AMY HANSEN

It’s important to occasionally take time for self reflection and to sit quietly with your thoughts.

Often times we are rushing through life without the opportunity to stop and acknowledge where we’ve been or where we are trying to go.  We float through life each day without purpose or direction.

This is why it’s imperative to schedule time for self reflection and analyze your thoughts.

Here are a few ways you can tap into your mind and release your subconscious thoughts.  You may not realize it, but these thoughts have been streaming through your mind without you giving much thought to them.

The first way to start self reflection is to take a walk in nature.  This means without looking at your phone or listening to any audio through your headphones.  It’s just you and nature.  As you walk your mind will travel.  You’ll start to ponder things that have been bothering you and the best part is, you may come up with solutions.

This is what getting quiet with your though...

The universe is made up of energy.  This includes energy from light.  Light is easily seen in the sun, moon, and stars.  But there are also light waves that are undetectable in plain sight.

The Japanese discovered that our human bodies emit light in a level that is 1,000 times less intense than all levels that can be seen by the naked eye.  In fact, all living creatures emit an extremely weak light.

Our bodies not only emit light, but also a band of color around us.  This energy given off by our bodies is called an aura.  Being able to read someone’s aura can say a lot about their emotional and energetic state.

This bring us to the world of chakra.  Chakra is an old Sanskrit word that translates to wheel or disk.  There are seven main chakras, or wheels of energy in our bodies. Each contains a bundle of nerves and major organs which form our state of being.  It is essential to keep the chakra’s open and aligned because if a blockage develops, energy cannot flow.  This invis...

It’s the end of the year and so many of us start reflecting on the year.  We look back at what we’ve done and accomplished. 

The hardest part is looking back and realizing we are in the same spot we were last year.  There was no growth, movement, momentum, or change. We are stuck in a rut and unsure how to get out.  Fear starts creeping in and the disappointment appears on our face. 

As high achievers, this is not like us.  We achieve things.  Yet, we feel lost.  Our mood changes and feel a bit depressed.  We sulk in this attitude only to realize this does not have to be our life.

We are in control of our life.  The choices and actions we take determine our future.  It’s at that point we decide to take 100% responsibility for our future and draw a line in the sand saying no more!

It’s time to take action.  No longer will we sit on the sidelines and let life pass us by.  Now is the time to take steps toward improving our current state of mind.  We don’t have to wait until t...

Having some degree of control over our lives is important to us, control freaks.  In our world, the fear of the unknown is far worse than the known. At least with the known we can prepare.  However, the unknown gives us a horrible feeling of worry when we don’t know what’s going to happen. 

Worry develops from things we can’t control the outcome of.  We fear what might or could happen in the future.  Our mind starts going crazy with negative thoughts and what if possibilities. We always jump to the worst case scenario.  We think what if this happens and what would that mean about us.     

Instead of living in the worry, we decide to suppress it.  We choose to push down these negative thoughts.  But, that only breeds more negative thoughts.  Plus, it builds more anxiety and worried butterflies in our stomach. We don’t want to think about the worst case scenario.  The more we try and forget, the more we think about it.  In fact, we dwell on it. 

We question if there is any wa...

As high achievers, we set goals that scare us a little bit.  This fear presents itself when we start questioning whether or not we can attain the goal we are working towards.  There may be limited or no evidence that this has ever been done before.  Still, we decide to set the goal even with that little voice of self doubt creeping in.

When our belief waivers, we stop taking action toward our goals.  Fear comes into our minds when we are trying to achieve something big.  Sometimes we shift in and out of belief that we can even achieve it.  We question if we will make it or not.  These thoughts aligned ourselves with doubt instead of belief.

Successful people have undeniable belief.  They act as if they already have achieved the goal.  These people think differently.  There is no doubt in their mind.  They just know the goal will be achieved.

This stems from a different type of energy as well.  There is the energy of scarcity that we feel this pressure and need to figure out...

A voicemail message said it all.  “Choose to have a great day.”  It’s true. We have the power to choose.

We can choose to live in the negativity and darkness or we can choose to see the positive and light in life.

Negativity seeps into our lives when we get caught up in our own mind.  We get swept up in the negative self talk of not good enough, worthy, pretty, or capable.  Belittling ourselves to the point where we remain frozen in fear because it’s easier than facing the stories we’ve made up in our minds.  We always think the worst case scenario, even when that rarely happens.

The truth is, we have the power to choose our thoughts.  We can simply ask ourselves is this a thought or is this true.  A thought can be something we’ve made up in our minds to cope with whatever we are going through.  But these thoughts may not always be true.

Using the phrase “that’s not true” can help refrain the mind and put things in perspective.  When we are stuck beating ourselves up ab...

When we see another person’s success, we often use this as a measure of our own success.  We see what other people have achieved, their financial status, what job they hold, if they own a nice car or house, and even the kind of family relationships they have.  We analyze their life and compare it to our own.

There are many factors that play into this mindset.

The first begins with already stated fact of comparison.  We compare our lives to those of others.  Somehow the success of others defines our own worth.  If we don’t measure up we think this means we are not enough.  We beat ourselves up over what other people have that we don’t.

The second mindset comes from a place of jealousy and greed.  We want all the success for ourselves.  We think that if we had all the “things” that it would make us look better.  Read that sentence again.  It would make us LOOK better.  As if we are trying to impress someone.

Having a certain level of status does not make us a better perso...

One of the feelings that can easily consume us is worry.  We worry about what’s going to happen and the unknown outcome of an event. We struggle not being in control of the result we desire to happen.

Worry happens when we start to get inside our head about the worst possible scenario.  We dream up this huge story about what’s going to happen.

As we play different outcomes over and over again in our mind, the worry and anxiety builds.  We start losing sleep, eating very little, and not properly taking care of ourselves due to the deep pit of fear in our stomach.

This can occur before a big event where we work ourselves up into a ball of nerves.  We start stressing out about our appearance, what will we say, what will other people think of us, and all the what if’s we can think of.

Worry also happens after we’ve done something that we regret.  We think, what if I would have done this or that and we beat ourselves up over the bad decision we made.  Only wishing that we co...

We grow up on this life path of finishing school, graduating with a degree, starting an amazing job in our field, getting married, and eventually having children.

We want to make our parents proud, have that incredible career, and a beautiful family.

Life pushes us to acquire all the “things” to make it look like we have it all.  We strive to have this “perfect” life as evidence that we are enough.

This pressure mounts as we get older and soon we lose sight of what we truly love in life.  The passion we once had as children is no longer there.  It’s now a daily routine of getting up in the morning, going to work, coming home to dinner, tv, sleeping, and waking up to do it all over again the next day.  We believe that by achieving this “ideal” life we will finally be happy.

Happiness doesn’t come from having it all.  It comes from living a life that we’re excited about.

However, we worry so much about what other people will think of us.  We worry that we may look stu...

We often live in our comfort zone.  Our ego keeps us from stepping outside our comfort zone to try new things in fear that we might fail or be judged.  Therefore, we remain stuck in this bubble for most of our lives.

Having an inkling of something nudging us to move forward is usually when we get the spark to try something new.  We have a desire to make something happen that we’ve never done before.

That's when self doubt starts to creep in that we are not capable of achieving something so great.  We get so caught up in our own minds that we stop and remain where we are. It then becomes easier to remain stuck in our comfort zone.

Only when the misery of our current situation becomes too much to bare, do we start to look outside our comfort zone for solutions.  We only take action when our comfort zone is no longer comfortable.  It is then that we draw a line in sand and say enough is enough, it’s time to make a change.

We are forced to do something different when we get...