Bills, Beautiful Bills
September 2, 2009 by Donna
Filed under Articles, Blog posts
An excerpt from “110 Ways to Heal Your Money” by Donna Higton
When you see bills, how do you feel? Do you feel great that you can pay them, and that somebody trusts you enough to bill you, knowing that you will pay them? Or do you feel anxious, fearful, stressed, shocked? Many of us complain bitterly and endlessly about our bills. We dread seeing them, we ‘rob Peter to pay Paul’, we wait as long as possible to pay them, and we stress about them and generally feel bad about bills.
Bills are a fact of life, unless you live on a commune, and it is a terrible shame if we allow something that will always happen to get us down. A few years ago when I went self-employed, I would panic and stress whenever I saw a bill – I hated bills. Now, I see a bill, I pay it as soon as I can (usually the same day I receive it), I am grateful than I can pay it and I do it with ease. The difference in experience is profound and wonderful.
Often we think the only answer to the misery of bills is ‘more money’ but I am talking here PURELY of a change of attitude. It is amazing how much a change of attitude and perspective will change your experience. Picture it: you have in your hands all your bills. Instead of your usual reaction, you are happy to see the bills, know that you can easily pay them and are grateful to have the goods and services they represent. When my friend Claire gets her mortgage bill, she points to the bricks on the wall and says “paid for that one and that one and that one over there”.
What difference would this make to your life, your happiness, your energy if this was your regular experience with bills instead of the usual worry, stress and fear? If you can usually pay your bills, this scenario is well within your grasp. Even if you struggle to pay them, this is a possibility for you…I know, I did it without significantly changing my income.
Do you ever stop to appreciate the ease with which you pay your bills? (Once you’ve stopped bitching about them!) Maybe you are too used to seeing your money go out hand over fist, or have got into the habit of making bill-paying a difficult, grudging process. Remember why you are paying those bills, the services and goods that you’ve received, and remember to appreciate that you can pay them.
To find out more about this downloadable ebook, click here.
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Self Care Vs Self Torture
August 18, 2009 by Donna
Filed under Articles, Blog posts
After talking to several clients, friends, and myself about self-care, I started to wonder if we learnt how to take care of ourselves from torturers. Do you recognise any of the following methods of ‘caring’ for yourself?
1. Feed your victim none nutritious food
2. Order your victim around
3. Deprive your victim of sleep
4. Physically, emotionally and mentally abuse your victim
5. Deprive your victim of water
6. Judge your victim harshly
7. Have impossibly high expectations, and get angry and abusive when these expectations are not met
8. Find your victim’s sensitivities and use them to hurt them again and again.
9. Keep your victim caged in an unhealthy environment with no fresh air
10. Teach others how to treat your victim – with no respect.
Seriously, take another look at the list above – ever done any of those things to yourself? I suspect most of you will be able to say ‘yes, I have done them all to myself’. Interesting eh? Even more interesting is that most of us would never treat someone else the way we treat ourselves.
If we wouldn’t treat anyone else like that, why do we do it to ourselves? We are not cruel by nature, we just don’t know any better. We grew up watching people be horrible to themselves, we’re surrounded by other people caught in the torture trap, and getting out of that trap is seen as ‘boring’ or ‘selfish’.
A magnificent catch-22 isn’t it? Despite the fact that we know torturing ourselves is NOT the answer, we are turned off the alternative because society as a whole advocates the torturous road. Are you running with the herd on hot coals? If you were to consciously choose whether to continue beating yourself into the ground or taking excellent care of yourself, which would you choose?
What have you unconsciously chosen? Have you spent so long torturing yourself that you have Stockholm syndrome ? Are you ready to make a new choice? Trust me, it is not selfish, or wrong, or boring, or square to take care of yourself. You deserve to be healthy, energetic, happy and getting the best from your body, mind and spirit. More torture will only bring more pain, and you deserve better from you. Choose life, not persecution.
Love
Donna.x
PS this is an excerpt from my FREE ebook “The First Step To a Joyful Life” – to get your free copy, go to http://www.donnaonthebeach.com/blog/index.php/sign-up-for-more-donna/
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You Set the Tone
August 3, 2009 by Donna
Filed under Articles, Blog posts
What was the tone you set for your day today? It’s a Monday, so I’m going to take an educated guess that you didn’t start the day with a woohoo! So how did you begin the day? ‘oh god, it’s Monday’; ‘another day…same old shite…’; ‘today is going to be a great day’? Most of us just respond to each day as it comes – so the tone we set depends on what mood we wake up in, what we’re doing, what happens to us during the day and how other people are behaving around us.
Now that’s fine if you’re surrounded by joyful, encouraging, fun people, wonderful gifts and surprises, doing what you love to do and waking up with a bounce and a ‘hazah’ every morning. However, that is not the usual experience. And it makes us pretty helpless when it comes to having a good day or bad day. We are basically at the mercy of the tide of life. But we are better swimmers than we realise…we have more potential for control than we think.
We have more power than we realise…and we don’t use it. Each day, you can decide to set the tone of the day. Ok, if you wake up in a foul mood in foul weather with a day ahead doing something you hate surrounded by people who drive you nuts, perhaps it’s too much of a reach to set the tone as magnificence! But you can certainly decide that things can get better. This is all about your attitude.
So let’s have an example – if your mission was to make the next hour as much fun as possible, what would you do? (yes, even if you’re at work – it doesn’t have to be like a night at a comedy club, just what is possible within the constraints) How about if your mission was to make the next hour as miserable as possible? What would you do? Which would you prefer to do? Remember that you have more say over how your day goes than you currently use, and start using it.
You don’t have to do it for the whole day – you can just decide to set the tone for the next meeting, the next hour, the next phone call. Practice flexing your power over how you react to your day, how you enjoy your day (despite what happens, not because of it), how you set the tone for your life.
Love
Donna.x
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Unstick Your Stuck Pooh Stick
June 26, 2009 by Donna
Filed under Articles, Blog posts
Remember Pooh-sticks? The game Winnie the Pooh and friends played where they drop a stick into the water on one side of the bridge, and the first stick to reach the other side wins. Now, imagine that life is like a game of Pooh sticks…and you are the stick. The stick is happily floating downstream in the river of life…until it gets stuck. Maybe it’s wedged in with a bunch of other sticks, maybe it’s caught in a little eddy, going round and round and round.
Does this sound like your life? Is your stick stuck? Does it help your stick to complain about being stuck to all the other sticks? Does it help to moan that your stick is too fat, too stupid, too stuck? No. Your stick is still stuck. The stick isn’t a bad stick for getting stuck – it just got stuck. It happens in the river of life. Some sticks float down the river without ever getting stuck (although I’ve not once met one!), but most get stuck sometimes.
Now imagine that all you have to do is get your stick unstuck…that’s your only task. See the thing about getting stuck is that you don’t have to stay stuck. Sometimes you will need to move a load of other sticks around you to be able to move, sometimes it’s just a matter of pointing the stick back downstream, and sometimes you have to throw a rock at the stick to get it moving.
Again, the stick isn’t bad…no matter what it takes to get it moving again, the stick is just stuck. No more, no less. Are you getting the relevance of this metaphor to your life? Maybe you are not stuck right now…if not, great! Remember to enjoy the flow of life, and notice what is going on around you. Maybe you can avoid getting stuck for a while. When (if) you do get stuck, and if you are stuck now, your only task is to get unstuck.
My stick gets stuck on a regular basis – it might be a business challenge, or relationships, or outside influences, or health trouble, or writing, or any other ‘obstacle’ in life. I don’t mind getting stuck anymore, because I know lots of tools that will help me move my stick – coaching, journalling, gratitude, vision, friends, colleagues, clients, the list is endless. A few years ago the only way I knew was to throw a rock at the stick!
I want you to know that you don’t have to throw a rock at the stick – life change doesn’t have to be shocking and hard, and totally disorientating. You can let it be easy. As long as you are working on getting your stick back into the flow of life, it’s all good. And where is the flow going? Well, Nirvana of course. The joyful life. It’s not that far away…you just might get stuck a time or two. But your only job is to keep your stick unstuck and flowing.
I wish you this weekend a flowing, wonderful, joyous ride on the river of life!
Love
Donna.x
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What do You Want For Others?
June 18, 2009 by Donna
Filed under Articles, Blog posts
Yesterday I realised that I have been so caught up in the business of ‘making my business successful’ that I had forgotten the most important thing – what I want for my clients. Not from them, for them. You see, I want the people who come to me for coaching to be able to realise and access their inner magnificence, to connect with who they truly are and what they truly want, to use their intuitive guidance to make their lives completely amazing…and to trust themselves enough to allow their intuition to take over. Oh, and above all, to live joyfully, and dance and laugh their way through life.
When I remember this, business takes on a more ’service’ aspect, becomes less about what I can get or achieve and more about the difference that I can make to 1 or 1000 or 1,000,000 lives. It is all too easy in this world just to get caught up in the race for success, without stopping to think about why we’re doing it in the first place. You can probably think of many examples of people who had ideals and integrity when they started out, but then got caught up in the culture of doing, fighting, pushing and forgot why they began that journey.
I believe most politicians fit in this category. They start out wanting to change the world, and then they get bogged down in the bureaucracy and mind-blowing slowness of change, and they simply forget what they initially set out to do! All of us have our bills to pay, our lives to live, our own agendas in life…but sometimes when you reconnect with what you want for others, you find a better way of doing what you do, increase your enjoyment of life, and you serve others.
So think of all the people in your life – what do you want for them? Your clients, your friends, your family, your neighbours, your community? And is your action in alignment with those desires? You may want your children to be happy – is criticising them adding to or distracting from their happiness? You may want your clients to have a great experience of working with you – is moaning about them or delaying returning their calls giving them a great experience?
Get back in touch with what you want for others and find the reasons why you do what you do, whether at work or at home. By the way, never sacrifice yourself to please someone else! Ultimately their experience of life is their business, but you can certainly influence that.
Love
Donna.x
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Writing and The Work
A note from Donna
I was telling a friend about this insight a couple of weeks ago, and she suggested that it would make an interesting article. This is based on ‘The Work’, a four-step process used by Byron Katie (see recommendation) – the premise is that you explore a stressful thought through these four questions and the turnaround. On this particular day, I was exploring why I wasn’t writing, which surfaced the most beautiful belief: If I only write when I want to, I’ll never write.
Writing and The Work
If I only write when I want to, I’ll never write. Question 1: Is this True? No. (Question 2 is ‘Can I know for sure that this is true?’ – irrelevant in this case as it is not true in the first place!)
Question 3: How do I react when I believe this thought “if I only write when I want to, I’ll never write”? I get p***ed off. I compare myself unfavourably to other writers who force the process to get themselves flowing. I get mardy because I don’t want to do that at all. I love writing, but this takes the joy out of it for me. I don’t want to write when I believe this thought!
Question 4: Who would I be without this thought? Oh wow, I feel light, free, happy, I’m looking forward to writing, I’m excited about creating more fabulous stuff. I know that I create well when I am inspired so I feel really proud (in advance) of what I will create.
Turnarounds:
If I only write when I want to, I’ll always write. This feels so much more true – I’ve been writing regularly now for 6 years and I am always having ideas and inspirations…and I love writing. So if I don’t ruin it for myself and make it a chore, I will always want to do it.
If I never write when I want to I’ll never write. Yes! Very true – if I’m always trying to ‘make’ myself do it, I’ll kill the desire to do it!
If I only write when I don’t want to, I’ll never write. Yes! This is exactly what’s been happening.
This exploration helped me to realise something – I have never wanted to create in a formulaic way, to me it kills the creativity. And yet here I have been, trying to force structure around something that isn’t structured. And that forcing has actually been slowing down my writing. So, now I am back to writing when I want to…and LOVING it!
Something to play with
Check out www.thework.com for instructions about doing the work, or buy the book, and then start to explore your stressful thoughts – you may find, as I did, that your stressful thought is a load of b***cks!
Want to share your thoughts on this article? Leave me a comment below.
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OnTheBeach – Drop the Story
We all have our stories – created by how we grew up, how our love life has gone, how our career has been so far, how our friendships and social life have been. Sometimes these stories can be useful – for example, you may know from experience that when somone only gives you their mobile number and is usually in the garage when they speak to you, chances are they are already in a relationship! So your ‘old’ story may give you fair warning when you encounter a similar situation.
However, the past does not predict the future. Just because the sun shone yesterday does not mean in will shine today (especially relevant if you live in the UK!). Just because you were let down, dumped, made redudant, in trouble, lonely, tired yesterday does not mean you will be in the same situation tomorrow. Sometimes we let our story of our lives get in the way of this moment we’re in, and we judge this moment we’re in by our story, unfairly.
For example, on Monday I was tired. 7 years ago I was diagnosed with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, so when I am tired there is a whole big story there to do with exhaustion, being unable to think, not having the energy to exercise or go anywhere. For a while the story served me because it stopped me from overdoing it, it made me far more conscious of my limitations and my energy patterns. But then, on Monday, I realised that the story had become a millstone around my neck.
Because on Monday, I was tired. Nothing more. The thousand other times I’d been tired for months were irrelevant, because I was just tired. And since I had that realisation, I’ve noticed that lots of us make our ’story’ more important than the reality. And if we just ‘drop’ the story, and look at what’s here now, we might just have a different take on it. I’m sure you know someone (maybe even yourself) who has built up a catalogue of complaints against a colleague, a boss, or a spouse.
What if you were to drop that story just for today and just treat them as you would if you didn’t have the litany of reasons to be cross with them? What would change in your love life, your career, your friendships, your social life, your health if you dropped your story about that area? What might be different? I discovered that when I dropped my stories about my life, I felt lighter, freer, more ‘in the present’, and ultimately, happier! It may be that your story is a wonderful fairy tale, but if you are telling horror stories about your life, maybe it’s time to drop them and let a new story be told?
Something to Play With
What is the story you are telling yourself and others about your life? About your relationships? About your finances? Your career? Your social life? Drop the story for a moment, and imagine that you have no history in this area – does it look different? Does the story change? Do you want to create and tell a new story?
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OnTheBeach – Are Your Good Habits Wrecking Your Life?
I have written a lot about self-care over the last few years (for my free ebook on self-care, click here), and the basic idea of self-care is doing things that care for you – physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. I am often intrigued by how people (including myself) do the opposite of self-care, they self-hurt. Not necessarily by cutting themselves or in any obvious way ‘self-harming’, but by not noticing when the little things that make up a life detract from their enjoyment. And sometimes it is the so-called good habits that turn toxic.
One of the reasons I was so grateful to be sick last week was that it forced me to cut out so many things that I normally do…and to notice when I was doing something that actually made me feel worse. For example, I have a series of ‘daily practices’ that help me make my life amazing, like meditations, yoga, gratitude, journalling, channelling, affirmations. But I had made them into a chore by trying to do 15 things every day – whether I wanted to or not.
The irony is that I do these to make myself feel better, but I spent half the day avoiding the chore and berating myself for not doing them. (oh how I laughed when I realised what I was doing!) So they didn’t make me feel better! Each process, each item, done in its right time does help me – whether physically, emotionally, mentally or spiritually…but that doesn’t mean I have to gorge on them!
Awareness is the key to making sure that something or someone who once enhanced your life and made it better STILL does. It’s amazing how often we continue with a so-called ‘good’ habit long after it stops serving us. Let me be clear here: to my mind, something serves you and enhances your life if you get joy from it. So running for 5 miles a day does not count if you hate it. If you love to run, then that’s something that serves you and enhances your life.
If we really believed in our inherent worth, we would never tolerate habits, or anything that did not serve us. Imagine believing so much in your divine magnificence that you nurtured yourself, cared for yourself, put your joy before your ‘should’s, gave yourself the tender, loving, gentle, total love and respect. Imagine if every ‘good’ habit you had added to your joy, instead of being a chore and wrecking your life!
Something to play with
Check your ‘good’ habits. Do the things that you do to make your life better make you feel fabulous? If not, maybe it’s time to swap a tired old habit for a new shiny, joyful one?
Leave me a comment with your thoughts below.
Joy be with you.
Love
Donna.x
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OnTheBeach – Revealing Your Natural Radiance
Imagine this: a person radiating warmth, effervescence, joy, delight. A person glittering, incandescently shining with brilliance. A sparkling example of the stunning beauty of the human soul. Now imagine your face on that radiant body. For some of you, that might be exactly how you appear to the world on a normal day. For most of us, incandescence is something we save for special occasions, good days, in my case, summer!
But that inner radiance doesn’t go away just because we are moping about the lack of sunlight, cold, rain and bitter winds. It just gets covered up by a few layers. Perhaps one of those layers is the fact that you don’t realise your inner radiance. I’m here to tell you that we ALL have an inner radiance. We are all bursting with effervescence. Sadly from the time we are very small, many of us have that brilliance criticised – for being too giggly, disruptive, or chattering too much.
Then as life goes on, we try to extinguish our own light by being less than supportive to ourselves, getting stressed and not taking care of ourselves. The good news is that it is impossible to extinguish that inner radiance, but you may need to take off some metaphorical layers to reveal it. Yes, I said metaphorical – running around in the buff is not what I mean by revealing your natural radiance.
Can you imagine if your friends and family all took off those metaphorical layers to reveal their brilliance? You will have seen them shining, joyful, sparkling at some point in their lives, but perhaps they are not now? What a difference it would make to our world if we were surrounded by people who radiated their inner beauty on a regular basis – what a beautiful thing that would be.
It starts with you. It starts with you recognising your brilliance…even if you only see a tiny bit of the wonder of you, that’s a start. And it continues with you opening up to shine, and knowing that in doing so, your friends and family will bask in the warmth of your radiance. They will be encouraged to shine, because you shine. The darkness in your world can be lit by your light and your love – will you rise to the challenge and reveal your natural radiance?
Something to play with
How radiant are you feeling on a scale of 1-10? What could you do to increase that level of radiance by 1 point in the next week? Do it.
Want to share your thoughts on this article? Leave me a comment below.
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OnTheBeach – What Do You Serve?
Note from Donna
Life is so much more difficult when you aren’t sleeping well, isn’t it? I had got used to being optimistic, full of ideas and inspirations, laughing easily and often…but then insomnia visited me (again!) and suddenly my brain is made of custard, being optimistic takes work, and laughter is a little smile and a sharp exhale through my nose. Hmmm…you know what that says to me? I need to go get some sleep. Nighty night.
February Special offer
We all have something that drives us, something that moves us, something that we feel passionate about. It’s what we serve, the oomph behind our purpose in life. Do you want to find that thing that you serve? This month’s
special offer is a special coaching session to help you find out what you are ‘in service of’, for just £30 (normal cost £65-90). E-mail me with ‘yes! I want to serve’ in the subject line, http://www.donnaonthebeach.com/blog/index.php/coaching/special-offers/ for more info.
What do you serve?
I was at a workshop a couple of years ago talking to some truly amazing people about what they were ‘in service of’, and I got a jolt (like a bolt of lightning) of realisation that if these people didn’t serve this world, it would be a tragedy. And I know that this realisation was not just for the 10 people sitting in that workshop, but for every single person on this planet. Including you.
I know that you have something truly amazing to give, that you are passionate about something that you see every day in your life, that you really would love to do something to ‘sort it out’…and I know that sometimes ‘life’ gets in the way! Another thing I know is that it does not have to be this way. There are ways to ‘serve’ this world without sacking your job and haring off to work in poverty stricken areas.
(Although if you really want to do that…what is stopping you?!)
You have so much talent, so much to give that it breaks my heart to see so many of you not using it. Especially when it could be so easy! Truly, it can be very easy. Nothing drastic needs to happen. All you need is imagination, willingness, and a cause. For example, if it drives you wild to see people being miserable, you could make it your mission to bring cheer to the world.
You can even use your current job to serve – my favourite example of this a story I heard of an accountant who is driven by the desire to make the world a more peaceful place…so he helps people get ‘at peace’ with their finances. If an accountant can do it, why not you? How could you turn your current place of work into your ministry?
This is too important for you to just read, nod and forget. I want you to remember that you have something incredible that you are here to accomplish. And you know it. You might not know what it is, you might be afraid of it and you might even think ‘I can’t’. You can. You must. This world needs you to step up. I once didn’t know – I found out. I am scared – that’s okay, I can still serve. I sometimes think ‘I can’t’, and then I remember. I can.
Each one of us is just one part of a much bigger picture. You might be here to serve peace or joy or love or passion or a million other things…and you know what? There are others who are serving the same thing. You are not alone in this. But you, too, are needed to do your corner of the tapestry of life. If we all started working together, imagine what could be achieved? This world needs you to step up.
Something to play with
Start thinking about what you are here to serve. What do you hate to see in the world? What makes you think ‘NO! that must stop’? If you had all the money in the world, what would you ‘fix’? Figure out how you can start serving now, today.
And if you are really interested in exploring this – take me up on the offer above – it’s part of my ‘service’ to help you find out what you are here to serve, and how you can do that easily in your day to day life.
Love
Donna.x
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