Carla Royal, M.ED., Mindset & Performance Coach

April 2, 2018

Relax, Love

Carla Royal, M.ED., Mindset & Performance Coach

April 2, 2018

I have a chalkboard in my office upon which I write inspirational quotes. For a few weeks now, I’ve had this wonderful quote by Nayyirah Waheed: “You will be lost and unlost over and over again. Relax, Love. You were meant to be this glorious. Epic. Story.”

Relax, Love. Those were the words I needed to hear during my breakdown breakthrough. Relax. This too shall pass. No need to take it too seriously or too personally. This angst (depression, grief, anxiety, shame, anguish) is not who you are. The storm clouds will pass.

But I did take it seriously, very seriously. I created a tragic and melancholic saga from the stressful thoughts and emotions that were trying to pass through me. I did this innocently because I didn’t understand the inside out nature of life. I kept the stressful thinking alive and I seriously suffered as a result. For years. I didn’t know at the time that I had the capacity to handle what I was going through. That it didn’t define me. I didn’t know that it wouldn’t harm me at my core. I didn’t know that it would pass if I left it alone. I didn’t know that resilience and well-being were innate in me.

No. I analyzed it. Judged it. Diagnosed it. Medicated it. Ran from it. Barreled toward it. Escalated it. Tried to pray it away. Tried to drink it away. I misunderstood it. I became mired in shame and despair. I couldn’t find a way out. All I wanted was for it to end and I thought I had to end it. One way or another. I didn’t know that all those feelings of angst would end themselves by simply moving though me. In their own time. There was nothing to be afraid of all along. Relax, Love.

Sydney Banks, a philosopher and author, said, “If the only thing people learned was not to be afraid of their experience, that alone would change the world.” I’ve found this to be true. As I take my moods and emotions less seriously, I find that they have minimal influence over me. As I stop adding my personal thoughts on top of the impersonal thought that is naturally passing through, I’m not as affected by them. As I become aware that I am spinning stories when I reach into the past or project into the future, I relax a bit and the fog begins to clear so that I am able to see my way forward again. Relax, Love.

You see, thoughts are impersonal. They constantly arise. That’s what thought does. As we attach to them, making them personal, we feel them. That’s how we are able to have this epic human experience.

You could think of thoughts like the painter’s palette. The painter has an array of colors available to her. She chooses which she wants to create with and she leaves the others on the palette. She creates with the colors she chooses, creating form from formlessness. Thoughts are similar. They are energy moving through us but once we start painting with them, we create our unique experiences, we create our lives. That’s why you and I and every other person can react or respond to the same situation completely differently. We are painting with different colors.

When we notice ourselves caught up in complicated thinking, analyzing, judging, reaching into the past, or projecting into the future, no problem. That’s our cue to slow down and allow our thinking to settle. We don’t get to choose which thoughts arise but we do get to choose which thoughts we paint with. If we have a stressful thought arise, we could leave it on the palette.

Relax, Love. You are resilient. That is your nature. You have all you need to move through this life with its ups and down.

I welcome your questions or comments below.

By the way, I offer Free Well-Being Resources for anyone who subscribes to my weekly newsletter. You will receive inspirational tools to support you in returning to a place of clarity and wellbeing in your day to day life plus framable (high resolution) images and quotes that I have created just for my subscribers to inspire you. It's my way of saying thank you for your time and attention. These tools, quotes, and images are completely free of charge and can be accessed instantly when you sign up for the newsletter.

Contact Carla to learn more about coaching and how you could benefit. Carla's total commitment is to help her clients wake up and live the life they've been dreaming of.

Carla Royal, M.ED., Mindset & Performance Coach

March 19, 2018

Outside In or Inside Out? It Matters.

Carla Royal, M.ED., Mindset & Performance Coach

March 19, 2018

Click on images to enlarge

Last night, I dreamed about Oprah. She was doing some kind of performance with gorgeous white horses who had long flowing manes. It was a beautiful and perfect performance.

When she came in, she walked over to a vending machine where I was standing. I told her what a wonderful performance it was! She said, really? Are you sure? She was doubtful, insecure, tentative. I said, yes, of course! It was superb!

You see, even Oprah has doubts about herself. Welcome to the human experience. The problem is not that we have those thoughts but that we take them so very seriously and personally. We buy into them and, by doing so, we keep them alive. You could call this contaminated thinking.

Thinking, coupled with consciousness, creates our life experience. We are only ever dealing with our state of mind in the moment. That's how the system works. How it's meant to work.

It's what gives us our rich experience of life. It's a beautiful, creative system but most of us have a misunderstanding about how it works. This misunderstanding can cause all manner of discomfort and even suffering.

We've grown up in a culture that has taught us to view life from the outside-in. That's the misunderstanding. We believe that what happens to us out there is what causes us to feel and experience. So, we read the books, attend the seminars, and visit our therapist, minister, or expert in order to learn the techniques and gather the tools to manage and combat our circumstances, deal with the people in our lives, and minimize our stressful feelings because what else can we do?

It's a constant game of managing all that is happening to us. No wonder we are tired! The techniques and tools can be helpful and sitting across from someone who really sees us and stays with us in a place of love can be wonderfully helpful, but somehow, we find that nice feeling and those techniques difficult to sustain and, before you know it, we're barely able to keep our heads above water again.

Once we understand that we experience life from the inside-out, we are able to find our clarity and well-being again. We are no longer at the mercy of what happens out there. We understand that our thinking about what's going on out there is the source of our feelings and experience. This understanding can be confronting in a way because it goes against everything we've ever believed, but when we take a moment to really examine it, we see how much more freedom and choice could be available to us if it were true.

Contaminated thinking, that is, stressful thinking that we buy into and feed, like Oprah did in the dream, is what causes our discomfort. When we turn our attention away from the contaminated thinking, we make space for new thought and clarity to arise. Thought is always arising. That's what thought does. We don't get to choose which thoughts we have but we do get to choose which thoughts we feed.

This is good news because we don't have to fight our thoughts, or change our thoughts. We don't have to take our thoughts so seriously and personally. Boy, has that been a game changer for me. We can choose which to let move through and which to create our lives with. If we feed them, they will grow and we will feel and experience them. That’s the way of it.

Practical example: Last week, I had a Facebook exchange with someone whom I love. We walk in very different worlds now and we disagree with one another on many issues. Hot bed issues, like politics and religion. I try very hard not to engage in Facebook exchanges like that because I know they are useless. On this day, and it’s not the only time, I got caught up in a thought that was passing through. How can these people think like this? I’ve got to convince them otherwise! Really, the thought was just passing through, but I brought it to a full stop and I fed it. Man, did I feed it. Let me tell you, it didn’t feel good. Not for a moment did it feel good. And taking action on that contaminated thought did absolutely no one any good. It did not deepen our love. It did not deepen our connection or understanding. It probably did deepen the divide. And I felt awful (and self-righteous, superior, and justified, dammit!, but not good).

Here’s the thing, once I fed the thought, it grew exponentially and seemed to take on a life of its own. That’s how powerful thought is! My friend’s beliefs, ideas, and comments did not cause my feelings but what I thought about what she believes had everything to do with how I felt. How can I be certain? Because there are many times that the same situation is at hand and I feel neutral or maybe even love. It can’t be her. It can’t be the situation or I would react the same way every time. It has to be my thoughts about the situation. Once I understand this, I am free to allow the stressful thought to pass without having to act on it. I’m free to wait for a new thought to arise, a new insight to occur, that will allow me to respond from a place of love if a response is needed at all.

This is how thought works. This is how our experiences are created. No two people experience the same situation, circumstance, or person the same way because we are living from the inside-out. We are only ever living in the feeling of thought in the moment.

Don't believe me, really examine it. See if it’s true in your life. Notice when someone cuts you off in traffic one day and you rage and when it happens another day and you are perfectly calm. There are a million examples like this. Just notice. Notice the stories you tell yourself about the circumstance on this particular day. Notice how these stories themselves are the source of your feelings, not what’s happening out there. Just notice. Once you see, once you understand, it will be like understanding and aligning yourself with gravity and not falling down as much anymore. You will flow with life a little more easily as you understand how this human system works. Life is experienced unfailingly from the inside-out and a fresh thought is always on the horizon.

I would be delighted to hear what you think in a comment below.

By the way, I offer Free Well-Being Resources for anyone who subscribes to my weekly inspirational newsletter. You will receive inspirational tools to support you in returning to a place of clarity and wellbeing in your day to day life plus framable (high resolution) images and quotes that I have created just for my subscribers to inspire you. It's my way of saying thank you for your time and attention. These tools, quotes, and images are completely free of charge and can be accessed instantly when you sign up for the newsletter.

Carla Royal, M.ED., Mindset & Performance Coach

March 3, 2018

Snakes! and the Power of Thought

Carla Royal, M.ED., Mindset & Performance Coach

March 3, 2018

I walk the Hammock almost every day. The Hammock is a 100-acre forest in the heart of Dunedin, FL. I feel perfectly at home there. I see roseate spoonbills, owls, hawks, egrets, herons, turtles, lizards, and the occasional snake, among other critters. I absolutely love walking the trails.

Today, Pedro and I wandered into the Hammock and something fast and small bit my leg scaring the bejeezus out of me! Snake! I looked down only to find that I had stepped on a small stick. I shook my head and then my whole body, releasing the surge of adrenaline and cortisol that filled me. Fifteen minutes later, it happened again! Snake! Of course, it, too, was nothing more than a stick. I shook my head once again and laughed at how ridiculous I was being.

I walk these trails every day, never afraid, even if sticks do pop up and hit me from time to time. What was different today? I had snakes on the mind because Pam and I had been talking about them the day before. I thought the stick was a snake. Even though it barely felt like much of anything, I almost jumped out of my skin! That, my friend, is the power of thought. I was experiencing my thinking in the moment, nothing more.

Additionally, I had a business meeting with a colleague today. The conversation didn't go as I had imagined. I hung up and began to feel a tad sorry for myself. That's when I got up and went into the woods, only to be bitten by two snakes! Of course, I've already established that there were no snakes. No snake bites and no snakes in the conversation. I realized that I thought the conversation was a snake, just as I thought the stick was a snake. I started to make up what was going to happen in the future as a result of the conversation. I decided it wasn't going to go well after all. I decided the call was bad news, yet, there was no bad news. Just different news than I had expected.

Once I realized that I was buying into these thoughts that were welling up in my mind, I began to relax, allowing them to move through me. I reminded myself that the future is an incomplete equation. I can't possibly know how the situation will unfold. When I started to believe that I did know and then the conversation didn't go as I imagined, I freaked out a bit, fearful that things wouldn't turn out well. Truth is, I have no idea how it will turn out and I had no idea before the conversation either. All of it was made up! I believed the thoughts to be real and that's why I felt I had been bitten by a snake. There was no snake. Only thought in the moment.

Can you relate? How many times have you seen a snake, whether in the woods or in a person or situation only to find that it was a stick? How many times have you made up an imagined future only to find that the future turns out completely differently? Probably more than you can count. And how much stress have you experienced as a result?

When we get caught up in an imagined future and in our exponential thinking, insight eludes us and we can become stressed, angry, disappointed, or fearful. When we recognize thought for what it is, we relax a bit and can begin to bring ourselves back to the present moment, allowing the thoughts to move through and opening to the insights we need to handle right now. We have all we need to deal with this moment. Even if it is a real snake.

I would be delighted to hear your thoughts.

Carla Royal, M.ED., Mindset & Performance Coach

February 26, 2018

The Struggle to be Perfect

Carla Royal, M.ED., Mindset & Performance Coach

February 26, 2018

"I thought I had to become something... something more, something better, maybe even something different."

Since 1990, I have been in the business of helping people either as a psychotherapist or certified coach, except for the couple of years I worked as a horse farm caretaker and the couple of years I owned a fine art gallery. Even then, I always had a client or two. It's been an interesting, bumpy journey to say the least.

Against all odds, because I really hated school, I went back to university 30 years ago to earn my graduate degree in counseling. I trained. I got credentialed. I set up a practice. I struggled. I helped people. I struggled. I felt like a fraud because I struggled. I helped people despite my struggles. I felt inauthentic because I wrestled my own demons. I helped my clients. They said so. I felt I wasn't enough. I quit and worked on a horse farm. I knew the farm animals had no expectations of me.

After a couple of years on the farm, I decided to work with people again because that truly is my calling. I got more training and more credentials thinking that would prove my worth. For some reason, I thought I needed to be perfect in order to help people. Of course, I wasn't and I didn't have to be. In fact, since that time, I've learned that the struggle to be perfect actually interfered with the perfection that I am at my core already. We forget that our essence is perfectly whole. When we forget, we struggle and suffer, and boy did I suffer, almost to death (another story for another time).

Since then, I've learned that life (God, spirit, the intelligence behind all life, or whatever name you call it) is living me... just as life lives the oak tree that grows from an acorn... just as life lives the precious songbird who knows innately to wake up each morning and search for food... just as the flower effortlessly opens its petals. It took me quite a few years to learn this, and I still forget. Life continued living me, as it lives everyone, even though I didn't understand, even though I struggled against it. I thought I had to become something... something more, something better, maybe even something different. This thought took on a life of its own, as thought tends to do, and I suffered greatly. Perhaps you understand the struggle.

Perhaps you can feel the power of thought at work in you, how it takes on a life of its own and runs the show. Such and such happens, thoughts flood your mind racing into the future or reaching into the past. "Maybe, I'm not good enough, smart enough, brave enough. I'll never manage this. How will I ever get through this? Or, how dare they! How could they! Why me?" The story gets bigger and more powerful as it generates emotion. The story exponentially escalates as we feed the flame. It feels so real and compelling! Now it has become unmanageable, indeed.

Here's the thing, you and I can handle this present moment. We are built to handle the present moment. It's our default. When we get caught up in our personal thinking about what's happening, reaching into the past and future, we create suffering. Test it for yourself. See where this may be true in your life. Notice the stories you spin. The ones that keep you up at night and keep you from relaxing during the day. Notice how the stories themselves cause you to suffer rather than the situation at hand. It can be tricky to see at times so experiment with it and see what you see. You may be surprised.

You can handle the situation at hand. I promise. What feels so unmanageable is the exponential thinking you're having about the situation. When you let that exponential thinking fall away, the clouds eventually part and the sun of your well-being and clarity appear. You can count on it.

I would be delighted to hear your thoughts.

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