How your life can be shaped and impacted by an unconscious decision

Somewhere in time, there was one decision you made (consciously or unconsciously) that shaped the trajectory of your life and may have caused you to freeze in time, not serving you any longer now. Do you know what that decision was?

Did you know that if you bring a situation, and add massive pain / trauma to it, you have the recipe for a STRONG decision that will create a ripple effect in your life?

The bigger the emotion attached to an event, the deeper and stronger the decision. And THESE are usually the decisions that impact the way we perceive and experience the world, often becoming a buried unconscious limiting belief.

I only uncovered such a strong decision when I got to 43 years old.

Let me tell you about the day I made the decision "it isn't safe for me to express myself because bad things happen".

I'm 9 years old. It's a beautiful sunny Sunday and we're heading to a local amusement park to celebrate the city's holiday. My dad drives a van from his job, my mum and my baby sister are sitting at the front, and me and my sister (8) are standing in the back of the van. (Not a lot safety measures back then!)

Me and my sister, we are very excited about going to the city centre. My parents are having their adult conversation, and we too are having our kids' talk. You would think we are talking about cartoons or school or friends... But No! We are chatting about being stitched, and how painful that must be, as my sister refers to a surgery she had when she was very little.

Well... here comes the part why I am telling you this story!

— I don't ever want to have to go to the hospital and get stitches! — I say to her.

The minute I say these words, our van crashes into another car, I fly to the front of the van and smash my mouth against a metal bar. 😱😭 Blood all over the place and I end up in hospital having my mouth stitched in several places. (sorry about the graphics)

One small detail — I am the ONLY one who gets injured! This, for sure, did help confirm the decision I am, unknowingly, about to make at the age of 9.

Unconsciously, that day, in that moment, I make the decision that when I open my mouth, bad and painful things happen. That day, I unconsciously decide that it isn't safe to express myself. You see, in my 9 year old mind, I just expressed my wishes and I got punished for that.

(Oh yeah, I was already being brainwashed about a punishing God!!!)

This decision will run the show for the following 30 plus years of my life. Can you imagine the impact this decision has had in my life? Can you imagine the decisions I made, and didn't make, based on that decision?

Can you see how important it is to know our beliefs?

What about you? What could have been a situation in your life that ended up being a decision making moment, that may be holding you back in life?

Share in the comments. I always read them and reply back.

#DecisionmakingMoments #Beliefs #GetCuriousAboutYourBeliefs #BreakthroughsAreTheJuiceOfGrowth

How To Make A Change In Your Life

Have you been struggling with repetitive negative or destructive patterns? 
Is there something in your life you wish to change but you seem to never succeed?

In his book Awaken the Giant Within, Tony Robbins suggests that you ask yourself some specific questions to help you make that change. Those were actually the questions I asked myself, leading me to some powerful breakthroughs uncovering the root cause of my weight battle. (I wrote about it here)

So, if you are ready to play, sit down and put pen to paper. You know, you can read a book to learn how to swim but you won’t ever swim unless you get yourself inside water. 

Ok, you get it, right? So, here it goes. Answer these questions in this specific order. Tony Robbins says that it’s really important to follow the order. He says it’s like dialling a phone number to call a friend – if you change the order of the numbers, you’ll end up calling someone else.

1. What are two things that you need to do and you have been procrastinating on them?

2. Why haven’t you acted upon them? What pain have you associated to this action in the past?

3. What pleasure have you felt in the past by giving yourself into this negative pattern?

4. What will be the price to pay if you don’t change now? What will it cost you over the next 2, 3, 5 years? What will it cost you emotionally? What about self-image? And about physical energy? Self-love? Financially? Romantic relationships?

5. How does that make you feel?

6. What pleasure will you get if you act immediately?

I would love to read about what showed up for you. Would you like to share some insights you may have had? I would love to read them. Comment below and I'll get back to you.

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My Relationship With Weight

My battle with weight began when I was around 16. I have never been too obese but I was definitely overweight. No matter how many people would tell me I looked good, I didn’t feel good at all, either about the way I looked or about the way I felt.

I would engage in crazy gym challenges and diets and, needless to say, it only worked out for a short period of time. And then, everything would start all over again.

I won’t go into the guilt or the shame that battle brought along. That’s not the reason I’m writing this.

Back in 2015, I started doing some major spiritual and self-development healing work on myself, and around that time, after hitting a threshold of physical pain in my joints, I could hear my body shouting out loud that it was time for a deep change.

I could feel this time the decision was coming from a totally different place inside of me… I was certain I was going to change!

And I did! I started taking care of the food I would put in my body, and I started to feel awesome, lighter and more energised than ever. The joint pain completely disappeared, and I could move my body in ways that I couldn’t before. 

I was feeling AMAZING! Had I finally owned this? Was it really possible? I was so HAPPY!

In January 2017, I had a surgery to an epigastric hernia, and it didn’t take long for me to realise I was going back to the old patterns, and I was bullshitting myself with a bunch of excuses to eat some cookies late in the evening, or even to have some chips twice a week.

My belly started getting bigger (I don’t know about you, but for me it’s always the belly!) and I would fool myself telling myself that it was due to the hernia surgery. 

There was a thought running over and over in my mind - “NOT AGAIN!”
And the more I heard it, the more I didn’t want to look at it, and the more cookies I felt like eating. (By the way, I would make sure the cookies were the healthy kind of cookies, fooling myself that those were not a big deal.)

One day, with love, no judgement whatsoever, and as curious as I could be, I decided it was time to go deeper to find out the real root of this, since it was clear I was not healed yet.

I knew that in this internal system of making decisions there should be a belief that was making me sabotage my outcome. 

Sitting outside, with the help of Tony Robbins’ book Awaken the Giant Within, EUREKA! I had a f*cking breakthrough, and then others followed! (Wow … multiple breakthroughs?! Oh… yes, there’s more than just multiple orgasms! ;) )

I realised I took a lot of pleasure out of the process of losing weight. It gave me a challenge to pursue, and I would get an immense sense of accomplishment and big achievement in succeeding at losing weight. Now… guess what? You got it! For me to be able to engage in that challenge of losing weight, to begin with I would need to have weight to lose.  I would put on weight to engage in the process of being successful at losing it afterwards (how fucked up is that?!).

And then, another breakthrough… Succeeding at losing weight would make me feel really significant! Others would notice me and the weight loss, and they would tell me “Oh, you lost weight!” or “Hum, you look thinner!”, but what I would hear them say was “you look awesome”, “you look pretty”.

But deep down what that really meant was — “I SEE YOU!”

BOOOMMMM… another massive breakthrough hitting me hard.
I had created this belief that others would never see me, that I was unnoticeable! So, I ended up finding a way to have people look at me.

You see, my sister, who is one year younger than me, is so beautiful and for as long as I can remember being a child, every time we would go anywhere with our parents, everybody would look at her, and comment on how beautiful she was and how beautiful her eyes were. Hardly ever anyone would notice me and when they did, they would turn to me in second place, and say “oh… and you… you are beautiful too”. (Today I imagine myself showing them the finger! ;) )

I was only 2 or 3 years old (yes, I know… I have a great memory… and I can go even further back in time – amazing what babies can remember, right?) and that was how I perceived and experienced the events; that was the meaning I gave to them, and from there I made a decision, and soon a limiting belief was born.

And as time went by, life made sure to provide me enough evidence to prove me that I was right. That’s what beliefs do. I had become the creator of a self-fulfilling prophecy! 

Now that I uncovered the root cause, healing can finally begin!

Me and my sister :)

If you are curious about the questions that helped me uncover this story, or if there’s something you want to change in your life, I share more in my other article.

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The Question That Shaped My Life

Back in December 2016, I was at Tony Robbins’s six-day seminar in Florida, Date with Destiny and there I had A LOT of breakthroughs (another word for that would be insight). For those of you who have not been to a TR event or haven’t heard much about him, the best thing you can do to understand what he is truly about is to watch the documentary I’m Not Your Guru on Netflix.

One of the countless things I’ve learned from Tony Robbins is that QUESTIONS determine your focus, and what you focus on is what you experience and what you get from life.

So, today I want to tell you about a major aha moment I had with what he calls the PRIMARY QUESTION.

A Primary Question is a dominant question you ask yourself on a consistent basis, and that filters your thinking (conscious and unconscious). It’s a question that pops up constantly across contexts. Even if you aren’t consciously aware of it, you believe that if you live by this question, you will feel ultimate success, pleasure and fulfilment. Your identity is often tied to this question. You experience life through the lenses of it.

Now that you know what a primary question is, let me share with you what MY primary question has been for 44 years.

I have lived my life through the lens of this question — “How can I make this better?”.

For me, life, in all its areas, was always about improving, making better, making more effective, more inspirational, more impactful. I was always looking for ways to make anything, I mean, ANYTHING better.

The magical thing about having a “aha” moment with Tony Robbins is that he always makes sure you find the higher intent behind any of your behaviour / decision / emotion. So, not only was I able to uncover that primary question, but to also see both the benefits and the downsides of it.

As TR also teaches us, first let’s go for the UPSIDES of that. What were the empowering effects that came about for asking that question? What did that question do for me?

Well, here’s what I found out: to consistently ask myself that question, I believed that there’s always a better way; that there’s always space for improvement; that change is needed, and that change is something positive. I learned not to settle, to become more creative and more determined.

And what about the DOWNSIDES? What did that cost me?

I must confess this was a very deep and emotional moment. When I was face to face with the truth of it, I cried as I became aware that I was always too hard on myself, always demanding too much from me; I didn’t enjoy being myself because I was always looking for ways to make ME better, and that means in some moments I was making ME wrong.

I would always try to “fix” others and make them better, as if there was anything wrong with them… Can you imagine how I have made people feel in the past? OMG, so many things I did wrong with my kids and my relationships. It’s a fact that what I did to myself I would do to others. I know I did the best I could with the resources I had but it hurt like hell to think about the pain I caused, especially to my kids.

TR helped me find out WHY I had that as my primary question.

For some reason (well, like I said I had a lot of breakthroughs, so I know the reason, but I’ll tell you about that in another post) I had this belief that if I didn’t make things better, more inspirational, more impactful, etc., people wouldn’t notice me, I would be unseen, which means I would be ignored, which means I would be insignificant, which means I wouldn’t be loved.

What a scary frightened little girl there was living inside of me!

So now, I cherish and nurture that part of me, the scary one, the one looking for love and significance. And I also forgave myself for the pain I caused to my kids.

If we are always looking for ways to make things/people better, we are not allowing space for things/people to be just the way they are.

Many times, WE just want to be loved, THEY just want to be loved, I just want to be loved… unconditionally loved, being imperfectly perfect.

And there are moments that we just need to BE and not DO. After all, are we human beings or human doings?

So… I am so thrilled and excited to share with you my NEW Primary Question –

“How can I appreciate even more the beauty and the perfection of what is in this present moment, trusting that I am always guided?”

Can you imagine how different my life will be having this question as a filtering lens?

Now, I’m curious to know…

What is a question you repeatedly ask yourself? What do you consistently focus on? What question do you ask most often based on this focus?

It’s my deepest wish that this story may help you in some way, and I would love to know what your primary question is. So, please leave your comment below.

And remember, YOU are imperfectly perfect.

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Have You Loved Yourself Today?

Today I had a breakthrough! I have just experienced with full awareness how subtle this self-love thing can be and I wanted to share it with you! There's a chance that some part of this story may resonate with you, and you can get some value from it.

Last December I made great, awesome and unique friends at Tony Robbins' Date with Destiny in Florida, USA. (For those of you who don't know about Tony Robbins or if you even wonder what that event is about, I would suggest that you watch “I am Not Your Guru” on Netflix)

One of these amazing new friends, a phenomenal woman and so talented artist, Susie Suh, sent me four essential oils all the way from the USA, to help me recover faster from an epigastric hernia surgery.

When the oils arrived, she explained to me what I needed to do to apply them. So, the only thing I needed was to get some carrier oil, like coconut or almond oil (or any other), blend it with some drops of the essential oils, and massage my belly in the area where the hernia used to be.

Guess what?! It has been 6 days since those oils arrived, and I haven’t applied them yet. Why not? “I don’t have carrier oil”, I thought. “When I get it, I’ll do it!” And then I asked myself: “when are you going to buy it?”; “what are you waiting for?”

How come that woman, Susie, used her time and energy to go to the post office and send me those oils, and I wouldn’t take 5 minutes to buy the carrier oil? Did she love me more than I loved myself? This question made me tremble!

Very often, things aren’t what they seem to be. I was hiding behind the excuse that I didn’t have the carrier oil, when in fact the truth is that I was not loving myself nor making myself a priority. Why was that? And that’s when it hit me.

Even though I’ve walked a long path on this healing journey of loving myself, this is a daily process, and I can’t take it for granted or as something I can be distracted from. I need to be present! I need to be mindful, and to remind myself daily to love myself.

Being naïvely distracted from my own self is a recipe for disaster. I need to stand guard at the door of my mind while taking care of my inner garden, otherwise weeds will grow.

In the past, every time I engaged in any behaviour that would make me feel important or loved, even if it was just a glimpse of it, guilt and blame would be running the show: “who the hell do you think you are?”, “what?! Do you think you’re special?”, “what do you think makes you so fucking special?”… and it would go on and on and on…

The truth is that I wanted so badly to be loved ... So I thought I had to stay low, to be less, to play small, and without even knowing it, I was annihilating myself so deeply that my soul started aching.

Because Life is a wonderful teacher, it keeps bringing me all sorts of different situations, so that I understand how important I am, and that there’s nothing wrong about it. Life keeps showing me that there’s no reason to feel guilty for making myself a priority, and for feeling that I am important and that I do matter.

Life keeps showing me that if I think I’m not important, nothing else will ever be.

Every time I neglect my own needs, and every time I don’t love myself, I suffer. And from that suffering place, I judge others, I get angry, I get frustrated, I doubt my own capacities, my own strengths, my own inner power, my own inner voice, my soul, my spirit.

That’s when fear kicks in! That’s when the mind starts to rule my life. That’s when the mind kicks the heart out, and runs over it, shutting its voice, its truth, its wisdom. True Wisdom and True Love live only in the heart, not in the mind!

How can I think anyone else is more important than me, if we are all connected? We are not separate!

It all begins with me and in me!

I need to be the change I want to see in the world, and that’s why I am 100% committed to loving myself, cherishing myself and honouring myself, and that means loving myself unconditionally, with both the shadow and light that live within me.

Fully committed to loving myself so that I can love others, I went to buy the carrier oil and all it took was 5 minutes of my time and 1,14 euros.

What about you? Have you loved yourself today?

Let me know in the comments if this resonates with you at any point. I would love to read it!

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Life After Destroying A Limiting Belief

I'm having a BOLDNESS HANGOVER today!

This is LIFE after DESTROYING a LIMITING BELIEF!

Have you ever done something totally out of anything you would ever imagine you could do, and then afterwards you go and think "I can't believe what I just did!"? Well, that's me today!

For you to understand why this was so out of what I thought was possible for me to do, last April I went to London to one of Tony Robbins' events called Unleash the Power Within (UPW), and there we worked around 2 or 3 limiting beliefs.

Well, one of those limiting beliefs was — "Nothing of what I say has any value".

I need to let you know that I needed to check the handbook of the event because an exercise TR does (I'll tell you this story some other time!), just destroyed it completely, and I couldn't access it in my brain.

Well, guess what? Life does change when you destroy your limiting beliefs! Yesterday evening I was on a webinar being interviewed by a fellow firewalker Ben Colley, with the purpose to inspire other women. Yesterday I SPOKE UP and there were people who wanted to listen to me and my story. I am now free!

And I also realise now that our story is not ours to keep, otherwise it won't serve anyone in this world.

It was quite a raw, open and authentic interview!

Just know and be certain that once a limiting belief is destroyed, your LIFE WILL NEVER BE THE SAME AGAIN! 

Tony Robbins, Amen!

BE AUTHENTIC! 

You can watch the interview here