power Archives - Life Coaching by Christine Gipple

What’s your New Year’s Eve Ritual? Instead of [Resolutions], try this!

The past few days, I’ve been thinking about how we can enhance our family’s “reflection rituals” for New Year’s Eve. In the past, we’ve done vision boards at our dining room table, each equipped with magazines, poster board, scissors and glue. We play music we love, we chat, and we enjoy the creation process. Additions for this year are: reading through all the messages of thanks from 2017 from our gratitude jar (shown below), and answering a new series of questions I created as we exit 2017 and welcome in 2018’s peaceful energy.

If you’re tired of making resolutions and not following through, join me in reflective ritual by asking yourself the questions below. (If you need to pull your 2017 calendar off your wall, or look in your phone’s calendar to recall how you spent your time, by all means, do it!) Pour a cup of tea, light some candles, put on some quiet music and enter 2018 with awareness around our choices. (Here’s just one of my favorite CD’s for reflection): The Essential Snatam Kaur: Sacred Chants.

Grab a journal, or some paper and answer these reflective questions:

What worked in 2017? What didn’t? Make a list.
What do you want more of in 2018? What do you want less of? Make a list.
What activities did you do, what actions did you take, or what choices did you make that drained you, leaving you feeling depleted? Write them down.
Which activities or actions lit you up, excited you, leaving you feeling inspired, motivated and unstoppable?
Looking at your list for what excited you, what’s the common theme or feeling that’s present? Next to each activity, just make a note of the feeling that was present from doing that activity. Was it happiness? Confidence? Freedom? Look for the most common theme for 2017. Choose the feeling that’s the strongest from your list. This is what you want to create more of in 2018.
Knowing that in order to feel those feelings, there’s likely an action you’ll need to take or a structure you’ll need in place in order to feel inspired and create change. What’s one thing you could do this week, and potentially continue, so you could feel those feelings now, instead of in the future?
Lastly, what kind of support do you need in place to accomplish this? Is there something you need to let go of? Something you need to add? Someone you need to help hold you accountable?

My hope is these questions bring you closer to your dreams for 2018! If you’d like a list of feelings to help you tap into your desires, you can find that here. If you liked this exercise and would like some deeper introspection, I’ve included a PDF of Debbie Ford’s, “A New Year’s Ritual here.

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I’d love to hear if this helped you. What did you love? What did you resist? What are you creating more of (or taking away) as a result of doing this exercise?

Sending you wishes for a powerful and healthy 2018!

Chris

xo

By Christine Gipple|2018-01-07T01:46:11-05:00December 31st, 2017|Uncategorized|0 Comments

Feelings & Needs, Part II – What’s driving your behavior?

How do you help someone when they’re out of touch with their own needs?

What if it’s your child, and they’re laying on the floor, with tears running down their face, and they’re so overwhelmed they can’t tell you what they need? Like it was for my daughter last weekend. How do you invite connection, intimacy and interaction?

As a parent to a highly sensitive child, it’s been a delicate dance of knowing when to ask questions, when to give space, and when to hold space. I know for me, when my daughter starts to get overwhelmed, I need to start looking at where I am. What am I feeling, what am I needing? How am I contributing to her own stress levels, if at all?

This where self-empathy comes in. In order to tune in to the needs of someone else, we have to do self-connection first.

When we’re meeting our own needs, we increase the capacity to hear others’ needs. I admit, it’s not always easy to pause, especially if we’re feeling stressed out, have too much on our plates, or are running on little sleep. Combine those factors with a highly sensitive person (HSP), and you have a recipe for disconnect and discord.

As I mentioned last week in Feelings and Needs, Part I, in our family dynamic, peaceful resolution to conflict is always the goal. Hearing the needs of everyone in the house is a priority. It’s our way of being. When I was growing up, the mindset of my parents was the kids were to be seen and not heard. We did what we were told, without invitation for conversation or discussion. Needs or Feelings weren’t considered, and I almost laugh when I think about what would’ve happened if I’d tried to express back then. I heard, “Do as I say, not as I do” more times than I can count. The silent message was, “Your needs don’t matter. Be quiet. Do what you’re told. Don’t ask questions, and if you have an opinion, keep it to yourself – you’re just a kid – I’M the parent.”

If you look at the logic of that, it doesn’t really make sense. When you think of a kid speaking their mind, what do you think of? I hear the saying, “Out of the mouths of babes…” – in other words, kids are uncensored, honest. They don’t filter what they say or how, and often they have incredible insight and wisdom. That’s a gift.

Consider this: When a need is met, it goes away.

When we can truly hear a person and connect to what’s going on for them, that’s often what they desire most – to be heard, to feel valued, to be seen. So when you consider the concept that all behavior is an attempt to fulfill a need, it makes sense to find the need under the behavior. Whether your child is curled up in a ball crying, or someone’s lashing out, screaming, or hurling things across the room, there’s a need underneath the behavior. Looking past the behavior to understand what’s driving it is key. That’s where the truth is. And where there’s truth, we can be vulnerable, connected, and move on.

However you’re celebrating this season, if you’re feeling obligated, stressed out, or like you can’t give anymore, press your own “Pause” button. Close your eyes. Take a breath. And ask yourself, “What do I most need?” If you can’t name the need, ask yourself, “What am I feeling?” And work your way to the need that’s driving your behavior. Find your way to your own truth.

The best gift you can give is your presence. You’ll feel happier, lighter, and so will the people around you.

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Much love and Merry Christmas,

Chris

xo

By Christine Gipple|2018-01-07T01:50:02-05:00December 25th, 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

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