Once again I have been remiss about publishing to this blog. Please scan through the history to see if any former titles resonate with you right now. My 2017 intention is to write more frequently. Now that I am clean, I can write with a pure mind and focus :)

It's been an interesting, transformative few months for me and I have moved along in my journey at an amazing pace. What happened to me was that I reached a point of complete and total surrender and realized that in order to achieve what I wanted I had to get out of my own way and allow things to happen the way they were supposed to happen and not in a shape or form that I was expecting them to happen.  I started to change my outlook from "what do I want" to "how do I want to feel".  So for example, it is less about having millions of people sign up for my retreats and tons of money pouring in from all the change I was facilitating in the world and it is more about "I want to feel serene and confident. I want to have creativity, love and joy in all of my affairs.  I want to feel like my vibration is high and I am loving all people that I have the ability to touch each and every day. I want to be the change I want to see in the world".  Once I made this slight shift in thinking about my reality, I stopped focusing on outcome and started focusing on the quality with which I did everything.  I started to be more discerning in the things I said yes to as well as the things I said no to.  I spend my time on those activities that feed my soul and strengthen my vibration. Not surprising, more of what I want and need is showing up with much greater ease. I always ask my client to think about their vision - what do they want to create.  I think there needs to be a shift in this question to "how do you want to feel?"  and then "what next right step will lead you closer to feeling this way? "   This clarity takes a lot of the pressure off of getting it right and enables you to really tune in to what your true desires are.  

I welcome you all to try it - You might come up with different answers than you do previously.  I wish you all love, light and serenity in 2017.

Much love,
Carrie 

In previous posts, I have discussed avoiding negative people from your life but there are many more things that can be done to help you eliminate negativity and set you on a path towards your personal truth and obtaining serenity in your life.   Think about the things you view and consume like media, news, pictures, Facebook posts, etc.   How many of them contribute to the negative emotions that will rest in your energy and settle into your energetic vibration  - what you think, view, consume will become your reality so any of these negative elements will lead to a negative output.   Start thinking about how you can erase this negativity from your life.  I blocked all Facebook friends who consistently posted messages of hate or negativity.  This is a start.  

A dear friend recently went through a painful divorce.  During the process, he saved many sarcastic, ironic and negative pictures, memes, etc.   As part of his recovery from this life stage, he went through his photo cache and deleted anything negative.   I asked him to share what the process meant to him and this is what he shared (shared with his permission of course)....

most negative/scathing/hurtful some unimportant/useless
approximately 400 when i was done; saved out of pain/anger/grief/hatred/devastation/need to blame me and her

looking at/reading them was like a snapshot of recent history printed on a mirror. each representing me/my feelings/beliefs about the end of my marriage.

as each image was removed, the mirror cracked. as the final image disappeared, the mirror i was holding shattered leaving protruding shards. removing the pictures from the deleted images album was akin to pulling out each piece of shattered mirror one at a time. a twinge of pain connected to each shard.
the distress subsided rapidly as the memory and reason of each faded. not completely gone, but a now distant reminder of the loss i have learned from. The feelings will always be a part of me, no longer in anger or disappointment, but as lessons to be cherished for the growth they spurred.

The weight of carrying them with me lifted, freeing me to let go of the negativity they harbored. Promoting the actualization of true forgiveness for blame i have placed on myself as well as my ex. Immediate and complete, no, but allowing me to continue more easily on my path.

We can all learn from this reflection and this exercise.  Good luck with it and I would love to hear your reflections on your process.

with love....
Carrie

Happy summer everyone!  I am back!   The past 60 days have been miraculous - I have been deep in a state of metamorphosis and change....Back in May I was waffling with my identify - should I go back to a safe job, or should I take the plunge and pour all of my energy into creating this business?  During this time, I was offered (and turned down) very lucrative job opportunities, tweaked my business strategy a few times, was truly tested about which path I wanted to take...and finally settled down into where I am know.  I have total clarity about the business I am creating and my life purpose - Enliven, LLC's purpose is to create experiences that will cause you to transform.   What I have realized, is that if you are in a state of total stress or suffering, you cannot try to create  change from this place - Change can only occur when your life has clarity, where you have an inner peace about who you are and the change you want to make.   The purpose of my business is to provide the experiences that will enable people to explore and hopefully find this.   Truth becomes clearer when you are away from your day to day stressers, with other people, having fun, trying new things and communing in nature.  All  of the experiences created by Enliven will incorporate these elements.   Whether it's a day, a weekend, or a week, you will have the opportunity to do something active outdoors, meet amazing people and certainly have a lot of fun.     So keep checking back to my website.  There will be a dozen new experiences added here in the next 30-60 days.  I am confident that you will find an experience that appeals to you and will draw you closer to transformation.   xo

I am on an airplane heading home from San Jose, CA following the wedding of a dear friend of mine.  It was such an amazing event.  This couple was a bit "older" than many for their first wedding and the benefit of this is how much the event truly reflected who they are and their special relationship.  I danced, I ate well, I met wonderful people including some new friends, I got to go with a dear friend of mine and spend special time with her and best of all, I got to show up for my dear friends'  special event.   It was truly a happy time!I was honored to be a guest and to have even been acknowledged by the groom who claimed in his vows to "never impede the bride's flow" which apparently was a request by the bride following one of my retreats!!!  The day after the wedding was a super fun day of rafting and a wonderful bbq and better than all of that, an opportunity to hang out with the bride and groom in a much more relaxed manner. 

I left the river and went to San Jose for the night before this flight and had an opportunity to reflect on the entire experience.   There were a hundred reasons why I should not have gone to this wedding - it was a long flight, it's the end of the kids' school year and I missed some activities, it was expensive, logistics were challenging as it involved plains, trains, automobiles, rafts....  

Every opportunity gives us a chance to evaluate trade offs like this.  There are reasons to do it and reasons not to.   When deciding whether or not I wanted to go, I looked at why I would go.  The bride and groom have been amazing friends to me for many years.   We have laughed and cried together and traveled together.  Whenever I asked them to show up, they did.   I had no choice - I had to show up for them.   Also, traveling like this always leads to some kind of adventure and always some good memories.

I think many enjoyable things in life are kind of like this - they involve some kind of trade off and even stress in order to experience the pleasure.   I invite you all to say yes a little bit more often in your life and show up for the people that matter in your life!    I promise you it will greatly enhance the richness of your life and the joy will always outshine the hardships.  

We finally have some gorgeous weather here in the Northeast.  Yesterday was 88 degrees and I was desperate to be out in nature and be near water.   There is nothing like unplugging, using your body, and being in nature to nourish the soul and if you don't believe me, you should try it!    I was hiking with a friend and we had a 3-4 hour window so we decided to hike a small mountain next to a local lake.  This is really a gem of the community I live in as nobody would expect a hike to gorgeous views here.  As expected, the path was virtually empty and we had it to ourselves.   

There was a map to the trails at the parking lot but much of the connecting trails and higher levels were cut off of the map.  It's a small park and we had time to risk it so we decided to wing it a bit.  We took a marked trail up midway and found a second trail to the left, that seemed to go up.  The other trail went back down to the lake.  We took the trail to the left but discovered very soon into it that the markers fell away.    Being reasonably intelligent, worldly hikers, we decided to keep winging it and figured if we kept going up, we ultimately would find a summit.    To make a long story (and hike) short, we hiked in very rough terrain for about 90 minutes without any summit or any trail markers at all.  Defeated, we decided to head back down and connect up with the original path.     As soon as we found the original path, however, we found a new set of markers leading to the "overlook path"....This seemed promising!   We only had one hour left at this point so we took this trail with a pretty aggressive pace.  This trail was straight up hill, rocky, branchy and buggy!     We were sweating, breathless and pretty darn tired.   When you reach this point on a hike, it's easy to throw in the towel and head down hill right?    Well, we persevered.   We followed blue marker after blue marker and suddenly, there was a clearing ahead and it was possible to glimpse a bit of a lake in the distance.     We turned a corner, climbed a final rock and BAM!  there was the vista - just when we thought we couldn't go any further or that it could possibly be there.   Here is what we were able to view:

PIt truly was awe inspiring.  The weather was perfect, there was a slight breeze, it was completely silent and there were hawks circling right above us.  This provided a perfect venue for a short but powerful meditation and honestly, I can't remember the last time I felt such gratitude.  

What struck me in that moment, is that this hike was exactly a metaphor for what life feels like sometimes.   You work, and work and work.  You are tired, stressed, feeling like you want to give up and then suddenly, there it is - the jewel, the gift, the payoff, the vista.    Please keep persevering for those payoffs in life - They are always worth it!    

So I've been sick and can't believe how much it took out of me.  Sorry it's been a while since I have written.  While sick I finally got around to reading Sheryl Sandberg's book "Lean In".   Sheryl and I are about the same age, she graduated Harvard Business School one year after I graduated Wharton Business School.   She is COO of Facebook and I recently left as director of a company.   Her concept of women needing to "lean in" rings so truthfully for me.   I have been called aggressive, ambitious and out spoken and none of these were complements when said.  Since I left my last company, many employees have told me that "the place hasn't made sense since I left".   So interesting as my views, opinions and roles were not valued when I was an employee there.   Women do need to band together, women do need to lean in to the conversation and probably most importantly, we need the men in our homes and our corporations to get on board with this concept.  I have the good fortune of raising boys.   These boys will enter the world wanting the balance we women crave - a rewarding career, a happy home, and the ability to make a difference in our communities and our world.  This is how change happens - one person at a time.   So what are you doing to "lean in"?   

So many of my regular readers don't know my personal story.   I left a very difficult, toxic corporate job in October of 2016 without a sense of what I was going to do to pay my mortgage or to feed my children.   In hindsight, this event threw me into a journey of self discovery unlike any I have experienced in my life so far.   I spent the first two months "recovering".  I did little more than sleep, meditate and practice yoga.  I tried to get as silent as I possibly could so that I could listen to my intuition and carve out a path that made some sense to me for my life.  I have always been successful in my career so this experience had rocked me to my core.   As January came, I realized my calling was to take all of my personal and professional learning and start Enliven Retreats.   I feel a strong calling to help other people find the same kind of transformation and serenity that I have found in my life.  I have spent considerable time developing a tried and true methodology that I use with my clients to aid them in finding sustainable transformation.  I do this individually and with groups on retreats to exotic places.  It is the most rewarding job I have ever had and I feel truly blessed each and every day and honored with every person that I get to help.

In addition to launching this business, I picked up many new hobbies and activities:  I began practicing Tae Kwon Do, doing Zumba, strength training, studying "Mussar" with amazing local educators, got very active in my spiritual support group, jumped into cooking, started writing a blog and became a super present, engaged parent.   I also have become very clear on my truth and who I am as a person and have been very true to this each and every day.

At Tae Kwon Do today, I was profoundly struck by the student creed that we utter each and every class: "I have dedicated my life to attaining the highest level of self awareness through knowledge in the mind, honesty in the heart and strength in the body".  Today I discovered that although I had, in fact, accomplished all that I mentioned above in the past few weeks, what I really have been doing is dedicating my life in this fashion.  Every single pursuit I have taken on is to enhance my self awareness either through knowledge, honesty or strength.   Whatever I decide to pursue next be it leading more retreats, engaging in more relationships or perhaps even working for someone else, I am super clear that this will be a life long pursuit.   I look forward to continuing this pursuit and supporting others in  theirs.  

On the day after Mother's Day, I thought it might be nice to reflect on my Mother's Day as well as the one I observed for so many people.  

So let me start by saying that Mother's Day is always a bit hard for me as I lost my mother about 3 years ago.   I didn't have that kind of mother that the Hallmark cards were made for.  My sister and I like to say that my mom had her own "special brand of love".   That's a nice way of saying that she tried the best that she could and loved us in the only way that she knew how.  It's just unfortunate that her way was not the Hallmark way.    We spent Mother's Days as kids making sure we bought the perfect cards, the perfect gifts and that we behaved perfectly.   I think you get the picture.   Now in hindsight and in memory, I like to reflect on my mom with significant gratitude.   Sometimes we learn good parenting skills by good roll modeling and sometimes we do from omission, or maybe the opposite of good.   In any case, I am the mother that I am because of the mother that I had and for that, I am infinitely grateful.   Also, whatever your relationship is with your mother, she did give you life, so for that, be grateful.    It was beautiful to see the outpouring of love for mothers of all generations in social media all weekend - the pictures, memories and messages were awe inspiring.   Mothers deserve this as we all work so hard so that was beautiful to see.   

My day was quite beautiful.  My children were with their father so I was able to go to a Zumba class in the am and then have coffee with a girlfriend to celebrate our motherhood.   I then picked up my kids and we had a lovely brunch and a great visit to the dog park with my fur baby.   They showered me with love and cards and homemade presents and we had a great time.

I delivered them back to their father and made dinner for two of my best girlfriends.  We are all single moms so it was very fun to be able to celebrate together and be grateful to our exes who have to behave like moms so much of the time!    We had an amazing time talking about our paths, our growth and our parenting journeys.  I am so blessed by the people in my life!

I called my eldest to say goodnight and he ended the call by saying "Thanks for being the best mom ever".....and yep, my life is complete.

I hope that you had a wonderful mother's day and/or did something nice for the moms in your life.   Please feel free to tell me about it :)   

It's been a busy week and a somewhat stressful one at that.  I am a person that makes decisions very easily and lately this has been really hard for me.  I have struggled with listening to my intuition and knowing which path is the right one.   I have found that when I get twisted around the axle in this way, the best thing I can do to get out of my own way is to be of service to others.   This act will lift you out of a place of ego and provide a clarity that I otherwise couldn't find.   There are many ways to be of service - you can volunteer, you can hold the door for people during the day, you can visit a senior citizen center and bring books or baked goods.  The idea is to just stop thinking about yourself and be for other people.  It's like medicine.    I taught a  yoga class tonight and now I have crystal clarity!!!  Let me know what you end up doing! 

So my theme for the past few weeks has been simplicity - what can I do in my life to simplify.   The definition of simplicity for my personal practice is as follows:  "Simplicity is assessing what is necessary in life and what is excessive. By slimming down our appetites, possessions, and our desires, we can begin to experience the riches of a simple life."    What this practice has afforded me is to assess my life from a far more pragmatic perspective.  I had a great realization the other night that when I can truthfully say that "I have everything I need and nothing that I don't" then I have achieved the level of simplicity I seek in my life.   

I have looked at this in all areas of my life:  possessions, food, clothing, self care - and have tried to scale everything back to exactly what I need.  Tremendous peace and satisfaction comes from saying "I have everything I need and nothing that I don't".    Give it a try and let me know how it feels.