by Debra | Apr 8, 2019
How easy is it to harness the power of partnerships?
When we go into partnership consciously we have the ability to create in a powerful way. All partnerships, not just romantic but creative or professional relationships, we have the ability to pool from each unique talent and ability. Not because we are deficient but more because having two people create has more energy than one.
It’s important not to go into relationships unconsciously because it could make the creative process harder rather than easier. When we go into any partnership because of a need rather than a clear intention, it will usually be good for the short term but the problems of rushing in so fast without much thought can be hard to recuperate from in the long haul.
If you have clear intentions in the relationship you are creating, it is easier to stay on track instead of getting into a relationship and trying to fix it. Again this isn’t just a romantic relationship, this could be for a professional relationship as well. I find that the more okay you are with yourself and you are your own source of happiness, it will be easier for you to not jump into a relationship that doesn’t work for you.
Obviously, there’s always something to learn from all of the relationships we’re in, but they don’t have to be that difficult if we know what we are wanting and not waiver from what we want out of the relationship. All relationships give us the opportunity to look at our self honestly and see our shadow sides and grow from them, but most of the time we need to be on the same path for an easier flow.
When we enter into a symbiotic relationship the chance of drama is way less because both parties have a clear intention of what they are co-creating. Creating on this level offers the opportunity for transformation, flow and an easy collaboration. Think back at when you were trying to co-create in a relationship with someone that wasn’t in alignment with you. Not as easy as you would have liked, right?
In all of my retreats you will learn about how to work through your shadow side and be able to create better relationships in your life. Make your life easier by having relationship you are alignment with.
In all of my retreats, the individual intensive, the couples retreat, or the mother-daughter retreat, you will learn about yourself and how to clean up your past so you can move through this life with love and passion.
by Debra | Mar 18, 2019
Can we change the world by changing ourselves?
I think it is a great deed to do charitable work and help others. Going out into the world and making a difference can be an honorable thing to do. It is also important to look at the reasons why you are giving. I believe it was Anthony De Mello in his book Awareness that said that most people are giving for self-satisfaction. What does that mean to give for yourself? We need to be seen as a good person; trying to get the acceptance of others, needing to create community or trying to even up Karma, etc. could be a few reason we might give for our own satisfaction.
I think even if it has a touch of self-serving, it is still nice to participate in charitable events. It is just a good idea to check in with yourself to see why you are giving and see if you can shift it if it is self serving.
The biggest way we change the world is through being self-aware. If you are not working on becoming more awakened, you will project your woundedness all over the people you are working with in the organization and the people you are helping. I have been a part of a couple of organizations that were for peace and awakening, with people volunteering there that were often triggered and acting out.
When we act out of our triggers onto other people, it makes them feel crummy as well as us and it spreads negative energy throughout the group. It is very critical that we do our inner work so that we don’t take our junk and projected onto others.
The most basic part of waking up is being able to not blame the outside world, and not project our feelings outside of us in an unhealthy way. It’s important to contain the reaction to the trigger and go to a deeper place and look at what is going on in us.
If we were all looking to become more awake and not project, imagine what the world would look like. It would be a beautiful place to be with many open hearts.
In all of my retreats, the individual intensive, the couples retreat, or the mother-daughter retreat, you will learn about yourself and how to clean up your past so you can move through this life with love and passion.
by Debra | Mar 11, 2019
Dealing with people who are passive-aggressive can be exhausting and hurtful.
Usually passive aggression comes from people who feel powerless and don’t want to feel their own feelings. They can also be blaming you for something that’s going on inside of them, again leaving them in a powerless position. Acting out of aggression comes from people feeling threatened and they are unable to sort out what they are feeling.
When we are not able to express our feelings such as anger, fear, resentment or sorrow in a healthy way, it may come out in a passive-aggressive way. People who have a hard time saying no because they feel guilty and constantly breaking promises, is another form of this behavior. Others could just make snide remarks so that they don’t have to feel their true feelings.
When we are around people playing out their patterns in this manner it’s better to not get drawn into any kind of a struggle for power. The more you try to obtain your viewpoint the nastier it could get. If you have someone in your life that is giving you backhanded zingers and claiming nothing is wrong you may need to seek a mentor that can help you with the situation.
Most of the time when people are doing their personal work, just simply bringing it to their attention will shift things for them. If this is a blind spot and it’s with someone not doing their personal development you may have to walk away from the relationship or except that you’re going to get zingers from them. In most cases when someone isn’t doing their personal work bringing up anything around their behavior will trigger them more and act out worse. The best thing you can do is to just let them know how their behavior makes you feel and do your work around your trigger.
If you are the one being passive aggressive, I suggest that you start to learn to be with all of your feelings. If fear comes up or anger or any other feeling that you’re having a hard time being with my suggestion is to sit and breathe into the belly and relax your body and just be with the feelings.
In all of my retreats you will learn about your behavior and how it is affecting you and others. Most of that are doing our personal work don’t want to project our junk onto others.
In all of my retreats, the individual intensive, the couples retreat, or the mother-daughter retreat, you will learn about yourself and how to clean up your past so you can move through this life with love and passion.
by Debra | Mar 4, 2019
Why do we have regret and why is it so harmful?
There are a few reasons why we may have regret. First is because we are not seeing life through our higher minds consciousness. We are seeing life through a skewed wounded inner child. Second, we have created a mess that we have it cleaned up. If we have acted out of our little inner child and we haven’t apologized for our behavior this can cause regret inside of us as well. Third, not forgiving ourselves for our past mistakes.
Not apologizing for our errors or seeing things through our lower minds, causing regret is like dragging a huge weight of our past around with us everywhere we go. This would be pretty exhausting. It drains our energy, making it difficult for us to be present in the moment because we are dealing with our past issues.
When we are constantly in the past it is hard to create something new in the future. When we clean up our past issues or our past messes we have the ability to move more freely in life. We create our life from our thoughts, so if we are always in the past in our minds we are creating our past over and over. When we accept what is happened in our past and move forward it transforms the energy inside of us to a more constructive, creative pattern.
Forgiveness is critical because it heals regret. If we were in a situation where we cannot apologize we can re-create the situation in our minds and imagine a different outcome. Or we can simply apologize in a prayer to a person if they are no longer here. Forgiveness comes up quite often in my mother daughter retreats because one or both parties have exhibited behaviors that have been hurtful to the other.
There is so much judgment when we have regret. We mostly are judging ourselves for not behaving in a way that we see loving. It doesn’t do us any good to judge ourselves on top of the regret. It’s best to do it to need to do with others to remove blockages and to also do your personal work around your own regret.
When we do our work around regret we created a clear path for energy to flow so that we can live in a space of love and passion. When we take responsibility for our actions in this present moment we release our past.
In all of my retreats, the individual intensive, the couples retreat, or the mother-daughter retreat, you will learn about yourself and how to clean up your past so you can move through this life with love and passion.
by Debra | Feb 25, 2019
How do we find the strength within us through the tough times of this life?
We all experience challenging moments in our lives when we feel that we are on the edge and can’t handle it. Sometimes we have just moved through a pretty big obstacle or illness only to find another one waiting on the other side for us, before we can catch her breath. Often we keep enduring one challenge after another and feel as though we never get a break from life’s trials. We may question why life keeps piling more difficulty on us when we are all ready our maximum.
We may blame God and even get angry with God, depending on how we view life. When we are continuously tested with one experience after another, it is a learning to be present to our moments directly in front of us. Instead of looking outside of ourselves or blaming someone or something outside of us, it’s an opportunity to go inward and do your healing.
The feelings that come up during these experiences can be completely overwhelming, where you may want to run away from them. The best thing you can do is explore what’s going on with you, what old beliefs you are buying into, sit with the feelings and do your best to let them go.
Depending on what core wounds they are hitting, will depend on your capacity to sit with the feelings. The feelings may be so overwhelming that you feel like you’re sitting in a fire and the need to get out will be extreme. I encourage you to stay with your feelings and comfort the inner child through this experience instead of abandoning them.
Two things are happening when we are faced with challenges. One is the learning so we can understand why we are feeling the way we are feeling and two, to transmute the energy, so we are able to let go. Most the time if we cannot have an understanding for the experience it might be tougher to let go and transform it. So the need to understand it and sit with the feelings are critical to being able to let go of them. To be able to come into a complete place of peace and joy it is important to go through this process to come out the other end.
This is not a journey for the weak at heart, it is for Warriors.
In all of my retreats, the individual intensive, the couples retreat, or the mother-daughter retreat, you will learn about yourself and how to be with your feelings so you can move through the trials of this life with ease and grace.
by Debra | Feb 18, 2019
Is it hard for you to being with your feelings?
How tough is it to just sit with your feelings and feel the intensity of them? Most people medicate their feelings away so they don’t have to be with them. They shop, eat, drink, do drugs, argue, complain, blame, they do anything not to feel.
The heart has a wide range of feelings that it experiences, from the deepest of sorrow to the most elated joy. When we restrict feeling any of them because of our old beliefs, they get stuck and it stops our energy, our chi from flowing. It’s much better for our health to allow feelings to bubble up and flow through us.
Often we put our feelings off to the side to deal with them later and we end up storing them in our bodies and minds. If we could get a visual on this is would look like a hoarders house. If we store them for later and never get to them, they stay inside us and block energy from flowing.
No matter how scary it is to look at and be with our feelings, it is always better to deal with them as they come up and not stuff them down, hoping they will go away.
One of the main reason we hide our feelings is because we live in a culture that doesn’t support having emotions. It is our job to allow ourselves to acknowledge our feelings and be with them. If we feel sadness, we can embrace it and let it in and noticing where we feel it in our bodies and allow ourselves to express it through crying or just going inward.
When we give ourselves the right to feel our feelings as they come up, it will be easier for us to let them go. All the feelings want is to be felt. Get out of the story of what is making you feel this way and just feel. Feel, relax and watch your heart open.
In all of my retreats, the individual intensive, the couples retreat, or the mother-daughter retreat, you will learn about yourself and how to be with your feelings.
by Debra | Feb 11, 2019
What does it look like to be in surrender?
Surrendering is to cease resistance, yielding, and give in, and succumb. The biggest issue to just letting go and surrendering is our resistance. Our resistance to change, our resistance to staying awake and looking at our blind spot and our resistance to life being exactly what life is! When we resist anything, we strengthen the energies around what we are resisting.
“What you resist persist”
Do you notice how some issues keep coming around repeatedly, no matter how hard you try to avoid or ignore them? It never works to push issues away that we need to process through. The more we push it away, the more we get push back.
Our resistance gives power to that which we resist and leaves us with unresolved issues. To be able to totally surrender we need to look at what is coming up and get an understanding of what it is trying to teach us. It is critical to stop resisting to be able to surrender. Surrender cannot happen without yielding and giving into the lessons in front of us.
What affects us on the inside is a direct call out to us that we have work to do on the inside. If we avoid or run away from the emotions, this causes a resistance inside of us and an inability to let go and surrender. If we have emotions and feelings coming up from the outside world or our thoughts it’s best to do a deep dive to move through them, not push them to the side.
Everything happening on the outside or inside us with our thoughts and feelings is a reflection of what we need to work through, it’s always an opportunity to go deeper into our learning. It’s difficult to go running straight into our fears and of course you will notice resistance. This is where surrendering to the process will help us go through the fire and come out the other end to peace and serenity.
In all of my retreats, the individual intensive, the couples retreat, or the mother-daughter retreat, you will learn about yourself and where surrender is important.
by Debra | Jan 28, 2019
Why are there so many people with depression and anxiety and what is causing it?
In my practice more than ever, people are coming to me of all ages, with depression and anxiety. Anxiety and depression are the two biggest issues that I work with my clients. Again it is hitting all ages, from the 13-year-olds to the 60-year-olds I am working with.
If it isn’t a clinical issue around depression, it could be a suppression of feelings. When we suppress how we are feeling about ourselves, about our circumstances and about the world around us, it tends to settle inside of us. It could be a sense of hopelessness about your current situation or the world affairs. There is a lot going on with our lives and the world to be having feelings about. If we are stuffing those feelings, they could come out as depression or anxiety.
Depression is an umbrella for what’s really going on. Are you having sadness, are you hopeless or maybe you have high anxiety. It’s important to get to what’s underneath the depression or the anxiety. The work that I do gets to the core reasons you are feeling and why. It is so important for us to feel what we are feeling and have an understanding about our feelings so it doesn’t sink into depression.
Depression and anxiety are great indicators that there is something inside of us that we need to look at so we can transform our thought patterns. If we are continuously looking outside of ourselves to feel better and not addressing our feelings, we could start feeling pretty depressed.
What makes this life palatable is that every life experience is an opportunity to shift my skewed thinking from my old beliefs. If I had to go outside of myself and change the situation, that would be very frustrating, leaving me feeling pretty hopeless, which would lead to depression.
In all of my retreats, the individual intensive, the couples retreat, or the mother-daughter retreat, you will learn about yourself and what triggers these feelings of anxiety, hopelessness, sadness or fear and start shifting them.
by Debra | Jan 21, 2019
How can we create a different outcome by doing the same action?
“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.” -Albert Einstein
I believe this behavior is from a lack of consciousness that we continue to do the same thing over and over again, while getting upset with the results. It is very important to pay attention to our behaviors and the outcomes so we can adjust our thought process and behaviors in order to create a different outcome.
The same situation may continue to come up over and over when we don’t recognize and learn from it. When this happens it gives us an opportunity to make a different choice. Sometimes we push really hard up against a situation hoping to bring about change, only to settle into the same results.
With these encounters it is best to pause and look at the situation from your higher mind, digging deeper into old patterns and beliefs and see if it’s possible to create it in a healthier way.
If you notice that you are creating the same situations in your life that don’t work for you, it is time to explore what is happening inside of you. A change in perspective, behavior and your reaction can do so much more for shifting the outcome. It takes a fair amount of self-observation to change our patterns and thus creating a different outcome to a situation.
This self-examination isn’t for the weak of heart; it is for Warriors. It isn’t easy or fun to look at our dark side and then hold ourselves accountable for our actions. If we don’t self-reflect we will repeat our patterns and behaviors. Asking questions directed at our ego minds and little girl will give us the data needed to see how we are seeing things through a skewed lens. Once we see things clearly we are able to make the shift to our higher self. We cannot make the shifts through our ego or little girl (lower mind) because thinking through that lens is what got us into the situation in the first place.
I love it when I am in a mother daughter retreat and both the mother and daughter see how their behaviors have been playing out and causing havoc on one of the most important relationship they have in their life.
In all of my retreats whether it be the Individual Intensive, Mother Daughter or the Couple Retreats you will learn how recognize your ego mind, and stop acting out of your unconscious little girl to shift your beliefs.
by Debra | Jan 14, 2019
Are We Only Teaching Ours Children or Learning From Them as Well?
When we have an awareness that we are also learning from our children as much as we are teaching and guiding them, we become very present to ourselves. When our children come into the world they come in without preconceived notions about things, situations and people. They are not avoiding situations because they don’t feel good. Because of this we have so much to learn from them about our judgments of situations and people.
Children are much more heart centered because they haven’t had the experiences to taint them. We do have so much to teach our children about life in general, but we have to be open to what we are learning from them as well.
One thing that I believe is most precious to learn from children is how they express their emotions without worrying about what people think. How many times have you not expressed how you feel because you didn’t want to seem vulnerable, weak or needy. They live their life fully in the present moment with an open mind, not caring about the judgments of others.
What would this be like as an adult if we were living in this moment completely open-minded without any of our wounds from our past tarnishing how we see things? It would be so freeing and we would feel completely alive and full of passion. It’s our triggers from our wounding that make us look at situations with a judgmental eye.
Another important component about seeing our children as teachers is that it removes the hierarchy of parents being The Great Wizard of Oz. I believe it is important for children to know that their parents don’t know everything and they are on a path of learning as well. I remember when my kids finally understood that I was human too. They had more compassion for me and stopped treating me like a machine.
The biggest problems I see in mother daughter relationships are the mothers treating the daughters less than because they believe the daughters aren’t as wise. The daughters become very resentful when they feel like they have nothing to contribute.
The work I do in my retreats and mentoring is all about learning about yourself and actually using everyone and every situation to become more self-aware. No one is better or worse than another.
In all of my retreats whether it be the Individual Intensive, Mother Daughter or the Couple Retreats you will learn how to live in your true authentic self, come from your heart, stop acting out of your ego and shift your beliefs.
by Debra | Jan 7, 2019
What are some of the things you can pay attention to, to create a happy new year?
I don’t usually set intentions for the New Year or do New Years resolutions. I am always in the process of moving forward in life regarding my personal development and other projects.
I don’t know how resolutions pan out for you, but what I see in other people and myself when I use to set them was that I would do really well in the beginning and then they would slowly drop off.
I think we need to look at the core reasons why we aren’t reaching our full potential. What is our Ego saying to us that will sabotage us? If we have unhealed wounds from our childhood and we still have trauma inside of us, our Ego will be running the show. If our Ego is running the show it will be tough to reach our full potential.
My New Years Resolution is always to heal my wounds and keep a watchful eye on my Ego, so that I know what it is doing at all times.
Here are a few of the things I would like to accomplish in 2019 and what my Ego has to say about it.
- Exercising more: Ego-It’s too cold outside to hike and we hate the indoor bike.
- Finish my parenting book: Ego-You don’t have time to write and no one is going to buy it anyway, so don’t waste your time.
- Stay on top of my health: Ego-Your body is too big of a burden; just forget about it.
- Start my relationship book: Ego-You can’t even finish your parenting book.
My Ego is mean and is certainly not out to help me. It is here to sabotage anything in my life that is good for others and me. So I am always giving my Ego my higher mind point of view and letting it know that I will not be listening to it. “Thank you for sharing but no thank you.”
What are some of the things you would like to accomplish and how is your Ego mind preventing you from achieving your higher potential and messing up your life?If you need help learning what your Ego is up to, connect with me.
A great gift for your daughter, partner or yourself is a Soul Retrieval Retreat.
In all of my retreats, whether it be, the individual intensive, mother-daughter, or the couples retreat you will learn how to recognize your Ego mind and stop acting out of it, love yourself, shift these old beliefs and show up differently in the world.
by Debra | Dec 31, 2018
What does it mean to be your authentic self?
When we show up completely ourselves in the world, keeping it real, we offer the same to others. Most of us know what being authentic means and we know intuitively when were not being a real and when we are out of alignment. When we don’t show up being ourselves it’s mostly because we are afraid of how people will perceive us, and how they may judge us.
I remember being in a five day workshop and one of the exercises had us stand up in front of everyone and express one of our fears. Well, one of my fears was standing up in front of a crowd and speaking. So I was so scared that I actually shot out of my seat first with tears streaming down my face expressing my fears about speaking in public. I was shocked at the response. So many people expressed having the exact same fear and thanked me for standing up and being so vulnerable. Then they stood up one after another expressing the same fear. This is a perfect example of being real allowing others to be real as well. I felt so much love for all these people with the same vulnerabilities as me. I also felt truly seen as the real me.
Being real isn’t easy when we live in a culture that shows us how were supposed to be physically and materially perfect. There really isn’t any room for being human. When we feel like who we are is just not good enough, this is when we tend to cover up our shadow sides. When we walk through life hiding parts of who we are we feel it internally, we know something is off. When we are able to accept all parts of ourselves, and love those parts, there is a comfort in the way we move through the world.
There is such a freedom in just allowing our self to be how we are in every moment of our life. When we have insecurities around our deficiencies, we show up in the world insecure. When we embrace our deficiencies, knowing that we’re human, we show up in the world feeling way more empowered.
One of the rewards for showing up in the world unmasked is that we will inspire others to do the same and attract authentic people in your lives. In all of my retreats whether it be the Individual Intensive, Mother Daughter or the Couple Retreats you will learn how to live in your true authentic self, come from your heart, stop acting out of your ego and shift your beliefs.
