Tuesday, 19 August 2014
Tuesday, 29 December 2009
Sow the Seeds of Love
Although it may appear that the wise of mind rule, it is with the heart that we plant seeds of love and spread kindness to one another.
Seasons come and seasons go and the growth of our seeds may be threatened but if we tender to them well and offer them shelter from harsh conditions, we can protect our crops and eventually harvest the fruits of our labour.
When love truly resides within our soul, there is very little anyone can do to ever destroy it. Sometimes, it may feel like it waivers, like it’s absent for a moment or two but the flame never dies. We find our inner strength when we need it the most, when we trust in ourselves most and when we find that every answer we ever needed is contained within ourselves.
It is in love that we extend our hands to one another as brothers and sisters sharing one world where we all reside; breathing the same air, sharing the same oceans, admiring the same beauty of magnificent flora and fauna.
Nothing makes our enemy despise us more than to see our resilience and yet, in truth, we have no enemies because we are all the same. We are ever changing. We are ever evolving and with love we can ever evolve our relationships with those around us.
Ignorance: the lack of information is the root of all our differences. Knowledge: is power. Inner knowing, inner recognising and inner truth bring us closer together and make us see each other for who we were, who we are and who we will be. You and I are one and the same.
We come into this world the same way. We are made of the same substance. We cry the same when we are sad, we bleed the same when we are wounded and one day we all come to pass.
Our time on earth is too precious to waste on futile pursuits that drive us further apart. There is much to be learned in sharing, in proximity, in communication and in co-existence. There is a difference between arguing and debating. One leads to destruction, the other leads to construction.
We gain so much more by freely giving and freely receiving from others than by fighting or by clinging to that which we cannot or will not ever possess of free will.
If I can call you friend and if I can call another friend a friend then you can call my friend a friend too, because we all share common ground.
May 2010 bring peace, love and prosperity to you all.
Wednesday, 2 January 2008
Christmas Special
The topic of conversation was the festive season.
One of the points raised was how Christmas, having lost its true meaning nowadays, has become an extraordinarily beneficial time for trade and commerce as people try to outspend each other. It is the one time of year when people will often get themselves into so much debt, they might pass the next 6 months to a year paying that debt off.
With starvation reaching all times highs in the world, have you ever stopped to think about just how much money is overspent “haphazardly” at Christmas and New Year? How much of that is on food? And, out of all that purchased food, how much is thrown away? How much is actually wasted? Have you ever stopped to wonder how many billions of tons of food are wasted every year over the three day period of Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and Boxing Day?
Real Coaching Radio is launching a campaign to combat hunger. Find out how by tuning into our show and check out the information on our website: http://www.realcoachingradio.com/
Another holiday favourite that was mentioned during the conversation was stress. People stress themselves out in so many different ways over Christmas and New Year because they feel so many diverse types of pressures coming at them from all around. There’s the pressure to be something someone’s not; there’s the pressure to live up to others’ expectations; there’s the pressure of acceptance, compliance and so forth and so on. Of course, for some, this time of year may be when they feel the pressure of being most alone in the world with no-one to share with.
Why should we work ourselves up into such a frenzy for the sake of a couple of days a year?
Stress is one of the biggest causes of all kinds of depressions at this time of year. It can even reach levels that prove dangerous for the body. Stress can be a killer. So, how can you beat the holidays blues? The stress? The sadness? How can you be less alone at this time of year?
Christmas is meant to be a time of compassion, love and brotherhood; a time when kindness, smiles, warmth and hugs should be abundant. But why should this one day a year be the excuse people need to remember to employ these qualities. Or do they employ them?
It seems to me that … we’ve forgotten something very valuable along the way.
Have a peaceful, joyous and love filled New Year and may these feelings persist throughout the whole of 2008.
Namaste
Venerina
http://www.villavalview.com/
Thursday, 13 December 2007
Self Sabotage
On Thursday 6th December, Host Coach Steve Toth and myself Co-Host Dr Venerina Conti, of the Mind, Body and Soul show on the Real Coaching Radio Network, discussed the topic of self sabotage.
What is self sabotage? How does it hold us back? How does it make us our own worst enemy?
Self sabotage happens when we impede ourselves from doing something that we would like to do, or ought to be doing, by letting everything around us get in the way. For example, if we dream of becoming a great painter, so we could establish ourselves in the Artists’ world and maybe have our own exhibitions, painting something every day would help us to improve our skills.
However, if we allowed everything else to get in the way like: being too tired, not having enough time or whatever excuse we choose to use, then we are acting in a way that sabotages our hopes, wishes and dreams, which eventually we will give up on. We have nobody to blame but ourselves. Time does not just occur. Time needs to be created.
We have willingly diverted our attention and focus away from what is important to us. We have made up excuses and found every reason not to be doing what we would like to be doing. But are there underlying reasons for this behaviour? Does self-sabotage go deeper than we imagine? Where exactly is it rooted?
Self-sabotage starts with internal dialogues. Think about this. We are the one person we talk to all day long, ever day, and we are the one and only person we will know all our lives, so why then do we choose to talk to ourselves in such a negative way? Why do we convince ourselves that we are not good enough? Why do we talk ourselves into states of insecurity and destroy our own self-confidence.
If your best friend came to you and asked for your advice, you would show them support and offer them encouragement. So why is it so hard to be your own best friend? Are you not the most important person in your life? If you are not, then you should be because if you are not feeling well and are not capable of taking good care of yourself, then how can you possibly make others feel good or even look after them?
So, how do you talk to yourself all day long? Think about what words you choose to use in your internal dialogues? How do you transmit your being to the world around you?
Rather than focusing on the negative, think about all the good qualities you have. Feel grateful for all the good things you have achieved. Doing a little is better than doing nothing. If you doing something then you can never fail. Be realistic when you set yourself goals. Take one step at a time and do not expect to conquer
Keep a journal, (for your eyes only), where you can write everything down. Show gratitude for what you have. Clearly express in writing what you would like to have and achieve.
Learn to appreciate yourself. How? … Listen in to the exercise Coach Steve Toth and Drª Venerina Conti did, live on air. It takes one minute to change how you feel about yourself and who you will become in the future. Tune into the Mind, Body and Soul Show every Thursday at 8am MST, 3pm GMT.
Monday, 26 November 2007
Live in the preparation of today ...
Does this sound familiar to you? Now why should that be?
I would like you to take a moment and think back to your childhood days when you created your imaginary worlds and acted them out in the real world. Think about how you felt. My guess is that back then anything was possible. You didn’t stop to think about the consequences. You didn’t have any fears or doubts. There was nothing to hold you back. You were the sole creator of everything.
How many times did you fearlessly do something like climb up a tree and get stuck? You didn’t worry about getting stuck. You just went ahead and climbed the tree. You only worried about getting down when the need arose. Each event occupied its own time and space. You never thought that far ahead. You took one step at a time and crossed each bridge when you came to it. You never thought about failing or having failed. The aim was to climb the tree which you succeeded in doing.
So, why should things be any different when you become an adult?
The blessing of being an adult is that we have an acquired sense of knowledge from our experiences that help us make more appropriate judgments. The curse of this knowledge though is that we let it hold us back by misusing it to create possible unfounded fears in our minds.
Lets look at the example of our tree. As adults who want to climb the tree, we stand there considering how we are going to get down before we even start to think about how to climb it. Our immediate thoughts are: “What if I get stuck”?, “Who will rescue me if I get stuck”?, “If someone has to rescue me, they will think I am an idiot - at my age - climbing a tree and getting stuck”.
If we haven’t begun climbing yet, how can we possibly know whether there will be a clear way for us to get down?.
What’s happened here? Well, technically, we’ve had a goal shift without even realizing it. Instead of climbing the tree, our goal has now become getting down. We stand there, before the tree, having a series of negative thoughts and internal dialogues with ourselves, until we are completely dissuaded from our original goal. Instead of thinking positively about creative ways we could get down, i.e. by following the same path we use to climb, we choose to persuade ourselves that we cannot do it - full stop. So, we give up. We walk away from the tree and don’t even make an attempt at it.
The problem is though that when we have walked away, we still have a lingering bitter taste of disappointment in ourselves. It’s another goal gone by the way side. It’s another negative self-judgment, which is now stored in our personality profile. It’s another element we add to our failure list.
So, what happens next? Well slowly but surely, as we accumulate negative thoughts about ourselves and about the things we failed to do, we start to shy away from things we would like to do simply because we think we know we are going to fail. We make no attempt at anything that will disappoint us again. We do not trust ourselves anymore. We become insecure and lose best part, if not all, of our self-confidence. So, we only apply ourselves to the realm of things that, (we think), we know for sure that we can succeed at. We create a world around us that is safe and stay locked up in it.
Essentially, we have unwittingly and yet willingly become our own worst enemy by creating an image of ourselves as failures, as losers and as people who are not blessed with special capacities like others who seem to succeed at everything they do. The truth is that we are not giving ourselves a chance. From thereon in, we seem to prefer to shut out any opportunity that we think goes beyond our readily misconstrued abilities and we sadistically deny our true capacity for achievement any benefit of the doubt.
The end result?
We unconsciously or consciously, as the case may be, resent ourselves. We resent those around us because we love to lay blame on them for our shortcomings. We overeat to compensate and then hate ourselves for being overweight. It’s a classic vicious circle in an ongoing spiral. We are unfulfilled and dissatisfied with our job because it does not align with our original goals. We fail to make promotions in our jobs because, although we believe we are up to it, our external behavior tells the world otherwise. We have difficulties in our relationships because, in this frame of being, we choose partners who either over-compensate for us, which in the long term makes us feel completely worthless or under-compensate for us, who in the short term makes us feel better about ourselves.
As human beings we are masters of disguises. We accommodate ourselves and just plod along accepting second or third best instead of the best for us. One day though, when we least expect it, who we truly seeks revenge as it demands to be unleashed. The question is: Are you really going to wait until that happens or are you going to take action now?
It is not enough to just hope, wish or think that something is going to happen. There is an Italian motto that says: “Dio aiuta chi si aiuta”, which translated means: “God helps those who help themselves”. So, you need to take action. You need to take responsibility for yourself in the here and now if you want the future to be different. Mahatma Ghandi once said: You must be the change you wish to see in the world.
Search deep in your soul and find out how you got to be where you are. Ask yourself what it is that holds you back. Put them in groups. Is it money? time? fears?
Name them all. Write them down. Acknowledge them. Then write down next to each one all of the subgroup excuses like: “I don’t earn enough”, “I work too many hours”, “I am useless at drawing”, whatever , but be sure to write them all down until you have no excuses left to write. By writing them down you are taking a step in being willing to face them. By facing them, you can work through them and then let them go.
Dig a little deeper into yourself and decide what it is exactly that you did, or failed to do in your life, that was so bad you cannot forgive yourself. Write them down. Acknowledge them. Face them and learn to forgive yourself. Tell yourself that you forgive yourself and love yourself. Tell yourself that you are sorry, that you made a mistake and that you are willing to start over. Commit to the words you tell yourself.
Then, write down all the things you have ever wanted from life. Have them clear in your mind and on the paper in front of you. Start to think of ways you can make extra time, extra money, be better at whatever it is you want. Write them down. Write down the qualities you love about yourself even the ones you lost somewhere along the way.
Set yourself realistic daily, weekly, monthly and yearly goals. Write them down in a journal and after each day or each week keep a written track of your progress. Learn to prioritize. Learn to manage your time better. It does not matter if you have to carry some of your goals over from one day to the next. Do not be hard on yourself because of it. Just know that you will whatever it is the following day. The important thing is to keep moving forward.
Make your end goal climbing the tree and not worrying about what the end result will be. As long as you are moving forward towards what you want, you cannot fail. As long as you are changing your views about you, you are already a winner. Doing something is better than nothing and by doing something you will begin to see a turn around in your world. Nobody can fail when they are doing their best. Praise yourself for your achievements and do not judge them by anyone else’s standards. You are you and you are unique.
Live in the preparation of today and the tomorrow will come by itself.
Drª Venerina Conti
Holistic Psychologist, Freelance Writer & Life Balance Coach
www.venerinaconti.com
www.villavalview.com
Available for completely confidential and anonymous consultations
Copyright: venrecords 2007
How to overcome fear
What is fear? How many types of fears are there? What are you afraid of? How do you deal with your fears? How are you held back by your fears? How can you overcome them and finally achieve what really matters to you.
Did you know that fear is one of the biggest killers in the world? According to an American study, carried out some time ago, 80% of people who were bitten by snakes did not die through the presence of venom in their system. Rather, they died from elevated quantities of adrenalin that caused them to suffer a heart attack.
There are many types of fear. Fear of aging, fear of death, fear of failure, failure of not getting the desired job, fear of success, fear of losing control, fear of not seeming appropriate, fear of not fitting in, fear of rejection and fear of losing love among others. There is even such a state as fear of fear.
The question is how does one judge failure and success? How do you judge it and subsequently how do you judge yourself because of it?
If you ceased to judge yourself negatively and stopped having negative internal dialogues with yourself and just took a quiet moment to search inside, you may find that almost all of your fears are just states of mind that you have created and turned into your own reality.
However, if you scratch past the surface and delve deeper in your inner being, you will probably find that most of your fears have no real foundations nor can they really be justified.
Listen in to our broadcast on the Real Coaching Radio widget and find out how you can begin to look at your fears, acknowledge them and finally learn to let go of them.
Namaste and have a wonderful week
Venerina and Coach Steve
Friday, 9 November 2007
Mind, Body & Soul - "I'm not good enough"
Where does that syndrome come from? Are you willing to find out? Are you ready to face it and move on?
You do realize that the only person stopping you from becoming who you want to be and doing what you want to do in life is you, don’t you?
Are you one of the millions of people who think that they are not good enough just because you think you are not pretty enough or clever enough or thin enough or whatever fears, doubts and issues that may lay secretly in the back of your mind and ingrained in your soul?
Have you ever stopped to really think about whether these complexes are truly yours or whether they are just others’ opinions that you have come to accept as reality. Remember, the more someone says something to you, the more you think about it, the more you think about it, the more you believe it and soon, before you know it, you have acquired a new reality in your subconscious upon which you base your actions and create the world around you.
This is not who you are though. Who you are is a spiritual being with the same capacities as anyone else in the world. The only difference between you and a successful person is that the successful person acts upon his world and does not let the world just act upon him.
Forgive yourself your harsh judgments. Forgive others because perhaps they knew no better. Everyone creates their own reality based on their own circumstances and influences in life. There is no such thing as a perfect life. Everyone has baggage. The important thing is how you deal with the baggage that you are carrying.
If you cannot love yourself, forgive yourself and be at one with yourself, the chances are you will not succeed in having successful relationships with others. Look deep into the inner you and discover even the most painful of content. Let it rise to the surface, analyse it, cherish the lesson that may be contained within it and then let it go.
Create new realities for yourself based on what you love about you, the things you are best suited for and what your passions are in life. Give yourself all the validation you need to restore the belief that you can be and you will be. Once you restore this self-confidence you will find that the only limiting factor is your own imagination.
Listen in to our recorded show on Mind, Body and Soul and find out more about how you can learn to let go and forgive yourself and others.
Move forward and upward … the sky is the limit.
Namaste
Dr. Venerina Conti & Coach Steve Toth
http://www.venerinaconti.com/ – Available for Email or Live consultations
http://www.villavalview/ – Holistic Retreat
Friday, 2 November 2007
Mind, Body & Soul - "Being Awake"
The Trans-Atlantic Mind, Body & Soul show, on Thursday 31st October, at Real Coaching Radio, had as its central theme the topic of “Being Awake”.
The first question that Host Coach Steve Toth and myself Co-Host Drª Venerina Conti tried to address was: “Who are you”?
We are launching a challenge to you, our listeners. How many of you out there can actually answer the question: “Who are you”? … Are you how you identify yourself in your societal role? Are you who you envisage yourself to be as defined by others? Have you lost track of who you are?
Regardless of your answer, whoever you are is a very deep and personal matter but we all share one common trait, our souls derive from the same place … from the One and only Conscious Creative being.
Egdar Cayce believed that our soul’s purpose for being here, in the physical being, is to learn, grow and develop so it may earn it’s place next to the creature. We are all born with the same potential for being. We all have our innate connection to our spirit and that of the Universal Being.
Somehow though, we lose this sense of connection as we grow older due to whatever may influence us such as: educational systems, cultural integration, societal stereotyping and so forth. It takes for something drastic to happen in one’s life for the spiritual awakening to re-occur and for us to, once again, be in touch with our Inner Self and the Higher Being.
It all seems to be about extremes rather than integration. Some people experience the separate duality of spiritualism and the physical. Some people only experience either one or the other. For a person to be whole and complete it is necessary to find a means of integrating the two extremes in our modern world. This can be done by focusing ourselves and giving equal attention to all parts of who we are. The rewards are phenomenal. Don’t wait for something drastic to happen to you before you awaken.
Life is not a survival. Life does not have to a be hard. Life is for creating and experiencing. We are the sole creators of us, of our own circumstances and the world we surround ourselves with. Change requires action on our part. If we do nothing, nothing will happen.
We all construe our own realities but the truth is that there is no one singular absolute reality. There is no one singular absolute truth. There are multiple realities and multiple potential realities that we all have the abilities to create. The only limiting factor in creating the you and the life that you want is you and your imagination. How far are you prepared to go? How much are you prepared to put into it? Are you willing to face your own fears in order to create a new reality?
As long as we are alive, as long as we have desire to and as long as we are willing to, we can change anything and everything around us. If you cannot do it on your own then you could seek the guidance of a professional Coach.
Real Coaching Radio offers 7 Professional Coaches in 7 Professional areas of Life Balancing. Email Coach Steve Toth at realcoachingradio@msn.com for more information.
Namaste until next week
Venerina
http://www.villavalview.com/
Thursday, 25 October 2007
How do you find your passion in life?
It is so good to be back at Real Coaching Radio. If you were listening to the show, you may have heard that I just spent 3 weeks in a Holistic Retreat in Sicily recharging my batteries. It was truly a slice of Paradise.
From next year, in collaboration with Real Coaching Radio, myself, Drª Venerina Conti and Coach Steve Toth are going to be organising some spiritual/Motivational/Personal Growth events. If anyone wants to see what I was waking up to everyday and get a feel for the place, then please check out this website:
http://www.villavalview.com/
If you are interested in taking part in any of the events we will be organising there, in 2008 or 2009, then please do not hesitate to contact Coach Steve Toth or myself Drª Venerina Conti.
First of all, we would like to apologise to the people in the chat room during the live broadcast. Due to technical problems, we were unable to use the chat facilities and answer your questions there.
Today’s topic at Real Coaching Radio was: “How does a person find their passion in life”.
The leading questions posed were:
Why do people give up on their dreams early on in life?
Why are people so unwilling to look inside themselves?
Why do people sell out?
What is the cost of giving up on personal passions?
Where does the motivation come from to follow a passion?
Why are people afraid to come out of their comfort zones?
Why do people become resigned and cynical?
How can people turn negative into positive and use sexual energy in a Creative way?
Some of the answers addressed issues like parental influences, societal stereotyping, desire of seeking fame and glory and pressing financial demands, people find themselves in, along with people’s own fears that limit their potential for growth.
People sell out for all kinds of reasons. The essential thing is to recognize the reason and confront it. People can make up all kinds of excuses like no time, no money, no energy but the truth is that we are responsible for the world we create around us. Our thoughts and actions are what make up our world.
He who has no time will make it for what he believes in. He who has no money will find a way of making it if it means realising his dreams and he who has no energy can learn to create it. There are no real excuses. They are shadows we cast over ourselves in order to hide our lack of will and our fears.
He who wants something will always find a way to achieve it or someone that can help him learn how to achieve it. Life is about moving out of your comfort zone and taking risks and as Brian Tracey said: “What’s the worst that could happen?”. Keep answering that question and you’ll find there is no worst that could ever possibly happen.
Ultimately though, the only way you can find your passion in life is by asking yourself the question: “Am I truly happy”?. If the answer is: “No”, then you should look inside yourself for the answer as to why you are not. Is it the job?, Is it a relationship?, Is it the general circumstances in your life? Then think back to a time when you were happy and think about what use to make you happy at that time. Attempt to find out what you were doing then that is now missing in your life.
Meditation is an excellent means to connecting with the self and making self discoveries that have previously been suppressed or ignored. When we stand outside the issue, we can see it more clearly.
Listen in to today’s recorded show: http://www.venerinaconti.com/Realcoachingradio.html
Namaste
Venerina