2012 - a year of Conscious Self Care

Why not grow a little herb garden in your back yard? It’s really cool when you run outside to pick your home grown basil to add to dinner. Pots are great when you don’t have a lot of space.

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We’ve decorated our new coaching room in the spa immersion center, it’s light and breezy and has a great energy.

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Sleep time

I love my bed. I love my sleep. Sometimes I can’t get enough sleep. Having a comfy bed is a major requirement for quality sleep. Lazy days spent sleeping in are a must do in your self care routine.

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Out the door

Exercise should be a major part of your day, whether it be going for a walk or jog, working out in the gym or playing your favorite sport. Whatever makes you smile and sweat a little, it’s good for your body and your mind to be active.

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I remember my first Christmas with my new in-laws. See, they do the BIG family thing but for two whole weeks, not one day. Because Ian’s two brothers and parents all live in different states, they come together every other year bringing with them the whole clan of off spring.

Now if this isn’t stressful enough, I had only met his family once, before we secretly eloped under the Eiffel Tower(that’s another story). So here we all are in the family home. All 14 of us plus Nana, the cousins, the cousin in-laws, the aunts and uncles, the grand kids, and the great grand kids and guess who everyone wants the low down on? ME!

PRESSURE!!!!! I just wanted Santa to whisk me away in his sleigh and set me up in his toy factory. But no, I had to buck up and pull my head in and just be myself. But that’s the thing. Is myself good enough? Because that’s where our head goes sometimes when we are under pressure isn’t it? We start thinking worst case scenario and soon enough a simple lunch turns into a cat fight scene from Next Top Model.

In the end, Christmas ended up being pretty good once I applied the 5 tips I am about to share with you. Christmas can be the most stressful time of the year for a lot of people. Diet and exercise go out the window and then we start to feel guilty which adds more stress. I’ve put together 5 simple tips that can help you sail through this Christmas relatively unscathed so that you can have fun and enjoy the festivities and the in-laws

There are lots of situations in life that produce stress but worrying over things that you cannot change magnifies the stress. The situation then becomes fear based and anything grounded in fear blocks the flow and prevents or slows down achieving the desired outcome.

So here are 5 ways to avoid unnecessary stress and worry in any situation.

1. Step back from the time machine. Going into the future in your head and thinking about all the ‘what-if’s’ and ‘maybes’ will only cause you to freak out more. Going into the past and dredging up all the “shoulda, coulda, wouldas’ will only cause heartache and regret. Stay in the present moment and look at what is real. Most of the time it is not as bad as it seems.

2. Lose the drama queen act, sweetie. We can be very good at turning a mole hill into a mountain and we do this by being a drama queen. For some people they need drama in their lives to feel alive and so they turn a headache into a tumour or an innocent look into a full blown affair. Drama taps into the wrong kind of energy and it’s like sugar. It will give you a quick fast burst of energy but will then completely fatigue you.

3. Scratch the record. When we continually go over and over something in our head we create our own bad song record in our head. We keep playing this bad song over and over again and it becomes catchy. Soon enough you can’t get it out of your head. Sort of like what Billy Ray Cyrus did to us with ‘Achy Breaky Heart’ (Bad song). We need to scratch the record so we stop thinking the negative thoughts. Once it’s scratched we replace it with more positive empowering thoughts.

4. Don’t try and play God. If you can’t change the situation then don’t try to. I couldn’t get out of Christmas so I just had to let it go. Surrender to what is and have faith that the right outcome will happen. Just because you don’t know what it is yet doesn’t mean it’s not going to happen. Keep the faith, sister.

5. Stop, Drop and Roll. Well, that’s if you’re on fire but if you’re not then I suggest you have another little action plan that helps you out when you feel yourself in a stressful situation. We have a little guy called Rompa. He is a crocodile from the Crocodiles not Waterlillies personal development course and he stands for:

Relax

Observe

Manage

Patience

Act

Rompa is always good in a sticky situation. So there you have it, 5 suggestions that will help you stay grounded and centered this Christmas.

Merry Christmas everyone!

Filed under: Health and Wellbeing, Personal Development

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It seems a pattern of mine is that I tend to make life changes in huge gigantic leaps, not small bite size pieces that are easier and more manageable to handle.

For example when I got married, I didn’t JUST get married. Getting married alone is enough to warrant at least 12 months counseling  pre and post the BIG DAY.

No, I got married in Paris to the love of my life, a man whom I’d known a total of 9 months in a long distance relationship. I gave up my job, moved interstate to a place where I had no friends or family. We decided to go into partnership with our business yet I had no clue what my role was. Add to this the fact that I was now a step mother to 2 pre-teens and had an ex-wife in the picture and a whole in-law family who had met me once.

Now I’m not the type to make it easy on myself. So I developed a whole identity crisis in relation to what my purpose in life was then (only a little thing right!). I added to this the whole step-monster syndrome not to mention comparing myself to the very present ex wife.  And OMG, what was I thinking.

Now let’s jump forward six years. My marriage has survived, the business has grown. I got in good with the in-laws and I managed to navigate my way into teenage hood with ‘step kids’ without too much alcohol . The ex was actually one of those people that turned out to be my biggest teacher. Who would have guessed?

So now we are in a comfortable position, we think. Yeah! Let’s find our ideal property and move. OK, easy done. Nine months later, we have moved our home and business interstate, expanded the business to include a spa and retreat because we could, left family and friends once again and now have a complete start up business to build.  I don’t even know how to get to Office Works yet!

Breathe Karina.

So if your life can sometimes be a little similar and you need a few tips to help you through the day then I have a couple of tried and tested techniques to help you out.

1. No matter how busy you get, don’t give up your morning ritual. That’s if you have a morning ritual and if you don’t then I suggest you get one. But not just any ritual, it has to be one that grounds you and centres you.

Meditation is ideal and it doesn’t have to be long, just 10 minutes is enough to bring you back into your body and the NOW moment and out of your head and all the worry and stress that comes with that.

My ritual consists of a 15 minute meditation, followed by prayer and setting my intention for the day. I follow this with 5 minutes of writing in my journal which helps clear away the white noise and provides clarity.

2. Finish the day with an upper. No, I don’t mean a chemical upper; I’m talking about the natural kind. Gratitude is the best natural organic upper you could find. Finding the blessing in your day and being grateful for the little things as well as the big is one of the most life changing things you can do.

So even in the midst of what seems like the worst day ever and all you want to do is crawl into bed and hide away, I encourage you to find that one thing you can say, ‘Yep, I can be grateful for that’ and don’t just say it, feel it. The blessing is in the feeling.

3. Let go of the guilt and pat yourself on the back. When your ‘to do’ list is as long as a Bryce Courtney novel and you feel like you’re just not achieving anything then do yourself a favour and pick your top 5 best bets and back a sure thing.

Go through and prioritise your list and then concentrate on just those things. Turn the phone off, the email off and shut the door and work in 90 minute spurts with a break in between.  And by break I mean move around and get out of your office.

Once you have crossed your top 5 off, don’t go down the guilt track for not doing other things.  Pat yourself on the back and do something to celebrate.

Even the horse that wins the Melbourne cup gets a bag of chaff after they’ve been able to cross that race off their list.

So there are a couple of tips that hopefully will help get you through life’s big challenges a bit more balanced and in control.

Next time we will look at a few more ways of dealing with change so that you can come through with not too much damage

Filed under: Health and Wellbeing, Stress Management

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I create a menu plan for the week!
Creating a menu plan for the week not only helps you to get organized, it also helps you save waste. How much food do you throw out because it has expired or you bought it thinking you would use it at some stage and never did?

Every Sunday I sit down with some favorite recipe books and create a menu for the week. It only takes half an hour and at the end of the process I know not only what we are going to eat for the week but also what I will need to buy. This saves me money at the grocery store because I don’t buy things I don’t need.

You need to look at your upcoming week and decide who is going to be home to eat meals and how much time you will have to cook your meals.  If Ian is away for a few days, then I know that I only need to cook for myself but I’ll make a serving for two so that I can eat it the next day for lunch or dinner, saving me time. This is great if you know you have to work late one night. You already have the main course cooked and you can vary it with a different side dish.
We have provided you with a great little tool called the ‘Enrich Food Planner‘.

On the front is a shopping list and on the back is the menu planner. When you work out what meals you will be preparing then you list the ingredients you will need to buy on the shopping list. This way you know that you will have all the ingredients needed to make the recipe on the appropriate day instead of wasting time racing to the supermarket to get what you need that day.

It may seem like a hassle to have to sit down and prepare for the week but believe me the energy it saves you in regards to time, money, environment, health and stress is enormous and once you get into the habit you will never want to stop.
My menu plan excites me
Food nourishes the body.  It is the fuel for life so you need to be excited about what goes in it. When planning a menu for the week, it’s good to look at recipe books and pick the recipes that make you look forward to that day. When you give your meal planning attention, then you are consciously making healthier choices instead of deciding at the last minute what to feed the family and then making the decision based on limited time and choices. This leads to eating fast food or what I call ‘same old same old’, meals that you revert to because they are quick and easy and you’ve cooked them a thousand times.

Exciting meals doesn’t mean restaurant quality or Masterchef induced dishes.   They are simply meals that make you go hmmm, because you know that they are healthy and that they are easily prepared according to your love or lack of it, for cooking in the kitchen. You don’t have to enjoy cooking but there will be meals that you love to eat that are not that painful to cook. With a little preparation and organization you can sit down to food that excites you.

My menu plan fits into my life and is realistic
This is where you need to be totally realistic and tell it like it is. If you have little time to cook then it’s no use planning a three course menu.  It’s not going to happen. If you have children that don’t eat what you like to eat, you will find yourself preparing two or three different meals.  Then it’s futile to cook a recipe that takes two hours to prepare because you will be too tired to eat it

When you decide on a recipe make sure that it fits into your lifestyle and your commitments for that day. There are so many cooking shows and websites now dedicated to great healthy easy options that don’t break the budget and don’t require a university degree to cook it. Spend some time finding recipes that you love to cook and eat and then create a filing system so that you can easily find them when you want to make them again. It’s also a good idea when trying new recipes to rate them so that you know if it was a winner or not.

I only buy food according to the menu plan and to replenish low stocks of staples. By sticking to the shopping list, you will know exactly what you need to buy so you won’t be tempted to throw in that extra packet of biscuits as you walk down the biscuit isle. It definitely saves you money at the register and prevents unnecessary wastage.

I don’t have junk food in the house
If you are trying to lose weight then you are tempting fate by having a junk drawer full of all those forbidden goodies that tease you every time you walk past. It’s like sticking a bone in front of a dog and then telling it not to eat it.  It’s darn cruel, that’s what it is. If it’s not in the house then you can’t eat it.  Unless of course you get into your car and drive down to the 7/11 in the middle of the night and then I would say there’s a  bigger issue than a chocolate craving going on.
My kitchen is clean
The kitchen is sometimes the heart of the home. There is so much energy happening in that space and so it’s important to make sure that there is no energy loss happening as well. That’s why it’s important to have a clean and tidy kitchen. There’s nothing worse than walking past a sink full of dirty dishes and thinking, ‘oh I must get to those’.  Because each time that happens you’re losing energy.  The Fly Lady is a great website for learning how to keep your kitchen and house clean.

When you are preparing nutritious, loving meals for your friends and family you deserve a pleasant environment to work in. This space should be clean and free from germs that spread disease. Imagine if you went to a restaurant and after your meal you walked into the kitchen and saw dirt and grime and cockroaches. You would probably be sick so you wouldn’t want that kind of environment in your own home.

It may take a little time at the start but trust me, when you are organized the amount of time you save during the week far outweighs the time spent at the beginning.

The more organized you are in the little things means great rewards for the big things!

Filed under: Health and Wellbeing, Peak Performance

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Need to lose a little weight? Maybe a lot of weight? Tried every diet under the sun?

Things not going according to plan, the weights not coming off and you don’t have time to exercise? Then maybe you need to be a bit kinder to yourself.

Setting a goal is crucial to your weight loss journey, if you don’t know where you’re going you will end up anywhere right?

The important thing to remember though is that a goal is an action plan and plans can change. Life teaches us this all the time. We plan to get to work on time but traffic makes us 10 minutes late. We plan to get a full night sleep but the baby keeps us up all night. You get my point.

Sometimes we can feel like we are going backwards instead of forwards. A universal law is that we need to be flexible and adjust or we end up fighting against things that are out of our control and all this does is bring stress and pain. Creating an action plan needs to have the same rules applied – be flexible.

One of my previous clients is the perfect example of someone who desperately needed such a plan. Carole, a 39-year-old divorcee with three children, came to me after trying many, many diets and failing every time to keep the weight off.

Carole had very clear goals about what she wanted to achieve and by when. She wanted to lose 15kg in three months and drop two dress sizes. Not an unrealistic goal by any means if you do the required activity.

I provided Carole with a detailed training program that consisted of small bite size goals of losing 1-2kg a week.

To achieve this Carole had to follow a calorie controlled diet and disciplined exercise routine.

I knew Carole was a very busy woman so I suggested if this goal was unrealistic for her lifestyle she should set a goal that provided more leeway.

Perhaps she should set a goal where she only needed to lose ½ – 1kg a week and extend the timeframe up to six months.

Carole dismissed this idea and insisted on the three-month time frame.

We met once a week to train and assess Carole’s progress. After two months Carole had lost only 7kg and was becoming very disheartened at the process. One week she had even gained 2kg.

This confirmed my fears that due to the demands of being a working single mother, Carole’s goal was too ambitious for her lifestyle.

I recommended to Carole that we refocus and adjust the goal accordingly. Unfortunately for Carole she wired not meeting her goals as failure and gave up.

This was a pattern with Carole and unfortunately one that lead to her detriment. If Carole had only set realistic goals and was flexible then she would have eventually succeeded and achieved her desired results.

As a result she judged herself as a failure. Sometimes stopping and looking back provides us with the insight to see our mistakes and the wisdom to move forward in a more empowering way.

I saw Carole 12 months later at a shopping centre. She had put on more weight and sadly informed me that she was still “fighting a losing battle” when it came to weight loss.

Carole’s story is not unique and this is why we stress the importance of the “regress to progress” principle.

Taking a step backwards is not the end of a goal – it is merely another step in the journey of success.

Call to action: Write down your goals according to 1 month, 6 months, 12 months and 5 years. Be realistic about what you can achieve yet still challenging. Make sure you go back and review regularly where you are at and if you need to adjust in any way. Be flexible and most importantly if you need help then get it!

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Watch this video to find out!

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Enrich means to bring about an abundance of anything desirable. Abundance means an overflowing fullness and prosperity is best summed up with a quote by Eric Butterworth,

“Prosperity is not just having things. It is the consciousness that attracts the things. Prosperity is a way of living and thinking, and not just having money or things. Poverty is a way of living and thinking, and not just a lack of money or things.”

So for an enRICHed woman, what health looks like to her is not just the absence of disease or illness but absolute vibrancy and radiance that comes from the inside out.

It is cellular, emotional and spiritual. It is all about energy and this energy overflows and makes us so attractive to the world that we manifest whatever we desire into our life. It is the ultimate law of attraction.

When I grew up I got sick a lot. I was always getting tonsillitis and at 21 had to have my tonsils removed. My body was pumped so full of antibiotics over the years that it destroyed all the good bacteria in my stomach and so I was receptive to every bug around.

I would get colds at the drop of a hat. If ever there was a virus, it found me. I never ate foods that nourished my body; I ate to relieve my sugar and preservative addiction.
I worked out spasmodically, meaning that my only motivation came from a source outside of myself which flickered like a flame in the wind.

Life for me was a struggle, whatever I managed to achieve was done so by me having to fight for it. Nothing ever just came to me. I worked hard for everything I got.

My energy levels were shocking and my adrenal system was totally taxed. I was always in fight or flight mode.

In 1996 I came across Louise Hay’s book, ‘You can heal your life’ and that is where I learnt that physical illness has an emotional cause and you can literally heal yourself without drugs and medication. This was the start of my journey into what REAL health means.

I had been a nurse for 8 years at the time and for some reason, nurses always take the least care of themselves. I knew how to make someone’s symptoms go away but I didn’t know how to treat the actual cause, until now.

In 1998 I became a qualified personal trainer and therapeutic massage therapist. I learnt how to help a person lose weight, gain weight, get a six pack and run a marathon but the biggest thing I learnt was about mindset. I discovered that unless you deal with the mind as well as the nutrition and exercise then your health will always be a struggle.

I went on to devour every course, every book and every cd that I could get my hands on about why people do what they do when they know what they know and what makes someone successful.

All this time I was working on my health, eating foods that nourished me. Learning how to cook them and prepare them. I learnt about petro-chemicals and poisons and toxins in our products and how we are poisoning ourselves every day.
I got to know my body and how I work. What gives me energy and what zaps it. I figured out how to engage my feminine side and how I had become so masculine over the years I had literally lost the essence of who I was.

I found my passion and purpose for life and started living authentically. All this I call wellness. I call it my birthright as it is the birthright of every human being on the planet. We deserve to have abundant energy and fulfillment.
It is attainable and in my ebook, “The art of mastering prosperity and abundance when it comes to your health”, I share my top 5 principles for achieving abundance and prosperity with your health.
If you haven’t already sign up for my freebie and receive the full 5 tips and a special audio chapter of our brand new resource titled, “Neuro-transformational Strategies, Changing limiting beliefs and adjusting your values”.

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