Laura Erdman-Luntz, MA, E-RYT(500) | Yoga | Yoga Teacher Training | Minnesota | Costa Rica | Life Coaching

Life Coaching Moment - Client Question: What do I do when I can't take action?

(I am beginning a series on Client Questions.  I receive questions from clients regularly and realized that you might have the same question as well.  Feel free to email me your own questions!)

Question:  
My next action step has, for some reason, been really tough. I know what I want, but it seems like I am holding myself back and it also feels like I am a little stuck ~ not sure where to go next, or what the next step is.

(Side Note:  This client has been working actively toward creating the life of her dreams for a few months.  She has taken many actions steps -- even ones that have been quite scary.  While my answer was with her in mind, it can apply to any action step you are feeling stuck around -- even if it is simply taking your first step!)

When we feel stuck around an action step, it is usually due to one or more of the following:

• You have begun to feel "too good" and have reached your joy celling.
• You are feeling "too bad" and your vibe is too low to take an action.
• You are more of a "dreamer" and taking real action steps that take you forward are hard to figure out.
• The step is too big and needs to be broken down.
• You aren't truly believing in your dream.

Regardless of WHAT your reason is, the way through it is the same:

• Step One: Return to your Just Feel Good practice.  Do whatever you need to do to help yourself feel good on a deep, soul-nourishing level.  

• Step Two: Revisit what and why you want what you want.  Is it a feeling you are craving? A way of living? A way of being?  Remember why you are desiring change and let that desire inspire you.  Do you have a Vision Board?  Spend time standing in front of it.  Don't have one yet?  It is time to create it!  (Note: A Vision Board is a visual representation of what you want to create.)

• Step Three: Work on your limiting beliefs.  Do you truly believe what you want is possible? 

• Step Four: Set aside quiet time, it doesn't have to be much (ahem...15 min a week :-)) to figure out true action steps (not busy work) to move your dream forward.  If you need to break down your action steps to make them less scary, here's the time to do it.  If you can't figure your actions out, ask someone to help (such as your Life Coach!)

Here's to taking Action and moving forward with your life!

You might also enjoy...

Your Joy Set Point

You Can Live Your Dream Life

 

Peace and miracles to you!

A Coaching Moment: New Year's Resolution's From the Heart

New Year's Resolutions from the Heart (aka: Goal Setting from the Heart) is a three-step process for guiding you into powerful resolutions that will truly transform your life.  Are you ready to really make 2013 different?  To be able to say something wonderful about your life on December 31, 2013 that you cannot say today?  Enjoy this video as Laura takes you through her three-step program.

Want to explore the three steps more deeply?  Enjoy Laura's E-Course:

New Year's Resolutions from the Heart
(aka Goal Setting From the Heart)

 

Yoga Teachers: Honor Our Student's Reality (and hold the door open...)

We all have beliefs about our bodies. (And beliefs, by the way, are just an opinion, a thought, that we have held for a very long time. Read more about them here.) We may see ourselves as flexible, tight, injured, weak, strong, unable to go upside down, unable to balance, etc. My guess is if you sit for a moment you will come up with half a dozen beliefs you have about your own body. What is most interesting about our beliefs is others usually see through them before we do. And, as teachers, we often see that our students are capable of so much more than they think they are.

As teachers we need to honor other people’s realities and at the same time, hold the door open for something more. Beliefs create the reality in the body, not the other way around. If you think you are tight, you will be tight. If you think you can’t do a handstand, guess what? You’re right! We can best help our students by first helping the student feel safe by honoring what they think about their body. I think we have all experienced at one time or another a teacher who led us to feel less than or even stupid by not understanding what he/she was trying to teach us because we weren’t ready or were still too mired in our belief and so still afraid to try. We need to be there with the student in the place the student is, not where we want the student to be.

Then, at the same time, you can hold the door for the student for something more. You can gently guide them to use different language to describe their body, to see that anything can change, that they are capable of anything. Gently remind them they are strong enough, flexible enough, whatever. Then they will fly!

 

Related Posts:

• Releasing Old Beliefs in Your Yoga Class

• Decluttering: Part One (Beliefs) 

• Decluttering: Part Two (Yoga)

A Yoga Moment: Savasana (Relaxation Pose) is About Not Doing

(A post from years ago I share again at a request from a student.)  I was teaching Restorative Yoga the other night and had an insight about my own practice. I used to avoid Restorative Yoga (including Savasana) more than any other types of poses. I have always thought it was because I couldn’t sit still. Tonight, I realized it was about “not doing” and “not struggling”. I hadn’t realized how much in my life I felt I needed to struggle to do. Any success or accomplishments were more satisfying (in other words, they “counted”) when I had worked hard for them. (How many of you appreciate your own gifts? The things that come easy for you? I bet you take them for granted or don’t even see them as well!) I certainly needed to work hard at my exercise whether it was aerobics or yoga. Tonight I learned my greater lesson was the benefit of not doing, of surrender, of not struggling and the benefits that can come from letting go.

Related Posts:

• Find Breath in Your Pose

• A Thought: Do You Receive on Your Yoga Mat?

• Need Some Help for Letting Go?

Your Story

 

One of the greatest gifts of learning about manifesting is you finally learn that you are the creator of your story, your life. You get to write it. Much of your life so far (and perhaps all) has been based on the stories others told you and you believed. Some stories were wonderful and therefore you thrive in those areas. Most of the stories were limiting and have only served us by keeping us small in those areas of our life.

I recently learned first hand of the power of our stories. It seems like it is such an insignificant story, but it represents something so much larger for me. I love coffee. I love the smell and the taste. I stopped drinking coffee the day I handed in my research thesis for my masters. (I was up to a pot a day.) I quit mostly because I was cutting out chemicals from my diet and the only way I could make the coffee sweet enough for my taste was with sweet-n-low. Anyway, I have told this story for years — I graduated in 1996 — you do the math. “I just can’t drink coffee without sweet-n-low”. (Feel free to add a whine and self-pity to that sentence — it was always full of it.) Whenever I tell the story, I also add that I miss it. I love the smell and my husband makes delicious coffee every morning so I smell it a lot. Finally, about a month ago, when I was telling this story for the umpteenth time, my husband said, “You have got to stop telling that story. You have changed so much. Why don’t you try coffee today, right now, with your new consciousness.” I did and I loved it!! I put in a single teaspoon of sugar and I thoroughly enjoyed the flavor. I had told that story for years and it had truly affected me and how I was living.

Granted, the story is insignificant perhaps, but I really got in that moment the power of our stories. What do you tell yourself that is negative about your financial situation? Your job? Your marriage? Your weight? Your business? Your home? Your children? If it is negative or something you don’t like, then rewrite your story. We assume today will be just like yesterday. Today can be completely different if you allow it. You can change on a dime, really. Sometimes it takes longer, but it doesn’t have to. It is really as simple as saying, “I am ready for this to be different.” Then you need to decide what you want, or better yet, how you want to feel, and begin to strive for that feeling. Your story is only a story and it can be changed.

A great start to writing your new story comes from a great book I read awhile ago called, Zero to Zillionaire by Chellie Campbell. She says to write the story of your life so far with only the highlights. Tell about all the wins in your life, all the silver linings. (She also recommends writing your story from the perspective of your losses, but I do not recommend spending any time there — although it is quite illuminating!) Start your day reading of your exploits and see how your day unfolds.

Related Posts:

• Beliefs: Do They Open Doors or Keep You Stuck?
• Life Coaching: What is it?
• Cease to Have Cherished Opinions

Get out of the Box

 

I have been studying the brain lately in reading a book called The Answer by John Assaraf and Murray Smith. Basically the book discusses how our unconscious mind keeps us stuck in our current (usually limiting) way of thinking, stuck in a box. Sometimes the box is pleasant ("My marriage box is lovely!") and sometimes it is mediocre or even very uncomfortable ("My current job is terrible but...I am stuck, I can't leave, I need the money..." -- you know the thoughts!). But it is what we know and there is security in what we know. A step away from the known is scary and we unconsciously (and sometimes consciously) avoid taking the next step. Often we can't even see the next step.

Ready to use your yoga to expand your consciousness? Remember what you do on the mat transfer off the mat and vice versa. Ready to expand out of your box in your job? Marriage? Friendships? You can do it on the mat first. How? Do you always do the same practice or same type of practice? Do you love forward folds and avoid backbends? Do you always want to feel like you’ve worked hard so that your practice “counts”? Do you sit on your mat with no energy and just sit there? Have you done the same 10 poses in the same order for years? Use your practice to break out of the box. Change it up. Do something different! Find a pose you always avoid or one you have never done. Begin to experiment. If you always feel you need a workout, do a restorative practice. If you always do restorative, do something vigorous and get your heart pumping!

Okay, now, does the mere thought of doing something different even for one day bring fear to your heart? That is the sign that you definitely need to do something different!

Effortless Change

 

 

“The single most important tool to being in balance is knowing that you
and you alone are responsible for the imbalance between
what you dream your life is meant to be,
and the daily habits that drain life from that dream.”
~ Wayne Dyer

Admittedly, this quote is about manifesting, consciously creating your dream. Yet I also use this quote when I consider making changes in my habits, especially when it comes to my yoga practice. Certain habits support who you want to be, where you are going, and other habits keep you stuck in your current place.  I know my yoga practice, meditating, eating well, etc. keep me feeling good and help me grow and evolve.  It is much easier to remain committed when I think in those terms.

Normally when we attempt to affect change in our lives we use sheer will power, making ourselves do something, forcing really. Sometimes the new habit takes root and other times it doesn’t only to leave us feeling as if we have failed. This quote changes everything. What is your dream? How do you want to show up in the world? Do your habits support that dream or drain the life from it? I find, with my heart focused on the dream, it is much easier to make changes in my life, to do what I know supports the dream. In fact, I find the changes come about quite joyfully when I connect them to a higher dream.

Do your habits match with who you are and who you are becoming? What do you really want in your life? Begin to be selective and move yourself closer to your dream each minute of your day.

 

monday morning musing: suiting up

M U S E  U P O N  T H I S

“My real role in life is to suit up and show up
and then turn the results over to God.” 
~Unknown

 

Read more...

A Thought: Limitations in Your Yoga Practice are Merely Self-Imposed

In tonight’s class I taught, I had an interesting thought I shared with my students. Do you often go into a pose assuming it will look exactly as you did it last time? I am guessing there are a few poses in which you do. Personally, basic standing poses such as Warrior II and Triangle Poses are my weak spot. I just plop myself into my usual position and hang out there until I think it is time to go to the other side. I don’t even try to take myself more deeply. I just assume my pose will look the same today as it did yesterday and it will tomorrow.

When I realized what I was doing, it made me think. Where else in my life do I just plunk myself down and assume I have gone as far as I can go? There are so many places we can limit ourselves in what we have – happiness (really, test yourself – being happier than you are comfortable with can be incredibly uncomfortable and we usually only allow it for brief periods), love, money, career, health, even the number of vacations or where we go on our vacations (or whether we go on vacation)! Where in your life do you feel a bit stale? Is it time to blow past a self-imposed limitation?

You see, the irony of physical limitations is they are often merely  perceived. What I mean is you can move beyond your “wall”, which is, in fact, merely a speed bump. Our flexibility is tied mostly to our consciousness. If you think you are tight, guess what? You are right! If you think you can loosen up and move past your inflexibility or weakness, guess what? You are right, too. If you think you can move past your current health crisis, guess what? You are right! Maybe it is time to blow past a few of those limitations and experience the joy on the other side…

monday morning musing: I believe in you

 

M U S E  U P O N  T H I S

I believe in you...

Read more...

(I know, the monday moring musing on a Tuesday morning...stick with me!
Some weeks are like that! :-) )