Are your thoughts taking you down the right path?

“Does my thought create the condition or does my condition create the thought?”  I asked that question one October day in 2007 to Bob Proctor and Mary Morrissey, empowering leaders on the forefront of the human potential movement for over 30 years.  Bob and Mary informed me, “Of course the thought comes first; whatever we focus on shows up in our lives.  What have you been thinking?”

So what was I thinking?  I had what looked like a picture perfect life; lovely home in suburbia, healthy children, a loving family, great friends, a very successful husband, and no financial stress.  There was still something missing.  I thought, “There has to be more to life than this.”  What am I doing with my life?  I had no fire in my heart.  Each day seemed like the next.  Then after 9/11, I lived in fear.  Time stood still and I felt powerless, unable to control my own life.  What’s worse, I realized I had felt like that for a long time.  I was letting all the circumstances of my life direct me; what my children needed, what events I had to be at, what I was supposed to do.  I was so tired of the constant running.  I didn’t have time to think about the life I wanted to create and had no idea where to start.

Distressed by persistent fainting episodes that began occurring more frequently, and overwhelmed by the busyness of my life, I began thinking about their answer daily.  I knew the heart medication that the doctors wanted me to take for the rest of my life wasn’t the answer.  But what was the answer?  As I looked back at each of the episodes I realized they all occurred at times I felt helpless and hopeless.  After giving birth to my third child in July 2001, I believe I was in the midst of post-partum depression.  I had three small children and didn’t reach out for help; having been successful at multitasking in the corporate world for years I thought I should be able to handle it on my own.  My husband was a great support when he was around but he left the house each morning at 6am and returned at 8pm every night.

With a limited belief in Bob and Mary’s theory that my thoughts created my condition, I started changing the things I thought about which changed the things I did.  I had come to learn that our lives are built day-by-day, experience-by-experience.  Throughout our lives, we may have made decisions out of fear and not even known it.  Those silent decisions hold us back every day and we don’t even know that those decisions are running our lives.

I have been on a journey of creating my life by the thoughts I choose and I can say out loud, “I LOVE MY LIFE.”  What is the life you would love to live?  Look around you – the car you drive, the table you sit at, the page you are looking at now … they all started with a thought.  Someone had an idea and brought it to physical form by thinking about what they wanted and then taking action.  Look at your life.  What have you created in your everyday life?  Are you excited by your job/career?  Does your physical health support you in doing all the things you want to do?  Do you have financial freedom?  Are your relationships the ones you always wanted to have?

Our time here is not a dress rehearsal.  We have all come to this earth to give our unique gifts and talents and to deliver them in our own special way.  The world needs you to proceed in its evolution.

What is the life you would love to live?  We are creative beings and thinking is part of creation.  The universal Law of Thinking states as we think, so our life becomes.  I was recently thinking about the dark period of my life.  The truth is that the real problem was that I didn’t know what I wanted.  I didn’t have a vision for my life.  I didn’t know what was possible.  It was too much of an effort to think about that while I was doing so many other things.  How about you?  Have you spent more time buying furniture for your home or planning a vacation than planning your life?  Are you focusing on the thought that your relationships are boring and not what they used to be or are you creating great relationships every day?  Are you thinking how grateful you are that you have use of your body in some way or are you making excuses not to move it?  Do you think about why you don’t love your job or do you think about ways to do what you love full time and make money at it?  We can have the reasons or we can have the results.

Right now, list 5 things you would do if age, gender, time, money, education and experience were not factors.  Now, imaginally move into that place in your mind.  How would you be living your life if you could do all those things?  Is that what your everyday life looks like now?

So begin to pay attention to what you are thinking now and what you predominately think about all day long.  If a person is not thinking they are not growing.  Mental activity, or being busy, does not constitute thinking.  The kind of thinking that I am talking about requires a period of calm and quiet reflection.

Where is a good place to start thinking?  The place to start is to ask, “What do I really want?”  Not what do I think I can have or what do I think I can do, but what do I really want?  When we start to dream about that and then turn that thinking into a theory, that’s when we begin to think.  Over the course of the year we will discuss some of the universal laws and how to apply them to our lives, creating the life that we’d love to live.  As my mentor Mary Morrissey says, “If you keep breathing for the next 365 days you will have created a life.  You don’t get a choice about creating a life.  It will be either by design or default.  You do get a choice about the life you will create.”  The truth is that we can have anything we want that we are willing to become.

I have not experienced a single episode of fainting since I changed my thinking.  What do you want?  What have you been thinking about?

Theresa Wienecke is a certified LifeMastery Consultant, dynamic teacher, speaker and personal coach expanding awareness and creating new realities.

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Life seen through our reflection

We live in a relative world and it’s in this world that we define ourselves. There is no meaning in life other than what we give it. Really, take a close look at it. How many people are happier when the sun is out? Yet the sun is always in the sky, sure sometimes a cloud may be between the sun and us. So we are saying that the cloud determines are happiness. Yet the cloud does not have any happiness in it, it’s just water droplets. For many of us, we experience that people are friendlier this time a year. Yet it’s just another month, just another day. I claim that if you really look, you are friendlier this time of year because you have chosen a different perspective. The point here is that we define the quality of our lives by how we relate to the things in our lives. In every situation you determine your interpretation and its meaning. How we see and experience the world is a reflection of our perspective, beliefs and reaction to the events, people and things in our lives.

We have been given a huge gift; we have the power of choice. If you do not like something in your life, if your life is not inspiring and satisfying, then notice the choices you are making. Really take some time, look at what upsets you, look at your relationship, look at your job, look at you health, look at your family and love relationships, look where you suffer and take a look what you’re choosing. See the good news is that you have the power to make any change you want by choosing how you respond and interrupt any event; the bad news is that it is up to you. So while we are in the holiday season and giving gifts, I invite you to get in touch the ultimate gift, choosing how you respond. How you respond will determine your experience. All actions are associated with one of the 2 principal emotions; love and fear. If you are not sure how to respond, choose the one where you experience the most love and joy.

I wish you love and joy. Happy Holidays.

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Living Life Based on Wrong Assumptions

What is the implication if we are living life based on the wrong assumption(s)?  We all know that if we look back in history it is easily seen.  At one time, between 1480 and 1700’s, we executed women because we thought they were witches.  At one time the only people that had rights were kings and priests.  We all chuckle and think it’s unbelievable that they thought that way; we would never do something as foolish as that.  What happens if we do, what if these assumptions are so much part of the air that we breath that we do not see them?

What is the impact of basing our actions on the wrong assumption?  An easy example is if you are at the airport renting a car and grab the wrong map.  You try to get to where you are going and you get lost.  Along with not getting where we want to go, we have the emotion that goes along with it, like being confused or frustrated.  Being a professional in the software development field for many years, the biggest mistake in trying to resolve a bug in the software was making a wrong assumption on where you thought the problem was.  Many times we spent hours and even days looking for the problem in the wrong area because we made an assumption rather than allow the facts to drive the direction of where and how we look for the bug.  Also, during the process, there are all the emotions that go along with trying to get somewhere or solve a problem such as frustration, anger, and confusion which is also accompanied with our assessment which impacts our beliefs of ourselves.  While these emotions can be positive, most of them are not.  This repeated over time usually results in what we think as possible to shrink.

What are your assumptions?  I claim they are all over our lives.  They are in our beliefs and perception of how life shows up for us.  And it’s not just you or me.  These assumptions live in our institutions.  There are many in our education institutions, in the institution of marriage, in our market economy, etc.  Just look at marriage, 50% of first time marriages end in divorce, 67% of second time marriages and 74% of third time marriages.  Underlying this level of failure are unexamined assumptions or beliefs.

Let me give you 2 examples from my life.  When I was in my teens and twenties there was always a friction between my parents.  So much so it got to the point that is was easier just to avoid them, just not be around.  Not uncommon, yet I discovered something through the EST training that changed my life.  Shortly after the training I had this desire, this internal pull to be with my parents.  That was odd, especially given that I was living in upstate New York, some 4 hours away, which would mean taking a whole weekend to visit them.  My underlying assumption was that my parents were always telling me what to do, and I kept trying to let them know that I was 25 years old, living on my own, “please give me a break”.  I took it to mean that they saw something lacking in me.  This was the friction.  Yet this time the experience was different.  There was no friction, and in fact, there was an easiness about being with my parents.  Here is what shifted; while my parents acted the same, I had a new understanding.  My parents telling me what to do was their way of expressing their love for me and this would never change.  See, love is a verb; it takes form in our actions.  So I could allow their expression and did not have to react to it or prove anything.  Ten years later my mother was still telling me when I was visiting to come home early.  I would just smile and tell her; “I love you too”, then kiss her and leave smiling.

Another situation occurred while in St. Lawrence Hospital when I was with Marcie while a doctor examined her.  He spoke to me afterward and told me that Marcie would never walk again.  Yet, in this case, I did not accept his declaration.  I felt that his assumptions were not correct.  Marcie and I worked on her legs and did other exercises and within 2 months she walked out of the hospital.

We have been told throughout our lives that our DNA determines what is possible, that our genetics determine our physical possibilities.  Yet that has been changing and a new science called epigenetics states that something outside of genes determines behavior.  That outside influence is our thoughts and belief’s.  Now science has new evidence of this.  What if what you believe has a direct impact on your life?  Bruce Lipton has written a book, “The Biology of Belief” that is based on scientific research that goes in depth on his findings.

So, what is possible if we start operating from the correct map?  What would you do if you could not fail?  I do know from direct experience that our thoughts shape our experience and our possibilities.  Remember; shift how you look at things and what you look at changes.

Below is a video that is a brief summary by Bruce Lipton on the impact of the study of epigenetics and what it means for us in our lives.

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Dynamic Evolution

Welcome to Dynamic Evolution Blog, a site that focuses on the study of human potential and what does it mean to be human.  Who are we and what is possible?  It has been an interest that I have had since 1977, when I was in my mobile home in the middle of a farm in Westmoreland, New York and asked the question of myself; is my life is about entertaining myself?  I had done what my parents asked me to do; I graduated high school, went to college and then actually acquired a job in the field that I went to school in, which was not common at that time given the economic difficulties.  I was out of school for a few years, making more than I was spending and had the ability to go wherever I wanted on weekends, traveling and having fun.   Life was easy, but is this all there is to life?   Then my neighbor introduced me to the EST Training which I did in August of 1977 and my life changed pretty dramatically.  The dramatic change occurred from a change of perspective.  Wayne Dwyer captures it well in saying; “Change the way you look at things and the things you look at change”.  So the road began to have a new direction, a desire to express a higher good, and a desire to make a difference in some manner.   This new direction led me to meet and marry Marcie, which was completely out of character of what I thought I wanted as I began to make choices that went against the picture and images of how my life would be.  Marcie was so much not the person that I ever expected to marry, and that choice created significant internal friction for me, yet ultimately led to a breakthrough that transformed my life in the area of being related.  Then, Marcie got sick.  This was another major life experience that catapulted me deeper in looking at and understanding who are we and the power of choice that we have regardless of the circumstances.  After Marcie passed away, I met Theresa which was fun and very joyful and ultimately led to having kids and that was another unexpected change, something I had no idea about and discovered another whole aspect of life.  While the journey continued, the growing dissatisfaction of not being true to me, not pursuing my dreams and being stuck in job that consumed all my energy with no time to pursue my desires  became a bigger conflict.  Waiting for my kids to grow was no longer viable.  So I went and found a mentor and coach who had studied human potential for a long time, and began to study and really invested in my learning to augment my life experiences.  They say that the quality of your life is a reflection of the questions you ask of yourself.  Well, being a father I asked myself, how can I tell my kids that the most important thing in life is to do what you love to do and if there is a will there is a way and not do it myself?

Dynamic Evolution is an expression of my commitment to service and contribute to others, empowering each person to live the life that they dream and to continue to understand and express that all of what we have starts from within.   I invite people to share their journey and their discoveries in a way that allows people to stand on their shoulders and see new possibilities to live in a way that respects each other, to rigorously question your assumptions and to entertain new ideas that open new possibilities for living a life that is satisfying, nurturing and in harmony with mankind and our planet.  This site will focus on human potential and extracting potential into achievement.  I look forward to hearing from you during this journey.

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New ICF study benchmarks awareness of coaching profession globally

International Coaching Federation Logo

FOR RELEASE: August 31, 2010

ICF HEADQUARTERS CONTACTS:
Ann Jarvis, +1.859.226.4428, ann.jarvis@coachfederation.org
Kristin Hogue, +1.859.219.3614, kristin.hogue@coachfederation.org
Amy Richardson, +1.859.219.3550,
amy.richardson@coachfederation.org

New ICF study benchmarks awareness of coaching profession globally
Results to be released starting in September

LEXINGTON, Ky., USA – More than half of the general population is aware of professional coaching, according to a new groundbreaking survey by the International Coach Federation (ICF), which gauges global awareness of coaching for the first time since the profession’s inception nearly two decades ago.

Overall, 51 percent of 15,000 participants in the ICF Global Consumer Awareness Study reported they were “somewhat to very aware” of professional coaching. General awareness varied by country from a high of 92 percent in South Africa to a low of 20 percent in Germany.

Continuing its role in providing the coaching profession and public with reliable industry research on coaching, ICF set out to conduct the Global Consumer Awareness Study to show the worldwide reach of coaching in terms of how many people have been coached, how many people are interested in being coached, and how many people want to become coaches.

“The findings from this survey are significant because they show us the first glimpse of coaching on a global scale in awareness and use,” said ICF President and Master Certified Coach Giovanna D’Alessio. “Until now, coaches were only able to speculate about how wide our industry’s reach has become. Now we have information to show us where we are as a profession, which will help us build and sustain our industry’s future.”

This robust research was conducted independently by the International Survey Unit of PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC). Respondents in 20 countries located throughout Africa, Asia, Europe, North America and South America were asked to provide feedback using online panels which were validated to be nationally representative for those aged 25 and up.

In addition to benchmarking consumer awareness, the survey asked respondents key questions regarding reasons for why they participated in a coaching partnership, their perceived importance of certification and credentials for coaches, and overall satisfaction with and feelings about their coaching experience. Findings from these questions and other highlights will be released starting in September.

The ICF Global Consumer Awareness Study complements ICF’s previous industry research efforts, including the ICF Global Coaching Study (2007), which established a baseline overview of the profession from the perspective of practicing coaches, and the ICF Global Coaching Client Study (2009), which studied coaching clients throughout 64 countries.

ICF defines coaching as partnering with clients in a thought-provoking and creative process that inspires them to maximize their personal and professional potential. Coaching is a distinct service and differs greatly from therapy, consulting, mentoring or training. Individuals who engage in a coaching relationship can expect to experience fresh perspectives on personal challenges and opportunities, enhanced thinking and decision-making skills, enhanced interpersonal effectiveness, and increased confidence in carrying out their chosen work and life roles.

The International Coach Federation is the leading global organization for coaches, with over 15,000 members in more than 90 countries, dedicated to advancing the coaching profession by setting high ethical standards, providing independent certification, and building a worldwide network of credentialed coaches. The ICF is the only organization that awards a global credential which is currently held by more than 6,600 coaches worldwide. For more information, please visit our website at www.coachfederation.org.

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