Well, the holidays are gaining on us fast and the stress of trying to do all that needs doing before, during and after can leave us holding onto too much, while forgetting to be grateful for much else.

Maybe you’re holding onto a past resentment or two about a particular family member that you will hopefully avoid sitting next to at Thanksgiving Dinner or during Hanukkah or Christmas Dinner. Those holidays are just around the corner too.

Perhaps that sense of overwhelm with too much to do and too little time to get ‘er done is beginning to take over your thoughts and you’re already feeling that sense of dread building.
Here are a few tips to let go and give thanks instead.

First, when you notice the emotion of overwhelm or dread, stop and breathe. Yes, intentional deep breathing can have an instant impact on our psyche.
Here’s how to do it.

1. Take three of the deepest breaths you have ever taken.
2. When you can’t inhale any more air/oxygen, hold it at the top for just a second or two.
3. Exhale each breath slowly.
4. Do this three times.
5. Try it now so you know what I’m talking about.
6. What did you notice? A sense of calm? Peace? Slowing down of your heart rate? Did you notice a change in where your shoulders are now? Still up by your ears, or back to where they are meant to be, shoulder height?

Second, be grateful for something general, in the moment, after you do the breathing exercise.

• You could be grateful for the fact that you remembered to breathe at that moment.
• You could be grateful for the blue sky, or grey sky or dark sky.
• You could be grateful for the wonderful relationships you have with (a specific friend/family member/animal).
• You may choose to be grateful for your favorite sports team winning a game or being with your children on this day.

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Keep it general, having nothing to do with any of the holidays. Simply find gratitude for your eyes being able to read this. Your ears for hearing someone say I love you. Get me?
Gratitude goes a long way in helping us improve our thoughts and feelings around what can be a challenging time for many.
This Thanksgiving season, however, you now have a tool to help get you through any stress or overwhelm.

Gobble! Gobble!

What if when you woke up you decided “today is going to be a really good day”?

What if today you choose to believe that “others, when they show up today will show you their excellence?”

What if today you believe “things are always working out for me”?

How might your life be different if you could find a more positive way to BE with yourself today?

Do we have to “allow” the traffic, or the significant other, or children, or co-worker, or project, or boss, or weather, or finances, or responsibilities, or commitments, or...or...or...have such a negative impact on us? Can we choose to believe that today will be different?

The good news or bad news, depending on your perspective and thoughts around this idea, is that YOU CAN if you think you can and YOU CAN’T if you think you can’t. Either way, you’ll be right.

So, I ask you...do you have the power within to think more positive thoughts that could shift your feelings and therefore shift your beliefs so your life can take on some more positive ways of being with you today?

Thanks for reading and please feel free to leave a comment or forward this to someone you think may benefit from knowing what else is possible.

​Jenn was 51 years old. Living in Alewife, Massachusetts, her company was acquired, again and she was frustrated. Another happy face was going to be needed when meeting her new boss, who was two decades her junior. Jenn was sick and tired of being treated like someone who didn't know what they were doing, although she was a long-term, successful, seasoned employee.
Jenn often came home tired and complaining to her husband, Steve, about how disgruntled she felt and unappreciated. Job dissatisfaction had been going on for a while now, and she was at her wit's end. Even her two high school-aged children noticed her unhappiness with work, which left her depleted at home.
The company even dared to take some of her best clients and give them to the newer, younger account executives to help them feel more confident when they started with the company. How much more was she going to have to take?

• Have you ever been in a situation like this?
• Now that you are in your forties or older, do you see where your job is going?
• Do you still feel relevant?
• Are you so experienced that you're just going through the motions, or are you still passionately loving your job?

Jenn always enjoyed the relationships she had developed over the years with many of her clients. She loved solving their problems and coming up with solutions. Her job felt like a vast puzzle she got to solve daily for her customers.
Yet, the writing was on the wall that more change is a-comin', and it was time to do something else. But what? Jenn was scared. How would she help put her kids through college and save for retirement? What else was Jenn going to do at this stage in life? She had convinced herself that she could push through the challenges, yet after five years of driving what felt like a boulder up a mountain, Jenn knew she had to do something else.
Then she met with Elise, who had used a coach to help her through her job challenges in recent years. Elise found courage through the coaching process in knowing that she could create a new and different pathway for herself at the ripe age of 52, and so she embarked on a new adventure doing something completely fresh with the help of her coach.
Jenn wanted the same courage and confidence she heard from Elise, and she wanted to know how her coach might help her too. Jenn then reached out to the coach.
The coach offered an exploratory, confidential coaching experience that would quickly to put any reservations Jenn had to rest. Jenn would come to understand more clearly what her next step was and confidently envision a new future self, and what she wanted for this next chapter of her life. Jenn hired the coach.
As they worked together, Jenn discovered her confident self again and got some much-needed downtime to re-energize. She boldly turned in her resignation. As she and her coach worked through their action plan, Jenn realized she had put her own needs on the back burner of her life.
Fast forward, and Jenn has a new job working for a company and a boss that appreciate what she brings to the table; sage wisdom and experience.

​69% of marriages have a perpetual problem that is never going away, says author John Gottman. The financial and emotional costs don’t end just because your marriage does. If your divorce is ugly, so will dealing with your partner be as time moves forward. You’ll be forcing your kid(s) to choose between you or your former spouse/partner at weddings, holidays, family gatherings and more if you don’t learn new ways of communicating, even after you’ve split up. And, that ugliness your kids saw growing up doesn’t end there. You’ll either become or try to become the favored parent. Maybe you’ll

• “buy” your kids love like my father, or
• if you’re the more emotional parent, you’ll force your kids to choose the parent that is less emotionally draining on them, or
• they’ll be left to deal with your neediness and is that what you really want?

Did you know many of our communication skills (or lack thereof)often come from what we experienced as kids growing up and what we saw our parents do? It’s often the same form of communication we’ll use in our relationships if we know nothing else. I ask, “How’s that workin’ out for ya?”
Well, the first six months of my 26-year (still) happy marriage came close to ending before it even got started. We were acting like our parents and communicating the only way we knew how, and that included sometimes the good, but mostly the bad and the very ugly.
Growing up, I experienced the wagging finger by my mother toward my father. Then I watched my father stonewalling my mother; sitting there taking it in and saying nothing in return. Talk about escalating an already highly charged “conversation”?! My in-laws had their own ways of communicating and that included name-calling or ignoring each other, which is a form of contempt.
These so-called forms of communication or lack thereof, are simply patterns of unskillful interacting.
Did you ever learn how to communicate and relate to others in school, college or a Catholic Pre-Cana? Maybe to some degree, but usually, we just tried our best to get along with others. Ordinarily, there were no instruction manuals handed out. We just communicate with each other doing what we’ve seen or experienced growing up. Period. And, if you have been to therapy or marriage counseling, then good for you!
Now, there are Relationship Coaches, and I am one of them.
I recently completed a high-level Relationship Systems Coach Training and I am further equipped with more great coaching tools to help couples whose relationship is in stress. Perhaps you’re no longer communicating like you once did or you have financial concerns, job stress, lack of intimacy, not on the same page with how to raise the kids, or dealing with your mother-in-law, or ex and much more.
Coaching couples means a lot to me, personally, because it took me decades to get over the divorce of my parents when I was 20 years old. How did I deal with it? The only way I knew how at the time: I got married myself, just to escape the fallout because I felt my entire childhood had been a lie.
Although my first marriage would only last 18 months and feels like a lifetime ago, this was the way you handled things, or you did something else like have an affair or you ran from the relationship, as in separation and divorce. You learned how not to commit. You learned you didn’t want to make someone else happy (and that’s not a thing you can do anyway, but that’s another article for another time!). And, if you’re trying to figure out the math, no, I didn’t go to college at the time because education wasn’t valued by my mother (although my father was a college grad) hence the story ‘higher education is not necessary’. Are you starting to see any patterns you’re guilty of in your own relationships?
Fast forward twelve years and I’m now in a second marriage. The help of a few therapists, which was the only modality available then, proved great for our marriage. Yet, our relationship got even better when my husband participated in this same Relationship Coach training before me, at least a decade ago. Those tools and new ways of communicating changed our relationship for the good and how we communicate with each other. You see when one partner starts to change, the other either goes along or chooses something different.
Might Relationship Coaching be the answer to your marriage? I offer a 60-minute complimentary coaching call for couples to experience new tools right away, while we determine if I can help.
Check out my website for more information.

This series of BLOG’s were designed to help you understand more about confidence, and more importantly, help you become aware of the factors and situations that influence your confidence.
Remember, the route to confidence is not a sprint. Instead, consistently take small steps to reclaim the natural confidence you were born with, and strengthen your situational confidence, and you’ll feel your MOJO rise!
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You don’t have to wait for a summer day, a new client, a call from a “certain someone” or praise for a job well done. Simply visualize yourself as That Girl or That Guy. See yourself managing whatever curve balls life might throw your way. See yourself competent, capable, and confident. Feel the energy of what is now possible. When you do that, don’t be surprised if you suddenly have a lift in your spirits, a smile on your face and a bounce to your step as people see you walking down the street and say:

“I like his MOJO!”
or
“Look at her, she’s got MOJO!”

As you may recall, last week, in my newsletter, I shared the five common situational confidences.

Hopefully by now, you have a better sense of what causes your confidence to go up and down like a roller coaster. You can be on the top one minute, and feel your confidence sink the next.
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To stay more even-keeled, think of confidence like a bank account. You want to make regular deposits into your confidence bank, so you can stay positive when people and situations make withdrawals on your confidence.

The key to having a more sustained level of confidence is to make more deposits. The ways you can make deposits into your confidence bank account are numerous. Here are a few you might try:

• Project a positive presence. This goes beyond good grooming (but does include good grooming). A positive presence is projected through good posture, a smiling face, and a quick and light step. If you don’t believe this, then try this experiment:
  • Walk into a convenience store with slumped shoulders, eyes diverted, feet slow. Pay attention to how people react to you – if they even react at all. You may feel that you are invisible.
  • Now walk into a convenience store with a positive presence – good posture, light step, smiling face. Hold the door for someone. Look them in the eye and say “hello”. Now, how do people respond to you?

One of the take-aways from this experiment is this: When you project a positive presence, most people respond to you in a positive way. That in turn gives your confidence a boost. When you have a bland or negative presence, most people ignore you – and that in turn diminishes your confidence.

• Make a list of things you like about yourself. It’s okay to be a little egotistical here. Include in this list the positive things your friends and family say about you. Not only is it important to like yourself, it helps to be aware of your positive attributes. Keep the list and refer to it prior to going into situations that seem intimidating. You will be reminded that you have value!
• Pay attention to your self-talk. Is it negative? Critical? Blaming? Hurtful? If so, switch the language to positive comments. You have wonderful qualities and you also have some “needs improvements”. Yes, you may be disorganized at times AND you also do wonderful things for other people. You are a blend of your positive traits, sprinkled in with a few areas that may “need improvement”. Seek self-acceptance, not perfection.
• Recognize your mistakes for what they are. Most mistakes can be defined as mistakes of ambition. This means that you are trying something new, solving a problem, working too hard, or trying to do more than you are actually capable of accomplishing given your resources. You will make mistakes. And when you do, take responsibility. Raise your hand and say, “I goofed.” Then, seek a solution, learn your lesson, and move on.
• Be supportive of others. People who are overly self-critical are usually critical of others. When you put yourself in the position of helping, not judging, you will find that you judge yourself less.

Confidence can be developed. Sure – it seems that some people were born with a leg up in life. We all know people who started life in a supportive, nurturing family that provided the opportunities for them to get ahead. But many, many successful people have had to pull themselves up by their boot straps and go it alone. They took responsibility for their lives and you can too.

Stay tuned for the final week: Is confidence a sprint or a marathon?