• Purchase below for $15 by May 31
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• Celebrate every step along the way with women around the world
• Participate in three 30-minute Tiara calls:
WOW: We’re Starting (June 4, 1:30 pm CT)
WOW: It’s Happening (June 11, 1:30 pm CT)
WOW: We did it (June 18, 1:30 pm CT)

Complete details will be sent to you upon purchase. You must be registered and have submitted your WOWZA by end of day May 31 to participate.

You can look at how your life is aligned with (incorporates in a way that works for you) your values, your strengths, and who you truly want to be.

For example, one of my values is trust. And, I can see that when I’m not trusting that I am the one who is supposed to be writing the book that I’m currently in the process of writing, then I get all worried and fearful about having a book that flops, I spin my wheels and am totally unproductive. I get out of alignment. When I notice this, I can practice alignment by reminding myself about how I’ve felt called to write this book, about how far I’ve come, about the talented people I’ve hired to edit and proofread, and about the people who have contributed to the book…and I feel my trust increase.

When we’re not leveraging our innate strengths and are instead trying to force an approach that doesn’t feel natural to us…we are out of alignment. We can look at how to bring our unique perspectives and talents to the task in order to increase our alignment.

When we’re not thinking and feeling in ways that line up with the person we want to be and know we can be, then we can look at how to shift our perspectives to more empowering ones and improve our alignment.

You can look at your physical environment and see if your surroundings are set up in ways that work and flow and feel peaceful and good to you. Sometimes that flickering light in the closet or the broken toilet paper holder or the pile of papers on your desk can have you feeling totally out of alignment.

For example, I am in the process of cleaning up all surfaces, shelves, and spaces in and around my home office desk. I’m about half-way done and I can already sense how much better this clutter-free desk is going to make me feel! And, how the space is going to have me – in many small ways that will add up – being more focused and productive.

How about for you? What “alignment experiement” are you practicing? What “alignment experiment” could you practice?

The first time was when I made the decision that I wanted to do a cleanse. A lemon juice one. 10 glasses a day, a large drink, a mix of lemon juice, maple syrup, water, and a sniff of cayenne pepper, 10 days in a row. I had recently rediscovered the fresh taste of lemon and I loved it. Also, quite a number of friends and people around me are endulging in cleanses, or recently completed one, all for different reasons. I also had some good reasons: have a bit more energy, especially early evening, and loose a few pounds… I’d really love to grow back into some gorgeous trousers I bought many years ago and well, you know, things happen, and now they don’t fit anymore. I have an important celebration coming up on May 22nd and those trousers… they will really make me look and feel like a Queen.

So, when my dear friend and business partner Andrea said she had just started this lemon juice cleanse I immediately knew: YES, that’s what I want too, and I want it NOW. A so called inspired action. In Tiara we love inspired actions and we encourage ourselves to really surrender and go with them. So, this was the first time I made myself happy this week.

The second time was 30 hours later, when I decided to stop. I was doing great on the lemon diet (sorry: cleanse), feeling really good and healthy the first 24 hours, but then… it hit me: headache, sick, cold, tired, feeling very bad. The fight began: “come on,” some voice said, “you chose to do this, you can do it, it’s only the beginning, your body must get used, you have to give it some time, it really is good for you” etc. And suddenly I knew: this is just not right for my body now, I want to stop. Aha, also a truly inspired idea followed by action! Wow, did I feel good about that decision. And also about the bowl of left over macaroni that I celebrated with.

OK, I pondered next, was I going to look at this sequence of actions as being a success or was it a failure? Was I being a success or was I being a failure?

Now when I look at the overall impact, I say it was definitely a success. Each decision in itself had the impact of a cleanse: energy freed up, I felt happy, purposeful, and strong. AND the net result after 30 hours is, that I feel energized (it is early evening when I write this blog), AND I lost 2 pounds in just 1 day.

My question for you is:
- On which subject, or in what area of your life, would it be beneficial for you to make a decision? Consider that from your decision a new situation will emerge, and then again, you will be in a position to make a new decision, and so on.

- Make that decision and line up with it, make it feel right, decide to be open to what happens next and that you will gracefully handle the consequences with more decisions.

- Notice what the impact is on your energy and notice how you feel.

Enjoy, be playful, don’t make too much of it, and thanks for sharing your experience!

I didn’t do it. I couldn’t do it. I started getting WAY tired 2 and a half miles into it. Well…I completely freaked out. I started believing that I couldn’t run the pace I wanted in the race. I started thinking that all my training was for nothing…why was I running all these miles, if I couldn’t step up and do what I wanted in a race? I questioned the point of it all. I got to thinking I’d never reach my goals. I was upset. I was frustrated.

I could also see that I was over-reacting. I rationally knew that it was just one training run. There are many reasons that I might have not run as fast as I wanted or thought I could in that run. It didn’t have to mean any of the things that I was making it mean. Yet, I didn’t know how to turn off the “upset and frustrated” switch. I was telling myself that I shouldn’t feel that way…yet I did feel that way. I was annoyed at myself for feeling frustrated. I was feeling bad about feeling bad.

Have you done this to yourself? We humans often do. We feel upset – or some other negative emotion – then we tell ourselves that we shouldn’t feel that way. “This shouldn’t be a big deal.” “I gotta get some perspective.” “There are people dealing with bigger problems, I’m so self-centered.” Any of these sound familiar?

Often the thing to do is to just let yourself experience the negative emotion (the initial one…not the feeling bad about feeling bad!). What we resist persists. So, if I had tried to pretend that I wasn’t frustrated on Tuesday, I doubt I would’ve been very successful. (If you had seen me on Tuesday, you would’ve agreed .) Also, by accepting and fully experiencing the emotion, then we allow it to travel through us more expediently. We don’t waste time fighting against it. The feeling can be there, serve its purpose, and move on.

I’ve gained some important perspectives and lessons learned from my “big upset” on Tuesday (to eat more before a mid-morning run, watch my mental chatter, and to know that I will run the half marathon in the time that I want…it just may or may not be on Sunday, May 6 – to name a few…). I can look at it as a valuable experience.

What difference could it make if we choose to look at our negative emotions as ones to embrace and learn from…rather than ones to feel bad about?

So far this year, we have conducted two excellent Tiara 4-week TeleClass Workshops (we call them TeleSeries).  Whenever we launch a new event, I must admit, I do get some butterflies in my stomach, and some limited beliefs start to roam the corners of my mind.  Things like:  is this valuable to women?, what if we screw this up?, what if this doesn’t have the value we think it does?, blah, blah, blah.  But then we jump in and trust our instincts and the programs are always fantastic!

Right there is an example of getting over myself.  And the opportunities present themselves daily! The thing that is required is actually quite simple – it’s a single courageous act.  In order to get over yourself, one of the best things you can do is to recognize your concerns (or fears) as they are occurring, and then take an inspired and courageous act.

This week, in our programs Tiara women have shared some inspiring stories and incredible acts of everyday courage:

• At work, one woman faced a bullying boss and finally got him to sit down and listen.
• Another woman, spoke up to a room full of angry people and asked them to find a cooperative and positive way to move forward and to take personal responsibility for the lack of progress. And she felt powerful and they took ownership!
• Women who wouldn’t normally ask for things have started to make powerful requests and are confidently renegotiating outcomes from one-sided (yes only or no only)  into win-win and renegotiated solutions.
• One woman launched a new web based business and had to defend her initiative to family and friends who didn’t quite ‘get it’ and realized what mattered was “she got it” and she saw the goodness in being able to defend her logic and her model.
• A professional woman stepped in for her partner to deliver what was supposed to be a simple presentation for a Board of Directors which instead turned into a full scale inquisition of product and service offerings.  And she won them over!

What do each of these women have in common? . . .  They had to get over themselves by stepping up and taking a single courageous action.  This is what we mean in Tiara we say we are all leaders!  No, they didn’t find a cure for cancer, or resolve global warming.  But what they did was take personal responsibility for their lives and become the source of their own inspiration.  See, it is the everyday acts that make us inspiring.  It is a simple act of courage in any given moment that helps us ‘get over ourselves’ each and every day.  It is taking an inspired and courageous act ­ that is the tried and true solution.

Where in your life is it time for you to step up and be the leader in your life?  And if you did step up today and took one single courageous action . . .  what would it be?  Enter a comment at our blog and share why you are inspiring yourself right now and what your courageous act is!