self love

Sit Down & Shut Up

May 7, 2020 By Rosie 1 Comment

Don’t worry, I promise it’s for your good.

At the risk of offending you with the bold offer to “sit down and shut up”, I am taking this opportunity to pass along the idea that doing this one thing daily will change your life. Yes! Doing this is that important to your health and wellbeing!

If I was being gentle with the request, you might not hear me loud and clear. And I want you to hear this. I could rephrase and say “find a few minutes, sit, meditate, go within”. And you might respond with a ” Yeah but….. don’t have time, too busy, can’t do it, too hard.

What if you tried it?

Sat down. Shut up. Every day for at least for 5 minutes.

You get that. It’s easy. Right?

This simple act is a actually a meditation practice.

What’s cool about sitting down and shutting up, is that you can’t do it wrong, you can’t mess up. Because there is no right or wrong way to do it, you can drop the excuse that you suck at it. You can drop the excuse that you don’t know how to how to do it.

Sit down in stillness, “be quiet” and allow it to grow, expand and develop into “whatever it will” without judging.

What’s so good about meditation?

Meditation has been proven to reduce stress, relieve anxiety, calm you down, center you in. It enhances your creativity and your intuition. It hands you answers. Yup. I said that. You will get answers when you are still. In our daily rushing around, we can’t hear anything but those chaotic voices in our heads. Sitting down in silence gives you the space to hear your Divine inner guidance talking to you. It’s really quite amazing.

I took a meditation certification.

I learned that there’s no right way. There are many ways. And the best way is going to be the one you actually do.

Finding your flavor of mediation is all it takes. Now there are going to many out there that say you should do it their way, but no. I say do it your way as long as you do it.

You can sit on the floor, sit on a chair, lay down on the floor or on the bed. You can be silent, or listen to music or a soft voice guided meditation.

I hear you. I really do. Even though I took the course, and I know the benefits because I’ve experienced them, I sometimes find resistance to it, saying those exact same things you’re thinking, I don’t have the time and yada, yada.

We’re so weird!

I mean really ! Why the heck would we resist something that would make us feel better all around? It is uncomfortable to sit still while we know that as we’re trying to sit still, our minds are not sitting still. Our mind continues to go a million miles a minute.

Then we get stressed from trying so hard and we think we’re doing it wrong. Frustration ensues. The way around the drama, is to take it slow – and not worry about what happens. Focus on your breath or an object in front of you, or a mantra.

Oh and trust me, your mind is still gonna try to pull away from that, but keep gently pulling back to your breath, object or mantra. That’s why sitting down and shutting up are an art and a beautiful practice. You will get better every day and every day you’ll be creating something new and different.

Drink your way into it

Tea is a beautiful place to start drinking your way into it. Mindfully sipping a warm drink is a huge dose of self love. And yes, it counts towards your meditation practice because if it’s good enough for the Monks, it’s good enough for us (*wink *wink). Sipping tea became common place for Buddhist Monks – they wash their face, their hands and drink tea. They use tea as a means to cultivate mind and body. We can do that too –

in a beautiful sacred space,

in your favorite china cup,

with you and the Divine,

creating a quiet time for peace, pleasure and joy to fill your heart and soul.|

I love these 4 recipes for warm yummy drinks – and of course you can always use your favorite go to tea. And there you have it – the space and place to slow down, shut up, sip, savor and surrender.

Peppermint Hot Chocolate

This yummy drink is make with:

1 cup almond milk
1 date
1 peppermint tea bag
1 tbsp raw cacao

Warm the almond milk, date and raw cacao to a soft rolling boil. Remove from heat and add tea bag. Let it steep for 5 minutes and serve.

Pumpkin Hot Chocolate

If you are desiring smooth, creamy and warm, this is the one!

This yummy drink is made by mixing and warming these few naked ingredients:

1 cup almond milk
1/4 cup pumpkin
1 tbsp raw cacao
cinnamon

(sweeten with stevia or you can add on date while heating this on the stove. And then you can eat the soft gooey date, right before pouring your drink into your favorite china cup)

Warm Pumpkin Cream

1/4 cup pumpkin puree
1 cup almond milk (hemp, rice, cashew or any nut based milk will work perfectly)
Optional sweeteners (stevia, raw honey or a mejool date soaked while boiling as in the above Hot Pumpkin Chocolate)
cinnamon (sprinkled on top as desired and stirred with a cinnamon stick)

Tumeric Latte (aka Golden Milk)

And this one is one of my absolute favorites. As you sip your Golden Tumeric Latte, remember the golden opportunity that going within offers you. You’ll feel the health benefits as you sit this one. It’s anti-inflamatory, improves memory and brain function, anti bacterial, anti viral and lowers blood sugar. So there you have it. You’d actually be multitasking (in a good way) while sipping on this in a meditative state.

Feel free to share this graphic. I’ve got to say, from my personal experience, allowing a time for “slowing down, going inside, and checking in, has been a life changer – changing my relationship to myself and my relationship to the world.

(Pick up your free gift – Self Love Guided Meditation here)

Give it a try, experience these ideas for your self, and please share what changes come up for you in the quiet corners of your mind,

Hugs,

The Self Love Question You Must Ask Yourself Daily

April 21, 2020 By Rosie Leave a Comment

It often takes a crisis of the craziest kind to wake us up. Have you ever had the experience of a 2 x4 smashing into your head or feel like you’ve hit rock bottom and then smash your head on the rock?

You get the picture. It ain’t pretty.

I personally had somewhat of a thick head and chose to learn lessons the hard way. Until I had my world crumble under me, I did’t see the signs.

I’m talking about the SELF LOVE sign. Also called the wake up and love yourself message…

The sign leads to love

If you miss the signs all hell breaks loose.

You might say this is what hell on earth looks like. Lack of self love creates a messiness for you and for everyone in your life. When you’re not loving yourself, how could you expect anyone else to love you? Your deficiency in the self love department attracts to you those persons that will mirror back what you think of yourself.

You choose those people that will say out loud to you the hurtful things things you actually think and say about yourself. It continues with the blame game because of course it’s everyone else’s fault. When you blame everyone else, you make yourself the victim. Victims have no power….

Not pretty. Not attractive. Not healthy. And it feels bad.

You don’t have to live there.

The good news is that you can change all that. You can learn to love yourself no matter where you are, where you’ve been, what you’ve walked thru or how many 2 x 4’s have hit you in the head.

Mastering the Art of Self Love

I had a very open deep conversation with Tisha Lee from Shining Self. It came clear to me that although we struggled with different things, we both struggled, and we both came to the realization that it was that lack of self love, the feeling less than, feeling broken, feeling disconnected that drew her to drinking and drew me to an eating disorder and both of us to poor relationship choices.

In this podcast, I share more about my story and my switch from “not enough” to “perfect love”. You’ll learn what was going on and how I pulled myself out of that state and began to fall in love with myself one day at a time. And I still continue to do that. I call self love an art and a practice. It must be practiced everyday. And it can be artfully crafted in different ways for different people depending on the day or situation.

It comes down to healthy boundaries, personal responsibility and what we are willing to accept for ourselves. How much love will we allow ourselves to receive?

One of the things I do consistently is ask myself this questions:

Is this the most loving thing I can do right now?

It’s seriously one of the best tools for accessing any situation you find yourself in. It’s perfect for tapping into your in own intuition, your inner guidance, your higher self, your god-self.

Take a listen here for the rest of the conversation between Tisha and I.

Listen in as Tisha and I share our stories.

Today, I sit here with gratitude for the messy stuff . Those things in my life led me to discover my love of self and to understand that my lack of it was the reason for the poor choices that I made along the way. Self love is the foundation.

When you love yourself, the game changes.

Self love is an action, a constant continuing evolving state. It’s a feeling.

Self love is a way you show up. Everyday in every way, self love must be present if you want to be the woman that God intended you to be. We are not here to play small and scared. We are not here to operate from lack or not enoughness or brokenness. That’s a bunch of B.S.

How cool is it that all you need is already inside you. Once you discover that, there is nothing to search for or fix.

My gift to you

Free self love you-tensils

I’ve got something for you. It’s a self love letter (template) and let me tell you, if you’re just beginning, this can be a difficult thing to fill out. I remember not being able to thing of nice thing to say about myself. How sad! The person that asked me to tell him something I loved about myself, was a personal trainer, and I had no answer.

I began from that day, taking it step by step, piece by piece until I could recite one thing and then 2 and then more and more… until I completely turned myself around.

These tools are my gift to you, a self love letter and a self love meditation meditation to turn things around for yourself.

If you’re ready to learn more and take a deeper dive, come on in and Build Your Self Love Muscle with me.

xxoo,

Your “BUT” Stops Here

June 27, 2019 By Rosie Leave a Comment

Yes, my ass is on the line here. I’m the first one to the left. (That’s me in my 2nd figure competition) You may say, not bad for a 53 year old ass, BUT…..

I realized during a recent conversation with a friend that my BUT had gotten way to big.

It was time to pull back and access the situation.

Unless you’re Kim Kardashian, you may not be proud of your big but(t). As a matter of fact, you may not want to admit that you have a huge but(t) that is causing a lot of unnecessary stress to your life.

Take a deep breathe because what I am revealing here may be challenging for you to hear. This self reflection stuff (aka: taking ownership of the things you do) is not aways easy. It takes a big girl to realize she’s got a big BUT(T) standing in her own way.

How often do you catch yourself saying, “I would, BUT….”?

I bet it’s a lot more than you care to admit. Let’s be honest, naked and vulnerable right now. Your big but(t) may be in your way and holding you back from living your fullest and best life.

There are 2 ways that your big but(t) can hold you back. One is physically and one is emotionally.

Let us address the physical BUTT first.

If you are feeling that your butt is too big, you’re being self critical and most likely not participating in extreme self love and care. When you truly embrace self love and treat yourself from that loving place, you don’t pick on your body parts.

You don’t compare them or judge them. When you are fully in the process of extreme self love and care, you treat your body with respect. Not only in what you think about it, but also in how you talk about it, refer to it and feed it.

Extreme self love allows you to practice acts of kindness towards your body.

Consciously choose food that is good for you and treat your precious body well. When you eat healthy whole unprocessed foods (I call these naked food), your body responds well.

Continued eating in this loving style brings you easily and gently to your perfect weight. Perfect because deep down you’ve lightened up knowing that you have treated your body temple with the divine care it deserves. It’s a great feeling when the scale, the numbers and the size no longer matter. Being true to yourself is the only thing that counts.

So where in your life are you allowing self sabotage, self denial, lack of self care and love?

What has to change for you to put your self love first?

Let’s address the emotional BUT.

This one is a true pain in the BUT(T). When you suffer from this, you create big ass blocks to the things you really want.

Because putting a “BUT” into your command sentence allows you to play it small. The thing you attach to the end of your “BUT” holds power over you.

It has the perfect amount of power to stop you from getting the very thing you say you want. There’s one reason we use this BUT for stopping us. It’s because you are afraid. You’re afraid of that thing you want either because you don’t believe enough in yourself to think you can have it or you’re scared you’ll look stupid if you don’t actually succeed.

Either fear based reason butts you right up against a wall and stops you.

Using my body building figure competition as an example, I had a very big BUT staring right at me. Here’s how it sounded.

“I want to enter a figure competition…

but I’m too old,
but I have too much weight to lose
but I’ve never done it before
but what if I start and I can’t finish
but what if I look like an idiot on that stage?

I could have easily picked anyone of these 5 but’s and hung on to them. They could have worked as a grandiose excuse and opportunity to play my life small. Today instead of writing this blog, I would be wishing I had done it and filled with a whole lotta regrets.

Thankfully I did not attach myself to the fear and instead I let go of the “but”.

I stepped up on my stage!

That one moment of the baring of the butt, transformed my life in ways I could not have imagined at the time. What appeared to be a physical transformation ( and it was) was more profoundly a spiritual AH-HA.

I would be an ass, (sorry I couldn’t help myself) if I let you off the hook here.

Ask yourself what it is you want for yourself if you could just do it without any asinine excuse getting in your way.

Where in your life do you let your “BUT” interfere?

What would happen if you deleted that concept from your vocabulary list?

How would your life improve?

What scary thing would you step into?

I love self reflective questions.

In my Happiness Intensive Program, questions are key. How else do you get the answer if you don’t ask the question?

Scary is good…even though it sure doesn’t feel it at the time. Things that scare you are like a set of keys for opening all kinds of doors that lead to opportunities.

For me, standing on that stage, was the catalyst for publishing my book, Sleeping Naked After 4o, and the basis for what I share with you now.

If your self conversation is stuck in the fear zone and loves to talk you out of things that set your soul on fire, check out the Happiness Intensive. Because I belief with all my heart that

When we get to the naked truth of who you are and what you are here to do, happiness follows every time!

I hope I’ve inspired you to do something that scares you,

Say Goodbye to your Evil Step Sisters, Woulda, Coulda and Shoulda

June 24, 2019 By Rosie Leave a Comment

These three relentless undying siblings are the secret to your pain, angst and regret. When we direct our attention to the things we did that we wish were different, we set ourselves up for suffering.

The evil ones are intently waiting on your every move for the opportunity to dance at your pity party. They are standing in full out garb ready to make it a full-on Dance of the Dead sequel. These zombies of regret aren’t pretty.

You can always conjure up the thing that you did that you coulda done differently. You can always conjure up what you woulda done differently if “this or that” or “he or she” did something different. You can always conjure up what you shoulda done, once your hindsight is 20/20.

Now that you know this, it’s time to say goodbye (kinda like unfriending them on Facebook). Your life is by invitation only. You’re the one sending out the invitations. You get to choose who you hang out with. So leave them behind and let’s get this party started without them.

What can you do to stop regrets from creeping in?

Maybe you coulda, maybe you woulda, and maybe you shoulda. The fact is that you didn’t. You can’t go back and change any of that. But what you can change is the way you look at it from the vantage point of right now.

Life is filled with lessons. This is how we grow. It’s for our soul growth that lessons present themselves to us like little hidden gifts. Our life lessons take us closer to knowing who we really are.

Lessons are constantly coming but if you learn from them, they won’t need to be repeated.

I lost my home 10 years ago, and spent many years mourning that loss. Even now, when the moon of regret is full, that nasty one, Shoulda, rises up for a quick visit. She reminds me that I shoulda been more careful. I shoulda been smarter. I shoulda got a job. I shoulda set it up differently.

You get the point…

If you want to be happy, you have to tell her to go away.

You have to choose not to hang with her or let her drag you down.

So what do you do when you have one or all of these three sister’s rearing their ugly heads and ranting in your ear?

Put your earplugs in and your blinders on and look forward

… and you keep looking forward, and you keep looking forward and toward your light. Pay no attention to those haunting voices. Your attention feeds them. However, if you don’t pay them any mind, they get tired and they go away.

Take a deep look at what you did learn and write it down

… include a list of all the golden gifts you received. For me, using my house example, I learned that it was my lack of self love that led me to that messy financial situation. It was my lack of self love that caused me to have to give up my home. I learned that a house does not define me but being at home with myself does. My gift is this lesson and it’s a big one.

So it’s okay… and I’m okay.

I want you to be okay with things that happened in your past. Give yourself the gift of putting your past to rest – allowing your present to be at peace.

Practice doing something different when your evil step sister visits with her haunting voice. How can you find the gift?

Once you find the gift, it works like kryptonite, and her voice loses all power over you.

Let’s get this party started!

Psst…one more thing. If you’re serious about putting the past really behind, I put together something to help you. I can help you amp up your happiness with the Happiness Intensive.

I believe happiness is the result of owning the gifts you’ve been given.

That can be challenging when the threesome is holding you down. In this course, (and it’s 2 weeks of really digging in) we’ll get to the naked truth of who you are. Once you embrace that, nothing can hold you back.

I’ve seen it over and over again, happiness follows every time. Come on over and check it out.

To your freedom and your happiness,

xx00,

Soul Growth Lessons

June 10, 2019 By Rosie 1 Comment

Soul growth lessons don’t always come in boxes. This time though, my soul lesson came with a truck full of them.

For the past 2 years, 80% of my material belongings lived in a storage unit.

Due to a certain circumstances beyond my control, (the details aren’t the important part of the story, so I’ll keep it short for the sake of your time) I was forced to move from my apartment. It was a quick and unexpected exit so storage seemed the best option for this transition time. Only a few items remained with me.

I spent months crying over not having my stuff. Always seeming to be needing the thing that I couldn’t get to.

It took time to process what happened and make decisions on what I wanted for my life. Two years to be exact! In those 2 years, I got to feel what it felt like to be without my “beloved stuff”.

The good news is that I survived.

The other good news is that I learned huge lessons along the way as part of the bigger plan. Patience, compassion, forgiveness were on top of that list. Shockingly, me the woman with hundreds of shoes, realized that I don’t “stuff” to be happy.

This week, I consciously chose to reunite with my belongs and take them out to be with me.

While it felt like a fun shopping spree to peak in the boxes at what I hadn’t seen in 2 years, my state of happiness didn’t change.

When large events happen in our life, there in that moment we get to learn more about ourselves. The move out 2 years ago was very traumatic for me. I’ve moved many times in my life and most of them not for happy reasons. I could have allowed this move to shift my consciousness back to the trauma of why I moved.

But this time was different. I chose to break that old pattern and to do it differently.

This was a great move. It was great because I chose to make it that way. I chose to make it a fun adventure and not attach meaning to any of it.

How cool that we get to do that! With the gift of free will, we always have the opportunity to choose differently. That’s what I call freedom.

The challenges you currently face may feel hard right now. If you dig a little deeper and allow the lesson to come to the surface, you’ll understand that all was divinely guided.

You’ll realize that lessons come for your soul’s growth. That self reflection enhances your spiritual growth and well being.

I am so grateful for all of it, for the rediscovery of my books and shoes and clothes that I had forgotten about. But mostly for the profound lesson that happiness resides inside of me; not in any material object that I have or don’t have in my possession.

Has there been a challenging time in your life, where you realized the lesson was your biggest gift?

I hope there was something here for you. Share and comment below.

Psst… remember, your only job is to light up the world with your brilliance. Get on it!

Label Limitations

September 28, 2015 By Rosie Leave a Comment

A label tells you what’s inside. They can be somewhat useful if the item is a box of oreo cookies. But even then, labels lie. A label is the only the perception of person slapping it on.

I am anti-labels. I’m just not a fan of them. I don’t eat food with labels, define my relationships by them or stuff myself into a category of any kind. Labels limit you to the definition you attach to the label.

I am not just this or that. I am many things. I am no-thing.

And the one thing that continues to irk me when I hear it used as a reference to define my age is this one:

Hello “woman of a certain age”! Grrrr…..Each article, ad, or post that passes my way causes me to cringe.

What the heck does that mean anyway ?

So I turned to my friend google for some answers and oh boy, did she provide an array. None of which make the matter better. The Oxford English Dictionary defined that sense of certain as “which it is not polite or necessary further to define.”

The phrase was re-popularized in a 1979 book by the psychotherapist Lillian B. Rubin, “Women of a Certain Age: The Midlife Search for Self,” in which midlife spanned 35 to 54. OH crap! Where is that gonna put me now that I am 55? Does it catapult me into another category which will then define what I should and shouldn’t be able or willing to do – because of that number?

SO STOP IT. I am not this or that woman of a certain anything.

The only thing that is certain is that

I AM WHAT I AM.
and WHAT I AM IS AMAZING.

No matter what the number on my certificate indicates.

I don’t do numbers, sizes or ages.

Can we as women choose to be amazing at every turn, juncture, step and mis-step?

Can we change our minds about aging? Embrace the changes. Enjoy the changes. Welcome the changes. Because they’re coming. Botox Babes and Surgery Sisters beware ~ you are not stopping the inevitable.   Instead of trying so hard to change your body, change your mind… do good things for yourself, treat yourself well with food, and doses of fun, and tons of fabulous to all areas of your life.

Age is a only a mindset. At a certain age you understand this. And when you do, you stay young because you do what you love and what you want without the restrictions. (and fyi, the only one that can restrict what you do or designate it “age appropriate” is you – it’s all made up and it’s all up to you).

I don’t do age “appropriate”.

I often forget how many years I have been around until I do the math and even then I usually miscalculate the addition.

Because I feel what I feel. I don’t feel OLD.

To be clear. Is my body changing? YES. Is my mind changing? YES. My body is experiencing different and and my mind is experiencing different. Is that bad thing? Or is it just a thing?

I’m taking a page from my Dad’s book of life. That man has no concept of how things “should” be. He rocks amazingness. He’s on no meds, has a full time career in NYC, takes public transportation to get there, works the nite and holiday shifts, lifts weights daily, keeps a daily food journal, has a boys nite ‘in’ (watching movies) with high school friends, is GCing the addition on his home, and doing all the physical work and has 3 girl friends. Oh and he’s 74, if you are keeping score.   SO.. when I say “Dad ~ What is your secret? He smiles and says, I can’t hear you, that’s my deaf ear. I just smile back because the truth is that he can’t hear me. He doesn’t understand the question? To him there is no secret, he’s not aware of any other way of being.

He is just being who is with no attachment to any ideas, excuses or reasons he can’t.

What’s the motto of this story? Lose your attachment to the aging and anti-aging thing. Stop trying not to age. Stop defining yourself by what should happen at a certain number.

One thing I know for certain… this woman is all that. All that she is meant to be. I am that I am.

I invite you to think about who you are? By what definition are you willing to define yourself? Can you remove the label you’ve placed there? And can you remove the limiting beliefs that you’ve set for yourself ?

Can you stand tall and proud and say

“I AM ALL THAT I AM . AND all that I am is amazing. “