End of Year Reflection: Learn from the Past

It’s the end of the year, and it’s time to reflect.Time to learn from the past and use this information to create our dream future.

Some of the following reflecting questions are useful this time of year.

• What has this year brought me?
• What goals did I achieve?
• What memories did I create?
• Where did I still make excuses for myself to not go for everything I wanted and more?

Why Dreams Don’t Come True

In this article, I want to focus on why your dreams haven’t yet occurred from the beautiful 2021 intentions you set out to achieve. Many of us get so caught up in what has happened in the past and what is already familiar to us. We think that our dreams cannot occur just because of what people have told us in the past. I always find this sad because I often hear people say, “Oh, that won’t work for me.” Or, “my medical case, dream, or life is very special or different, so the odds just aren’t in my favor of my dreams working out.”

It’s interesting how much people cling so tightly to what the past has dictated their future could be so that their dreams never come true. It’s almost like an addiction to self-sabotage.

An example of this would be when I was diagnosed with thyroid cancer. I was told I’d be on medication every day for the rest of my life, I would require a yearly special doctor checkup. And when I wanted to have children, it would be very challenging for me. In many ways, I was addicted to the feeling of being unwell, of not wanting to be at school, of thinking I needed special treatment because my cancer case was unique to happen to a 14-year-old girl, and two surgeries instead of one were required. I would often say I had cancer or battled cancer so that people knew I went through something traumatic.

When I made the commitment that I wanted to change my life, I was able to take the massive action necessary to leave my past in the past and create a new future. I was able to do this even when I was told it wouldn’t ever be possible for me. In this article, I will share the specific action I took that guided me to get off the medication I was meant to be on every day for the rest of my life.

So I was directed to trust that I could travel the world without relying on Western Medicine to be right there if something went wrong. This specific action led to the birth of my company, Colleen Gallagher International, which has transformed my life and tens of thousands of others worldwide. I want to share these secrets with you to learn from your past, let it go, and take action to live your future dreams right now.

Secret number one: Awareness.

Secret number one is that you must come into a state of awareness that no one is forcing you to suffer in this life.

You are the only one who is making yourself suffer. What I mean by this is that if your end-of-year reflection does not align with the dream life that you know you want to live, that is because you are allowing yourself to stay in a state of suffering instead of going into a state of thriving. You let your past dictate what is possible for you in the future.

I allowed myself to suffer from cancer; I felt guilty to be alive when other children I knew died. I felt guilty that I didn’t have to suffer through money to pay for my treatments; however, many others did. I thought I needed to be right by a doctor if anything went wrong. And until one day when I had a doctor visit that transformed my whole idea around health and wellness, I realized that it was me and me alone that was going to have to heal my life, and for me to dictate how my future would be, not what anyone else said it could be.

Secret number two: Self-forgiveness.

I had to forgive myself. It was from the previously described state of awareness that I had to forgive myself for choosing to suffer for nine long years of pain as I share in my first book Live Your Truth.  It was me so willingly allowing myself to trust all those people telling me how I wanted my life to be. I had to forgive myself; I had to look in the mirror and forgive myself for all the ways I acted out to seek attention and all the times I said no to opportunities that would have brought my dreams closer out of fear for my health. All the failed relationships during which I chose work or being emotionally chaotic and using cancer as an excuse.

I had to forgive myself, and that takes a bit of time. The process of self-forgiveness often looks like sitting in front of a mirror and looking in your eyes to say “I accept myself, I approve of myself, and I forgive myself for doing the best I knew at each given moment in my life.” Once this process takes place, you are now able to enter secret number three.

Secret number three: Take Action.

Secret number three involves being in a state of taking action that will bring you closer to living your future dreams right now.

Before this point of acceptance and forgiveness, any action you would have taken would be out of the mindset and beliefs that whatever you do to make your dreams happen isn’t going to come true because of past stories told by yourself and others.

For example, when I graduated from college and was working in a corporate job, I thought I could only live internationally by going to an international school or working for a company abroad because these actions would guarantee health care and a salary. Once I realized that you could get your own visas to live in other countries and travel on your own without a corporation, I realized what I had been told in life wasn’t necessarily true. We could always alter our reality, to create a life we want to live.

I learned I was acting out of default instead of designing my life by choice.

Once I could accept that I chose to suffer, I could forgive myself.

Then, I could act, believing my dreams would come true with that action instead of thinking the same old story, that nothing will ever change.

Secret number four: Learn from the Past.

Finally, secret number four is to learn from the past so you can build the courage to take the leap of faith towards your dreams. As we enter a new year, this is a perfect time to take this action and live this secret.

Look within your past. Write down all the moments you are most proud of in your life. For me, these included beating cancer, traveling the world, seeing how I could empower people to transform their lives, et cetera. And I realized that in order to do those things and seemingly defy the odds at winning in those areas, I had to take action.

So, I began to join webinars by people who would travel the world full-time. I began to write a book. I then created my first online course. Then I built my online education company, Colleen Gallagher International.

For you to learn from your past you must observe what brought you joy from your past actions – what you are proud of from your past.

Take Action to Learn from the Past and Recalibrate Your Life

Then repeat those experiences in the present. These actions guarantee results. They allow you to create your dream reality in the now, instead of suffering from past stories that are not true.

These are the four secrets I repeatedly use to recalibrate my life, release the past that brought me to $10,000 months, then $20,000 months, and travel first class and luxury instead of economy and Airbnb. If you want to go deeper on this, I recommend my two-part workshop called Recalibration.

I used this repeatedly to redo what no longer worked so in every moment, the past never dictated my future, but I consciously created it from pure desire. I took the action that I knew would make me proud and this is what I hope for you!

Colleen Gallagher

Colleen Gallagher is an intuitive business and personal development consultant. She has survived childhood cancer, is a global citizen, an advocate for everyone to have an opportunity to live their dreams and an academic who is currently pursuing her Ph.D is Psychology with a focus on Global Leadership and Change. She is an author of multiple books, including her latest release An Uncompromised Life, and the host of The Colleen Gallagher podcast. Her greatest success is seeing her clients fall in love with life by overcoming trauma and life challenges and create a lifestyle career that impacts the world. Colleen empowers leaders and businesses to come to a newfound clarity of their mission, so that they can better understand their gifts while taking calculated action to grow their businesses. Colleen offers these experiences through online courses, in-person retreats, her podcast, books and products. Currently, Colleen resides in Los Angeles, California.

colleengallagher.co

The post How to Learn From the Past to Create Your Dream Future appeared first on LA Yoga Magazine - Ayurveda & Health.

Prioritize Growth throughout the Year

As the holiday season approaches, I know that some of us are so excited and some of us are dreading the holiday cheer due to sadness, feeling like we don’t have people to spend it with, work, a challenging year for us all, experiencing loss, or just about everything. As I write in my third book An Uncompromised Life, I chose to let my child go within six days of my first missed period in December 2019. So, trust me, I get it that the holidays can bring up a lot for you! So, what can we do during these last few weeks of the year to prioritize growth and mental wellness during the holiday season?

First, don’t get lost in trying to buy the perfect gift to impress the perfect person.

The holiday season has been so warped that now we need to get each other gifts as this act of appreciation to show we care or are thinking of someone. Instead, think about what experience or memory you can create, offer or plan that will be something you and the people you care about will remember forever.

Maybe add playing “Apples to Apples” as a holiday after dinner game, Christmas caroling together or volunteering time at a charity your family is passionate about. Think of doing something outside of just giving gifts by providing an experience that your family will have as a memory to cherish.

This will take the stress off buying the perfect gift and instead begin to allow you to tap into your creative nature while reflecting what is important to the people you love the most, and offering that as an experience together instead of a gift that usually doesn’t last a lifetime.

Second, make sure during this holiday time you have at least one friend or a community that you are able to join up with during the weeks, whether that be online or in person.

However, make sure if it’s church, video games, healing community, blogger community, coffee group, or any group–that there is some community you find near your or online that you show up to! Because there is nothing worse than feeling like we have all this time off and there is nowhere you can go or nothing you can do to keep consistent with your passions or begin to emerge yourself in environments around people with whom you share passions. Things like online yoga classes, book clubs and travel groups on Facebook have left me feeling really supported during this time of year.

Finally, this time of year, take time to define your passions more clearly and find ways you can be doing them more consistently. I highly recommend this as when we begin to see what our passions are, we allow our mind to focus on how we can begin to create space to do them more consistently. We will become happier–especially during this time of the year.

Third, prioritize your growth by looking back on your year.

It’s important to take time to reflect and see what you loved about your year, what you didn’t love, what could have been better, and where you want to be in the next 12 months through 2022. During the holidays also make sure to have some solitude time instead of running around for everything and everybody to be perfect.

For me, I usually prioritize either November or December as the month I will be providing the experience for the holidays with my friends, and the other one, I do more solo as someone who shows up as a participant. And instead, I take this time to reflect on my year. I go month by month reviewing my calendar and photos in my phone to remind me what I did and to reflect on how I felt when doing each of those things.

And if I did anything that didn’t feel great, I see how I can remove it in 2022 and begin to replace it with something that makes me happy! This is really the process of how I began my business, Colleen Gallagher International, in 2017.

Fourth, be in a state of acceptance that feeling not happy all the time during the holidays is okay.

It is okay to be sad, to not want to buy all the gifts but instead stay home alone watching television. It’s okay to say no to parties you just don’t want to be at with no explanation. If you’re sad and want to visit the graveyard of someone who passes it’s okay! The most important practice in prioritizing our growth and mental wellness during this time is to be in an acceptance of ALL that we are feeling instead of fighting what we are feeling, trying to numb our feelings or needing to understand why these feelings are arising now.

Instead, when you feel like you’re experiencing challenging emotions during the holidays repeat simple mantras like the following.

• I accept myself.
• I accept all my feeling.
• I no longer need to understand my feelings- I simply accept them and feel them.
• I love myself.
• I allow myself to feel what needs to be felt so I can return to a state of harmony and peace.

These simple mantras will support you in realigning your mind, body and soul to feel well and experience growth instead of looping within negative thought formations.

Lastly, I recommend listening to podcasts.

Of course, I recommend my own podcast, The Colleen Gallagher Podcast, or others that are focused on growth and healing during this time of the year. This will support you in feeling not alone as there are other people out there who have struggled with what you’re going through and found healthy ways to cope.

When we listen to podcasts that focus on growth instead of just holiday cheer or paradise, it allows us to refocus on where we want to go, instead of dwelling on what we don’t have today or how our holidays aren’t how we want to remember it this year. When we listen to the news, radio, podcasts or even music, it is either always supporting us for future growth or keeping us stuck in the current moment of why we don’t have what we want. These are the two states of being- expansion and contraction.

This holiday season, fill your life with being in an expansive state instead of contractive so you can focus your life on where you want to go, with people who are already living the life you want.

Colleen Gallagher

Colleen Gallagher is an intuitive business and personal development consultant. She has survived childhood cancer, is a global citizen, an advocate for everyone to have an opportunity to live their dreams and an academic who is currently pursuing her Ph.D is Psychology with a focus on Global Leadership and Change. She is an author of multiple books, including her latest release An Uncompromised Life, and the host of The Colleen Gallagher podcast. Her greatest success is seeing her clients fall in love with life by overcoming trauma and life challenges and create a lifestyle career that impacts the world. Colleen empowers leaders and businesses to come to a newfound clarity of their mission, so that they can better understand their gifts while taking calculated action to grow their businesses. Colleen offers these experiences through online courses, in-person retreats, her podcast, books and products. Currently, Colleen resides in Los Angeles, California.

colleengallagher.co

The post How to Prioritize Growth and Mental Wellness During the Holiday Season appeared first on LA Yoga Magazine - Ayurveda & Health.

It is Possible to Practice Manifesting Love

The term manifesting has become a term that many people look at as new-age or woo-woo, or maybe wonder, “is this possible?” Manifesting is, in essence, the belief that you can bring your intangible thoughts, dreams and desires into reality by simply attracting what you think about. To most people, this seems insane because, well, can the thoughts we have be that powerful? This is the root of the issue. People have so little concept of themselves and lack the acceptance of just how important and influential they are. We become lazy and unaware of what voices we allow within our minds which directly impacts our relationship with ourselves and the relationships we have with everyone around us.

As I shared in my recent workshop Overcome Heartbreak & Forever Attract Love, the attraction part of love is the most fun and easiest, because that’s when we get into our flow and become carefree instead of trying so hard. However, arriving at a state of attraction is a process that occurs once we learn to bring awareness to our unconscious habits and release the toxic thoughts we allow to wander in our minds.

The power of manifestation is when you are alone in the coffee shop and you think, “it would be so nice if a perfect stranger walked in for a beautiful conversation,” then, in walks the beautiful stranger. Every moment is creating your future, your interactions, your opportunities and your relationships.

I want to focus on manifestation with relationships and manifesting love as there is such power in this. However, the power comes when we can begin to understand that we can communicate, create requests, and state desires of who we want to be with, how we want our relationship to be and what we want to improve once in the relationship with our minds more than our words.

Most people think that communication through talking is the essential key in a relationship. But people miss that we communicate through our actions and the thoughts inside our head. Which these forms of communication are more powerful than anything we can state to another person.

Three Steps to Manifesting Love: Putting it into Practice

Step one in manifesting love is to become aware.

Become aware of what you are stating about dating, the gender you seek to date and your ideas around relationships. Most people come to me craving a fairytale relationship out of this world, and at the same time, have so much hate in their hearts. Stating things like, “but it will never happen for me.” Well of course it won’t happen for you because deep down, you want something and have a conflicting feeling of why it cannot happen for you. So, it never happens. This is like going to the store to buy something and stating, “I want these raspberries, but it will never happen for me.” or, “I want the Chanel bag, yet I’ll never make that much money.” or “I want to help a lot of people, but I don’t have the money for it.” Each of these are conflicting beliefs. The first step is to become more aware of what you’re stating your reality to be. Because you’ll be surprised at how scary it is to notice how much you speak about what you don’t want.

Step two is notice your complaints.

In this step, start noticing how often you are nit-picking other people, your reality, and yourself. I often hear people come to me and complain that their partner never does this, this gender doesn’t do that, or in the past, they asked their partner to do something, and they never listen, so everyone must be this way, etc. I follow this up by asking, have you stopped asking them to do something and instead become happy with what is already in the relationship? Do you show gratitude and appreciation for any of the good things occurring or is there always one more thing that needs to arise out of a nag, or that must happen, so happiness, peace and joy occur between the two of you?

This reoccurring pattern of feeling like the partner is never doing enough or not listening is because communication is happening through language instead of through the mind. So, you want to begin to think about what you would like to see happen, then start to act in a state as if that desire you have is already done. Do this consistently over a period, then quite quickly, the Universe and your relationships will match your energy because you become complete without needing someone else to do something for your mood to shift.

When you enter this state of controlling your emotions, you become self-empowered and everyone realigns to support you, guide you and fulfill you even more because you are the example of how you want to be treated.

Step three is to create the habit of speaking in the present.

I recommend making this short exercise a habit if you want to practice manifesting love. Try this exercise out even if you’re skeptical over a short period of time to begin seeing if manifesting will work for you to attract love. However, I’ve never had one person start this habit in their life consistently where the results haven’t arrived. This exercise can be done alone, but I always find it fun to include a few friends, whether texting or phone calls, etc. Instead of stating or talking about your reality how it is right now, begin to articulate how you want your reality. However, this MUST be in the present tense.

For example, my girlfriends and I will call each other and say things like, “It feels so amazing to go on the best date ever, he picks me up, fantastic sushi, picks the bill up, takes me home so nicely, and the kissing was terrific!” Even though there is no date planned, there is no man, there is no sushi restaurant. My girlfriends and I talk about it as if it’s already happening. Guess what? It almost always happens. Why? Because our mind, from a neurological standpoint, is starting to see that we can create an unknown reality, so the neurons begin to morph our reality and begin to see what we’re talking about.

This can happen with the attraction of love, money, relationships, jobs, et cetera. I always say give it a try; the worst thing that can happen is you can say I tried, and it didn’t quite work.

However, if you do it from your heart with consistency, your fairytale life will be birthed every day repeatedly to become better than you dreamed every waking moment of your life.

Colleen Gallagher

Colleen Gallagher is an intuitive business and personal development consultant. She has survived childhood cancer, is a global citizen, an advocate for everyone to have an opportunity to live their dreams and an academic who is currently pursuing her Ph.D is Psychology with a focus on Global Leadership and Change. She is an author of multiple books, including her latest release An Uncompromised Life, and the host of The Colleen Gallagher podcast. Her greatest success is seeing her clients fall in love with life by overcoming trauma and life challenges and create a lifestyle career that impacts the world. Colleen empowers leaders and businesses to come to a newfound clarity of their mission, so that they can better understand their gifts while taking calculated action to grow their businesses. Colleen offers these experiences through online courses, in-person retreats, her podcast, books and products. Currently, Colleen resides in Los Angeles, California.

colleengallagher.co

The post How to Start Manifesting Love appeared first on LA Yoga Magazine - Ayurveda & Health.

What does it mean to leave the past behind?

The past is such an interesting concept to talk about. Is the past really in the past? So many of us think that the past is behind us; it is simply a memory. We must begin to understand that the past is alive, it lives inside us. It is a practice to leave the past behind. We must actively choose to let it go and design a future we want instead of living by default. Until that process occurs at some level, we will always suffer.

Each person’s past carries many memories. These range from painful to joyful. They include automated routines and habits, and may involve living based on how our parents, family, schoolteachers, and other influences, lived. To leave the past behind and work towards a clear and fruitful future, we must start to understand that all we have is right here, right now, this present moment.

From this present moment, you have an opportunity to shift your future as you input new information into your brain. With hope, your present moment and future will improve. Before reading this, you were operating out of your past habits, only what you knew how to do, to get a specific future result. My goal for you is to recognize that every present moment is shaping your future based upon your previous knowledge, habits, and memories until you begin to actively change this.

Three Steps to Leave the Past Behind and Move into the Present

Step one: Become focused on your thoughts and communication in the present moment.

I know this is a BIG concept. This took me some time to grasp, to understand. The first step in leaving the past behind is to become hyper-focused on the present moment. Cultivate a moment-to-moment habit to become the curious observer of your thoughts and the language you are communicating.

You would be surprised by how much you reflect upon or bring up past drama instead of past joy. You would be shocked at how often you refer to problems in the past. “Well, this is how it was always done even though it takes forever, and I hated doing it.” Or “people are always driving badly.” “People are so selfish, only thinking of themselves.” Or with frustration saying, “I already know how this is going to go.” This is all your past that you are bringing into the present moment to create your future.

You are speaking your past into your future, even if your past isn’t the reality you want.

Step two: Begin to actively choose different thoughts to leave the past behind.

Speak new and different words in the present that will empower you to leave the past behind and align with your chosen future. For example, if you are running late and it is rush hour, instead of saying, “Well, I’m going to be late traffic is always bad;” try saying, “I’m hoping for a miracle, take me on some back roads, and I get there right on time.” If you stop, pause, and read those two sentences out loud right now, you will feel a difference in your body. One of them feels like, “Oh brother,” like Eeyore from Winnie the Pooh. The other feels good; it fills your body with hope and optimism.

Practice your power of choice. By choosing to speak a world you want instead of a world you are used to, you are beginning and deepening your journey to self-empowerment. Because you know you are choosing to co-create with the Universe, to work towards a clear and fruitful future that you want, you are excited about instead of living life on default.

There is nothing more powerful than getting into a state of knowing that you were the one who created your life exactly how you wanted it, and no one around you stopped you. This habit allows you to leave the past behind. The past no longer hooks you with invisible chains and heavy weights. Instead, your future becomes clear and limitless.

Step three: Set time and space for yourself to daydream your future.

This is essential! Set time aside and have space for yourself, to daydream about your future. Just as you would call a girlfriend, have a phone call with your mind. Sit and watch what thoughts come up in your mind. Notice how quickly you want to move into action to respond to everyone around you to avoid looking at your automated habits, conversations. Notice the moments when you are avoiding yourself creating a future by design instead of the default.

This simple habit of self-avoidance is a destructive habit that keeps us in a state of suffering. Our mind is designed to keep us safe. When our mind cannot see something into the future, it feels unsafe. Then the mind goes into a fight or flight attack mode as if a giant tiger was about to eat us because our mind does not know how to handle the unknown. The mind works in polarities: life or death; safe or unsafe. Tune into the heart. The heart allows emotions to enter our life.

Living into the Unknown: Call on Yourself

The future we want to create and be proud to live will be into the unknown as we want something different from our past. In this time of setting time aside to have a phone call with yourself and your mind, you can begin to make the unknown future you want to be known. So, your mind isn’t afraid of it, yet knows where it is focused on going.

Dream Big: Question Yourself

Here are a few questions to start to ask yourself. While asking yourself these questions, allow your mind to wander, to dream, to imagine the things that seem “too big.”

• What do I want my destiny to look like during this lifetime?
• If I could wake up and my life could look like anything, what would that be?
• What stories from my past am I telling myself that hold me back from the future I desire to live?
• If I could be, do, or have anything in this life, what would that look like in my future?

This process that I’ve shared is something you can intend to return to monthly, weekly, and daily. Eventually, it becomes a moment-to-moment habit. It is important to set aside the time to do this process repeatedly in order for this process to become an automatic habit. You will begin to catch yourself when the past tries to sneak in to create a future you don’t want. You will start to override the past thoughts and habits to align with your desired future and destiny. And then you will watch as the magic unfolds.

This is the same process I’ve used personally. It has empowered me to create a phenomenal lifestyle business in three-and-a-half years. This process has led me to be self-empowered and made me wise beyond my 27 years of life on this earth. I love this process because I am nothing special. Learning to let go of past traumas to bring beauty and wisdom into the future, creating our dream career and life is possible for every one of us.

Support for Your Journey

What is the biggest obstacle to this work? Ourselves. The journey to self-empowerment, releasing the invisible chains of the past weighing all of us down, self-education, and having a telephone call with our mind are practices to move us forward. No one in the world can stop you from doing this except you. I offer a mindset and meditation audio to guide you during this process if you feel called to be guided and led instead of alone on this journey.

I hope this serves.

Colleen Gallagher

Colleen Gallagher is an intuitive business and personal development consultant. She has survived childhood cancer, is a global citizen, an advocate for everyone to have an opportunity to live their dreams and an academic who is currently pursuing her Ph.D is Psychology with a focus on Global Leadership and Change. She is an author of multiple books, including her latest release An Uncompromised Life, and the host of The Colleen Gallagher podcast. Her greatest success is seeing her clients fall in love with life by overcoming trauma and life challenges and create a lifestyle career that impacts the world. Colleen empowers leaders and businesses to come to a newfound clarity of their mission, so that they can better understand their gifts while taking calculated action to grow their businesses. Colleen offers these experiences through online courses, in-person retreats, her podcast, books and products. Currently, Colleen resides in Los Angeles, California.

colleengallagher.co

The post Leave the Past Behind for a Clear and Fruitful Future appeared first on LA Yoga Magazine - Ayurveda & Health.

Learning How to Say No Will Lead to a Life of True Emotional Freedom and Liberation

Why do we want to learn how to say no? The art of saying NO is something we are never taught. Think about it. From a young age at school, we are told what to do. We start learning at a certain time, take recess at this time and eat lunch at this time without ever stopping to ask ourselves what we truly want to do.

Shifting Out of Autopilot

For as long as we can remember, we have been on autopilot saying “yes” to a system or other people telling us how to live our lives in order to succeed. But the paradox is that no outside person can tell you how to set up and design your life in a way that allows you to flourish. When we listen to the external voices around us instead of turning within to discover our internal system, we are disempowered. These autopilot routines of saying “yes” when we mean “no”, have caused a buildup within our bodies, which leads to pain or chronic disease.

For example, we automatically step with our right foot instead of our left foot. We reach for our phone when we know no one has texted or called us. We grab our favorite pair of yoga pants more consistently without even thinking about the other pairs. Our body carries an automatic routine to do things out of habit without us even having to think about whether it is something we want or not. To live a life of emotional freedom and liberation, we must begin to slow down our minds, emotions and bodies to be able to listen to what we want instead of automatically repeating a habit. These repeated practices may seem small, but they lead you toward living a life that isn’t your own as you continue to participate in things you don’t want to do, simply because you’ve never known another way.

The Practice of Living An Uncompromised Life

In my third book, An Uncompromised Life, the sixth principle is to ‘Own Your No’ so that you can live a ‘Heck Yes Life’. When I was 14 and doctors told me I’d be on medication every day for the rest of my life, I remember thinking it was the only life narrative that was possible.

But we must remember, much like yoga, being a doctor is a practice; we are always in a state of practice, not certainty. This is how the body has created miraculous healing stories you see in movies and books. In our individual daily lives, each person has the willpower to practice faith and beat the odds of what is possible to achieve in this lifetime.

As my life practice went on, I became more deeply devoted and committed to meditation and yoga practice. And it wasn’t too long after I moved across the world to New Zealand, that I made a commitment. I said no to doing things just to do them and chose to only participate in activities that would bring me closer to the future I wanted.

In this commitment of saying no to partying, saying no to random friends, saying no to random events, I said yes to four hours of daily yoga and meditation for six months. Suddenly, I no longer needed my thyroid medication, as half my thyroid produced the hormones that usually two thyroid lobes produce. Now, I did use other supplements and change my diet, but I also said “no” to a lifetime sentence of a daily pill, and a ‘heck yes life’ became my journey.

I committed to daily practices that would empower me to realize who I truly was, not who the world wanted me to be. I became emotionally free to no longer worry about doctor appointments, reminding myself if I took my medication that day, picking up my prescription from the pharmacy, etc. So, you may be asking how you begin to do this. How do you start saying “no” to automatic habits that you no longer want to exist in your life, so that you can start saying “yes” to living your heck yes life?

Three Steps to Learning How to Say No to Automatic Habits and Say Heck Yes to Your Life?

Step One: Consciously Create Space for You-Time

I mean, you chose to create a time in your calendar solely for you. You write down “ME TIME” just as you plan for work meetings, but this is a time for you. If you think about it, we quickly say “yes” to giving our time away to everyone else which at times means saying “no” to what we truly desire. This conscious time carved out in our calendars is the time to say “yes” to giving ourselves OUR time to provide ourselves with the space to craft the life we want to live instead of giving everyone else the life they want from us.

Step Two: Look at Your Calendar and Reflect

Look at your calendar from the past one to six months. While reflecting on your calendar activities,  ask yourself, “How did I feel when I was doing these certain activities?” Simply notice how many things you’re doing in your life that feel contractive, tedious, frustrating and soulsucking vs. expansive, fun, exciting or that were helping you to build a future you were proud of. As time goes on, make this time with your calendar more intimate, even from making the bed, cleaning, cooking, going grocery shopping, sitting in rush hour, etc. The more specific you become, the stronger this exercise becomes.

Step Three: Take Action

Begin noticing how many things you are doing in your calendar that are disempowering you instead of empowering you to be in a state of feeling good. Then start to shift those calendar activities with tasks that will empower you to feel good. This may mean taking steps to leave a relationship, including starting therapy, becoming more intimate with your finances to get out of debt, or becoming accountable to create time to leave your job and start your passion project.

Yet you must begin to own your “No” by saying no to things that are hindering you from saying “Yes” to your soul and what is truly inside of you, so that you can experience a life you are in love with. I want you to create a life where you are emotionally free to express yourself in all moments and become liberated in your state of being, to be the truth of you all the time, in every moment. But it begins with you creating the space to say “No” to everyone else and “Yes” to you, which, as I’ve shared, we haven’t been taught from childhood.

Live Your Uncompromised Life

In conclusion, to become emotionally free and sustainably live in a state of liberation, it begins by no longer betraying yourself for love, denying what you know can be possible for your life, or settling for anything because you think you need more money to make it happen. This is the art and dance of beginning to live an uncompromised life; one that is true to your soul, one where you are owning your honest “no”, so that you can be set free to live your HECK YES liberated life. I hope this serves. I love you, Colleen

Colleen Gallagher

Colleen Gallagher is an intuitive business and personal development consultant. She has survived childhood cancer, is a global citizen, an advocate for everyone to have an opportunity to live their dreams and an academic who is currently pursuing her Ph.D is Psychology with a focus on Global Leadership and Change. She is an author of multiple books, including her latest release An Uncompromised Life, and the host of The Colleen Gallagher podcast. Her greatest success is seeing her clients fall in love with life by overcoming trauma and life challenges and create a lifestyle career that impacts the world. Colleen empowers leaders and businesses to come to a newfound clarity of their mission, so that they can better understand their gifts while taking calculated action to grow their businesses. Colleen offers these experiences through online courses, in-person retreats, her podcast, books and products. Currently, Colleen resides in Los Angeles, California.

colleengallagher.co

The post Why Learn How to Say No appeared first on LA Yoga Magazine - Ayurveda & Health.

When it comes to how to heal from trauma, we must start with understanding. Many people do not know that trauma lives within the body – not just the memory within the mind. Trauma is caused by a stressful occurrence “that is outside the range of usual human experience,” which is markedly distressing to almost anyone. Anything that causes us to get into an emotionally disrupted state is an activation of trauma. By stress activating the nervous system to respond to whatever event just occurred, this indicates that unresolved trauma is still present in the body.

The stressful reaction in the present moment does not necessarily mean the response is from the traumatic event itself. This can become quite confusing when practicing yoga, teaching yoga, or living a yogic lifestyle. The slightest shift in tone, correcting someone during their practice, the language we use, the movement we sequence together all matter in allowing the nervous system to slow down or become self-regulated to release trapped trauma through stored emotions in the body. As yoga practitioners or yoga facilitators, how do we begin to create spaces and learn how to heal from trauma through love, personal development and become more aware of our bodies?

We Are Always in a State of Practice

We know we are always in a state of practice. When we show up to our mat, it is a time for us to practice moving through what lies within us to create a more expansive and stronger muscle memory as our natural state. Think of your body as your vehicle that houses your mind. Your body stores memories. It carries within it the Soul that connects you to the presence of something greater. It holds your beating heart.

And the practice of yoga, we are awakening, activating and releasing various muscles and organs in our body so that they can move in greater harmony together. We must begin to accept and acknowledge that we have gone through trauma or will go through trauma within our lives. It’s a non-negotiable to have a practice where we know how to get in tune with our bodies to create a life filled with love and happiness.

Steps to Self-Healing

One of the first steps in beginning to heal ourselves is to own our power. This is a topic I dig into in my third book, An Uncompromised Life. Many of us have no idea what it’s like to feel powerful or in control of our own lives. We have given up our power to societal structures and systems for so long, thinking there is no other way than what the mainstream within our respective county has presented to us as the average life.

Naturally, we have created muscle memory within our bodies to do things like recess, when we may want to stay inside and read a book or paint. We naturally turn away from the creative side of our mind because the curricula in America’s public education systems focus on subjects like math, science, English, and history. The majority of Americans go through public school, so we forget to even think about whether we are learning what we want to learn as an individual or if we are being forced into a system to learn something.

Learning How to Ask Ourselves Questions to Promote Healing

Second, we are not taught about how our emotional state influences our behavior. We are not taught that what happens within our homes, from seeing our parents fight to experiencing physical abuse to feeling unseen or unheard will massively impact us later in life as this trauma is stored within the body. From a young age this memory is stored within us to accept this as normal behavior from the world.

We must begin to constantly ask ourselves this question, “Is whatever I am doing or whoever I am choosing to be right now truly what I want to do or be?”

So often we have the muscle memory within our bodies to be around friends who we don’t even like because we are avoiding being alone, as we’ve become afraid of the beauty to be who we are. It is through owning our power by beginning to know who we truly are and love ourselves for us that we will start to heal from trauma.

The best way to start doing this is by becoming in tune with your body through a practice like yoga to see where certain parts of your body are tenser and tighter, as this represents where you are storing trapped emotions or trauma in the body. Then, through a practice like yoga, releasing the tightness and tension in the body allows you to release the trauma.

Consciously Create Your Life

The second part of healing yourself from trauma through love that I talk about in my book, An Uncompromised Life, is that you must start consciously creating your life instead of doing your life. As mentioned already, most people show up and do yoga, do their work out, do their life, do the date, do the dinner, do the grocery store or do the bed. But is that what you want to create in your life?

Every time you do something where your body is sending you a signal of “No I, don’t’ want to do this,” but you do it anyway, you are recreating and reliving past trauma instead of focusing on how to heal trauma.

You have the opportunity to pause, to love yourself for who you truly are, to stop whatever action your about to take and ask yourself, “What do I desire?” This frees you up to create your life from a place of pure desire. Often, people I speak with run on autopilot, meaning they do things without thinking, believing that they cannot slow down to become in tune with how the body communicates.

I walk through this in Episode 31 of The Colleen Gallagher Podcast. A great question to ask yourself to help you to slow down your life would be, “Is whatever I am about to do going to allow me to create a life I am proud to live and feel better in the way I live my life?” If the answer is yes, do it. If the answer is no, don’t do it. Then observe how to come up with a creative solution where you begin to create your life instead of doing it thinking there is no other option.

Creation is a form of love; it’s how children are brought into this world. Doing your life on autopilot is a form of self-hatred and only causes more trauma to be stored within the body.

Journaling Exercises Focused on Creating Your Life

Lastly, as I suggest in my book, buy yourself a journal and write out your answers to the following questions. We transform our lives when we heal ourselves, and then the world heals through us. This begins, though, by the questions we ask ourselves. So we can start to change our paradigm and the way we experience our life.

In truth, the neurons in our brain and the muscle memory in our bodies guide us to act on doing our life only by the habits we are used to instead of intentionally creating it. To heal from trauma and live a life we love, we must begin to develop ourselves by owning our power. This starts with bringing into awareness what we are “doing” in our life that is not working, so that we can begin to create a life by design. This is the key to empowering ourselves to live the most magical life filled with love beyond our wildest dreams.

These hand-drawn affirmation cards by Colleen Gallagher are intended to unify spirituality and business, creativity and monetization, and the mind and heart.

Questions for Journaling

• What things do you repeatedly do in your life that do not bring you joy, and how can you change these?
• Where in your body do you experience the most pain, stiffness, or tightness? Ask your body what it needs to feel free and liberated. The answers will come.
• If you could create the most amazing life filled with infinite abundance and love, what would that look like?
• Write down the last 10 times you became emotionally activated through stress, anger, frustration, annoyance, et cetera.
• Then ask yourself, “What consistent pattern actives my emotional disruption?” Begin to see how the story of your core trauma will begin to unravel.
• Ask: If I experienced emotional or physical trauma in my life, what emotions do I use to avoid facing that trauma? You will then begin to see what experiences you use give energy to low vibration emotions to cause physical reactions in your body of anger, pain, avoidance, et cetera. The moment we begin to bring awareness to this, we allow the pattern to release and reform.
• What are practices I can begin to do to make self-love and personal development a daily part of my life?

Meditate on Discovering Self-Love

Finally, I suggest listening to a free meditation I offer on my podcast in Episode 55. This will help guide you on your journey of learning how to heal from trauma and turning within to discover your inner self-love, release trapped trauma and develop yourself and life to become something beyond your wildest dreams.

Colleen Gallagher

Colleen Gallagher is an intuitive business and personal development consultant. She has survived childhood cancer, is a global citizen, an advocate for everyone to have an opportunity to live their dreams and an academic who is currently pursuing her Ph.D is Psychology with a focus on Global Leadership and Change. She is an author of multiple books, including her latest release An Uncompromised Life, and the host of The Colleen Gallagher podcast. Her greatest success is seeing her clients fall in love with life by overcoming trauma and life challenges and create a lifestyle career that impacts the world. Colleen empowers leaders and businesses to come to a newfound clarity of their mission, so that they can better understand their gifts while taking calculated action to grow their businesses. Colleen offers these experiences through online courses, in-person retreats, her podcast, books and products. Currently, Colleen resides in Los Angeles, California.

colleengallagher.co

The post How to heal from trauma through love, personal development and getting in tune with your body appeared first on LA Yoga Magazine - Ayurveda & Health.