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Create The Life You Want To Live

Category Archives: Gay Landeta

Create Intentions With Insight. Part 1

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Any time is a good time for a look into how we are travelling so we can create intentions that will enhance our being. To do that I love this process taught to me many years ago, the Maori Drawing Process. The Maori people of New Zealand traditionally do this each year to gain insight and guidance into how they are travelling. Everytime I do this I am amazed at the insights I get…

create Intentions

You will need paper and some drawing materials. Before you start take time to centre yourself – that way you won’t be trying so much to think about what you are doing, it will come more naturally. This is just time to draw not create intentions. That comes later.

I always find Hook-ups from Brain Gym a great way to relax and centre myself.

Hookups: There are two stages to Brain Gym’s Hook-ups.

Firstly, place one ankle over the other. Then cross one wrist over the other and interlace your fingers together, draw your hands up to your chest and breathe deeply in through your nose and out through your mouth (or simply with your tongue on the roof of your mouth) and your eyes closed or looking down (this cuts out the visual overload we experience daily).

After several breaths (6 or 8 or more as you like) undo your arms and move your feet apart. Place your fingertips together and continue to breath comfortably until you feel centred and ready. BTW, this is a great way to start any process you wish to approach with focus or midfulness. 

Once you are centered take your paper and materials and draw these symbols in any order and in any way you like. Read through the list and choose the one you want to draw first – your drawing can be as simple or as complex as you like. Then choose the next and so forth :

  • Snake
  • Flower
  • Tree
  • House
  • Bird
  • Path
  • Mountain
  • Butterfly

When you are finished note the first thing you drew and then move onto part two where you will find out how to interpret the insights into what you have just drawn and then how use it to help you formulate goals for next year.

All the best!

PS feel free to share – this is a fabulous process – every time I do it I am amazed at what I choose and how I draw it, even after all these years.

**********This was written with the intention of helping you to live your best life, if you want to know more about how I can help you Create The Life You Want To Live please get in touch!

Copyright 2008 / updated 2020 Gay Landeta, Create The Life You Want To Live. All rights reserved.*******

Creating Intentions With Insight. Part 2

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If you are reading this and haven’t already, I suggest you back-up right now to part one of this series. Why? Because this process can give you some beautiful insights into creating intentions for a new beginning. This process can help you understand where you are at the moment and where you might like to direct your life. You can do this anytime, the beginning of a new year, on your birthday, or just because.  

While living in the flow is a beautiful way to be and something many of us aspire to, it is also human nature to want to grow and expand and do more. Creating intentions about what that expansion looks like is like choosing a direction and starting out.creating intentions

Like any journey whether or not we get to the end will depend on many factors; how clear the pathway is, how much we are able to prepare, how willing we are to do the journey as it gets more complex. So creating intentions doesn’t actually mean that you will get exactly there. That is when we need goals. Goals include precise and clear steps to our desired outcome. So we need intentions for where we want to go and clear goals to get there.  

Before you begin your interpretation have a look at your drawing. Centre yourself and begin to delve into what it is sharing with you. Have a pen and paper handy to make some notes. create intentions

Here are the meanings of each item:

  • Snake: Regeneration, something you are letting go of.
  • Flower: Something that is opening up, unfolding.
  • Tree: Your evolutionary growth process.
  • House: Your process of creating your identity.
  • Bird: Belief systems, attitudes, values, a spiritual message has been recognised.
  • Path: Structure and discipline.
  • Mountain: Your quest, dream, spiritual journey.
  • Butterfly: Memory of something recently transformed.

Consider what you drew first, this is significant as it is where you drew each item, its proximity to other items and the complexity of each item. This will give you some insights into yourself.

intention creating This is sort of like translating a dream, there is no right or wrong, just things to consider. I find this a fascinating process, for example I always think I will remember NEXT TIME to draw the house with more complexity but do I? No. In fact there maybe less complexity this time, but I might have a big tree beside my house. That might indicate that my energy is going into my growth, not my identity. I can then reflect on that when I am thinking about the coming year and make sure that focus is serving me in the best way.

Notice if you :

  • Drew a symbol more than once: This could be an area that needs to be intensified or experienced several ways.
  • Added in other symbols: These show you ways you already know how to heal yourself.
  • If you had an area that was hard to draw: This shows you an area that may require extra attention – for example if my pathway was hard. yup. discipline. need more of that!
  • Forget a symbol? This could either be an area you have outgrown or discarded or, conversely, an area that needs to be consciously incorporated into your life.
  • The largest item holds the most identity and key to your well being.
  • The smallest item is an area that is just emerging but may still be unknown.
  • The first item you drew is a process you understand in someway and is important to you at least at present. 

If the drawing is more vertical (portrait) then there is strong activity in your inner healing.

If more horizontal (landscape) then there is strong healing at outer levels; body, relationships, etc

Next fold or divide the paper into four sections. Each quadrant signifies an aspect of your life. The area with the least symbols is showing consciousness that is not yet well developed – you may like to focus some of your energy into creating intentions in that area in the coming months. The quadrant with the most symbols is demonstrating the most activity and consciousness.

  • Mental (top left): Valley of the Birds.
  • Spiritual (top right): Valley of the Mountains.
  • Emotional (bottom left): Valley of the Flowers.
  • Physical (bottom right): Valley of the Trees.

If a symbol covers two or more quadrants then these are aspects of your life that are interconnected, such as spirit and mind. creating self care intentions For example, if the bottom right of a drawing was empty aside from a flower overlapping into the bottom left (emotional) then that could indicate an absence in the physical however the overlapping flower indicates that there is an opening up starting and a useful goal may be around regular self-care.

If a symbol covers all four quadrants then that same process maybe occurring throughout your entire being. For example if that flower was in the middle of the page then their may be an all around blossoming happening and instead of goals it might be more nurturing to create an intention to be open to the growth and changes that are happening in your life. 

Hope you find something enlightening in this process. I always do.

Happy New Beginnings!

With love, Gay

PS Share your thoughts, click on the link below to add your comments.

******** This was written with the intention of helping you to live your best life, if you want to know more about how I can help you Create The Life You Want To Live please get in touch! ********

Copyright 2008 / updated 2020 Gay Landeta, Create The Life You Want To Live. All rights reserved.

Create Your Year With Intention

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At the end of 2016 I was challenged to come up with some words to describe 2016 and what I wanted 2017 to be. I chose ‘Joyously Amazed’ for 2017 and 2017 certainly did that – mostly happily. I also found that continuing to align to those words throughout the year mostly reflected the reality I was living. Nice and simple intention setting!

My word for 2018 came towards the end of the year. ‘Contented’ … I wondered where that would take me …. At the end of that year I could see, I found more equanimity, more contentment, more acceptance and overall a more peaceful way of being despite some very challenging times. Things came to me and I made choices that aligned with that word. And once I discovered the Best Self Journal (and became a fangirl! See this blog I wrote in 2018) I reflected on what it actually meant every day as I wrote it down as my overall intention for the day.

This time last year I wondered if a word would arrive for 2019 … and it did …. ‘Consolidation’. And as I reflected I thought that sounded a lovely idea for the next 12 months. The last 3 years have been huge with the tree change to Tenterfield, moving the clinic to join the beautiful Kirsty Eng at Herston and taking Marketing with Heart online and transforming it into the Confident Practitioner Formula, working with practitioners nationwide, let alone being a grandmother and mother and daughter… (all that joyous amazement!)

Now — at the end of 2019 I can understand the journey that ‘consolidation’ took me on. It was different than I expected but wonderfully took me deeper into what is most important to me. And again writing it down each day in my Best Self Journal (still a fangirl!) has allowed me to re-connect to my intention in many different ways during the year. 

I recently did the same exercise and my 2020 word has emerged. Nurture. I like that. 🙂 Nurture me, nurture my clients, nurture my life and all that I love. Nice. I will enjoy writing that down each day! 

So now, with the end of the year coming up I challenge you to do that same exercise to set up your own 2020. Take a few minutes to centre yourself and gather up some words to describe 2019. No judgment – just see what comes up. Then allow the word or phrase you want to align to for 2020 to rise up together with some other descriptive words of positive intention. Make sure they are positive – be careful what you wish for! I added ‘joyously’ to ‘amazed’ in 2017 just to be clear that I wanted happy amazement please if at all possible!!!

Then pop it somewhere you can see. Add them into your 2020 diary for a daily or monthly reminder or add it to a bigger vision board you can see every day. Or both. And then wait for the magic to happen.

Have fun! I would love to see what emerges for you!
 

******** This was written with the intention of helping you to live your best life, if you want to know more about how I can help you Create The Life You Want To Live please get in touch! ********

Copyright 2018-2019 Gay Landeta, Create The Life You Want To Live. All rights reserved.

Can we really change?

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How our thoughts help and hinder us in our healing : Animal Kinesiology pt 2 

Cick here to read part 1 – Animal Kinesiology and Intuition or just dive in here!

The interesting thing about working with animals is that while they feel emotions they do not ‘think’ in the same way as we do. Yes, they appear to think – sometimes in a surprisingly sophisticated way – but they do not have the same intellect that we do. For example, what dog would be thinking  “hmmm, I seem to be feeling a bit blah and putting on a bit of weight, I think i need to eat a few less carbs and hit the gym.” These kinds of processes are reserved for the busy little human brain. 

This ability to think and process can be as much of a block to healing as a pathway to it. Because we have the ability to think about what the core of our pain is we can easily re-ignite it, even when we have moved into a better place, just through our focus. 

For example it is a very few individuals who come out of a messy relationship who do not worry that the behaviour will happen again. Sometimes we focus on it so much that we re-create it! We use our thinking processes to inform our approach to similar situations, to help us to navigate and avoid pain. Yes, some of this is instinctual and common to all animals, but much of this is central to our human thought processes. 

Once we start to pull apart how our thoughts are contributing to our pain we can really begin to be open for an entirely new experience of life. We may continue to be triggered by circumstances but we can use our thought processes to see the differences, instead of our emotions to see the similarities as we have a moment. As the emotions become less involved we regain more choice about how we respond. 

With an animal, their nature is their nature. Balancing Lola (our rescue Lhasa) when she arrived for her incessant barking worked only with the aspect that was bad training and to a lesser extent enjoying her own voice. The barking that happens because she is a dog with a fairly small brain, bred to love and guard cannot be changed. Honey, the Australian Shepherd will always want to have a job in the herd. Animals have no motivation nor reason to change. 

However with us humans, our thought processes can start us on a journey and we can use them to continue to take us forward, regardless of our nature. We can use our thoughts as well as energetic processes (such as kinesiology) to change who we are at very deep levels.

We will always be the same innate person underneath – however we really can strive to be the best version of ourselves that we can be. Providing we do the work, we will continue to change and grow without ceasing. This is not to say we won’t be inundated with our emotions at times but we can continue to use our motivation in positive and growthful ways and who knows what we will become!

And because of the inter-connectedness that we have with everything around us, as we change so will everything. That is why I have heard clients say “after that session I went home and could not believe how different my husband was!” Or “my kids no longer seem to need me all the time to help them do everything.”

I think this is such an important concept to remember. We can spend far too much time wanting situations or other people to change. The reality is as we change they will. So the more carefully we focus our attention on what we want the more everything around us will change.  

Our innate nature will remain as it is but our response to the world can be transformed. 

Conversely, the more we focus on our pain the more that will persist. 

So choose your focus!

…. Some tools that you can use to help you focus on the limitless potential that future you could experience ….  

self help emotional release vlog – I popped this up for children but it is just a useful for everyone!

Have a look through my Hints and tips for goal setting blog category…

Let go of Drama Triangle – This is part 3 of a vlog on letting go of one of the most common pain inducing habit! Follow the links to parts 1 and 2 first…

Meditation and mindfulness – I love the Insight Timer app – totally free too. 

Psychology of Peace Program … really take control of your thoughts and let go of the emotional pain generated by less than useful habits and patterns.

And of course (!!) Kinesiology sessions  where we always look at how we can harness the helpful qualities of the mind as well as dealing with painful patterns.

“Your destiny is to fulfil those things upon which you focus most intently. So choose to keep your focus on that which is truly magnificent, beautiful, uplifting and joyful. Your life is always moving toward something.”

~ Ralph Marston

Copyright 2019 Gay Landeta, Create The Life You Want To Live. All rights reserved.

Planning a quarter… a business essential

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Once upon a time I used to think business planning belonged in the corporate world, but over time I realised that continuing to do things as and when I needed to meant I left a lot of things on the table. Undone. Mostly things I didn’t like to do. And it was affecting my practice.

Starting to do some basic business planning was part of the turn around from being a struggling practitioner to having a thriving practice. This is a simple process to follow anytime you want to focus and get results.

Super simple business planning for your practice success!

For the last couple of years, I have been using the Best Self Journal system because it has all the elements that are needed to stay motivated and create meaning and joy along the way.

I highly recommend it as a system, they generously share the full pdf of their diary here and they have heaps of free support available.

If you are a handwriting sort of person you will probably want to buy a hardcopy at https://au.bestself.co – they often have great offers on but if there isn’t you can use our code Cr8! at the checkout for 15% off.

Here is to a successful quarter full of perfect clients! 😉

******** This was written with the intention of helping you to live your best life, if you want to know more about how I can help you Create The Life You Want To Live please get in touch! ********

Copyright 2019 Gay Landeta, Create The Life You Want To Live. All rights reserved.

Compassion, Empathy, Courage – And Marketing

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Recently I was listening to a podcast with Paul Gilbert OBE who is the founder of Compassion Focused Therapy and Compassionate Mind Training. His talk started me thinking about our capacity as practitioners to market ourselves and shed some light on why often the better a practitioner the less effective the marketing!

One thing I have observed over my 22 years in practice any my 11 years helping practitioners create businesses they love is how hard it can be to create marketing that gives results and feels good to do. I know some of this is introvert vs extrovert, understanding the process, having the resources, etc, but it is also much more than this. Sometimes the better a practitioner the less effective their marketing! and by that I mean, the more generalised their content (to help more people) and the less compelling their call to action. Neither of which contribute to effective marketing.

Gilbert has developed a huge body of work around the human capacity for suffering and how wired we are for inner conflict and even cruelty. That sounds intense, but our ability to think is what separates us from our mammalian brothers and sisters. 

An animal may do something that appears to be cruel, such as a cat playing with a mouse, however that is their nature. They are not thinking ‘how can I hurt this mouse’. It just what they do. Whereas human beings have the capacity to think about causing pain, make plans to do it and then carry it out. And sadly tend to use it far too often. 

So how does this relate to marketing?

Gilbert was talking about three qualities that we each have and how we can cultivate them to live with more purpose and joy. As he dissected his model and shared how certain careers need a greater capacity for one or the other I could see how practitioners often have a particular combination.

I also could see that this combination can easily make effective marketing difficult. Once we understand them we can harness them and use them more effectively as we wear our marketing hat.

the better the practitioner the less effective the marketing!

First, empathy.

Empathy is the quality of being able to feel what others feel. We have transformed this quality into a virtue, however it is not. It is simply the ability to put ourselves in another shoes. Disturbingly Gilbert said that the best torturers are the most empathetic. Creepy but makes sense. 

Second, Compassion.

The quality that the torturer is missing is the quality of compassion. Compassion is concern for another, not wanting them to suffer. Gilbert points out that compassion is actually not love as we often perceive it to be. We do not have to love another to be compassionate, we don’t even have to know or like them. We just need to not want them to suffer.

Third, Courage.

The third quality to consider is courage. The courage to do what is needed when it is needed. I think about our Rural Fire Service who we are seeing a great deal at the moment. These people not only have the empathy and compassion to want to help but they also have the courage to take action

As a practitioner you will have all three of these qualities in abundance. It will be in part, why you feel called to do your work. You do not want people to suffer, you want them to enjoy their life.

How can we cultivate these to help our perfect potential clients to see how we can help?

You probably want your marketing to be uplifting so your potential clients will understand that the work you do will help them. You probably do not want them to feel worse about themselves or their life. However this is where your compassion is letting you down! As I say – the better the practitioner the less effective your marketing!

Like it or not we move away from pain much faster than we move towards pleasure. By trying to help them without reminding them of what the problems are they will have no impetus to change. Your message passes them by. Your compassion in your marketing is preventing them from experiencing your compassion in person! 

So cultivate more of the quality of courage when you market. You will already be using that with your clients every day, to help them to see what has to change, to hold them accountable, to help them to live a better life. 

Draw on that quality, together with your empathetic skills to write materials that your perfect clients can resonate with. 

effective marketing

Always remember that your perfect client is looking for the solution you offer because of the pain that they are experiencing right now.

Make sure that is expressed clearly in all your marketing, what you do or how you do it matters less (for reasons that I will talk about next time). Make your marketing speak specifically to your perfect client, help them to see you understand both their pain and their dreams. Help them to see that your solution will get them there faster or easier than something else and those perfect potential clients will hear you.

And don’t forget your call to action! You would be surprised by how often that happens!

If you want help in writing marketing that works, developing strategies that get you more perfect clients and building a sustainable practice doing what you love fast have a look at my free live webinar.

Or just get in touch. 🙂

******** This was written with the intention of helping you to live your best life, if you want to know more about how I can help you Create The Life You Want To Live please get in touch! ********

Copyright 2019 Gay Landeta, Create The Life You Want To Live. All rights reserved.

Animal Kinesiology & Intuition

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I have always done kinesiology with my pets, starting with my son’s Axolotle (Mexican Walking Fish) back when I was first studying kinesiology.

Not only has my pet benefited but my own journey of personal growth has been supported through the development of trust and intuition. Lately I have been doing more of it and with these experiences a whole new level of understanding has emerged.

My first experience of kinesiology with animals was 27 years ago now. My son was only 7 and loved reptiles. He had already lost one Axolotle and his second one didn’t look like it would make it till morning. In desperation I tried this weird stuff I was learning. What came up was a struggle to breath and an awful sluggishness. We balanced for this and it made it through the night.

When we got it to the pet shop the next day we discovered we had been sold a 1’ tank instead of a 4’. The poor thing was drowning in its own excrement and had no oxygen as a result – hence the breathing and sluggishness. New tank, new weekly cleaning regime and all was well. It happily survived for many years after that. 

Around that time I also started using Bach Flowers on my cat who had gone quite crazy after the addition of an overly enthusiastic beagle puppy. I consistently noticed a huge shift in her behaviour every time I gave her drops. All this reinforced for me how powerful this vibrational work was even though was it was kind of flakey.

animal kinesiology

Since then I have always given my pets regular tune-ups, checking in that they are happy in themselves. Lola in particular has had a number of sessions, firstly to settle her in as a rescue and secondly after a back injury a few years ago. She knows when she needs some support and jumps into my lap for a tune up. 

Lately though, I have been seeing more animal clients including my first horse client. Rose was a great case study. I had gone out to a friends property to have a play with her herd of horses. When I arrived Rose came up to me and as we were doing some ground work, my friend noticed that she had a bit of a limp and a swelling on her back. An old injury had flared up.

Rose was a strong willed Arab had a history of a (probably quite) stressful 10 years in the show world. About 7 years ago, after she finished in the ring, she had lucked into my friends herd. It was there her nervous system learnt to relax.

kinesiology with animals

As I worked with the old injury it was apparent that it had stored a great deal of emotional pain. Once we cleared that the injury itself sorted out quickly. Rose wandered off as I finished, had a big sleep and the next day all the swelling and pain was gone.

Our original plan for the day was some horsey time and then a balance for my friends dog. Honey had been getting extremely anxious whenever my friend worked her horses and my friend wanted to be able to work the horses without worrying about her dog.

The interesting thing was that before I could start with Honey I needed to balance my friend. (In kinesiology testing you follow a step by step process that will tell you what to do next). It turned out my friend also had an old back injury that was playing up. We sorted that out and moved onto Honey. Somehow all three were interconnected and one supported the healing of another.

When I arrived a few weeks later for a little more horse time, Rose the horse was still fine. My friends back was good. And on observing Honey as we worked the horses, it was apparent that a whole layer of anxiety had been released. She still wanted to be involved, but she is an Australian Shepherd and that is part of her DNA. 

The really amazing thing that happened on that follow up visit was that about 5 minutes before I arrived all 6 horse moved up from the bottom paddock to the ring, where I park, and Rose and Honey were greeting me even before I got out of the car. This was more evidence of our interconnectedness. Truly understanding the depth of what that means can make a profound difference in our lives. We can start to see how much is unseen but still very real in our world.

So ask yourself when have you experienced that level of interconnectedness? When have you thought of someone and they ring? Do you accept these experiences as truth? Do you trust these moments and know they are part of something more? Or do you only listen when you want to, when it makes sense and then deny it when things aren’t working?

It is interesting to reflect on how much we miss out on when we use our intellect to process the intuition.

None of those horses would have been there to greet me had they been discussing the likelihood of me arriving that day and that time. No one told them that I was coming. We hadn’t synchronised diaries. And the time slot for my arrival was loose. But listening and responding took them to the right place at the right time.

When we can hold this truth everything will change in the way we act and respond in the world. We truly are not alone and there is guidance, help and support available all the time, if we are missing it we might just not be listening!

Or it may be that there is something more to learn at this moment in this place that we are.

personal development

We can start connecting by practicing listening to our intuition and responding when the outcome matters little. We may make some random choices that may raise some eyebrows however it starts us developing a trust in that quiet sense.

As we learn to listen more deeply the messages become stronger. We may never hear an actual voice but we will start to get a strong sense of what is right for us. By trusting that, anxiety will start to drop away and we can relax into this existence a little more deeply.

******** This was written with the intention of helping you to live your best life, if you want to know more about how I can help you Create The Life You Want To Live please get in touch! ********

Copyright 2019 Gay Landeta, Create The Life You Want To Live. All rights reserved.