miracles abound; you just have to accept them.  To learn how, listen to the inspiring talk that brought the house down, recorded live at the Miracles Weekend in San Diego with Joe Vitale. About 60 minutes.

Beliefs About Love – Audio;
This funny, insightful audio teaches how to break out from beliefs that block love. Do your beliefs about love sabotage cupid? The good news is there is enough love for everyone! About 25 minutes.

Choosing Happiness – Audio  with Mandy Evans Live at Interface. 

This recording includes an overview of the Option Method and rare Option Dialogues with real people working on real issues. Learn how to identify, explore and unravel limiting beliefs.

Peace with the Past – Audio
Recorded Live at the Betty Ford Center in California
In this revealing hour long talk, Mandy Evans tells the story of her childhood as the daughter of a violent alcoholic father and how she made peace with her own past. During challenging times we form beliefs that we continue to live by without knowing it. Learn how break out from beliefs you adopted in your past that block success and happiness now. About 60 minutes

Cheering you on to happiness and success!

Love, 

Mandy

Breakout from Guilt Jail

Are you locked up in guilt jail? A lot of of people have expressed feelings of guilt lately. Or insisted that someone else should feel guilty. Feeling guilty doesn't help anything much, though. It breeds resentment. It locks you up in guilt jail for an indefinite sentence -- with no release guaranteed. 

Here are some observations about the toxic nature of guilt (gleaned from decades of exploring this over-rated, painful emotion) to aid and abet your escape. Do you hold any of these limiting beliefs?

Myths about guilt:

• If I didn't feel guilty, I would be a monster. I doubt that you are a monster, but if you are, feeling guilty will not un-monster you. It will just make you feel bad.
• If I didn't feel guilty, I wouldn't change (whatever it is you feel guilty about). Desire is the strongest motivation for change. You probably really want to change something already if you are willing to feel that awful guilt just on the chance it might help you. Instead of stoking the hell fires of guilt, focus on what you want instead. 
• Feeling guilty shows I care. This in another cart before the horse situation. You have to care first in order to know when to feel guilty. Skip the guilt and nurture the care.
• If I can make you feel guilty, you'll do what I want. This rarely works. First, you can't really make someone else feel guilty. You can only discover what they will feel guilty about and give them an unhealthy dose of it to swallow. Second, they may give up or give in but they will resent the heck out of you for it.The price of induced guilt is way to high for the minimal, short-lived gains it promises but rarely delivers. 
• It, he or she, makes me feel guilty. All guilt is self-imposed. You have to agree to it or it won't work.
• Feeling guilty is how we know right from wrong. The old cart first scenario. Awareness of wrongdoing only takes a moment, but some people incarcerate themselves in guilt jail for years. Finding another way and acting on it is the real work.The punitive approach of self-induced guilt demoralises rather than strengthening your chances for changing something you want to be different. 
• Feeling guilty is how you pay for hurting someone. I would really like to know who came up with the idea that pain pays for pain. Wars and prisons testify to society's faith in that life extinguishing contract, but look at the results. There has to be a better way. I believe it would transform our world if we could banish that myth. Inflicting pain only creates more pain. Can you imagine a world committed to finding a creative, compassionate solutions to problems? What a paradise we would live in without guilt and punishment as moral guides.

Some questions that have helped people breakout from guilt jail. Each question follows the answer to the one before it.

• What do you feel guilty about? Identify and clarify.
• Why do you feel guilty about that?
• Do you believe that?  
• If you answer yes, why do you believe that?
• What are you concerned would happen if you did not feel guilty?
• Do you believe that (your answer)?
• What are you concerned would happen if you did not believe that?

Instead of guilt, I recommend happiness and desire. Make amends when you can. Be kind. Be happy. Do you dare to breakout from guilt jail?

With guilt-free love, 
Mandy

Breakout from Struggle to Grace

Is your life filled with struggle or filled with grace?

They say the work begins when you sign up and commit. I recently signed up to teach the Breakout Coach Training in the Netherlands next May. As I work on material for the course, the balance between grace and struggle rocks back and forth, from one side to the other.

In grace mode, I feel a tingle of excitement. Possibilities appear as unbounded as they truly are. I enter the space of creativity. Life is sweet.

In struggle mode I feel kind of tense, a bit grumpy and totally uninspired. Oh, and obviously unconscious, because who would ever choose that on purpose? Yet choose it I have. Sometimes I still do. Alas, the choice is no less powerful for being made in a state of grumpy unconsciousness. How to break out?

Thank heaven for consciousness -- that wake up call that brings us into the here and now. All you have to do is take a few breaths and notice who you are and what is going on. Then you can choose on purpose. Grace or struggle?

That leads to another favorite saying, when you know, you must teach. I love nothing more on this earth than to share how to break out from hidden limits in order to thrive and be happy. So since only 24 people will be able to attend the Breakout Training, I'm going to share some of it here as the work begins.

Here are some tips to break out from struggle:

When you tackle a new project or just begin a new day, take some time to reflect on how you would like it to unfold. No need to be reasonable here. Just let yourself know what you welcome into your life at this point. For the Break Out training, for example, I choose to be present for the highest good for everyone involved. I want to connect with the people who will get the most from our experience and bring the most to it. I welcome a time filled with learning, love and grace. I would like it to fill up quickly and easily too :-).

Notice how you feel. Your emotions provide wonderful clues about what is going on with you, especially your thoughts and beliefs. If you get caught up in fear, anger, dread or plain old grumpiness ask yourself what those feeling are about and why this is the reaction you come up with in these circumstances. Ask how you want to feel right this minute. Sometimes that's is all you need to transform the moment.

Look into your beliefs about struggle and grace. Success in grace mode may involve hard work; it does not require struggle. It allows inspiration, support, creativity, curiosity and happiness. Life in struggle mode indicates a conviction that there is no clear path forward. In that case, it's time to create one.

What happens if you miss the mark? Bruce Di Marsico, founder of The Option Method, said he always asked I wonder what this is for? instead of "Why did this happen?" It has proved to be a great question, leading to insightful answers.

Wishing us all happy times in a state of grace!

Speak Up or Shut Up?

The fiery political anger and fear in our USA election rhetoric raises the old question, speak up or shut up? Searching for an answer, I see relationships that ended when I delivered well intended but uncomfortable messages and others that grew deeper and stronger.

I usually avoid public displays of political bias except when to do so seems just plain immoral. This is one of those times.

I am very concerned about the influence of Fox News on my fellow citizens. I watch an actual speech on CSPAN and then watch a commentator on Fox News select a sound bite and spin the message in the opposite direction -- over and over.

I see the same thing on CNBC and CNN but to a much lesser degree.

That is why I urge everyone who watches the Democratic Convention to please view the actual event on CSPAN and make up your own informed mind. I hope we can share opinions and ideas across party and ideological lines and remain friends.

I hope this heartfelt concern will strengthen our relationship. If not, I'm sorry to see us part.

Wishing you inspired and informed voting.

Mandy

Who Irritates You?

I recently spent time with someone I'm tempted to say irritates the hell out of me, like chalk on a blackboard. Only I know I'm the one doing the irritating; he's just being him. It's my chalk and my blackboard -- all screeching and scritching up to me.

I decided to make the leap from knowing to acting as if how I react really is up to me. I kept the chalk in my pocket and simply remained present. I had to remind myself to breathe and keep-chalk-in-pocket a couple of times. And guess what? I had a good time.

Note to self and you: good times may await just beyond your memories of hard times and views of present injustice. The other thing I noticed was that without rancor, instead of stifling my irritated comments, I was able to speak much more directly and freely.

I'm going to use this chalk-in-the pocket technique all the way through the election!

Cheering you on to chalk-on-blackboard free times.

With love,
Mandy

How to Buck the Current

Like swimming up a waterfall! Yes, changing a deeply rooted behavior can feel like that.  It is hard sometimes. But going with the flow when the current sweeps you away from your heart's desire is not the best approach to success and happiness.

You may just have to buck the current. It's strong. All of the experiences in your life feed into it. The way others see you flows into the stream too. Then there all of those societal beliefs to pull you along, like:

• It's bad to be the tallest poppy in the field
• You can't teach an old dog new tricks
• You don't deserve that
• Desire is the cause of all pain

Enough to make you give up? No, don't do it! Changing your life takes awareness and dedication sometimes, but not pain. It can be a great adventure.

You can find a way out of rip-tides and cross currents in the mindset that keeps your old ways in place, with you bobbing about in the life-jacket you thought you needed to keep afloat.

To grow your relationships, career, prosperity, you have to alter the beliefs that put you where you are in the first place and hold you there now. It may be one limiting belief, a cluster of them, or an undiscovered perception of reality that paralyzes you.

No matter who tells you to get a grip and pull up your socks, or how much more you deserve, if you do not address your own underlying version of reality your chances of success are pretty small. When you start with the outside stuff, even the most expensive life coach or highly trained therapist is unlikely to help you move beyond your own reality. Changing circumstances does little to transform the quality of your life.

This blog is full of articles about how to find and dismantle the beliefs that hold you back. My books, "Travelling Free: How to Recover from the Past" and "Emotional Options" are dedicated to helping you breakout from the prison of your own limiting version of reality. I recommend exploring them.

What I want to address here, though, is how to buck the current. Think of something you want and look inside to see what's been in the way. Every time you successfully discover that something you have believed is simply not true, take action in a new direction. Add strong desire for new outcome.

Do something new or in a new way. You will build a new diving off point. The auto-pilot in your brain will change. Your past will actually change as you add new experiences to it that give it new meaning. You will be able to swim up waterfalls!

Let us know what you find.

Love,
Mandy

The Emotional Advantage

When I lived in Rosendale, NY Jeffrey Pease, while still in his teens, used to hitchhike 90 miles down from Ballston Lake to participate in my weekly group. One of the great delights of my coaching career has been watching Jeffrey grow and thrive over these many years. Here he is now to contribute our first guest blog with insights as Chief Marketing Officer of a leading tech company.

The Emotional Advantage

Walking into the wind along the Jersey City waterfront this morning I look back over the Hudson River at the resilient Manhattan skyline and make the most important decision of my work day – how I’m going to feel at the office.

One hundred days into a new Chief Marketing Officer job, I think a lot about the crucial role emotional health plays in success. I’ve been happy at work and I’ve been miserable at work. Happy is better! Not just for me but for my whole team and ultimately for a tangible difference in company results.

This is especially true for anyone in a leadership role. I’ve never seen a job posting that says “whiny executive wanted” or heard the words “that guy seems stressed and cranky; let’s put him in charge!”

Emotional health offers a company a large untapped advantage that is largely ignored. In this case ignorance is far from bliss; it is perilous, because companies are populated entirely by people with feelings and ignoring them does not make them go away. The only emotions we can be fully responsible for, however, are our own. So while the emotional health of your workplace isn’t totally under your control, when you claim your own emotional advantage you can share the boost in creativity and productive energy it provides.

Early in my career, I completely failed to claim this advantage. In fact, like most people, I did not even know it was available to use. I joined so many demoralized companies or departments you’d think I sought them out, like that friend who repeatedly attracts the same bad relationship with different people. Worse still, instead of using an emotional advantage once I’d chosen a company, I joined in the camaraderie of commiseration – reinforcing the perception of how much things sucked and how powerless we were to change them. You won’t be shocked to learn that my early career wasn’t crowned with glory.

What changed? Sure I learned some things about the craft of Marketing and accumulated some good experience. But the more you achieve in your career, the less those hard skills matter and the more how you relate to and inspire (or demoralize) others comes into play. For that, the emotional advantage is foundational. I’m still not sure what makes that unhappy commiseration so attractive, but even in the toughest circumstances, the least helpful thing you can do when co‐workers are sinking in emotional quicksand is to jump in too.

Gradually I began to integrate years of work with emotions and the limiting beliefs that fuel them into my work life. Claiming my own emotional advantage allowed me to connect with disgruntled colleagues, not by diving in, but by throwing them a rope. It turns out that rope‐throwing is a valuable skill when there are problems to solve.

For the “how to" to claim your emotional advantage, I refer you to the work of Mandy Evans, especially her helpful book, “Emotional Options.” Here’s the “why.” If you have been trying to succeed at work so you can be happier, reverse that equation and prioritize being happy first. That in turn will likely make you more successful at work. If you want to lead people, that goes double!

Back to the Jersey City boardwalk where I recall my first day leading a new team at a new company. Like every team and every company, it has problems and holds promise. I look over the water and say to myself, “no whining.” What follows is a hundred days of magic!

You can learn more about Jeffrey Pease by visiting http://JeffreyPease.com

What to Follow in 2016?

 When he graduated from high school, my son went to college in Madrid. "Why?" I asked, stunned at the idea of him being so far away so young.

"I decided to take your advice" he replied. How novel! 

"What did I say?" I wondered, still in shock. 

"You told me, that whenever I didn't know what to do in life, if I followed my intense curiosity, I would always be okay. And, Mom, I can taste fluency. I could do a year of liberal arts just because, or I really learn Spanish, so I'm going to live in Madrid.

It worked out well, in his life, full of ups and down, as life is but always interesting. And in mine.

Curiosity activates desire. Conscious desire (not to be confused with attachment) is the strongest motivation there is. Far stronger than resolutions. My curiosity has led me to travel widely. To learn how to lead groups and present seminars. To read many books and write some self-help books. To explore and break out from thousands of beliefs that hold people back, blocking happiness and success.

I wonder where curiosity will lead me next. Maybe I can find a way to communicate how I broke out from a "how to get by on as little as possible" mind-set to one conducive to prosperity, in a way that will be useful to others. Should it be a book or a seminar? Would anyone be interested?Another compelling puzzle is how to contribute to a reading program for adults in my community since there is no longer an adult literacy program in Riverside County.

I'll let you know where these threads lead and would love to know about yours. You can post them in "Post a Comment" below.  

As we enter 2016, I wish you many blessings of health, happiness, love, peace on earth, and some wonderful adventures following your intense curiosity. 

Love, 

Mandy