your.expanded.life

2023 word of the year: FREE 🦋 ✨

Tell me what you want to be free to recieve this year in a DM.

I set out in 2023 knowing I wanted to do another via ferrata. A via ferrata, or iron path, is a manmade path of iron rungs used to navigate rock face. I’d done my first in Telluride several years ago.

My vision board for 2023 includes a picture of a woman rope climbing a mountain that represents my desire. I imagined I could get to the closest one in West Virginia.

I didn’t get there, but I got something better.

A close adventure friend invited me to join a dream trip to Acadia National Park in Maine that she had crafted during COVID. The trip included summiting the highest peak in the state called Katahdin.

This thrilling trip included new exploration, daring challenge, days of connection & making memories & making new acquaintances, ocean kayaking at sunset, bike rides through Acadia, and — you might have guessed— some mini hikes outfitted with iron rungs!

It was such a great reminder that what we want does not always come in the ways we expect. Whether it is the path out of a job we do not enjoy, a person we want to hold onto for a specific role in our lives, the way support might show up, or a health outcome we so fervently pray for.

Sometimes we cannot even imagine the best that is in store for us when we are willing to hold the picture of what we want loosely and trust the direction and God as the ultimate provider more than the exact vision.

I am a person who ______. You decide.

Communication is art.

𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐢𝐬 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐯𝐢𝐞𝐰 𝐨𝐟 𝐦𝐞𝐧 𝐥𝐢𝐤𝐞?

You can do a quick test on your own to find out. Close your eyes and think of the first 3 adjectives that come to mind about men.

Are they positive?

What I saw this past weekend on an early Saturday coffee walk was nothing short of this masculine quality: devotion.

I cannot count how many young couples I saw, together, pushing strollers. I even saw men alone pushing strollers--I imagined they were giving their wives much needed breaks. You could see the devotion in the body language of these men.

Men will pour devotion out for those they love when they are ready and inspired to do so. Do you believe there are good men who are capable of this?

Whatever you believe you are going to find more of.

If you struggle with seeing men in a positive way, you are going to have a hard time attracting your ideal relationship.

If this is you, DM me your three adjectives and I can help.

I remember a few years ago, I was very stressed out by all I had going on, and there were some good things!

A friend asked what was happening at the gym. Truthfully, I felt weak. 

That is when he taught me that our emotional and physical energy draw from the same bank account -- our central nervous system (CNS) load.

He immediately recommended that I take a week off training or at least significantly reduce training. --What a gift that was!

A few years later after implementing what I now teach in my coaching programs, I had one of the best *scaled* workouts of my life last night even though I would say I am currently under stress.

This makes me feel so happy! In my personal life, I went from:

❌ Unchanneled go-go-go energy
❌ Lack of acknowledging personal limits
❌ Crash and burn experiences
❌ Limited outlets for working through challenging emotions

To this:

🍒Recognizing stress and making preemptive decisions to slow things down and pull energy back from areas that are not most important
🍒 Reducing workouts and intensity and really listening to what my has to give body with self-compassion
🍒 More capacity to stay in activities that matter most without the highs and lows 
🍒 Practices for feeling through my emotions to keep them from accumulating

It feels so freeing!

So here I am again with a few stressors but instead of hitting a wall, stopping, and waiting for the pieces to come back together, I am practicing moderation and protecting my energy.

Maybe others know how to do this as second nature. For me, I had to learn it, and I know firsthand that some of you do too.

If learning how to scale back to stay in the game resonates for you, but it’s a “muscle” you still need to work, drop a comment below.

𝔽𝕚𝕘𝕙𝕥𝕚𝕟𝕘 𝕣𝕖𝕒𝕝𝕚𝕥𝕪 𝕤𝕥𝕒𝕝𝕝𝕤 𝕘𝕣𝕠𝕨𝕥𝕙

If you want to stall your growth... fight, numb, and avoid your own reality. It is a 100% guaranteed success plan.

🧚🏻‍♀️Stay way too busy.
🧚🏻‍♀️Neglect sleep.
🧚🏻‍♀️Drink.
🧚🏻‍♀️Pay attention to what everyone else is doing.
🧚🏻‍♀️Give hours to social media or other media.
🧚🏻‍♀️Think only on positive things instead of learning to spend some honest time sitting in and moving through your own pain, disappointment, or grief.
🧚🏻‍♀️Dive into spiritual platitudes and do everything the church says instead of learning life skills to authentically deal with your stuff with those who really see you and have know-how to help.
🧚🏻‍♀️Spend time only with those who think and act just like you.

There are so many ways to not change :)

But, is that really what you want? Is that what your heart is really asking for?

Or, are you ready to try something new and different?

The irony is that the most effective key to unlocking change is to fully accept your reality and all that comes with it in places of safety and support.

It is not for the faint of heart, but I promise you it is oh so good.

Food for thought Friday 🤩

So many of the answers we need lie within us, and here at Your Expanded Life we develop practices for going within to find them.

Food for thought Friday 🤩

So many of our answers lie within, and we develop practices at Your Expanded Life to go there for them.

𝕋𝕙𝕚𝕤 𝕚𝕤 𝕞𝕪 𝕧𝕖𝕣𝕤𝕚𝕠𝕟 𝕠𝕗 𝟜𝟘.

I've been sitting on this post for a while now. There is so much tied up in it.

My first clients came to me because this transformation created a wrinkle in their universe.

"This is what 40 is like" is what they were being told by others. They were being encouraged to settle into bodies they did not resonate with.

What you believe makes all the difference.

This transformation --that happened in 90 days! --started for me about a year prior when I saw my first limiting belief.

I had an abundant life by all measures, but there were things I wanted that had not come to pass. And, 40 was approaching quickly.

I felt fear about the future.
I had no vision past 40.
I saw patterns in relationships, but did not have the solutions to break free yet.
I had support but unresolved childhood trauma was keeping me from fully experiencing it.
Skills that previously led to personal and work success were not what I needed to move forward.

There I was in Iceland with my adventure friends, off grid (no cell phone), and I decided I was making myself crazy with what I was choosing to believe.

And, I finally saw the power of changing was my choice. I needed to create a new truth. I needed new belief.

I'm a creative, problem solving luminary who is passionately driven to lift others up. I have made a career of sourcing unique information into new pictures to create plans and ways forward for career clients. So, I decided to do the same thing for myself.

Now I take what I learned and go deep with my coaching clients. We challenge belief and patterns that perpetuate the same results. We use embodiment techniques to make this change faster and permanent.

Mind over matter is better than nothing. But, I believe felt change and mind / body integration is a firmer foundation. This is how peace in stillness is achieved versus needing to constantly ride an achievement high or numb to cope.

I settle for nothing less.

If you are curious about unlocking sticky patterns in relationships or fitness and want to take an integrated approach, DM me "I'm curious". I will take it from there.

𝕊𝕙𝕒𝕞𝕖 𝕚𝕤 𝕒 𝕕𝕚𝕣𝕥𝕪 𝕓*𝕥𝕔𝕙.

One of my closest friends says this. It makes me laugh, and it's true.

As high performers, we feed off the rush of completion, off meeting the goal, off achievement.

Yet, we can find ourselves fixating on what is not perfect and miss the good. Or, we waste our time and attention on the wrong pursuits by not being clear on what we want.

This is the exact goal of Shame...to distract us from what is really good and to waste energy.

Shame's goal is to stall, misdirect, and drain energy from your good goals and purpose.

One question you can ask yourself when you find yourself fixated on "mistakes" or expending energy sideways instead of towards your true desires is..

"What other good thing would I be focused on or doing if I let this go?"

We are here for change and to find off ramps from our patterns to create breakthroughs in health and love using an embodied approach.

Drop a 🔥 below if you are in the fight.