“Breakthrough, the Movie,”

Okay. It has been one week. The challenge? NOT to promote others, but to promote my business. I’d love to say, easy, peasy, truly a piece of cake! I have successfully STOPPED promoting others and am now GIFTED at self-promotion! But oh, how untrue THAT would be!

This past week has been so interesting! I feel like Edison, I did not fail hundreds of times to create a light bulb, I now know hundreds of ways how NOT to create a light bulb! Monday was truly the hardest and most successful today. I was mentally whipped at the end of the day. AND, I had created more business in a few hours then in a month. FOCUSED on myself! However, it was a constant struggle! My mind/my habits kept trying to pull me in to that which I love… authentic and strategic connections… the other part of me felt like I literally had a rope around those desires and would pull, pull, pull me back to self and self promotion. Was not back in my office until Friday (out on appts.) so WHAT did I decide to do? Something I have been putting off for quite some time-reorganizing my office. I’m not SORRY I’m doing it, but is it just another way to stay away from self-promoting? I DO feel like cleaning the office out means my brain is re-organizing patterns so I can start fresh on Monday. New places for information, my materials handy, all good. And yet, I want to be straight and at least address the possibility of avoidance.

BUT! I am still up to this challenge! I have so much more sympathy now for someone quitting smoking, taking just one more puff, because I did not yet go an entire day not promoting someone. My name is Karen Hoffman and I am addicted to making connections.

Since I’m a glass half full gal, I WILL say EVERYDAY I self-promoted though so PROGRESS! I DID take several steps on my new brand/branding… calling people, setting appointments I have been putting off… Gateway to Dreams is being nurtured now. Taking/making time for it!

My yardstick this week will be the ratio… am I promoting myself/my business more or others. Hopefully the ratios will reverse (10 to 1? Hmmm…..) and I can truly step in to being comfortable with promoting my services.

What about you? Any place you are keeping yourself small?

A stray dog trotted down our country road, a white pit bull with a splotch of brown over his left eye. He ran after my truck as if he had been dumped on the roadside, hungry, tired, confused, forlorn and disoriented. The desperation in his trot was sad, he longed for a new home, a cool bowl of water and a potential place to lay his weary head.

OMG! Just finished the Big Reveal.. Phoenix Arises Seminars this
Weekend, and am still integrating the transformative gifts of Love
And Compassion I received. Thank you, Jaimes!! I feel like I have a new body
..I am in it! And at Peace..After years of consoling, body work, and Spiritual
Practice, the time was right for me to step forward and tell the Truth of
My experience. It was held in the most gentle, strong, powerful hands
As I released the suppressed energy I had held for so long. And to the team of
Compassionate Soldiers..that gave up their weekend,

You know what? The future is now. We spend so much time thinking, worrying, planning, hoping, and projecting into and about the future that we fail to realize that the “future” is right now.

You know what else? The past is now. We spend so much time resisting, reviewing, rehashing, lamenting, and reliving from and about the past that we hardly realize the “past” is right now.

The thing we must learn (or remember) about time is that it eludes us.

It tricks us into thinking that we can go someplace other than now. What I mean is, when we think about the past (or the future), our thoughts transport us to a place where we are consumed with what happened—or what we want to happen.

In a manner of speaking, we mostly live our lives as if from the wavy lines of a situation comedy flashback. You know what I’m talking about don’t you? It’s the moment where a character wistfully taps finger to chin while the screen image goes wavy to indicate that the event (even if it happened earlier that same day) happened in the past. Well, I suggest that we spend quite a bit of our “now” lives in the wavy past. And while we’re doing that, the clock called now is tick, tick, ticking. And sometimes before we realize it, we’ve logged quite a substantial amount of “now time” in the wavy flashback time called “past time.”

So, here’s the good news. If when we think about the past, we are transported to it as if it’s happening now, then, we can think about the future we desire and we are transported to it too as if it were happening now. So, go ahead. Leap into your future.

I dare you!

And another thing, the painful past you imagine likely didn’t happen the way you imagined it. In fact, if you must, go ahead and relive the past . But, live it in a way that leaves you feeling whole, complete, and satisfied. It’s not too late to see your life retrospectively happy.

Use this discussion board/blog to post your insights. Read and discuss the insights of others. Go for it!!!

Imagine feeling like you were born in the wrong body; inside you felt like a different gender than what your body shows on the outside.

This has been my son’s experience for as long as he can remember. He has a vivid recollection of looking in the mirror when he was 4 and realizing that the image he saw did not match how he felt inside.

In last week’s blog I wrote about my son, Daniel, who has embarked on an interesting journey of gender exploration. He believes the body you arrive in should not be the determining factor of who you are. He doesn’t buy in to a forced binary system of someone being male or female; he sees gender as more of a continuum.

Daniel has always danced to the beat of his own drum; his quest has always been being true to himself; being authentic. This became evident even when he was a toddler. Most young children will ask why they are being asked to do something. Daniel always took it a step further, questioning whether a request was reason enough to do what he was being asked to do, and frankly, whether or not he really wanted to do what was being asked.

Living life as a question has continued. Today Daniel’s questions revolve around who he is, what he believes, why things are the way they are, and what gender he most identifies with. The first step in his journey was to begin thinking of himself as gender free. As he allowed himself the space to transcend the physical body he entered this world in, he opened up to new possibilities of discovering who he is on the inside. Over time, he has realized that in many ways, he identifies more with being female than male.

Part of Daniel’s new beginning involved choosing a name that more accurately represents who/how zie is inside. (In last week’s blog I presented the preferred pronouns of people who are gender free: Zie instead of he or she; Hir instead of him or her.) Daniel’s chosen name is Yuki; a name used by both genders, but most often by females. It means blessing;snow in Japanese.

This makes perfect sense because Yuki has always been intrigued with the Japanese culture, language and art. And if you read last weeks’ blog you know that zie loves ice. Zie knows how to write Yuki using the Japanese alphabet; as usual, always going for full authenticity.

A more recent aspect of Yuki’s journey has been speaking at local universities. Zie is committed to helping teachers, counselors and school administrators understand the opportunity they have to make a bigger positive difference in the lives of kids by accepting and honoring all forms of diversity. Yuki asks them to be accepting of LGBT youth and to intervene when kids are ridiculed and bullied for simply being themselves.

One of the teachers wrote the following letter to her professor following Yuki’s visit to their class.

“Yuki was truly inspiring. Hir courage and openness was a breath of fresh air. I’m sure so many children are just hiding what they really feel inside in order to just live a “normal” life as their family had planned for them. It takes someone with real courage to step up and be so open. In return for that, Yuki gets to live a freeing life. A life that zie really feels is hir own, and that is so important. I really applaud both Yuki and hir mom for speaking with us. From that experience, I learned so much more about the differences people have, and it opened up a new accepting and understanding place in my own heart.”

Yuki is also an ongoing source of inspiration for me, and hopefully for you, too.

• Do you have the courage to ask ourselves and the world around us the tough questions?
• Are you willing to speak your truth?
• How authentically are you living your own life?
• Are you accepting of people walking different paths? And are you willing to move beyond tolerance to honoring those different paths?
• In what ways might you use your greatest pain as a catalyst to help others grow?

Yuki’s path also represents new beginnings for me as his mother. I will be sharing that in next week’s blog.

In the meantime, I hope you will join me on this week’s blogcast on with Jaimes McNeal and roundtable guest Debbie Volmert as we kick off March’s discussion topic:

Breakthrough in Leaping into the Future.

Monday, March 1st from 6:00 – 7:00 p.m.

Call 712-432-8282, enter conference number: 030110, then #

And, as always, I welcome your comments on this week’s blog.

Love & Light,

Toni

“What do you mean I’m using my energy on what I want, not what I need?

I shared on a recent post that Evonne Weinhaus made that I had a breakdown/breakthrough this weekend while in Florida.

The breakdown occurred at a marketing workshop for “helping-preneurs” that was hosted by Suzanne Evans.

February is a time of the sensual scent of roses, red cheerful hearts on cards, playful red ties and red dogs.

Here lately, I’ve become more aware of the negative things I seem to say about myself; “These jeans are looking awfully tight”, “Wow, I’m really starting to look older”, and “Hmmm, I really should get off my lazy ass and do something today.” I’m sure I’m not the only one that talks to myself like that. And yet, I would never say these words to someone else. Why do I think nothing of saying them to myself? In fact, if my husband, or even a friend addressed me in the manner in which I do myself, I would be shocked…and incredibly hurt. Which brings me to question:

Why is it so easy to say ugly words to ourselves…about ourselves?

It was a few years ago that I decided that my weight had gotten out of control. After having two kids and experiencing a couple of periods of depressions, I finally reached a place where I was loving life again, I was happy. But I wasn’t happy with what I saw in the mirror. I would say I loved myself, but the big question was….. Could I look in the mirror NAKED and say that I loved EVERYTHING about myself? Honestly, the answer was HELL NO!!! Look at those rolls, look at the way that my thighs touch, and I don’t even want to talk about the dimples in my butt!

As I became more conscious of the things that I was eating and learned to love working out…or at least learned to work out, even if I didn’t always love it… I saw changes. But over time, I came to realize that the big changes happen when I could start looking in the mirror naked and loving every inch of me…no matter what I saw. This took time, it didn’t happen overnight. I had to recognize that every part of me, including those rolls and dimples, represented who I am. And, in order to start loving myself completely, I had to love all of those parts of me. I became aware of the lessons that I could learn from every part and, when I became aware of those lessons, I could then love it. And, only then, could I say that I was done with it and release it…give it permission to change, and give myself permission to make changes. The vision that I saw in the mirror was changing, the work was actually more mental then physical. I was talking to myself differently, walking taller, and feeling the love that I had for myself. I felt GOOD!!!

I have learned since then that it is easy to fall into old patterns, there’s comfort in what we’re used to. Being aware of these patterns is the first step…and then recognizing the steps to change things comes next. Some of those steps I’ve already started. Now it’s time to focus more on those thought patterns that hold me back…to work on stopping the negativity in my head. Just like any relationship, we fall into negative habits and need to invest the time into creating good ones again. There is some trust that has been lost and not always being honest with yourself takes time to repair. But this relationship, the one with yourself, is the core relationship. It’s the one all other relationships that you have are built off of. And you can’t foster good, positive relationships with others if you don’t have a good, positive relationship with yourself.

NOW IS THE TIME

I am taking this weekend to invest in me. To clear my mind and to love myself…more now than I ever have. This is not about getting into size 2 jeans or to look like a swim suit model on the cover of Sports Illustrated. This about being healthy, about investing in my relationship with me, and about remembering to love myself every single day more now than the one before. This weekend is about me…and I intend to make the most of it.

Love and Laughter Always,
Becky