Christine Gipple, Author at Life Coaching by Christine Gipple

Feelings & Needs – Part I [PLUS: FREE RESOURCE]

What if I said it’s possible not only to get your needs met, but to also meet the needs and desires of those around you, without sacrificing your own values or desires? Would you think it’s possible? Would you want some insight as to how?

Here’s the thing. We all want connection. We all want to be heard, to feel valued, to know we matter, and be seen. The essence of Non-violent communication (NVC) is peaceful resolution to conflict. It’s understanding that we all have needs, and all human needs are universal.

FACT: Every action we take, and every choice we make is an attempt to fulfill a need.

Let me repeat that….. E V E R Y A C T I O N we take, and every choice we make is an attempt to meet a need.

So wouldn’t it make sense that in order to get our needs met, it’s essential to first name what they are? It sounds simple, but if you’re not accustomed to tuning in, to checking in with your body, with your emotions, with your own desires FIRST, it can feel impossible to name the actual need under your behavior or action. The link I’m sharing has 3 FREE lists: feelings, needs, and body sensations. It’s available for free download here. Once you click on the link, you can choose which list you want to download, or download all three. You can use these lists to help you connect to what’s going on inside you when you’re having difficulty naming the emotion or need. If you’d like to take it a step further, check out this feelings and needs card deck. When you click on the link, it’s the very first option shown. Consider these new tools for your Life Toolbox. (Disclaimer: I’m not an affiliate for NVC. While I do teach, live and practice this way of living, I’m simply sharing this resource. I was introduced to NVC more than a decade ago, and it was a game changer in the way our family interacted and how I approached life in general.)

WHEN we use the Feelings & Needs Card Deck:

When meltdowns feel imminent
If we miss the intuitive hits and meltdowns happen, these cards are a great way to connect from a place of love, of true desire to connect in a way that all needs are considered and valued.
As a way to connect to what’s going on inside you when you’re having difficulty naming the need
If one of us is feeling really off, tense, or irritable and unable to communicate.
Or if we desire deeper connection and want to enrich our experience with one another.

HOW we use the Feelings & Needs Card Deck:

We’ll simply lay out the cards, feelings first, and we’ll each pick our cards, in silence. When we have all our cards, we then remove that deck, and lay the other cards, the needs. We choose what’s most alive for us from this deck, again in silence, and then one person chooses to share first. While one person is sharing, we listen with silent empathy. We simply witness and listen to what’s being said. Note: This is just ONE way we use the cards, not “the only” way to use them. 😉 (Once, when I was overwhelmed with a lot of emotional attachment and charge, I used the cards to help me get clarity in writing someone a letter.)

If something is burning inside us and we’d like to respond, we ask permission. We don’t shout out our thoughts or project our reactions when someone else is sharing. We share with reflective listening.

Clarifying questions can be helpful to encourage someone to tune in deeper to what they need, but I encourage you to be clear of your intentions and agendas before asking questions. This isn’t for us to fix, diagnose, or decide for anyone else.

Are you thinking, “this is too much work!”?

I’ll admit that in the moment, it does take more time, energy, patience, and willingness. And…In the long run, it saves time, energy, patience and creates more willingness, because this practice of tuning in creates space for everyone to feel heard, which sometimes is all we need to be able to move forward in our day or life..

May you find peace, happiness, health and all of life’s blessings this holiday season.

With love,

Chris

P.S. If you’d like to follow my blog and receive my newsletter on simplifying, letting go and creating more ease, you can do that here .

By Christine Gipple|2018-01-07T01:57:48-05:00December 17th, 2017|Uncategorized|0 Comments

Minimalism, Simplicity + Letting Go of Perfectionism

As I make my way toward minimalism, I’m still surprised how resistance shows up so big for me. For years my mantra has been, “Order, Ease, & Simplicity”, and in that order. When I have order, it brings me ease, and when I have ease, my life is simple.

Sounds simple right? It can be. And yet, we complicate our lives more than we need to.

We hold on. We resist. We deny. We blame someone or something else so we don’t have to look at our own stuff, our own issues.

Because here’s the deal. Letting go isn’t about the thing, person, or situation we’re letting go of. It’s about the emotional attachment that the experience or memory has brought us –including difficult or negative memories.

Letting go is a process.

One of the most difficult things for me to let go of is books. Especially books that my daughter and I have read together. I can recall all our snuggles, cozying up for all our daily ritualistic reading times – wake-up reading, pre-nap reading, post-nap reading, bedtime reading, or just middle of the day reading. I can still hear her little voice bursting out when we’d get to a specific page, and I can hear my own inflections as I read certain books. I fantasize about reading those same books to her children when she’s older.

Maybe that will happen. Maybe not.

Life can change in a split second. We have little control over when we leave here or how. I mean, we do. And we don’t.

In an attempt to keep life simple, I started a book buying ban in August, and created a Little Free Library. I’ve wanted to create one of these libraries for years, and to keep me accountable with the lifestyle I want to live, the book ban felt necessary.

The perfectionist in me wants to tell you I have it all figured out, and I have this letting-go piece down. That I can live as a pure minimalist with only what I need. But that’s not true. I, too, am in process. I’m working my way there. I have my own demons, resistance and challenges, just like you.

What is true is this: I’ve learned to love and respect what I choose to keep. I’ve learned to only keep what I love. When adding something to my home or life, I’ve learned to ask myself if what I’m bringing in adds value, not just to my life, but to all of our lives that live in our home. As far as resistance, I’ve learned to do one thing – just one thing – instead of letting my mind spin out of control when I feel overwhelmed with too much stuff, too much to do, or too many obligations. I pause. I do one thing that I CAN do, then another, then another -not 10 things at once.

What matters is substance, connection, relating deeply to those I love. What I know for sure is clutter gets in the way. Mental, emotional, and physical clutter blocks us from the very thing we say we want. The funny thing about resistance is that it takes so much of our energy to resist, deny, not look at, or avoid something we need to do, or not do.

The truth is, if we channeled our energy into doing the very thing we’re resisting, we’d create more space, more openness, and more connection with ourselves, and those we love.

On this cold Sunday in December, after our first snowfall of the season, I’m going to honor my own resistance today and take control over what I can, which is planning my work week while my husband and daughter are enjoying some much needed daddy-daughter time. How about you? What’s one thing you can do today to honor yourself where you are?

Blessings to you!

xo

P.S. If you’d like to follow my blog and receive my newsletter on simplifying, letting go and creating more ease, you can do that here .

By Christine Gipple|2018-01-07T01:58:56-05:00December 10th, 2017|Uncategorized|0 Comments

[Stop Crossing Your Own Line!] Are you staying when you need to leave?

Are you staying in a job, relationship, or situation you should’ve left a long time ago?

Have you received intuitive hits, inner nudges, or had dreams about the situation, and ignored them?

I call it crossing my own line.

I can tell you what NOT to do.

Don’t stay when everything in you knows it’s not what you need, and not aligned with your values.

Don’t cross your own line.

That’s exactly what I did in 2015. I stayed in a job that crossed my line in every way. Employees talked behind people’s backs, bosses screamed at employees or other bosses, and there was no one I felt I could trust. Yet, I stayed. For the first time since having my daughter 8 years prior, I felt financial ease, and I liked it.

That financial ease came at a cost. In April 2015, I fell at work permanently changing my physical health.

I ignored my own voice. I ignored those inner nudges. I was so clouded that I didn’t even see the connection to my intuition until after the fall when I read an older journal entry. In Feb 2015, I’d written about how I was “completely out of alignment with this job and company’s values”. I didn’t listen. Post fall, I was physically out of alignment with a back, knee and hip injury.

A couple shadow beliefs surfaced with this fall. One was that, “I don’t matter”, and I really needed to matter. I told myself a story that if the bosses knew how badly I was hurt, they’d care; they’d make changes to insure no one else got hurt, or at the very least, they’d take precautions so that I wouldn’t get re-injured. But the truth was, they did know and nothing changed.

Another shadow belief was, “I can’t depend on anyone else.” I stayed out of fear. I feared I’d lose my financial freedom if I didn’t have the same income. It’s true my finances would change. But I was living in a state of fear anyway. Everything in my life was different. I couldn’t do my job, yoga, exercise, climb steps, walk, sit for a period of time, or sleep without pain. Nothing in my life was the same. So how much freedom was I really going to lose?

Anger, righteousness and denial were all pieces of this puzzle that it took me the next two years to unravel and let go of. If I’m being honest, I held onto these far longer than I want to admit. Truth was, I chose to stay – even when this company showed me who they were, and I knew it was out of alignment with who I was. I wasn’t making the changes I needed to make, so the universe stepped in to assist, taking me out at the knees.

This is what happens. If we’re not listening, the messages get louder. The whispers become screams. The intuitive hits aren’t so subtle anymore. We repeat patterns by drawing in those exact people, circumstances and situations that will have us play out the exact message we’re refusing to see. Whether it’s a relationship, a job, a boundary issue with someone you love, (or someone you don’t), or disconnection from a partner we’re refusing to see. Solutions come out sideways. Often, the choices would’ve been far easier to just make the change in the first place.

Embrace the conflict.

What’s one core belief you’ve had that hasn’t served you? I’m curious how willing you are to hold onto that belief? Is it serving you? Holding on can be a form of resistance, denial, or anger, or a combination of these things. Do you know your threshold on when it’s time to leave?

Today I invite you to look at your life objectively.

Is there something you need to change? Is there a nagging little voice inside that isn’t going away?

Sending you big love as you walk the path of alignment,

Chris

xo

P.S. If you’d like to follow my blog and receive my newsletter on simplifying, letting go and creating more ease, you can do that here .

By Christine Gipple|2018-01-07T01:59:51-05:00November 26th, 2017|Uncategorized|0 Comments

Resistance – How it shows up and keeps us stuck

A few years back, I had resistance to working with a coach to do some deep work. I had two main fears:

1) What if I surpassed my husband in terms of personal growth, ruining the possibility for us to stay truly “connected”? And,

2) What if I stayed the same? (which in my mind was worse than the first one)

Both of these fears were my resistance. Resistance is simply an unconscious (often self-imposed) defense mechanism that we put in place thinking it’s going to protect us from feeling the hurt, discomfort, pain, anxiety, rejection or whatever it is we don’t want to feel.

Fact is, resistance does the opposite of protecting us from any of those things. Resistance will bind us to the very pain and discomfort we’re trying so hard to avoid.

We often tell ourselves it’s scary to look inside and get to the root of our emotional stories, dramas, or situations, but the truth is, it’s actually scarier not to.

Once you see it, you can transform it. Louise Hay has a great quote, “If you’re going to clean the house, you have to see the dirt.”

You can’t change what you can’t see.

The good news is, once you see the dirt, once you face your resistance and actually DO that thing that scares you, you’re immediately more empowered. Then you can take steps toward your desires. Any small steps toward what you want will slowly dissipate your fear.

Think about something you’ve been wanting to say yes to, or something that’s been on your desires list and you’ve been too afraid to commit to. What can you do this week to move you closer to YES?

Think small, baby steps. Something bite sized and doable. Then do it!

Taking one step can be the catapult you need for big change.

You got this!

Sending you big love….

xo

P.S. If you’d like to follow my blog and receive my newsletter on simplifying, letting go and creating more ease, you can do that here .

By Christine Gipple|2018-01-07T02:00:34-05:00November 19th, 2017|Uncategorized|0 Comments

Being tired is a Choice: Shift from exhausted to energetic :)

Happy Sunday!

For the past 5 days, we hosted two girls from The Young Americans (YA) while our daughter did her first YA workshop. We chose to be a “home-stay” family (aka host) in hopes it would do two things – deepen the experience for my daughter, making her feel more comfortable trying something new, and support a great community. It did those things.

We also became very attached to *our* YA girls, Sasha and Moriah. 😉 This morning, I felt like I was sending my own children off to college as they loaded the tour bus for their next stop. Which I suppose I was – The YA school of performing arts is based in California where both the girls attend and live.

When I asked the girls how they keep their energy high on tour, Sasha laughed and said, “Well, sometimes coffee”, then added, “The way I see it is, being tired is a choice.” They also added that when we think we’re tired, sometimes it’s important to push through it and get to that edge, to go beyond where you think you can go.

Doing what we think we can’t takes courage.

How often do we stop doing something because we feel tired, or because something feels “too hard”? I know for me, I’ll procrastinate, telling myself a story that I either don’t know how to do something, it’ll take too long, or I don’t have what I need to complete it, etc. Then I waste mental energy ruminating over details in my head, making myself “tired”.

Truth is, if I simply DO that one thing that I think I “can’t”, or that I tell myself I’m not ready to do, it opens up a whole other level of energy.

Without knowing it, Sasha & Moriah gifted me this morning. They reminded me time is energy. And energy can be a feeling. A belief. A choice. Granted, I’m not advocating to push past healthy boundaries, where we ignore our need for sleep, rest and rejuvenation. I am saying sometimes we give up too soon. We tell ourselves we can’t do something, when in fact, we may not even try. Maybe we *could* accomplish it – if we chose to try.

Next time you feel tired, ask yourself what’s underneath that mindset. Do you really need sleep or rest, or is there some action you need to take, or some small step you could complete that would boost your energy?

I’d be remiss if I didn’t share our experience with YA. If you know children that love music and performing, definitely check out a YA workshop. There are still a couple stops left on this tour. After that, the next tour is in 3 years.

Sending a big hug to you on this gorgeous November day,

Chris

xo

If you know someone who’d benefit from reading this, feel free to share it out! 🙂

P.S. If you’d like to follow my blog and receive my newsletter on simplifying, letting go and creating more ease, you can do that here .

By Christine Gipple|2018-01-07T02:01:41-05:00November 12th, 2017|Uncategorized|0 Comments

Soul Space Decluttering

Soul Space…

Spaces where you find what you want when you want it.

Where you have what you need at your fingertips.

Space to think, to be, to feel, to connect.

To feel alive, to breathe deeply, have restful sleep, connect with yourself, and those you love.

To realign with what matters most…

Three of my core values are for Order, Ease and Simplicity.

When those needs are met, I’m calm, present, connected. I’m aligned. It’s easy to follow through on commitments, take action toward what I want, to say yes when I mean yes, and no when I mean no when my actions are internally aligned with my values and needs.

One way for us to stay aligned is to consistently reevaluate what we keep.

So yesterday I did a challenge (Link at end) to Declutter 100 items in less than an hour. The intent of this challenge is to set your timer for 60 minutes and go room to room gathering 10 items, 20 items etc, from each space until you have 100. You don’t stop until the timer goes off, or until you have 100.

I didn’t do it the same way as recommended, not by design totally. My somewhat OCD self – not really, but kinda – needed to have order amidst the self-induced clutter clearing challenge.

I started in my kitchen. And stayed there for 60 minutes. I cleaned, wiped, and organized as I decluttered – not part of the challenge. When the timer went off, I wasn’t done, nor did I have 100 items. So I set it for another 30 minutes, and this time stopped cleaning, organizing and wiping, kinda. I really am “Monica” from Friends, so it’s my own niche to clean, sort & organize as I go. But I did make it out of my kitchen, and into my bathroom. This time, when the timer went off, I had 160 items total and I even managed to find two missing items that had fallen underneath a drawer and were laying at the bottom of a cabinet. So 90 minutes, 160 items, not too bad. Still, I’ll redo the challenge and do it as designed.

There’s two lessons here: 1) it’s so easy to throw ourselves off track, and 2) it’s just as easy to bring us back when we have focus, awareness and intention.

Ease. Order. Simplicity. Life isn’t always easy, orderly, and it’s certainly not always simple. Which is why it’s critical to create soul spaces in your home, and habits. Self-care, yoga, working out, eating well – whatever it is that nurtures you and keeps you feeling connected and alive – that’s what needs to be in your daily rituals.

So where do you need to create more space? Is there a certain room? A certain spot within a room? Maybe a specific relationship needs a clear boundary in place? Maybe your mind wishes for quiet so you can actually hear your own thoughts and inner desires? What’s on your wish list? Your #50Desires?

Does this sound fun to you? The idea is to create incentive to let go, and to have fun in the process. Hop on over to https://bemorewithless.com/decluttering-burst/ for Courtney Carver’s Declutter 100 Items in Less than an Hour Challenge. Let me know what happened for you. 🙂 #bemorewithless, #100DeclutterChallenge.

Enjoy the process. Life’s too short to stress over our stuff. Learn to let it go!

Sending love,

Chris

xo

By Christine Gipple|2017-08-20T17:37:09-04:00August 20th, 2017|Uncategorized|0 Comments

Why I’m doing a [ONE-YEAR BAN] on buying books or courses (and creating a Little Free Library)

Though I live simply, I’ve had one vice that’s been strong since my 20’s – buying books. When our family of three moved into our current home in 2009, we came with 23 bookcases – some 4’x8’, some 3’x6’, some smaller – but all filled. Some had albums in them, yes, albums, but mostly books. As my daughter has grown, so has our book collection. I wish I’d counted all the books I’ve released since then, but I’m certain it’s in the 1000’s. Yet, I’ve also continued to buy books.

One of the surviving bookcases is housed in my dining room, and I’m in the process of redoing it. By redoing, I mean re-evaluating what’s there, moving things out, creating space for what I want more of in the next 12 months. Writing is one of those things. Since my bookcase falls in the creativity section of my dining room in feng shui, it’s critical to be clear and deliberate with what’s here…if I want to manifest my desire to write more. For me, this is an area that continues to get jammed up.

While I was creating a “writing section” in one area of this bookcase, it was easy to see nothing was moving in until something else moved out.

I’d done it again.

I’d pushed aside a big vision and filled it with lots of tiny obstacles.

Things. Stuff. Obstacles to space.

I stopped the process and just sat down where I was. I started to write to get clarity on my next steps. I didn’t want to just move books around and “make room”. I needed a new way of being.

This new way of being resulted in declaring a one-year book buying ban. To hold myself accountable and to document it, I’m sharing my journey, with the hope this adds some value to you, and you can benefit from my process.

My intention for the ban is to use the resources I have. If I’m tempted to buy something, I’ll shop from my shelves. Even though Amazon Prime and I are tight – you know, on a first name basis kind of thing – I could create my own amazon.

Instead of recreating my own Amazon, I’ve decided to create a “Little Free Library”. Have you seen them? They’re those adorable little “mini-tree-house-looking” wood houses that hold books. You place it on your property and wa-lah, instant library! I’ve been wanting to do this for years, and never made time for it. While I’m just starting the research on it, I’m super excited to start! I’m seeing them popping up all over locally and I love them. More on this soon!

Lastly, in addition to the book ban, I’m also declaring a one-year ban on buying courses – online or otherwise. (Only exception is additional coaching certifications already on my radar and accounted for.) I began 2017 committed to 3 trainings, and through the year, I’ve added at least 7 others that I can recall. Everything looks good to me. I have this insatiable appetite for learning and growing. But right now, I’m letting what I know and what I have be “Enough”.

In our world of consumerism, of always looking for the next biggest thing, it’s easy to fall prey to having too much. Also, in a world where there’s so many struggling to eat, or pay their mortgage, or find a job, having “too much” feels far too wasteful to me.

Look for updated posts on the Little Free Library and updates on the bans!

Like this article, or find value? Share it with those who’ll benefit from it.

See you soon!

xo

Chris

By Christine Gipple|2017-08-13T16:16:55-04:00August 13th, 2017|Uncategorized|5 Comments

About Christine Gipple

Feelings & Needs – Part I [PLUS: FREE RESOURCE]

Minimalism, Simplicity + Letting Go of Perfectionism

[Stop Crossing Your Own Line!] Are you staying when you need to leave?

Resistance – How it shows up and keeps us stuck

Being tired is a Choice: Shift from exhausted to energetic :)

Soul Space Decluttering

Why I’m doing a [ONE-YEAR BAN] on buying books or courses (and creating a Little Free Library)