One of the most important jobs of a Life Coach is to pay attention to the thoughts our clients are thinking.  Many people walk through life thinking that they ARE their thoughts, and that they cannot do anything about their thoughts…that they just happen and we can’t do anything about them.

Well!  I’m here to say NONSENSE!  You are NOT your thoughts.  And furthermore, YOU have a CHOICE in what you think–all the time! 

Yes…it’s true: we think thousands of thoughts a day, most of them are automatic and probably duplicates of the thoughts running throughout our heads every other day.  Until…

Until we notice them.

Notice your thoughts.  Now: which thoughts do you WANT to have?  Which thoughts empower you?  Which thoughts dishonor you?  Which thoughs bring you down or lift you up? 

You can choose.

During the months of July and now looking forward to August, I am leading two separate workshop topics: “You can be HAPPY No Matter What!” and “Simple Steps to Transform your FEAR to POWER”.  These workshops are based on my own life experiences, to be sure.  However, I’m never alone in providing the richest of resources to my students and clients.  For these two workshops, I have included the work and teaching of Neale Donald Walsch (on whose coaching staff I serve at the Conversations with God foundation), Marci Shimoff (also on The Secret along with Neale and numerous other spiritual teachers) and well-known psychologist Susan Jeffers, Ph.D.

Both Marci and Neale offer wisdom in creating happiness from the inside.  Susan Jeffers guides us through the map of fear, reminding us that just like happiness, fear resides in our inner conversations with ourselves.

In Susan Jeffer’s classic FEEL THE FEAR and Do It Anyway! she reminds us that our self-talk determines the quality of our lives.  So often, in the face of any number of circumstances in our lives, we might say to ourselves or to one another, “Isn’t it terrible…” and you can fill in the blank.  Susan Jeffer suggests that instead of saying “Isn’t it terrible!” that our self-talk could be the empowering mantra “Isn’t it a great opportunity…!”

A few months ago, I was diagnosed with walking pneumonia.  The doctor said “stay home” and I was grounded.  For a woman with my schedule, energy and enthusiasm for everything I do in life, it was like punishing a teenager who was just given a new driver’s license and car.  What?!?!  I have to stay home?!?  Ugh!  How terrible!

Now I ask you, was it really terrible?  Or was that just a thought?

I was forced by circumstances to rest, to sleep, to think, to read, to write, and…to pay attention to my emails.  I receive hundreds of emails a day.  Most of them, I delete, having no time to read them.  Now…I could slow down and pay attention.

Sooo…what might be seen as “terrible” at one moment, I quickly saw as a “wonderful opportunity” in the next.  I began to talk to myself differently.  Wow!  I GET to rest, slow down, read my emails, and even watch the Oprah Web Event with Eckhard Tolle.  What a gift!

One of my emails was from Bill Harris (also on The Secret), telling me about this exciting opportunity to be a co-author in a best-selling series called Wake Up! Life the Life You Love.  Just the title of the series alone got my attention (why?…I had been using the tagline I’m not here to change you…just to wake you up! for ten years).  I was also in the midst of Landmark Education, which also has the conversation about living the life you love, so that language captured my attention.

As I read the email from Bill Harris and clicked on the link to the WakeUpLive website, I was thinking “this is probably pie in the sky” but proceeded anyway.  Then, I noticed that Steven E, the creator of the series, gave his phone number.  As I was dialing the phone number, I was thinking “he probably won’t be there, and he probably won’t call me back”.  But I called and left a message, saying that I was home and could receive his call that night.  Within ten minutes, Steven E called me back!  Yep. He called me back!

That’ll teach me!  My thoughts were running wild.  But they were just silly thoughts.  They weren’t true.  Steven E called me, reassured me that this was a great opportunity for me to be a published co-author in a book that was totally in alignment with my mission, my purpose and my work.

What emerged from that conversation with Steven E was his putting me in touch with the WAKE UP WOMEN team; I spoke with Ardice, then Heidi then Karen.  We had an alliance!  It was real.  Little did I know how blessed I would be to have had pneumonia which gave me the opportunity to explore this exciting adventure in being a co-author in the new WAKE UP WOMEN book.  Wow!

This little story of turning something you or I might call “terrible” ino something I could CHOOSE to see as an “opportunity” is a small example of the ways we could all choose to see those things that happen in our lives; either we could continue to call the “terrible” or look through another lens, seeing whatever it is as an opportunity and blessing.

In addition to the WAKE UP WOMEN book in which I am a co-author, I have authored three other books which will soon be released; in each of these books, I share numerous stories from my life,  such as the story I share in the WAKE UP WOMEN book, entitled “Let it Be!”. 

Think about it you have your own list.  How many so-called “terrible” things in your own life are really potential opportunities and blessings for you to experience?  How do we know which experiences in our lives are the greatest blessings, in which we discover a part of ourselves or someone else that we never would have known was there?

So let me ask you this: how are you talking to yourself?  Just notice your thoughts: and then…remind yourself that you always have a choice about what you say.  Somehow, just telling myself that all he challenges in my life are opportunities and blessings, rather than being terrible, gives me back my power. And I can say “YES” to life. No matter what.