The Power of Changing Your Focus

Time to read: 56 seconds

Change Your Focus

I spent last week working at a spa in Mexico called Rancho La Puerta. (If you've been to The Ranch, email me!) I love teaching coaching classes, hiking, eating vegetables, sleeping, hip-hop dancing and doing sound healing.

I arrived depleted. Exhausted. Anxious. (Can you relate?)

I left hopeful. Calm. Renewed. (You can have this, too without crossing a border or buying anything.)

How can you duplicate this transformation from the comfort of your couch and neighborhood?

Here's what you do: Change what you pay attention to. Decide what you want to make real in your life. What do you talk about? What do you notice? What do you think about? What do you do with your time?

If the answer to those questions is worry, read news, and check items off your to-do list…well…how do those things affect your inner landscape? For many of you, those things equal stress.

Changing your focus is easy:

• talk about something you love
• spend time in an interesting conversation
• take your headphones out and listen to the birds on your dog walk
• cook tasty food
• call an old friend
• find what's right in the people and situations in your life rather than what's wrong

You have more power than you realize to determine your daily experiences. Tune your awareness and suddenly, you'll see that a beautiful reality exists alongside the ugly one. The beautiful reality is just as real (and maybe more real) than the stressed-out one.

Be well and have a good weekend.

Refreshing Your Spirit

Time to read: 30 seconds

Gwynn Valley at sunset

Hello Rebels,

I'm away at camp.

I spend three weeks working at my children's summer camp in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. In a departure from my regular life of coaching and momming, I spend my days as the Miller (as in grain and an actual water-powered mill) where I take children through a farm to table experience that involves lots of corn and lots of food. (It also involves dead fish, which is a story for another day.)

At camp, there is little cell service, spotty wifi, no TV or technology, lots of fresh air, baby animals, and hundreds of children. Even though I end each day covered in cornmeal and drop in bed exhausted at night, I am grateful I get to spend so much time each summer playing with children. They refresh my spirit.

As we prepare to start the Quiet the Noise Challenge, I invite you to consider what refreshes your spirit.

Where can you step outside your usual existence, even if only for a few minutes or a day? What can you do or where can you go to quiet the noise in your life for a while?

If you'd like a quick daily practice starting on August 5, our challenge is just the thing. You can join us here.

Anne and I look forward to seeing you there!

Christina

P.S. If you're excited for the challenge, please invite some friends to join by forwarding this email to them. They can sign up here.