The Third Kind of Secret…

There are secrets that make our life exciting and are full of positive energy, such as waiting to surprise someone with the perfect gift.

There are secrets we keep out of necessity; secrets we aren’t ready to share with the world because they’re too painful to talk about or we fear we’ll be judged by others if they’re brought out into the open.

The third kind of secret is the secret we keep from ourselves; the things we can’t or won’t face or admit to ourselves that keep us prisoner in our own mind.  The third kind of secret can be the most damaging to our mental, physical and spiritual well-being. 

The third kind of secret stays with us because of something we aren’t yet ready to face (addictions, the REAL relationship between you and your mother, an abusive spouse, how you really feel about your boss/job, your level of self-worth, etc.)

We keep the third type of secret because we aren’t ready to face the reality of our situation, or we have a belief that, “that’s just the way life is so I’d better suck it up and get stronger or I’ll fall apart.”

The third kind of secret is often the most damaging, can be kept for years (or our whole life) unless we’re open to asking ourselves one question: “Is that true, or is it simply what I’ve always believed to be true based on what I was taught and who my teachers were?”

Once you ask yourself this question (and are open to the answers), the third kind of secret will have little or no power over you.  You have the power to eliminate any secret based on a limiting belief, but first, you must admit the secret exists.

How do we begin to dig up long buried secrets that we buried out of fear, shame, guilt or the lack of knowledge that anything that brings on a feeling of negativity is never a burden we’re required to carry?

You can begin to let go of the negative energy surrounding the third kind of secret by asking yourself these 4 questions:

1.  What feeling, or belief can I let go of right now?
2.  What feeling, or belief will I let go of right now?
3.  What feeling, or belief do I need to hold onto for just a little while longer?
4.  How will I celebrate the fact that I have let go of the feelings or beliefs that were the cause of my negative beliefs?

The third kind of secret disempowers you.  The fear of what “might” happen is always worse than what actually does.

Life Is All About Choices

Nancy Mueller ~ Empowerment Sensei for Women

When You’re Really Afraid

I remember wanting to learn karate as early as the 6^th grade.  I thought if I could fight like Bruce Lee; no one would ever take advantage of me again.

It wasn’t until I was in my 30’s that I chose to become a student, competitor and teacher of the Martial Arts.  My reason for wanting to study was strong; I was sick and tired of being afraid; I wanted to learn to fight.

In his book titled, The Gift of Fear, Gavin de Becker states: “Most men fear getting laughed at or humiliated by a romantic prospect while most women fear rape and death.”

I was tired of being afraid of the man who took advantage of my childhood innocence.  I was sick and tired of work environments where I had to look the other way or pretend that comments didn’t bother me. 

Women and girls should never have to learn to fight just to feel safe in their homes, relationships, jobs and daily routines.  I was angry that my childhood innocence was robbed from me. I was angry that the people who were supposed to be there to protect me were the people I needed protection from.  I was angry that I was married to a person whose temper I did not trust. I was angry because I saw myself as a victim.  I was angry that I had to work alongside men who did not know how to think before they spoke or had very little regard for women.  Most of all, I was angry at myself for keeping quiet.

So, I learned to speak up.  I learned to stop keeping quiet.  I began my Martial Arts training because I wanted to learn to fight; I stayed because I learned how to fight so I didn't have to fight.

When you embrace the philosophies behind the Martial Arts, you travel a path of awareness and an understanding of self.  The journey from white belt to black belt includes taking 100% responsibility for every single one of your choices and to face your toughest opponent; the person in your mirror.  The opponent in our mirror is often our harshest critic and seldom shows compassion or love.  Learn to love her, she is amazing!

Every single woman has an inner warrior, just waiting to be unleashed.  Not because we are here to fight, but because we have an opportunity to show the world just how powerful the divine feminine is. 

As women support other women, stop victim shaming, stop judging and stop trying to prove our value by trying to take another person’s value from them; this is how we honor who we are as women.

 

As we stand behind every woman who has the courage to speak out; regardless of how she shares her story, she will gain strength because she knows she’s being heard.  When we’re angry, hurt, ashamed, fearful, resentful or vengeful, our story is often told from those same emotions. 

To all my sisters who have a story to tell, you are a woman of inner strength.  Share your story.  Speak your truth, no matter how much your knees wobble or your voice shakes.  Share passionately without maliciousness and your message will inspire, motive and empower women everywhere.

Nancy Mueller ~ Empowerment Sensei

Is This A Job For A Woman

My sister-in-law, Deneen, was working in her bedroom in preparation for her new bed to be delivered.  I stopped by to see how things were going and decided to help.

We wrapped the old mattress in plastic (per the city’s requirements for pick-up) and started to tackle the frame made of wood and slats covered with fabric.  I suggested we take it apart instead of lugging it out in one piece. Deneen loved the suggestion and said, “that’s a great idea; two heads are better than one!”

We removed the fabric, then started using the hammer to take the slats apart and Deneen asked me to, “go in the other room and get the wedge thing.”  I knew exactly what she was talking about, located the tool and said, “here’s the crow bar.  Why do you think it’s called a crow bar?” To which she answered, “I think it’s called a pry bar!”  We laughed and went back to work.

As we worked, I couldn’t help but think of my brother and how he would have been tackling this project.  I know my brother well, we think alike in many things (my sister-in-law refers to me as “Michael without a penis!).

As Deneen pounded the slats apart and the frame started to come apart, she yelled in a victorious voice, “see… we don’t need a man!”  And we kept going until the frame was completely apart and easy to carry out of the house.

My brother Michael, her husband, was in a motorcycle accident a year and a half ago which left him with severe traumatic brain injury and he has been in a rehabilitation center since the accident.

My sister-in-law has learned just how capable she is without her husband, not out of choice but out of necessity.  More than once she has had to unleash her inner warrior not only to be my brother’s advocate, but to make sure she doesn’t lose herself in the process. 

As we tore up the old carpeting and I was using the pry bar to pry up the strips of wood bordering the room I said, “you’d think someone would invent an easier way to tack carpeting to the floor.”  To which Deneen replied, “yea, if a woman were in charge of that, it would probably be held in place with Velcro!” 

As we laughed and kept working, I started thinking how men and women work differently.  We will use a high heel for a hammer, call a tool a “thingy” and worry about someone showing up at the front door when the house is a mess!  The beautiful thing about the difference between men and women is the fact that there is no right or wrong way to complete a project. 

As women, we owe it to ourselves to stop saying things like, “we can make it in a man’s world” because it isn’t a man’s world.  It’s a world where we all live together.  It’s not about gender, and every woman would be more empowered if she would give herself permission to stop trying to prove she's every bit as capable as a man while trying to discover exactly what she’s capable of. 

As women begin to identify with their inner warrior and realize that she is able to unleash her at will, we will have more women linking arms with like-minded women who finally understand that there is no such thing as competition and that collaboration will take us farther into the future as women of power and strength.  This is the legacy that future generations of women deserve to grow into.

We owe it to ourselves to stop waiting for death, sickness, divorce, injury or loss to finally understand what we’re capable of.  We owe it to ourselves to unleash our inner warrior and encourage other women and girls to do the same.  As we unleash our inner warrior, we empower our sisters around the globe to stand up and shout, “she was in there this whole time. My inner warrior was just waiting for me to release her, so I could live up to my full potential!”

Nancy Mueller ~ Empowerment Sensei

THE LOVE YOU’RE LOOKING FOR…

Since the time I first had an awareness of you, I knew I wanted you to love me! 

From that moment on I begged you, as though I were waiting for a handout, to see my worth, my value and my willingness to do whatever it takes to be worthy of your love.

I’ve made so many mistakes in my life and every single time I made a wrong decision, a poor choice or simply had no idea what I was doing; I knew you saw me as a failure and it hurt so much!

How can I explain how much your love means to me?  To have someone who sees me for who I truly am, flaws and all, is the best feeling in the world!

I ask you, how could I find value in myself when my own mother couldn’t stand the sight of me?  We had so many terrible arguments and confrontations; finally, I got to a point where I just had to stop letting her into my life and I felt so horrible about making that choice.  What kind of daughter won’t even talk to her own mother?  I have to admit that I really doubted your love when I made that decision.

When I got pregnant the first time and my daughter was born, I had no clue about parenting or being a good mom.  I was so scared; because it was important to me to do a good job and be a good mom I really needed your assurance and you always found a way to reassure me I was doing a good job.

Remember that time I quit my job?  That was a rough time; my boss was out of control and blaming everyone in the office for her mistakes and I always seemed to be in her line of fire.  I came home every night, crying, about how much I hated working there.  You always helped me find a way to have the courage to go back the next day and face it all over again.  Finally, I decided to quit and I had so many doubts about myself.  I know that every time you looked at me you thought I was a quitter.  I just couldn’t figure out how to stick it out any longer even though we really counted on that income every week.  If I had only known it would all work out so well and lead to a new career that I love so much, it might have been easier for me to be calmer and given you a reason to love me during that transition.

What about the time when I had to face divorce; twice.  That was such a low period in my life and I really couldn’t find much to be proud of during that time in my life.  Two divorces seemed so wrong.  You told me not to jump into a second marriage so soon but I wouldn’t listen.  I doubted my ability to live life on my own and being married was what I had known for most of my life.  When that second marriage ended, I was so afraid to admit it to you because I really felt the judgement coming from you about the decisions I was making in my life.

Everything I have ever done is because I wanted your love and approval and you have no idea how hard it was for me to admit that I had failed not only once, but twice at being married. 

Now that all of those choices are behind me, I marvel that you’ve been able to look past the choices I’ve made and continue to love me!

Finally, no more begging...

Finally, I'm able to look in the mirror and say, “Thank you for finally loving me!”

On this Choices 4 Women segment, Ildiko Scurr explains The Power of Your Energy #LiveEmpowered

Ildiko Scurr, the Founder of Life Retuning™, a self-empowerment system where Quantum Physics meets ancient Metaphysics shares a process which uses energetic information to remove pessimistic self-talk, self-sabotaging behavior and distressing and crippling emotions.

Letting Go; Getting Rid of The Box

We all have something in our past that we’d like to forget. 

Ø  The office holiday party; when we had too much to drink and co-workers love to remind us about the fun we can’t remember having

Ø  The one-night stand

Ø  The investment we didn’t make

Ø  The job we left

Ø  The job we never accepted

Ø  The traumatic childhood

Ø  When we bombed on stage, in front of EVERYONE

Ø  The person who broke our heart we still find ourselves plotting revenge

Ø  Yelling uncontrollably to our children

Ø  The hurtful words we hurled at our spouse in a fit of anger

Ø  The addiction that has hurt the people we love

Ø  The affair

Ø  The marriage that ended before it got started

Ø  The memory of the emotional, mental, physical or sexual abuse

Ø  Wishing we’d been a better parent

Ø  Wishing we’d been raised by better parents

These experiences and others like them, can cause us to feel so disempowered that we spend countless hours, days, months and years trying to put them out of our mind and move on with our lives.  

After a while we convince ourselves that we’ve moved on, dealt with it, and we’ve even managed to become very successful within our career and professional life.

But… the memories persist.

Why do the memories stay locked in our mind and seem to surface just when our professional lives are at an all time high?  What causes the memories to persist like an itch that we absentmindedly scratch until suddenly we realize the itch is something we can no longer ignore? 

Just when we’re at the height of our career, why do these memories, feelings and emotions keep cropping up at the most inopportune times causing us to feel so disempowered that we suddenly realize our personal life has now taken center stage in our life and we find our self, scrambling to regain a semblance of control?

The answer is, “The Box.”  The Box is an imaginary container that we stuff our feelings and emotions into when we don’t really want to look at them or they’re too painful to face.

Sometimes the box has been closed for so long, we don’t even know it exists but it’s there, lurking in our subconscious mind, hovering on the outskirts of our memories like the hazy memory of a dream you can’t quite remember. It never really goes away, and you recognize it when you’re at your most vulnerable state; when you’re tired, overworked, overbooked, overloaded and overwhelmed

This is when the box bursts open without your consent, causing you to relive the feelings and emotions you really believed you’d put behind you.  This is when your peers see you as the overly emotional female that is losing her grip, triggering them to back away and causing you to lose your edge in your profession.

When this happens you, cry foul, it’s not fair, it’s a man’s world, blame others and feel like you’re losing control.  The answer is simple but may be the hardest thing you ever do; the answer is to let go and get rid of the box.

The box will disappear when you finally give yourself permission to do the inner work that will release the feelings and emotions surrounding the memories of a time you felt so disempowered.

Get rid of the box, it’s the only way you’ll ever gain power over what lies inside.  Get rid of the box; give yourself permission to take back your power!  The world needs more women in business. 

If you're a woman in business, you owe it to yourself to release the emotions surrounding past experiences that are standing between you and your ability to rise to the top of your profession; but only you can choose when it’s time to let go of the box.

Nancy Mueller - Empowerment Sensei 

LIFE WITH MOM Technoloty

I’m a genius!

That’s what my mom and her husband tell me every day!

Since my arrival, I’ve updated their WiFi and cable boxes.  I showed my mom how to download the app to her phone for her cable company which allows us to troubleshoot her cable through her phone.  Does this make me a genius?  It certainly does to someone who lacks the technology skills!

My mom’s husband Vern is scheduled to have surgery to receive a pacemaker.  The doctor’s office sent a heart monitor for him to wear to monitor his heart 24 hours a day.  The monitor arrived in the mail and all you need is a little technology know how to get started; an easy task if you understand how to connect the device to the Bluetooth sensor.

I found myself doing something I never would have thought I would do; attaching a heart monitor to the someone’s chest!  Since my medical know how stops at CPR training I found myself in unfamiliar territory, but I managed to get it all hooked up only to discover they had sent two identical charging cords instead of two separate cords for the monitor and the sensor.

Once again, my mom and Vern called me a genius for knowing how to figure it out.

When you think about the word “genius” it’s all relevant.  How does one get to be a genius?  By not being afraid to try new things and being able to step outside of the box when you want to learn something new or create new opportunities.

Watch a 3-year old with an iPad and they will boggle your mind at what they can achieve because they have no fear of “doing it wrong.”  They just keep pushing buttons and clicking different areas until they get the desired results.

As adults, our beliefs about what we “can’t do” often hold us back from showing the world the genius gene we possess!  But when it comes to generations, how often do we find ourselves getting impatient with someone who believes they lack the knowledge or the understanding to learn new things?

When my mom chooses to lower her vibrational energy by convincing herself that she lacks the knowledge or the understanding to learn something new I find myself faced with two choices: either I can do it for her or show her how to do it.

Most of the time my mom is a willing student and is very eager to learn and celebrate at her own level of genius!  When she forgets what I taught her (or convinces herself that she doesn’t remember) it gives us the opportunity to have new conversations with new questions, so she can understand how she allows her own limiting beliefs to hold her back.

Life is all about choices.  We can choose to believe that we lack the genius that we see in others or we can choose to step up to our own brand of genius.  When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.  What comes easily to some can be a struggle for others; patience, a kind word and a willingness to share our knowledge can go a long way.

Relationships are all about strength yielding to strength; where one is weak, the other is strong and together they compliment each other!  

If you find yourself in need of bridging the mother/daughter gap, it’s important that you understand how your own limiting beliefs can make this gap wider until you are ready to master your own beliefs around what you believe your relationship is all about! 

Nancy Mueller ~ Life Empowerment Sensei