As I stepped lightly into 2026, I was asked what I’d gained through 2025. I thought briefly and answered that I didn’t feel I’d gained so much as I had lost. Then, thinking a little longer, I added… that through those losses, I was actually carrying a much lighter load. So, in essence, I had gained.

I’d gained a sense of spaciousness — and freedom from situations, roles, and relationships that had become heavy, exhausting, suffocating, and unfulfilling.

In my work, I’ve seen how loss can either soften us into truth — or harden us into survival.
Both personally and professionally, I’ve learned that grief needs space — not solutions.

I’m sharing this because loss is so common — and yet it can feel incredibly lonely when the world expects you to “be fine.”

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Grieve the losses, but don’t live in the grief

Losing something invites us to grieve what we have lost. Transforming grief demands that we embody the experience, because if we don’t let ourselves feel it, we’re only bypassing it.

Over time, emotional bypassing tends to make us either explode or implode.

According to Candace B. Pert, PhD, in Molecules of Emotion, every emotion has a chemical signature that affects our entire physiology. Processing difficult emotions is vital to our physical health, as much as it is to our mental and emotional wellbeing.

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Forms of grief

Grief arrives in many forms, and it can be utterly — breathtakingly — excruciating.

Sometimes it’s an aching emptiness that seems to sit deep in our very bones. Other times, it can poison us in the form of seething rage, bitterness, or resentment we can’t find an antidote for. It can also show up as paralysing helplessness, or consuming self-pity.

When we’re in victimhood, we’ve often outsourced our inner authority — casting blame outward because it feels too painful (or too powerless) to come back home to ourselves.

Exhaustion, apathy, depression, and anhedonia are other costumes grief can wear.

Here is an excellent description of grief vs depression from Artie Wu:

“Grief is when you have a loss, and willingly go down into the pain, and sit with it, and even hold hands with it, not trying to ‘cure’ it or stop it. And in this holding of space, it transforms into a deeper part of you, that nourishes you, protects you and makes you whole again.

Depression is when you have a loss, and run from the pain, numbing it and suppressing it, trying to ‘pull yourself together and just move on’ and to ‘get over it’ — and then a hand comes up from deep within you, grabs you, and pulls you down, anyway.”

This differentiation matters because it highlights the self-love that fuels the courage to willingly enter internal pain — so it can transform.

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Sharing grief and loss

When we share grief and loss, the challenge can be finding the right person to process it with.

Profound grief shared with well-meaning but ill-equipped family or friends can actually compound our grief and sense of loss — not because they don’t care, but because they don’t have the capacity to hold the magnitude of what may be happening. Many people cannot bear to sit with their own pain, let alone hold space for someone else’s.

That’s why it matters to share only with those who truly have the capacity.
Not everyone can hold this — and that’s why finding the right support matters.

In some historic experiences, sharing a profound grief with someone who didn’t have capacity ended with the words: “Get over it.” The underlying message landed as you’re too much, layering shame over anguish that was already hard to carry.

It’s not someone else’s fault if they don’t have the capacity to hold space — but at the wrong moment, it can feel like being pushed underwater when all we’re trying to do is stay afloat.

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What I learned about carrying weight

In hindsight, what made 2025 so heavy wasn’t only what happened — it was what kept being carried long after it stopped being ours to hold.

So often, the weight comes from over-functioning, over-explaining, and over-tolerating. Grief doesn’t just ask us to feel. It asks us to choose.

And some of the choices are quiet, unglamorous, and lifesaving: fewer justifications, cleaner no’s, and a deeper loyalty to inner authority.

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How grief moves through the body

Grief can feel like bone-deep fatigue. It can also feel like tightness in the chest that makes the simplest tasks feel enormous.

What helps isn’t forcing “positive thinking,” but giving the nervous system evidence of safety: slow walks, warm showers, longer exhales, honest tears, and the kind of presence that doesn’t rush the process.

Little by little, emotion does what it’s designed to do — it moves.

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Spaciousness is the new wealth

Some of the greatest gifts don’t arrive wrapped — they arrive as endings.

In the wake of loss, more room appears: room to breathe, to simplify, to stop negotiating with what drains. Spaciousness is not emptiness. It’s clarity.

And in 2026, the choice is to protect what creates that clarity — conversations that are honest, relationships that are reciprocal, and a life that doesn’t require self-abandonment in order to belong.

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Closing

If you’re entering this year carrying loss, I hope you don’t rush grief — and I hope you don’t set up camp inside it either.

What might become possible if the weight teaches you what you’re no longer available for?

And if you’re moving through grief, change, or a dark-night season and you’d like steady, compassionate support, you’re welcome to reach out. I’ve seen again and again — in life and in my practice — that grief moves when it’s met. You don’t have to do the heavy lifting alone.

Wishing you all the very best,
Chrissy

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WHERE IS YOUR TRUE NORTH – Locating Your Inner Guidance

We all face decisions in our everyday lives, some small and seemingly insignificant, or some big and potentially life changing. With so many influences in our lives, how do we locate our inner guidance to discover our own true north?

Do we put our intellect to work, listing the pros and cons to rationalise our way to deciding? Or do we let our emotions guide our choices to be dictated by ungrounded desires or unwarranted fears? Perhaps we plead our case to others, presenting our options to friends or family and decide based upon external guidance.

All of the above have their place, but we also have an utterly reliable way to locate our internal guidance. A reliable system that bypasses even our own personal bias. This is where we find our own true north, our own sense of rightness, our internal GPS system. What is it you ask? Its your BODY !

YOUR BODY NEVER LIES

So the main way we can locate our inner guidance is through our Body. To illustrate the statement ‘The body never lies’, I’d like to share an experience I had many years ago. I only recognised the value in the experience through hindsight.

I was working on a creative project for about a year with a guy I knew. Every Monday he’d come over to my flat with his computer and we’d spend the day working together. Our roles were clearly defined and agreed upon at the outset of the project, or so I had thought.

Then one Monday, he knocked on my front door and I went to greet him as usual. As soon as he stepped inside the house, I thought I was going to vomit. I assumed that I had some kind of tummy bug or had eaten something that had disagreed with me. The nausea subsided and we continued our work. The next Monday the same thing occurred, again I put it down to some kind of digestive issue. It continued for weeks while the whole time I continued to dismiss it as nothing more than a dietary reaction.

TRUST YOUR GUT – Locating Your Inner Guidance

Months later, I discovered my so called ‘friend’ had stolen my intellectual property claiming my creative work as his own. It was at that stage I realised that my body had been literally giving me a ‘gut-feeling’, that something wasn’t right for quite some time.

The intellectual property issue never got resolved but I learnt an invaluable lesson through that experience to literally ‘trust my gut’. I’ve also reclaimed my creativity in many other fulfilling ways since then and have simultaneously discovered that creativity is life force energy that cannot in fact be stolen.

My point in explaining this experience is that our BODY is our very own internal guidance system, with it’s own inbuilt GPS if you like. It faithfully lets us know when something is off, and it points us in the direction of what is in alignment with us by how it feels in our body.

YOUR FELT SENSE – Locating Your Inner Guidance

The term “Felt Sense‘ emerged from the work of American Philosopher Dr Eugene T Gendlin who founded the psychotherapeutic technique called “Focussing”.

The example I’ve given is in relation to my own dominant ‘felt sense’, meaning a literally sensation that that is felt in the body. Yours however maybe different to mine. Perhaps you can ‘smell’ when something isn’t right; or you find your jaw clenching; maybe you feel temperature changes or like your energy has been zapped. Maybe you get a visual sign or an auditory cue to guide you; a tingling; a tightness; an ease; a rush of energy. What is it for you? What’s your own dominant felt sense? It could be one, it could be many, I simply invite you to pay attention to your own body and discover for yourself.

SELF ENQUIRY -Locating Your Inner Guidance

In aiding the process of tuning in to discover your own felt sense, there are two questions that I find very useful. You can ask these questions to yourself in relation to another person, and idea, a decision, or a choice between two scenarios/options. It helps to be very still and relaxed when doing this and it’s important to make sure that you’re not disturbed. Then simply ask yourself:

• Does it deplete me or energise me?
• Does it limit or liberate me?

Then pay attention to your body’s response. One option/choice may feel lighter, more energising, expansive or warmer; the other may feel heavier, depleting, contracting or cooler.

Remember this is not an intellectual process as such, nor is it emotional guidance you’re seeking here. It’s your own physical, bodily ‘felt sense’ that you’re tuning into through this process, and that sense gives you another layer of information. You can then that add this new information to the intellectual understanding and emotional feedback you may also receive.

A PERSONAL NOTE

I’ve used this self-enquiry process many times to locate my own inner guidance when faced with the ‘Big Decisions’ that life sometimes asks us to make. More recently though, I’m engaging with my own ‘felt sense’ more frequently and it’s kind of fun, much like a game of ‘choose your own adventure’. Tuning into our felt sense is a skill that we can develop, and like anything that we practise, we can get really good at it!

It’s actually a way of tuning into our subconscious mind, (which is essentially our body). Kinesiology uses this same process during muscle-testing, it’s simply a more direct way of connecting with our subconscious.

So give it a go and have some fun with it, your own true north will never lead you astray!

With Love and Blessings

Chrissy x

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Dealing with disappointment at Christmas can be tough! Christmas is a time to express joy, generosity and love with the people that we care about, our family and friends. Yet it’s also a time that can magnify sadness, lack and loss. When the Spirit of togetherness and belonging are so strong, the polar opposite of loneliness and isolation can also occur.

You can positively alter your biochemistry by asking yourself this important question: what are you grateful for? The asking of the question is the important part because remembering things to be grateful for stimulates the efficacy of neurons in the pre-frontal cortex of the brain, as Korb also explains.

It’s difficult to feel disappointment and grief at the time of year that is loaded with expectations to feel differently. Remembering loved ones who have passed; broken relationships; let downs from family or friends can be painful. These memories can invoke feelings that somehow seem taboo during this time of celebration.

DEALING WITH DISAPPOINTMENT

ACKNOWLEDGE YOUR FEELINGS

Acknowledging your feelings reduces internal resistance and helps you to process and eventually transform and release your difficult emotions.

Your feelings don’t disappear just because you ignore them. Suppressing emotions only creates more internal pressure within your mind and body that eventually just wants OUT!

According to Neuroscience researcher Alex Korb, the act of being able to label your emotions actually reduces their effect on your brain.

Korb cites an MRI study, titled “Putting Feelings into Words” where participants viewed pictures of people with emotional facial expressions. Each participant’s amygdala mimicked the same emotions present in the picture. When they were asked to name the emotion, their prefrontal cortex was activated, reducing the emotional reactivity of the brain. By actively labelling the emotions, the emotional impact on participants was reduced

Seek to find some words to describe the emotion that you’re feeling e.g. anger, grief, despair, disappointment, guilt, regret. The mere act of labelling your emotions reduces your reaction to them.

ALLOW YOURSELF TO REALLY FEEL IT

Let yourself really sink into the feeling that you are experiencing in your body. Where do you feel it in your body the most? Does it have a specific sensation, temperature, texture or even colour attached to it? Now, let yourself really feel it without resistance. What we resist persists, so the key to getting through it is to really feel it.

If you want to cry, let yourself cry. Maybe it feels like a deep black hole inside you, just let yourself sink into that feeling for a few minutes. Perhaps it feels like a hot ball of rage, there is usually grief and sadness underneath it….sink into that. When you are afraid, sink into the fear.

The act of experiencing your emotions will not kill you. However, trying to avoid what you’re feeling can perpetuate behaviours that can have a detrimental effect on your overall health. Feeling your emotions is an act of befriending them that helps us find our way through them.

TRANSFORMING YOUR EMOTIONS

One extremely effective way of transforming difficult emotions is through E.F.T. (Emotional Freedom Technique). This technique involves tapping on acupuncture points which releases the physical, mental and emotional charge felt within the body.

Here is a demonstration of the technique that I use both in professionally and personally.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCF5ihzEexpCOluB2AA9oh2Q

By labelling your emotions and transforming them using the tapping technique, you can then redirect your focus towards cultivating gratitude.

CULTIVATING GRATITUDE

Gratitude literally makes us feel better because it activates the region of the brain stem that produces dopamine and dopamine makes us feel good. Another positive effect of gratitude is that it boosts the production of serotonin, which enhances our mood during daylight hours.

Expressing gratitude within your relationships also creates a positive social effect that can enhance the happiness of the individuals within the relationship. Everyone likes being appreciated, it’s that simple! So expressing thanks to your deserved loved ones is beneficial for all involved.

SEEK SOLACE THOUGH OTHERS STORIES

Part of the struggle with experiencing painful emotions is that we can feel quite alone in our suffering. Hearing or reading stories of how others have gotten through their own internal struggles can help us realise that we’re not alone in ours and this can help reduce our overwhelm.

One book that beautifully articulates overcoming these internal struggles is “Healing through the Dark Emotions” by Miriam Greenspan. https://miriamgreenspan.com/

FIND THE GOLD WITHIN

Finally, allow your painful emotions to cause you to become so unsatisfied with them and the life experience that they produce so that you learn to transcend them. This is not achieved by avoiding them but by going through them. Like the alchemist, who turns lead into gold, find the gold within your experience.

Buried within my most painful life experiences, I have always discovered a greater truth. This truth has led to deeper understanding and an illumination of the Spirit of Life within me, If you’re struggling with your own difficult emotions, I wish the same for you.

In Love and Recognition of the regenerative Spirit of Life within YOU.

Wishing you inner Peace this Christmas!

Written by Chrissy Diamond

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TRUE HEALING IS THE REALIZATION THAT THERE WAS Never anything TO HEAL in the first place

The Healing Principle

The principle of healing, be that physical, mental, or emotional, recognises the innate perfection of the life-force within. From this perspective, by focussing on the flawless renewable energy source of every individual, there is nothing to heal.

I realise that may sound like a paradox. Especially coming from someone who has worked in the “healing industry” for nearly 2 decades. However, the truth is, I’ve never called myself a “healer”.

Healing implies that there is something to fix within the individual. Yet the quintessential nature of every human being, is the vibrant life force energy expressing itself in fullness. Healing then is releasing anything that blocks that expression of that life force energy. So that the individual can return to their original state of being in complete health and wellness.

Seekers of healing are often focused on what they perceive to be wrong within their body, mind and emotions. Much time, money and valuable energy can be spent on these perceived “wrongs”.

The key here is that the perceived “wrongs” of illness, and dis-ease are simply experiences. Experiences that are not permanent states of being. Illness and disease are changing expressions of impermanent imbalances, disruptions or blockages of the vibrant energy that sustains all life.

What Do You Identify With?

People often identify with these experiences of imbalance and forget their natural way of expressing health and vitality. They can form chronic conditions of pain, illness and disease that they sometimes mistake as their permanent state of being. In doing so, they essentially cut themselves off from this ever flowing source of life force energy. The same energy that brings about the very “healing” mechanisms that they seek.

Healing is really more of an allowing, it’s a stepping out of the way of the innate wisdom within the body/mind. Allowing the intelligence within the body to organise its myriad of functions creates balance, equanimity and harmony and flow.

REMEMBER YOUR ESSENTIAL NATURE

Your essential nature is energy. Some people call that energy: God, Source, Universal Intelligence, The Unified Field, Consciousness, Spirit. It doesn’t matter what you call it, the infinite combination of waves, particles, atoms, molecules and cells is energy. That energy is what forms YOU. This energy is your whole and complete essential nature. It is the same energy that the earth, moon, sun and entire universe is made up of!

Returning to your essential nature requires your attention to be focused on the vital life force within you. You cannot return to what is natural and right by focussing on whatever you perceive to be the “wrong”. Healing is an act of remembering your “rightness”, your innate perfection. The precise and unique architecture of your exquisitely intricate mind and body.

This returning to your essential nature involves trusting your body and mind. Do you consciously tell your autonomic nervous system to activate all of the physiological processes involved in digestion? Do you tell your pancreas to excrete the insulin required to allow glucose into the cell for energy consumption? No, you trust the innate wisdom of your body/mind to do this naturally.

Healing is surrendering with confidence, to your natural ability to find balance. On the physical level, its called homeostasis – the body’s natural ability to return to a state of cellular equilibrium. On the mental/emotional level its called letting go and returning to your natural state of peace and harmony.

RE-FOCUS YOUR ATTENTION

You may have heard it said “Where your attention goes, your energy flows”. This means that whatever your attention is focused upon, e.g. what you perceive as being wrong, or right, will increase.

On the emotional level, focusing on things to be grateful for actually releases our good feeling hormones, endorphin’s. So the practice of gratitude redirects our attention and energy away from our perceived “wrongs”. It also gives us a chemical boost that enhances our ability to feel good. This in turn, promotes healing mechanisms within our body and mind.

BE CONSCIOUSLY AWARE

Healing is first about remembering your essential nature and then letting go and surrendering to this vital life force within you. It also involves being conscious of the process.

Many would say that consciousness IS healing. This awareness can guide you to take any actions that assist your body/mind to return to wholeness and health. The key here is that YOU are the life force energy that guides this process.

AREAS YOUR INNER HEALER MAY GUIDE YOU TO

Some areas of health that you may intuitively feel require your attention could be:

• Nutrition and hydration.
• Movement/exercise.
• Emotional outlets.
• Psychological processing/Psychotherapy.
• Massage/bodywork/Energy-work.
• Talking therapy/Counseling/coaching.
• Meditation/Breath-work.
• Forgiveness/Releasing Fear.

The invitation is to trust your inner healer and the guidance that you get through your thoughts, feelings and senses. Let them lead the way to the full expression of your health and well being

Your natural state of being is radiant, vital, flowing energy and healing is simply a returning to your natural state. So from this perspective, there is nothing to heal. It’s simply a matter of remembering who and what you already are!

Written by Chrissy Diamond

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Manifestation involves bringing into reality that which you consciously desire for your life. Being able to do so in an ongoing way requires you to be clear about what it is that you desire in the first place. For this to then be attainable, your desires must align with your personal values, sounds obvious right?

Well it is and yet sometimes the course of life, we can get distracted in attending to various commitments that crop up. Through family commitments, careers, health challenges and general life admin, we can lose touch with what we most deeply desire.

Let’s consider that there is no external power or force that can give you the life of your dreams. Nor is there any external power or force that is to blame if your life is not what you want it to be. If you don’t like the life you’re currently living, YOU can change it. Yet if you’ve simply got stuck on the treadmill of existence and want more than your current reality….read on

Get clear about what you want

Desires and values change throughout the course of life. Self awareness is vital in being able to identify what your personal values are and what you truly desire. This will differ when you are 20 compared to when you are 80.

Some questions that might help to guide you are:

• What excites you or what used to excite you when you were a kid?
• Where do you feel the most joy in your life e.g. what activities, people help to tap you into this
• What creates the greatest sense of harmony, peace, contentment for you?
• What do you enjoy the most about what you already do?

Does it align with your core values?

If what you want to achieve or attain does not align with your underlying values, the manifestation of your desires will be sabotaged.

An example of core values might be:

• Being authentically fulfilled in your primary relationship
• Having a career that allows you to live a healthy life
• Having the time to invest in family, and important relationships
• Living a life where harmony and peace, joy and fun are a priority
• Having an altruistic aspect to your work/life
• Earning an income that supports your chosen lifestyle and allows you to be able to assist others through donating to charities and/or contributing to society through other acts of generosity
• Living in a sustainable way that reduces your ecological footprint

How will you feel when it’s your reality

Literally imagine your desired outcome. Close your eyes and sink into your body. How will you feel? Have you ever felt this way before? Remember that feeling…the physical sensation in your body/mind/emotions. Allow your mind theatre to take you into this new reality like a dream, and summon up the feelings that emerge when you’ve achieved that goal. The important part here is to feel it in the present moment as if it has already occurred. Let the emotion well up from inside you like a fountain and stay in that emotional state for as long as you can. REPEAT DAILY.

Celebrate others who have achieved what you want to achieve

Instead of allowing feelings of jealousy, envy or self pity to contaminate your desires, celebrate with others who have achieved their goals as if they were you. This good intention creates a positive feedback loop that reinforces the vibrational state that you cultivate when you access your own feelings about achieving your goals. This practice aligns your energy field with that which you intend to manifest and assists you in bringing it into your reality.

Be undivided in your intention

If you have clarity about your desired outcomes as they align with your core values, anything other than your intended outcome is simply a distraction. Whether you’re suffering from an onslaught of self doubt, unwelcome judgements from others or material hurdles, they’re all just distractions from your intended outcome.

The key here is to acknowledge the distraction and then take your focus, attention and energy back to your desired outcome.

Take an action step towards your goal every day

Even if you only have 15 minutes spare, take that step, write that email, make that phone call, go for that walk/run, get out that canvas, sit down at that piano, cook that new recipe, deposit that money. Bit by bit, those 15 minutes turn into hours, days, weeks months and years and before you know it you’re looking back on what you’ve already achieved!

Take breaks to re-energize

It’s important to listen to your body and rest when your energy is starting to fade. Your goals will never be achieved if you break in the process of achieving them and so your health and vitality is paramount. Discouragement can set in when we feel fatigued and then start making mistakes as a result, so avoid this by giving yourself a break from time to time, switch that computer off…it will still be there tomorrow (just make sure you’ve saved your draft!!).

Keep going

This cartoon image sums up my final point beautifully

NEVER GIVE UP; YOU MAY BE CLOSER TO REACHING YOUR GOALS THAN YOU THINK!

All the best in whatever it is you’re intending to manifest!

Written by: Chrissy Diamond

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We are creatures of habit, and we often perpetuate the very habits that we want to change. Even when it is in our best interests to change, our internal resistance often opposes the very changes that we seek.

EMPOWERMENT MOTIVATES; FEAR AND GUILT PARALYSES.

If a proposed change invokes a sense of fear or guilt in the recipient, it reduces any motivation to change. The resulting feelings are more likely to be: apathy, disinterest, powerlessness and hopelessness. What is required is a sense of empowerment, positive choice and action.

ALIGNMENT WITH CORE VALUES

In order to embark on significant change of any kind, we have to consciously and subconsciously be able to “buy into it”. This means that the proposed change must align with our core values. Alignment creates the durability required to endure the process of change, which isn’t always easy. If your core values do not align with the changes you wish to create, any changes made will usually be short lived and will not be sustainable.

We must therefore be aware of what our core values are to begin with. If we realise that our core values do not align with our desired changes, we can choose to reposition and adjust those values to fit with our desired goals. Our values then become the foundation that drives and empowers us in achieving the changes we seek.

PREREQUISITES FOR CHANGE

The following beliefs/prerequisites are essential in making and succeeding with a decision to change. Like core values, the underlying beliefs that a person has must align with the desired changes in order to achieve success.

DO WE BELIEVE THE CHANGE WE SEEK IS:

• Beneficial, that it will make a positive difference to us, to others or to the world we live in.
• Possible to achieve.
• Within our power, ability, skill, support and resources to change.
• Our responsibility and that we control of our own behaviours and reactions.
• Within our capability to implementing a specific action or behaviour.
• Worth the courage required to face our emotional vulnerability

ARE WE WILLING TO:

• Identify our resistance to change.
• Explore how our resistance actually serves or protects us.
• Examine any adverse consequences that could result from the change that we wish to make.

DO WE FEEL THAT:

• Our desire for the positive outcomes we seek are greater than the energy required to implement the changes.
• The desire to change outweighs the comfort and familiarity of our current reality or state.
• Any discomfort of changing, is less than the discomfort of the aspect that we want to change.

If we identify a dissonance or misalignment in any of the above prerequisites to change, success is undermined. This may require further exploration with a therapist or life coach.

THE SEMANTICS OF SUCCESS

When we are truly intent on making a specific change in our lives, we often need to alter the words that we use. These include the words we think as well as words we speak. We need to eradicate “CAN’T” from our vocabulary and entertain the possibility that whatever we want to change is achievable.

Instead of beginning sentences that shut down your own ability or limit possibilities such as:

I don’t; I won’t; I’m not; It’s too difficult; It’s too hard; No…..

CATCH YOURSELF and replace them with:

I could try; I’ll have a think about it; I can; I will; It’s challenging but possible; It’s tricky but achievable; Yes….

THERE ARE NO PROBLEMS; ONLY SOLUTIONS

This is not denial of the very real threats and problems that do exist for us in our lives and in our world. Instead, it’s an attitude we can adopt that supports us in moving towards solving the issues we face. A much better alternative to giving them the power to stop us reaching our goals.
Employing this solutions based principle allows us to make profound personal changes. Changes that improve our health, relationships, living circumstances, families, working lives, society, country, world and planet.

YOU HAVE THE POWER TO CHANGE!

Written by Chrissy Diamond

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How often do you dim your light down for fear of shining too brightly?

In many ways, our society today is more accepting than ever. Yet there still remain aspects within it that point fingers and ostracize others for being different. Standing out, or expressing a point of view that may not be popular, can sometimes feel like dangerous territory.

Trauma from the past such as physical, sexual or emotional abuse, being picked on, or bullied creates protective mechanisms. Some forms of protection can lead you to shutting down the expression of your pure, essential nature.

The result of shutting down your essential nature is that it creates blockages in your body’s energetic systems. These blockages have a detrimental effect on your physical body, as well as mental and emotional states.

It actually takes a lot of energy to diminish the expression of the life force within you. Your natural state of being is designed to radiate, to be creative, to flow, to change and to grow. Stunting this natural outward movement of energy internalises it leading to stagnation and eventual suffering.

If you’ve continually received encouragement in your pursuits, and only encountered successful endeavours then this message is not for you.

This message is for those of you who have experienced self doubt that led to inner paralysis. Ridicule that led to crippling shame, or punishment for expressing yourself that led you to hiding your radiant light. So somewhere along the way, you decided that it wasn’t okay to be the most authentic, truest version of yourself.

The outcome may have led you to making life choices that didn’t reflect your true desires. These choices create deep feelings of dissatisfaction e.g. life-partner, career, health, home, social-circle and ultimately your passion for life.

Then, throughout the course of life, you forgot that you ever made this decision to stop being your truest self. A gradual feeling of unhappiness eventually crept in on you. The feeling that whatever you have, whatever you do, wherever you are, and whoever you’re with, is not enough. It’s the deeply uncomfortable feeling that something is missing and that something doesn’t quite fit.

At this stage, you can make the error of thinking and feeling that what doesn’t quite fit….is you. Left feeling like a victim of your own life, you externalise your power and project it onto others. Once you have externalised your power, you have abdicated responsibility for your own life. You therefore hold everyone and everything else accountable for your own happiness or your own misery.

Now, you feel REALLY powerless, because you’ve given away your inner authority. Perhaps you now need to numb the loss of your true self through alcohol, drugs, or food. Either that, or you distract yourself with work, work and more work to earn money to satisfy an unknown need? The need to avoid the emptiness inside. Like a boat without a rudder, you are tossed around by life’s storms. Your own body, mind and emotions are now rebelling against you because YOU FORGOT YOURSELF! The thing that you feel is missing…..is YOU!

Okay….take a breath, this can be a difficult realization to arrive at.

If you’ve come to this stage of awareness, how do you connect again with that long lost part of yourself. How turn up your inner light to let yourself shine again?

Get Really Still

Sit still in a chair with your feet on the ground, or sit /lay down on the ground. Connect with your breathing, feel your body rise and fall with your inhalation and exhalation. Feel the aliveness in your body, the subtle vibration tingling inside your skin, this is your life force energy.

Feel What you Feel

Ask yourself: What do you feel physically? Then “listen” to the sensations that your body may feed back to you. Become aware of any tension in your muscles, any pain, heat or cold. Notice any tingling or physical sensation that you may experience without resisting it.

Then ask yourself: What do you feel emotionally? “Listen” to any particular emotion that surfaces; joy, peace, love, excitement, anger, grief, regret, fear, shame. Just notice whatever emotion you are feeling without resisting it.

FORGIVE YOURSELF

No matter why you decided to dim your light down, forgive yourself. Whatever happened that caused you to hide the most authentic version of yourself, forgive yourself. You were responsible for choosing to diminish your light, therefore you are responsible for claiming back your true power. You do this by forgiving yourself.

Make a new decision to shine now

You’re still alive and there is no time like the present. Don’t waste a single moment more by regretting the time that you spent dimming your light down. Shine baby shine…..shine like the sun because that is what you were born to do. Shine in your unique way that only you can do!

Ask yourself:

What does the deepest part of me desire?

Pay attention to what arises in response to this question and make a commitment to follow to the answer. Give yourself permission to express your own unique light and let it shine brightly.

This is the way back home to yourself.

I’d like to share a poem written by Marianne Williamson that expresses this truth so beautifully.

OUR GREATEST FEAR



Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.       



Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.



It is our light not our darkness that most frightens us.



We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous?



Actually, who are you not to be?



You are a child of God.



Your playing small does not serve the world.



There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you.       



We were born to make manifest the glory ofGod that is within us.        It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone.



And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. 



As we are liberated from our own fear,Our presence automatically liberates others.  —Marianne Williamson

I wish you the courage to be your truest self and to let your essential nature radiate and shine brilliantly which is your ultimate purpose.

Written by Christine Diamond

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We are now half way through the year and we’ve passed the shortest day of the year in New Zealand. So it’s a good time to take stock of our wellbeing and the goals that we have set for the year.

By the time we reach mid-year we’ve we’ve already spent a lot of energy getting to where we are. We may have achieved some of what we’d set ourselves to accomplish. Perhaps we’ve had a few unforeseen events occur that have altered our planned course. Yet we can still feel that we have a mountain ahead of us to climb.

This is a good time to look back at just how much ground we’ve covered. We can also take inventory and celebrating our milestones and what we have already achieved. Making amendments to goals that have changed or are no longer achievable is also important. So that we can set new achievable goals and correct our course of action if we need to.

TAKING YOUR PERSONAL WELLNESS INVENTORY

I would like to quote directly from “Mind Over Medicine” written by Lissa Rankin, MD, who has come up with the following categories of optimal health that can be used as an example for taking your personal wellness inventory.

• “Healthy Relationships, including a strong network of family, friends, loved ones, and colleagues
• A healthy, meaningful way to spend your days, whether you work outside the home or in it
• A healthy, fully expressed creative life, that allows your soul to sing its song
• A healthy spiritual life, including a sense of connection to the sacred in life
• A healthy sexual life, that allows you the freedom to express your erotic self and explore fantasies
• A healthy financial life, free of undue financial stress, which ensures that the essential needs of your body are met
• A healthy environment, free of toxins, natural disaster hazards, radiation, and other unhealthy factors that threaten the health of the body
• A healthy mental and emotional life, characterized by optimism and happiness and free of fear, anxiety, depression, and other mental health ailments
• A healthy lifestyle that supports the physical health of the body, such as good nutrition, regular exercise, adequate sleep, and avoidance of unhealthy addictions”

Compare your own life in regards to these categories, what matters to you and where you put yourself on this spectrum of optimal health. This will give you an indication of areas of your life that you can celebrate, and areas that you’d like to improve.

CELEBRATE WHAT’S WORKING

It can be helpful to put pen to paper and actually list the things that are working for you, the relationships that you cherish, the material things that you have attained and appreciate, the activities that enliven you, the goals or partial goals that you’ve already achieved this year, the health and wellness that you enjoy in your life right now.

The reason this step is important is because you mustn’t just treat yourself as continual self-improvement project. Yes, there are always things you can improve on no matter what stage of your life you are at, that’s evolution and you are meant to evolve. However, you also need to celebrate your victory’s, to stop and “smell the roses” once in a while.

So CELEBRATE! Celebrate what you’ve achieved in all facets of your life this year so far and actually DO SOMETHING to mark your milestone. It doesn’t have to be big, and it doesn’t have to cost a lot. Just to something in appreciation of yourself and where you’re at right now.

RE-SET YOUR GOALS

Write down those areas of your life that you’ve identified that you’d like to improve on and brainstorm some ideas of how you could start to implement those changes.

It’s important to make these “next-half-of-year-goals” achievable, so that you’re not sabotaging yourself at the outset by trying to accomplish too much. These goals are more of a gentle tweak of your initial goals rather than a full blown re-writing of your life, so go easy and make them attainable.

SET THE WHEELS IN MOTION

Whatever your newly adjusted goals are, just take one small step towards them daily and don’t think about it too much. The thinking part comes in the assessing, planning and setting of the goals according to what it is that YOU want, and what you consider to be achievable. So when it comes to the doing part, thought is not required.

If you lack motivation, it doesn’t matter, take that small step anyway. If you experience feelings of resistance, it doesn’t matter, take that small step anyway. Feelings of resistance come and go and they are not the decider of what you do, YOU ARE.

If, however, the New Zealand winter has paid you a wee visit with a virus, cold, illness or fatigue….Rest, Replenish, Rejuvenate and Restore. Sometimes our illnesses are mother nature’s way of giving us a compulsory break and if this is the case for you, park those goals. They’ll still be there when you have recharged again.

ALL THE BEST OF HEALTH AND WELLNESS TO YOU

Written by: Chrissy Diamond

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