What's Your Story

Do you enjoy life or do you exist? We all have moments of feeling trapped leaving us frustrated and unable to figure out what changes to make. Poor relationships, lack of self confidence, resentment, anger, and lack of joy are the result of the stories we tell ourselves that direct our lives.

We all have stories and these stories place limits on us. They hold us back from accomplishing what we want. They are deeply embedded in our subconscious mind and we, for the most part, are unaware of them. We use our stories to protect ourselves from making changes for fear of failure or fear of success.

The challenge is becoming aware of when our stories make choices for us and when we make our own choices. If we can recognize and rewrite our stories, then we could live life to our fullest potential.

Do any of these sound familiar?

If I were thinner, I'd be happy.

I'm a failure because I can't do it all

If I can't be the best, then why bother at all

What is your story?

Judy Rienzi

Building AWE

AWE is defined in thefreedictionary.com as "a mixed emotion of reverence, respect, dread, and wonder inspired by authority, genius, great beauty, sublimity, or might."

What leads us to this emotion can be distilled down to three phases.

1. Awareness
2. Wisdom
3. Enjoyment

Some thing, some one, some experience triggers a response. It can be a work of art, music, a lovely autumn day, a conversation with a friend, a headline in the news. This "trigger" leads us to some level of awareness. This awareness can occur in a board room, a class room, over the internet, on a walk, driving in traffic. In reality, it is happening all of the time.

Once we are now aware of that stimulus, we use our wisdom, our beliefs to interpret what that information means. Our resources for making those interpretations comes from our personal and professional library. This library is the storage space where we have collected facts and fiction, illusions and inspirations, tips and tidbits. How we apply our wisdom actually takes us to the next level.

This final phase is enjoyment. How we move through those first two phases of awareness and wisdom will directly lead us to a wide and varied degree of enjoyment. We can experience amazing inspiration or overwhelming devastation, this certainly will determine our level of enjoyment.

Today, am making a conscious choice to do three things

1. Be aware of my actions, relationships, interests, environment
2. Expand my wisdom to how I am relating to myself and the outside world
   
3. And ultimately, experience enjoyment in the transitions and growth
   

What level of AWE would you like to experience?


What are three things you can do right now to help you get to that level of AWE?

1. 
   
2. 
   
3. 
   

Promoting Health & Wealth - Four Components of Attitude

BusinessDictionary.com defines attitude as a predisposition or a tendency to respond positively or negatively towards a certain idea, object, person or situation. Attitude influences an individual's choice of action, and responds to challenges, incentives, and rewards (together called stimuli).

This source expands the definition by adding there are four major components of attitude, which are

1. Affective - emotions or feelings.
2. Cognitive belief or opinion held consciously
3. Conative - inclination for action.
   
4. Evaluative - positive or negative response to stimuli

Interestingly enough, I never had really thought about attitude in regards to specific components. Breaking attitude into bite sized parts makes sense. First, deciding that I can and will be aware of my emotions and feelings as I approach a situation or a person can certainly will affect the experience.

What are some emotions and feelings that might affect our relationships and performance?

As I learn to consciously aware, I become more cognizant of how my beliefs and opinions might be limiting or helping me with that situation or relationship.

What beliefs and opinions do I presently hold?

The conative component, that understanding of our inclination to action, now becomes more important than ever. When we become more conscious of what affects our performance and relationships we can make better decisions in what actions we will take to make a change.

What actions have I taken or not taken lately?

The fourth component, evaluative, is now imperative. All the above questions were WHAT questions. Let's ask the HOW questions?

How are my emotions and feelings affecting my relationships, performance and results? How are my beliefs and opinions affecting my relationships, performance and results? How is my level of consciousness affecting my relationships, performance and results?

Evaluation is an element of attitude that is probably the area where we fall short, I for one know that it is mine. Finding approaches, tools and resources to help us really create an attitude that supports a health, wealth and a life that we want and need is the greatest gift we can give to our selves.

I have an entirely different appreciation and approach for changing my attitude. What about you?

All the best in health and wealth,

Laura