My granddaughters, Anna and Elena

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She is so precious in her new owl hat and leg warmers with the cute boots! 

They are both so precious to me and I wanted to share their sweetness with you.  Really take a few minutes and look in their little faces.  Absorb how that makes you feel.   Take a nice slow breath.  Relax.  Unload the distractions and just set them aside for a moment.  Connect with the part of you that makes you feel like these little faces.

Yes, what you see there is also in you.  That’s why you can feel it. 

I just want you to enjoy that for a moment.

Much has happened in the last year or so that has forever changed my life.  These two special little people rate at the top.  They have made me a grandma and it’s a very special name for me. I even changed my hair, and that’s a topic for another blog…

The other ways my life has changed has to do with my journey to continue to be able to be the best I can (never-ending, I admit).  The reason I push myself to do this is to be in service to those who want to have God play a bigger part in their life and to really shine as He has intended for us to do.   I know what it’s done for my life so far, and how profoundly it can play out in yours.  We cannot really shine if we are stressed and overloaded with life’s cares.  At least I was able to distract you for a moment with these sweet pictures.

My point here is that you do have this within you, whenever you stop to focus on it. 

If nothing else, you can begin to love that part of you.  Giving ourselves love and respect are the basic stepping stones to improving our lives.  Here’s a baby step:  A very simple thing to do (right now and today) is to find a saying or verse that reminds you of how really wonderful you are  and want to be, (whether you believe it right now, or not!).  Make it short so you can remember it.  You might even have one already!  If you need to, write it on a post-it note and carry it with you so you see it often.  We all need reminders!  You need to remember EVERY MOMENT what a wonderful person you are that God made.  Just like these little ones, inside you is your very own purity, beauty and light that is a reflection of God.  My mission is to have you see your own light, then bring it out ever stronger.  Isn’t that God’s wish for our lives as well?  Think of the babies and your ‘saying’ and be a light in this world today.  Contact me to learn more:  dream@light-r-u.com

She is always attentive and learning, and look at the tenderness!

TallTrainer Summer Challenge

Isn’t it nice when everyone wins SOMETHING?  You feel like a winner.  The very first thing that I want you to remember is that you are a special person and to love yourself for that.  For those who entered the Tall Trainer Summer Challenge, this is an explanation of  your gifts from Light-r-u, LLC – just for applying to the contest!

Secondly, I am very excited to be able to offer you, not only a half hour of coaching (*gift #1) to help you get launched, overcome obstacles and keep your motivation burning bright (which I have found to be a challenge in itself), but also giving you some insights to help strengthen your mental muscles.

What do you think keeps you going when your physical body gets fatigued?  Determination, motivation, drive, purpose…  This link will give you insights to help enable you to believe in yourself more – we can all use some of that!   Here’s the sign up for this “Believing Bootcamp” series that is absolutely fr** (*gift #2): Go to http://www.light-r-u.com/makeover_thankyou.html

Also check out this link for an amazing interactive Group Dreamcoach(r) course that will help you enlarge your vision of yourself and your future.  If you are really serious about changing the direction you have been heading and find the positive, new and wonderful you that lies just beneath the surface, this course is exactly what you’ve been looking for.  It can not only help you with your weight loss goals as you do bootcamp, or any exercise program, but also any life goal/dream you may have.  Once you’ve achieved the weight goal you may say, “What’s next?”  Why think small?  God has a larger vision for us and He really wants us to know it and live it.  We are all different and unique for His purpose and we each have special gifts that we are uniquely qualified to give.  I would love to help you find and activate yours!  Click here for more information.

I will be calling you very soon to set up a convenient time to chat and help you on your journey during that half hour.  There is absolutely no obligation implied with this call.  I sincerely desire to give of my abilities to help you move forward with yours.  I encourage you to continue to stand in your integrity and take steps forward to your dreams.

If you have found value in this, or think you know of someone who might, please send this on to them.  You will help me to help others.

See You Lighter!!

Jacqui Biernat (I am also the TallTrainer’s/ Jeremy’s mom)

Making the Right Decision

Making the Best Decision

Wouldn’t you like to know that you’ve made the best decision, especially when it comes to the really big decisions we have to make in our lives?  How can we know?  We have some great tools we can use and one is called the 10-10-10 rule.  Glamour Magazine called it “the best decision making tool ever”!  Suzy Welch initially came up with it.  Not only does this tool help you decide what is best, but it does so in a way that helps you explain your decision to your family, friends or whoever else may be affected by it.

We make so many, many decisions over the course of a single day without much thought or care.  The answers are obvious to us and instinctive.  We have built habits that support these decisions.  Do I walk, bicycle or take the car for local errands?  Do I eat the leftovers or leave them for the next meal?  Do I wash my dishes immediately or leave them for the end of the day?  Do I send a letter, e-mail or call?  We have specific reasons why we do things the way we do.  Some we have built good habits for and some not.  But these are the ones that are easy for us because they are our habits and are not challenging our values in some way.  The difficult decisions come when our values are in conflict with one another.  Our perspective of the situation highlights our values.

In the situation of Marie, who works at a full time challenging job and is a single-mother of 3 children, a last minute crisis at work can be quite challenging.  She has been working late pretty consistently lately and so promised the kids and the babysitter that tonight would be special and she’d be home on time.  That is when the crisis erupts during the last half hour at work that would mean an extra hour or so on the job.  Of course, you say!  Isn’t that what always happens?  This is a tough decision.  Some people utilize the following steps unconsciously and quickly.  See if you do.  Using the values based decision making tool, then the 10-10-10 rule:

1. Look at all the facts objectively.
2. Evaluate the possibilities based on your values.  (here, one conflict is keeping your word to the children and sitter vs. showing commitment at work)
• Ask others for input for a different view of the situation – there may be things you overlook or can view differently.
• Consider the age/ maturity/ reasoning ability of the children/people involved – will the children imprint that Mom doesn’t keep promises if they are very young? – or are they old or aware enough to understand that they are loved no matter what and that they will be taken care of regardless of what time Mom gets home?  Is the babysitter flexible and what are his/her needs?
• Will the boss respect you for taking a stand to be with your family or could it possibly affect keeping your job or future advancement?
3. Put together specific plans for each scenario (staying at work vs. leaving on time) and think them through.  (Try to picture unintended consequences as well.)
4. Evaluate the plans based on the 10-10-10 rule.
• What are the consequences in 10 seconds?
• What are the consequences in 10 months?
• What are the consequences in 10 years?

Once you have taken a deep breath and slowed down enough to think through your possibilities and evaluated the plans based on the 10-10-10 rule, it should be obvious to you what the best choice is to fit with your overall dream for your life.  You can also ask yourself several more final evaluation questions before going “live” with your decision.

1. Is my decision loving to myself and others?
2. Will my decision move me closer to my dream?
3. Is it ethical?

Know that at this time you only have the information at hand and do not have the advantage of hind-sight.  Pay attention to the signals in your body as well.  How does it make you feel when you say you are staying work?  How does it make you feel when you say you are leaving to spend quality time with your children?  Our bodies are sometimes our “other brain” and we need to take into consideration how it feels.  Do the “gut check”.

If you don’t presently have a dream you are working toward, aren’t sure of the values that rule your actions, and would like to discover your own truths and have a solid purpose for going forward…you may want to consider the DREAMCOACH® program.  It will give you that solidarity you are looking for and possibly a great dream to look forward to, learning the steps to achieving it.  July begins the next 5 session group coaching course that you won’t want to miss.  Click here for more details.

So, what do you think Marie would do?  From the information we have, we cannot make the right decision for Marie, because there are too many unknowns for us.  Only Marie really knows.  That is the way it will be for you too.  Innately, you will know what is best for you, once you take the time to fully think it through.  God bless you in your decision making.  Call me when you need more help or if you’d like to find your dream and your motivation.

Pantry Paint

The project is nearly complete.  I ran out of steam in removing the wallpaper from the ‘cubbies’  – so I have 4 cubbies left to go.  I had to see something happen, so I painted the ceiling and the walls today (all except for the 4 cubbies).  I promise that I’ll work on those tomorrow.  I have lightened up!  I’m smiling!  Here’s the pictures – even before the paint is dry so it looks shiny and you can tell the difference between where I rolled and where I cut-in with the brush.

Tomorrow, I also have to begin putting things BACK!!  (Besides finishing the cubbies).  🙂

Yes, it's light green - it's a pantry, not the living room!

View from doorway - paint's still wet

Cubby area that DID get painted

Well, I WAS believing to have it done by Wednesday, which is today.  It’s now 11:23 – no chance.  Like I said, finish getting the wallpaper off the rest of the cubbies and paint them, then begin bringing stuff back in and unloading my dining room – and tomorrow is another day!  so it didn’t get done today.  It’s not the end of the world and I obviously  under-estimated how long the wallpaper removal process would take.  IT IS GETTING DONE THIS WEEK!  I’m still okay.

Heavy work to lighten up

Pantry Upper Shelf Mess

I’m just beginning the marathon of several days’ work.  It’s been years since I tackled this to this degree.  It may not seem like a whole lot to some, but to me it’s monstrous!  It’s stuff I haven’t wanted to tackle for years.  My daughter is on vacation with her best friend’s and her family and my husband is gone for the week as well.  Perfect opportunity.  I vacillated for half the day, then finally around 5 I decided to tackle it.  It’s now 9:30 and I’ve emptied the larger section of the pantry.  Everything is in my dining room!  What a mess.  And I have to leave it like that and go to bed.  Tomorrow I rip the wallpaper off the wall, clean it up and paint!  I’d like to get some trim around the ceiling too, but I’m terrible at pounding nails, so I may just buy it, paint it and have it ready to cut, so it would be a small job for a handy-man to cut to size and nail in place.  That’s the plan… just so you know.  Here are some pictures – pantry before:

Pantry Mess

Pantry cleared out! (mostly)

Upper Shelves Cleared Off!

Second pile of stuff in the dining room

Tomorrow comes stripping the wallpaper and painting it out.  Wish me luck!  I have to live with the messy dining room while this is happening…

See what I mean?  I am now fully committed!!!  No backing out now.  And tomorrow is another day for lightening my load.  I think I’ll read a bit from a romance novel to get my mind off this before I go to sleep!   I’ll keep you posted and put up new pictures tomorrow – hopefully I’ll get the wallpaper off and have it painted…?

Pantry stuff in my dining room

Living light takes work!

This week it was very difficult to get through the task at hand!  I had 9 boxes in the front hall from doing a once-over in my office (at least six months ago).  I got out one.  I spend a half hour on it, then got a phone call from my husband, Ed, who is now in Nigeria.  I am not going to say no to his calls!  It was very difficult to get into a flow for sorting papers – too many other distractions after that as well.  I worked another half hour later in the day, then finished up, but am not entirely pleased with my result – I still have half the box because it’s paperwork from college loans for the kids and I’m not sure if I need to keep it or not.  I thoroughly dislike papers – and that’s what most of those boxes have in them.  The box is empty and the papers are filed elsewhere and half the box is thrown away or ready for shredding.  THAT WAS TOUGH!  No pictures this time.  I do have a new mantra.  It’s awesome!  “Get rid of anything that isn’t useful, beautiful or joyful!”  At least I’ve got that much.  Maybe it’ll help me to be motivated too.

I am living light

In order to be living light, I must make some changes.  I had been living as a heavier person for years.  There were lots of reasons for the heaviness:  having a Dad who loved me but really didn’t believe in me (or certainly didn’t make that very obvious to me) was one.  Another was being attached to physical objects and having a hard time getting rid of things.  I was depressed for a number of years, doing the obligatory counseling, anti-depressant meds, trying to ACT positive…  It could have been much worse than it was.  After pregnancies it was particularly difficult adding in the post-partum stuff, so I’m sure you get the idea.  I had tried so hard to stay thin, but I just kept gaining – every time I lost, there was an equal or greater gain.  I stopped the cycle several years ago.  You can go to my website to find my weight loss journey story at http://www.light-r-u.com/Heart_to_do_It.html  Now I am maintaining, building my life coaching business and staying in alignment with my purpose and goals – staying light.

My new challenge is to lighten my surroundings.  When a person has been overweight/depressed for a period of time, there are often issues that get “stashed” – boxes, closets, attics and garages.  Well, I think you see where I’m now going with this…

I have a buddy who is also keeping me accountable, as I am also doing that for her – it helps to have someone to check in with.  I have also made the decision to post it here so all the world will be keeping me accountable.   I decided to take pictures as I progressed through the house and the different projects that I have to tackle.  I began today!  I am putting my intention out there to complete a minimum of a one hour project each week (which doesn’t sound like much), but it’s a lot more than I was doing before.  If I do more, so much the better, but the minimum is one hour a week (unless I’m away on vacation)!

Here is my FIRST project.  I had cleaned out my bedroom last month and taken stuff from under my bed (old picture frames that I wanted protected and some clothing of my husband’s) but the stuff didn’t make it any further than the front upstairs hallway.  Today was the day to tackle it.  I called my “partner in clearing” but she wasn’t presently available, so I went ahead and got to it…    Here are the pictures to prove it!  I’m taking baby steps at first – bigger projects later!  I had to decide what to throw away, what to keep (and where to put it) and what to donate or have a garage sale with…  It took me a little longer than an hour – an hour and a half to be exact, with about 5 minutes where I got distracted as I was putting things away… (I did something not related to this front hall project – but it was still cleaning, so does that count?) I even added a picture to the wall in my front hall – even though the colors don’t go at all, but at least the picture will be protected from getting damaged just laying around.

After all this clearing, my gift to myself will be to redecorate and paint!  Yay!  So here’s the before and after pictures to prove it!

Front hall - before clearing

After picture of upstairs hallway

Before picture at top of stairs

After picture at top of stairs

Makeover of the mind

When we change our minds to new ideas, thoughts, strengths, and opportunities, we truly open up our world.  We become someone new in idea, thought, and strength and opportunities come through the door!  When we are faced with any challenge, we want to open up and face it head on, not holding back.  That is when we can truly accept what is coming in through that door.  This works no matter what kind of challenge we are facing.   Pablo Picasso said, “I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it.”  He may have had a few things out of order, but he put out something new to the world.  Each of us was created uniquely and marvelously and have wonderful strengths and gifts within us to share.  When we truly embrace that with our whole being, and take action (even if it’s baby steps), we will become closer and closer to the person and purpose we were called for.

What is something small that you can “makeover”  in your life today?  Might it be giving a kind word?  Might it be in simply giving someone the benefit of the doubt?  Might it be accepting yourself as a good person?  You decide what you can do today to have a small makeover in your mind.  Each small makeover or perspective change adds to the last and over time becomes monumental and even noticeable to yourself!  (I’m always the last one to acknowledge my own wins – maybe you are too.)  Become more of the person you would believe to be.