Tag: stress

Jul02

Keep it Simple – 5 steps to effectiveness in a frenzied get-it-done-world

by Cheryl Brewster

Stress may not seem like a  decision, but over time, we begin to see where it is. Fight, flight or freeze responses are immediate, but when we take a step back,  we do see that we have choice in changing our responses…. do that enough times and we have improved our lifestyles for the better. It all begins with baby steps and being more mindful…. paying attention on purpose without judgment in the present moment. In a world gone mad with deadlines and getting things done at all costs, we must be vigilant in honoring our values. We must ensure they are not being eroded by inner and outer forces that at first glance appear noble, but over time, diminish our quality of life.

Peace of mind = effectiveness. But all too often, our definition of effectiveness can get skewed if we focus on results at the expense of our values.

In his book “A Life of  Being , Doing and Having Enough,” author Wayne Muller starts out with these comments:  “we have forgotten what enough feels like…. So we work and add and never stop, never back away, never feel complete, and we despair of ever finding comfort, relief, or sanctuary.”

Sound familiar?

Step #1 – Evaluate Be truthful, honest and brave… If you keep your same daily routine, where will you be in the next 5 years?  Is that a YIKES! or a YES! response? What one small thing can you begin to do in your daily routine?

Step#2 – Choose Peace When we dig deep into our core, we find the strength to identify and drop old ineffective patterns.  When we focus on cleaning up on the inside, we find the strength to clean up on the outside too.

Muller’s take on this is profound:: “Here is the final thing we must know. We carry within us a fierce grace that will not be extinguished, does not break and cannot ever leave us comfortless. It lives in us. This life force, whatever it is that allows a blade of grass to push up, up through concrete to reach for sun and warmth. It lives in us. This is what we are made up of. If we trust in this impossibly resilient capacity to bear all we are given, and re-calibrate  our speed….”

Step #3 – Re-calibrate Your Speed Harness that “fierce grace within you,” it’s the booming voice that says “You can DO this!”  Fierce grace wins over the internal critic every time… it does require that you slow down to hear it, however…. it is always there…. it’s your noticing it and inviting it to lead that changes the trajectory of your life. It’s your willpower to Take You Stand for lasting change.

Step #4 – Use the power of Imagination! Imagination is the bridge from the unconscious to the conscious… it holds the secret solutions beyond the rational mind. It’s fun, refreshing and very effective… get relaxed, imagine what ease, effortlessness or flow would do in any given situation and notice the ideas or mental images that flash across your internal screen!

Step #5 – Breathe! If you kept a “breath log,” you’d be amazed at how little you maximize this incredible energy booster! In order  to access clear thinking and relieve anxiety and tension—like a plant needs water—your brain needs oxygen. Remembering to breathe helps take the edge off,  so you can respond from a more centered place which over time, creates a habit of calm and mastery in effective and accurate decision making.

Stress actually serves a purpose other than survival; it lets us know where we need to loosen up, let go, and enjoy the process of life and business rather than feel bound by them. Every challenge is an opportunity, every dilemma holds a a creative solution and every heartache over time can be healed… the freedom to choose is our greatest gift, willpower our greatest tool, and “fierce grace” our greatest birthright. Self discovery and self development are the twin flames of personal effectiveness; they hold the keys to what is sacred to us. They help us create a legacy rather than just get by. They are fed by the flames of fierce grace – that intrinsic desire to express our creative genius.

Cheryl 2009Interested in learning more on how Mindfulness contributes to your career, business or company?

Cheryl Brewster is a Business Intuitive, Coach and Speaker. She specializes in supporting  those  keen to expand personal and professional effectiveness through the power of intuition and soul-centred business practices. To join her mailing list, daily inspiration  or to learn more: TheIntuitiveLife.com+

May15

The Healing Power of Imagination – It Works!!!

by Cheryl Brewster

Stress can be deadly. While short-term stress can create anxiousness and overwhelm, we know all too well, that the cumulative affects of stress over time diminishes both the quality and quantity of life. A 2013  report from the  American Psychological Association, American Institute of Stress, in New York reported that:

  • The annual costs to employers in stress related health care and missed work is $300 BILLION!
  • Of people who regularly experience physical symptoms, 77%  are caused by stress
  • 73% Regularly experience psychological symptoms caused by stress
  • 48% Feel their stress has increased over the past five years

What does this mean to you?

  • With 48% of those studied feeling that stress has increased over the past five years, you have a 50/50 chance of being a part of this growing statistic.
  • If you are a person committed to self growth, you are going to experience stress as you challenge your comfort zones
  • Finding tools that are effective, get results and reverse the stress/death connection are imperative
  • The ability to do things differently is paramount
  • One of the fastest, easiest, most effective tools is the healing power of imagination, and it costs us nothing! Except willingness,  a paradigm shift and a bit of time

How imagination heals

In his book Jung and the Alchemical Imagination, author Jeffrey Raff concludes that “disease is never a purely physical event, but includes the spirit as well.” He  says that imagination can be responsible for the onset of disease, and has a great part to play in its healing. Authors Ann and Barry Ulanov of the Healing Imagination concur; they believe  imagination helps us correspond to grace – that’s how it heals.

This is where it gets personal for each of us so using myself as an example: As a business intuitive I teach  big picture thinking,  as a coach I mentor spiritual healing , and as a  mother, to nurture and guide my children,  I rely on the healing power of imagination in::

  • its ability to get my attention
  • using all of my senses
  • waking me up to a bigger picture of life that includes  healing,  solutions and creativity that I couldn’t otherwise see
  • getting me  out of the nonsense of my negative self talk

Simple Strategies to harness the healing power of imagination:

  1. Ask yourself, “what would effortlessness do?” to get   out of the stress habit and into pure imagination
  2. Breathe into your imagination ….  create some space for it
  3. Use Active Imagination (a process that Carl Jung created), as the bridge between the conscious and the subconscious (this includes dream interpretation, visualization, and daydreaming)
  4. Whatever stress or illness may be in your life, view it as a movie…. how did it get there? What will help to heal it? Notice the pictures, images or body sensations that you experience
  5. Commit to take some form of action…. write down what had the most compelling energy from the above  and use discernment… will action on your part take you further into grace or farther away from it?
  6. Do more of what you love… the state changes created from simple things like your favorite song, exercise,  a favorite flavor of chewing gum or fresh flowers take you to a much higher energy frequency which improves corresponding critical thinking and decision making
  7. Pay attention to signs, symbols and synchronicity
  8. Have a check-in or feedback loop to test and measure the results so you can drop what doesn’t work and expand what does

Embrace Simplicity
Stress becomes ugly, rampant and deadly when we lose our capacity to live from our imagination. Just take a look at the results in your life right now: where there’s shortage, lack or illness, there will be one of two things: lack of positive imagination or undisciplined, negative imagination. Until you become aware, nothing will change… the steps outlined here are beautifully simple. Are they so simple however, that you won’t take them? Imagine what would happen if you did?

Cheryl Brewster is a Personal and Business Intuitive who takes clients from Stress to Success through  Consultations, Coaching Programs and Seminars. She lives in Vancouver, Canada and is a dynamic speaker with leading edge material that captivates and inspires her audiences to greater success in life and business..

Testimonial:
Cheryl Brewster is a valuable contributor to the Business Management Course at Rhodes Wellness College. She is a dynamic facilitator, combining entrepreneurial wisdom and strategies for effective results. The students’ experience of Cheryl was amazing. We are thrilled to have Cheryl Brewster as an entrepreneurial/facilitation resource and recommend her services highly. – Lisa Brown, Operations Manager, Rhodes Wellness College

 

 

 

 

 

Apr02

Following your “Calling” in Life and Business

by Cheryl Brewster

Do you have a “calling” for the business you’re in or the life you want to lead? Or perhaps you feel a  shift coming;  a whisper inside  that isn’t clearly audible yet. It  seems to be nudging you to something different, but you’re not sure of what that is..What is your response when this happens? Are you curious or do you unconsciously begin to go into stress mode, and shut down? So many of us judge uncertainty, missing out on its gifts, but it’s a very important and necessary phase of self growth.

Re-frame uncertainty – its polar opposite lies just beneath the surface
Usually the only difference between  uncertainty and trust is the decision to believe in ourselves and our ability to handle change.  Self trust can only grow from the willingness to be in discomfort and take action anyway. When we decide to trust ourselves, we release perfectionism and drop destructive self judgment. Only then can we embrace the calling for change. It takes time. It doesn’t happen over night.

Uncertainty can be frightening and paralyze us from taking action, no matter how powerful our dreams are.   Gregg Levoy in his book “Callings”  describes this beautifully: “We love to quote the philosopher and poet Goethe who said that “whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.” But we forget that he also said, “To put your ideas into action is the most difficult thing in the world.” 

It all begins with our willingness to be in the discomfort of uncertainty and re-framing that discomfort into action

The poem in the head is always perfect, Stanley Kuntiz once remarked. The challenge comes when we try to convert it into language. This is especially so when we discover, as we often do, that saying yes to a calling requires not just one act of heroism and risk taking but a prolonged period of action that can stretch into years.”

How do we maintain the heroism required for these long periods of time? 

1. Use the breath to be with your fear of lack, whether that’s time, money or control, etc. Witness it, let it be there and acknowledge the subsequent feelings.
2. Notice the chemical reactions in your body… very powerful! But are you these chemical reactions or the awareness of them?
3. As the Awareness... what do you now choose to create? Breathe through uncertainty, let it be there which allows you to actually  let it go. As the Awareness, connect to what’s been here all along; trust in yourself and in life.
4. Always take time to be present with the breath; it releases the fear of change and puts the peace and confidence of your inner knowing back in the driver’s seat of your life.

Uncertainty is a part of following your calling. Putting your ideas into action is the most difficult thing in the world. Solutions begin with the breath; it slows things down, brings you back to the present, releases stress and invites clarity. Be brave; be willing to slow down and do things differently.

If this blog resonates with you, stay inspired with our daily quote and newsletter (two different places to sign up on our homepage The Intuitive Life.). Cheryl Brewster is a Personal and Business Intuitive who specializes in helping clients go deeper into self discovery, personal effectivess and intuitive development through the vehicle of life’s changes. .

Feb27

Business Stress – 3 Ways Intuition Can Help

by Cheryl Brewster

As a conscious minded business person, your goal is to provide the highest quality products and services in the most efficient, sustainable methods possible, with customer satisfaction and healthy profit.. But what happens when challenges come up that rock your world? Our knee-jerk reactions take over. Big Time. While some reactions can be  effective, most are not.  Intuitive Development plays a critical role in catching those gut-wrenching situations and transforming them into effective learning experiences. The caveat here however, is that we must be willing to re-frame how we look at ourselves and stress.

How Intuition helps to  reduce business stress:

1. Rule number one in intuitive development is to breathe.
Over time we learn to look at breathing in a whole new way:  slowly, deeply, consciously and deliberately.
This kicks us out of the “fight or flight” sequence and gets us connected back to our body wisdom. Otherwise, the huge rush of chemicals released in the body can take over our perspective and we all know what happens… we react (based on the past) rather than respond (based on the present). Without taking time to breathe, we simply repeat old patterns again and again. We’ve heard this a million times… breathe deeply and slowly, but are we actually doing it?
TIP: Use association. Choose something that happens frequently and use it as a reminder… for example…. every time your phone rings, use it as a marker to check-in and breathe slowly, deeply, consciously and deliberately before you answer it.

2.  How would you feel if everything was really okay?
Our intuition has access to the bigger picture that the five senses don’t.  Just take a look at nature’s beauty and perfection – there’s an invisible harmony that runs our world – when we breathe into that inner harmony, we operate from a success minded perspective. Our job becomes less fear-driven and more purpose driven; by allowing this inner harmony to emerge through us, we become aware of possibilities we didn’t see before..  We think more clearly.  Intuition draws from this creative space while fear prevents our access to it.
TIP: Re-frame stress as a  signal to refocus on the inner harmony already inside of you; it builds supreme self trust and improves the thinking process.

3. How would you act if you were already successful?
Ask this simple question in any situation and see what happens! You’ll feel instant relief and guidance and find it easier to drop ineffective thinking patterns.
TIP: Make this question a new practice by using your tea or coffee break to sit with the answers. Be sure to keep a journal handy!

The bottom line: Intuitive Principles reduce stress and add an element of self discovery. They increase profit by creating a new perspective of trust and freeing up stuck energy. Intuitive Development takes time and practice but it’s affects can be felt immediately.  Our biggest challenge as entrepreneurs is to give ourselves the same time, care and attention we give to our customers. Start small and build from there… these three simple steps can have profound affects on your business!

Cheryl Brewster is a Business Intuitive who provides intuitive mentor programs and workshops to support entrepreneurs  in being less stressed and more productive.

Inspiration:
If you focus on the negative in any situation, you can expect high stress levels. However, if you try and see the good in the situation, your stress levels will greatly diminish.”  –Catherine Pulsifer