Energy Coaching

A few days ago, the sunset was painting the sky orange in beautiful Istanbul as I was lingering at the airport waiting for my flight to Hong Kong en route from Brazil.  I began to focus on the changing colors in the sky and I felt so grateful for having the life I designed for myself!  My life includes traveling, partnering with others in their growing process and witnessing their success, being married to my best friend, living in the city I chose and love, being in good terms with my family, pursing my spiritual growth freely and without restrictions…  Truly, I cannot ask for more.  Being able to achieve all that is a direct result of many important lessons I’ve learned.  I am very grateful to The Infinite One  and to all the teachers that I’ve had in my life so far.  So, going back to the sunset at Istanbul airport, I felt inspired to write down a list of the lessons that have made a big difference in my life so far and I thought I would share it with you.  They are not numbered by their order of importance.  It’s just what came to me first, second, third and so on.  They were all equally crucial for what I consider to be a successful life.

1.  TOO MUCH OF EVERYTHING IS TOO MUCH. – This was probably the first life lesson I learned.  My nanny taught me that and I never forgot it.  It seems to apply to everything in life; from food, to money, power, prestige, holidays, work, etc.

2.  THERE IS ALWAYS A WAY OUT OF EVERY SITUATION, EXCEPT IN THE CASE OF DEATH AND EVEN THEN, IF THE INFINITE ONE WANTS IT, THERE IS A WAY OUT! – This I learned from my mother.  It stuck with me and I’m always sure that I’ll find a way for every problem I face.  Later on, I realized that it’s not up to me to find a way; the way will find me.

3.  SAVE THE DRAMA FOR YOUR MAMA! – When I became a coach, I learned that drama is like rust, it corrodes our lives, our relationships, and every situation.  As a coach, I listen to my clients and focus on the issue minus the drama.  They are extremely grateful when I mirror the situation back to them without the drama in it.  It’s amazing how much of the “fog” in our lives is caused by our addiction to drama.

4.  IF YOU BELIEVE IN IT, YOU CAN MAKE IT HAPPEN. – That I learned from my passion for swimming.  I strived for excelence and always wanted to become the best swimmer I could be.  I chose a school in the US that was ranked in the top 10 swimming schools in the country.  I was far from being a swimmer at that level and I decided that I would get a scholarship there.  Two years later, I was on their squad with a full ride scholarship.

5.  THERE IS NOTHING LIKE A DAY AFTER ANOTHER AND A NIGHT IN BETWEEN. – The first part is a famous Brazilian adage and “the night in between” was added by me.  Sleep does wonders for me.  If something bothers me, I feel the feeling, acknowledge it, and go to sleep.  The next morning everything seems clearer.

6.  KEEP MOVING. – This one has two meanings.  The first one is that no matter what happens we need to move forward.  The past belongs in the past and we belong to the present.  The only way to create our future is to ground ourselves in the present and keep moving forward.  The second meaning is that moving our body creates energy.  I always find solace and clarity while exercising.

7.  BECOME FINANCIALLY AND EMOTIONALLY INDEPENDENT. – These two are deeply interrelated.  We want security and money brings us the illusion of security.  Once we believe in this illusion, we become emotionally dependent of money and of who/what provides it to us.  Learning to master the energy of money and fulfilling our own emotional needs is a great way to get on the path of freedom.

8.  FIND YOUR SPIRITUAL CENTER. – My connection to The Infinite One centers me no matter what I am going through.  Whatever way you find your spirituality, that is the true gateway to your core.  There will be no more running away from life and from yourself.  You will find peace because you will find the place where your true essence meets the essence of the Divine.

9.  LEARN TO TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF FIRST. – As an athlete, I knew this one naturally because without food, rest and focus on my goals my body would not perform.  Later on, as I became a coach, I learned the importance of focus on myself in order to become aware of my own power and in order to become stronger to share more with others from a place of abundance.  We can only give what we have.

10.  BE GRATEFUL FOR EVERYTHING; EVEN FOR THE TRIALS IN YOUR LIFE. – My personal belief is that everything that happens in our life is always for the best.  It’s hard for us to see it right away because we are very close to our own lives and to what is happening at the moment.  However, as time passes by, we look back and recognize that whatever happened was the best thing for us.  This realization brings us a tremendous amount of faith in life.

So there you have it!  What have you learned in your life?  Share your lessons with me and I will post them as well.

Let’s learn together!

With energy,

Ana

Our sages say in one of my favorite works of the Jewish tradition “Ethics of the Fathers”, that a wise person is one who learns from everyone.  It is a great way to live our lives albeit not an easy one.  Its very humbling and yet quite powerful to commit to live by this principle.  One begins to look at people very differently and the natural by-product of that is that the need to put others down in order to feel good about oneself begins to vanish.

Living in China provides me with many wonderful opportunities to put this principle in practice.  China is quite unique and, as a Western, it’s easy for me to categorize  many of the local habits as “bad”, “weird” and downright “rude”.  Slowly I began to understand a lot more about the culture and about where many of their habits came from.  Needless to say that’s the subject for a thesis, but my point here is that I decided to make an effort to meet people where they were and learn from them whilst respecting my own limitations.

I am writing this post from Harbin, a city in the Northern part of China, near Russia.  The city is quite interesting.  Today I went running in the morning and walked around in the afternoon.  I needed to get water, money from the ATM and a good cup of coffee after lunch.  I don’t speak Mandarin yet (I will one day) and it’s not like there are signs in English pointing out to the nearest supermarket or coffee shop – Starbucks is not here yet!  There are signs in Russian but apart from “espaciba” which means thanks, I don’t know much else.  So I decided to smile at my every attempt to communicate and ask for information that would lead me to an ATM, a supermarket and a coffee shop.  It turned out that my efforts and my smiles were met with more smiles.  I learned that kindness is to be found everywhere even when I cannot communicate, and that people will respond depending on what I give.

Look around you for opportunities to learn from the most unexpected people.  You will be surprised at what they can teach you!

With energy,

Ana

One of the most important lessons I learned as a world class swimmer is that IF YOU BELIVE IT, YOU CAN BECOME IT.  It’s great when I see my clients learning this same lesson.  Sometimes however, there is a need for a change or for a few changes in order for us to become the person we want to become.  That’s when the rubber hits the road.

Change is a process and, many times, it is not an easy one.  In order to change and to make that change long lasting, we need to recruit help.  It’s easy to say that the only reason why we don’t follow through with change is because we don’t have enough willpower or because we are lazy.  This is a simplistic assumption and it is a wrong one.  When you believe that your ability to change comes only from your willpower – and that willpower is a quality that we are either born with or not – you eventually stop trying all together.  This mindset keeps people in a trap that leads to depression and eventually into the relapse of the old habits one is trying to change.

Fortunately, there are studies that proved that willpower is not simply an innate ability but a skill we can learn.  There are many other sources of help that we can recruit to help us change.  Let’s take the example of a person who became overweight and one day decided  he wanted to become and ironman contestant.  Now, this fellow, let’s call him Mike, used to be an athlete.  He got married, got a corporate job and doesn’t know how 10 years later he was 30 kilos overweight.  He felt bored and stuck in a routine, unfulfilled, and he began to blame it all on the people he loved the most – his wife and children – which led to many fights.  The picture was not a pretty one.  The one day, while watching an ironman race on TV he began to remember his days as an athlete.  He made a decision right there that he would be in that same ironman in a year’s time.  

Now Mike needed to come up with a plan.  He realized a few things.  He had his personal motivation but he knew he could not do it by himself so he recruited help by hiring a coach.  He also signed up for a team that would train together for the same ironman.  He also got educated about what would be the best fuel for his body and changed his diet.  He distanced himself from his “happy hour” buddies who refused to respect his decision not to drink and kept inviting him for drinks.  He began to hang out with his team mates who had the same goal in mind.  He also knew that he was doing all of this to avoid the consequences of being overweight so he created a story about what would happen if he did not follow through with his goals.  When he didn’t feel like going to practice, he would tell himself the story of what would happen if he neglected his health.  His story was graphic and detailed enough to kick him out of the couch and into the pool.  The thought of not seeing his daughter getting married or graduating because of his early death – like that of his father – did it every time.

Mike created a smart plan of change.  Let’s recap what he did:

1.  He was clear about his personal motivation and he knew that it was not enough to make him achieve his goal.  So, he recruited help both from inside himself and from outside.

2.  He joined a team and got a coach.  By doing that he made sure that he had support from people who had the tools to train him and that were literally swimming/biking/running in the same direction that he was.

3.  He educated himself on the best fuel for his body and followed a diet plan.

4.  He made a clear assessment of the people around him who could help him or hurt him on his quest.  He then eliminated the not so helpful influences and hang out with the others who were on the same path that he was.

5.  Finally, he created a powerful story about what could actually happen if he didn’t follow through with his plans to become a healthier person.  He didn’t sugar coat it or lied to himself.  He looked at the facts that were against him – like the early death of his father because he was overweight and diabetic  - and decided that the story would give him a powerful push whenever he was tempted with missing practice.

Mike realized that blaming or crediting his willpower is a major trap.  One that people fall for every time.  An athlete knows that s/he cannot do it by her/himself.  An athlete has a plan just like Mike had and follows it.  An athlete recruits help and uses strategies to succeed.  An athlete is not born an athlete; s/he needs to practice and learn the skill before becoming a good swimmer, runner or whatever.

You also can change!  Dig deep and find your personal motivation, get help, design a plan and get the systems in place.  We can all do it because it is a skill we can learn and not an innate ability.  Now, what’s your iron(wo)man challenge?

Happy change!

With energy,

Ana

In a recent event where I talked about “De-cluttering Our Lives”, I noticed that one point hit home for the audience:  Information clutter. I presented ‘Information’ as one of the places in our lives where we don’t think we have clutter – but we do.  Information can come in the traditional shape of magazines, newspapers and junk mail that we can see piling up in our living room.  It can also come in the form of TV, movies and e-mails that makes us waste time and energy just by looking at them.

We rely on information so much that we are afraid of throwing away magazines, newspapers and outdated books simply because we think we might need them someday.  Notice the word ‘afraid’ here!  Whenever you see this word showing up, you know that your action is fear based.  Being afraid of letting go of something is totally related to the concept of scarcity, of not having enough.  And why are we afraid of not having enough information about a subject?  In this day and age of ‘google’ we can find information about anything and everything on the web!  Just type any word and see what comes up.  I found about 112,000,000 results for the word “smile”!

It’s not that information is bad but when we rely too much on external sources to make our decisions, we develop the habit of looking outside of ourselves for answers.  We look at others for answers instead of using our main resource:  Our gut feeling, our intuition – the place where our wisdom is!

Take a leap of faith this coming week.  Make one decision without looking at any piece of information or consulting anyone. Look inside for the answer instead.  Start small and begin develop this ‘muscle’ we all have.  Intuition is there for us to access; we all have it.  All we need to do is develop the habit of looking inside instead of outside.  Give your gut feeling a chance!

With energy,

Ana

Traveling is a wonderful thing.  It opens our minds, it relaxes us, it makes us think outside of the box. In the excitement of it all, I’ve been far and away from the blogosphere.  I miss it and I am back with a bit about my trip that I believe will be relevant for your business as well.

I normally do not favor talking about myself, however the experience we had in Brazil was phenomenal and produced some fabulous results to our company almost straight away.  We organized a conference with all our reps from all over the country in our headquarters in the city of Florianopolis.  We had a couple intentions in mind and one of them – the one I want to share with you today – was to share our vision and our values with our reps.

We are crystal clear about who we are as a company and how we make decisions.  We know what our vision is and what our values are and they determine every single move we make on a daily basis.  The fact that we were able to put those two things down in words and to communicate them to our team proved to be a recipe for success.  When we communicated the vision and our values to our reps we also showed them a slide show on where we apply them in our business.  They saw how we live what we believe and how it is possible to run a company with clarity and integrity.

They left the conference inspired and asking how they can create their own vision and discover their own values as well.  I created a program for them and shared within a few days after the conference.  We immediately saw the results of this; sales are up and our new line has made into three major department stores in the country literally overnight!

It’s essential to have a clear vision for our businesses and for our lives.  To know our values is to know what drives us and what makes us move forward.  To me, this is the most important part in the process of creating a business.  If you don’t know where you are going and what tools you have to get there, how in the world are you going to make it?

Feel free to share your vision with me and to contact me if you want to know more about how to create your vision and to find out about your values.  Once you know that, making decisions will be easier than ever before, you will save time and energy and clarity will be your constant companion.  Now, that sounds like a great way to run a life and a business!

With energy,

Ana