I love Dec 31. You get to sit on the edge of the end of the year and the beginning of a new one. Perhaps it is because I get to look back and celebrate both my successes and lessons. This year was a massive year of growth for me. This is what I learned in 2010:

1. Trust your gut and take a leap. This past year, I closed down the magnet side of Color the Universe. I just knew it was something I needed to do. My heart was telling me to take the leap and give my coaching business a fair shot. I was able to rapidly build a coaching business taking my vision and mission to Color the Universe to a whole new level.

2.You need to make space for things to grow. Many people didn’t get how I could close down a stream of income like the magnets. After 10 years, my magnet business didn’t take a whole lot of effort each week. However my energy was being pulled in 2 different directions. I learned that with new ventures, you need to make the space for your ideas to grow. By putting the magnets on hold, I was able to give my full attention to my coaching business and make sure the proper foundation was being set up. It also forced me to let go of the crutch of having steady income flow in. When you start up something new you need the space to nurture and grow that idea, but also the fire underneath you to get things going quickly.

3. Surround yourself with people that pull you forward. Being an entrepreneur is different than having a 9-5 job. I have been an entrepreneur for over 10 years. However, in order to rapidly grow my coaching business, I needed to surround myself with new people that could hold a vision for myself much greater than I could see in the beginning. Their ideas, experiences and energy became the contagious fuel I needed to keep my passion and vision alive.

4. You need to have time for yourself. Surrounding yourself with others was one lesson, but having more “me” time was also a lesson I had learned (or perhaps re-learned). Since first becoming an entrepreneur 11 years ago, I have fallen in love and become a wife, become a mom of a dog, cat, and 2 kids, moved to a new town with new friends. Our lives get filled with new (& old)  joys, commitments, duties and tasks all the time.  We often get confused with what “down-time” truly means. Time to yourself doesn’t mean time to hang out with friends, get groceries or fold laundry without your kids around. Those can be all joyful things, but they are still commitments and tasks. True time to yourself is time where you don’t need to be anywhere or do anything. It means there is time to fallen in love with yourself again and time to listen to whether or not anything is off course and more importantly to just sit and do nothing. There is amazing creation in art of silence and doing nothing.

Well I am sure there were many more lessons. But those were definitely the top ones. Would love to hear what your lessons were. Post below your comments and may 2011 bring you all the joy, love and abundance of the Universe.

Happy New Year! Can’t wait to see what 2011 brings.

With much Love and Gratitude for being on this journey to Color the Universe with me,

Shauna Harper

Our attitudes define our lives. We train ourselves to think in a particular way since childhood. And many thought patterns become fixed as we grow. Can you take an honest review of your thought patterns? See if they border more toward the negative or positive.

If positive is your answer, you are living in a world of great power. If you honestly answered negative, you are missing the best part of life! Changing your mindset is not difficult when you practice it. Start by being thankful.

Eckhart Tolle,  the author of the Power of Now, once said:

“If the only prayer you said in your whole life was, “thank you,” that would suffice.”

That is the most powerful way of bringing miracles in your life. A gratitude journal is a good place to start. Make entries (daily if you can) about things you are grateful for.

If you have been a melancholy person till now, you might not see many things to thank for initially. This is because you have limited vision as yet. Not to worry. This practice makes sure you open your heart and attract all the good things into your life. You will realize life’s fullest potential through your attitude of gratitude. Even when apparent difficulties arise, you will see advantage or lessons in them. It helps you grow as a person. Be thankful for that.

Open your gratitude journal in the morning and thank the Universe for things in your surroundings, things from the day before or things that are to come. This will set the tune for the rest of the day.

As you continue with your day, you will start to notice things that you want to include in your journal later one. Suddenly, your mindset shifts to focusing on good things coming your way. Then, before you go to bed, make a list all the things that happened to make you day wonderful.

• I am grateful for (write about any completed task) today.
• I am grateful for being able to help (anyone) in (anything, be it a small favor) today.

You end up sandwiching your day to day tasks with great thoughts. Don’t get me wrong, this takes discipline, but the rewards are great. This exercise tunes you with the source that returns more good thoughts and things. Invest your time in polishing your attitude of gratitude and the world will deliver all you desire.

We fall into habitual routines, and so does our mind. Ideas stay with a person and become fixed with age. Were you brought up in an environment where you heard the word ‘lack’ most of the time? Then, in all probability, you have grown up believing that there is lack in the world. Lack of everything; love, money, kindness, success etc. These are negative thoughts thrust on you. Positive thoughts work in the same way. The power of positive thinking is much greater than that of negative thoughts.

Analyze your life. Take one good thing in your present situation. Maybe it’s your house. Maybe it is a car, or your job. Very ordinary items, you would say. But the truth is your thoughts influenced the Universe to send all these things to you. And you may not have even realized it.

You might have wished for a particular car or a job a few years ago. Then you got it/ them. And now you take them for granted. Want to know the real story? Your thoughts created these things for you. If you think a major part of your life is a mess; it’s your thoughts again. When you think your life is chaotic, it becomes just that.

So if words and thoughts have that power, how can we turn that to benefit our lives on a daily basis.

Affirmations are a popular method of shifting thoughts into the positive mode.

• Write your affirmations in a positive present tense first person form. If you want to be healthy, write, ‘I celebrate life.’ The present tense makes your mind believe you are already celebrating and grateful.
• Repeat your affirmations regularly. Write them and put them at a place easily and frequently accessed by you.
• Repeat your affirmations in front of a mirror. The audio/ visual stimulation will trigger a strong response in your thoughts. Say your affirmations in a meaningful, confident tone. Believe me, it seems silly at first…very silly, but if you knew they worked, would you continue? Well, trust that they do and continue J.

Visualization- Visualizing your affirmations is the next step to strengthen your power of positive thinking.

• To aid this process, find pictures that depict your heart’s desires.
• Collect these pictures and put them somewhere you can see them most of the time daily.
• A vision board is created for this purpose. Visual images stimulate your brain and send a message to the Universe. The Universe delivers a reply to that message in the form of actualizing your dreams and wishes.
• There is no magic formula to this… but when you visualize it, you start to attract the things or ideas that can make it happen

Trust- Trust your affirmations and visualizations before you see them happen.

• Don’t let any negative thoughts get the better of you. Be in that place where you just know.
• Oprah calls it “sunrise” faith… you just know, that no matter what happens, the sun will rise everyday and it will set every night. You never question it. Have that same trust.

Believe – Believe there is goodness in everything.

• Extract good traits in every circumstance. There is a positive side of everything. Seek that more, and more good and abundance will roll into your life.
• Most of the problems faced in the world are because of negative thinking. Combat that by sending positive vibes everywhere. If everyone used the power of positive thinking, miracles would occur endlessly.

Give- Give whatever and whenever you can.

Start your morning with one thought; “What am I here to give today?”

It doesn’t necessarily have to be something monetary. It can be positive thoughts.

When you send positive thoughts of giving to the Universe, you open the flow and energy of good things to return your way. The power of positive thinking remains incomplete without the giving spirit.

Be consistent in practicing positive thinking. It is like a muscle that needs to get worked. The more you work it, the stronger it becomes and the easier it is to do.

Although it is raining outside, I know that summer is finally here because there is no snow! I apologize that it has been way too long since my last blog entry… a little over 3 months!

How to stay on purpose and perhaps find the Miss/Mr Positive in all of us

If you talk to my husband, he will be the first to let you know, that Miss Positive/Miss Creator of the Upstones (my little inspirational glass stone magnets) doesn’t live with him all the time! In fact, I am sure there are days he wonders if Miss Upstone ever existed.

Well, one of the things I love to do to remind myself of my purpose and to connect to a place of gratitude is visioning. Through vision boards primarily… and also through keeping a journal, I am able to get back “on track” to my life’s purpose and re-discover Miss.Creator of the UpStones.

Vision Boards:

My vision boards are just a collection of images and words that I am drawn to that I have pasted onto a piece of cardboard. I take old magazines and photos and I cut and paste anything and everything that inspires me or moves me to action. I then use these boards as a very powerful tool to remind myself of the feelings and things that I want to attract into my life…. or that I already have in my life that I am grateful for. Once created, I usually hang them around the house or take photos of them and place them into a frame.

What is amazing is the transformation of my vision boards over the years. To see things that have either manifested or to see things that are no longer of importance to my current life. It is like a visual journal of my dreams. Nothing is set in stone… I give myself the right to change my mind and to live and grow organically towards whatever is important in the moment. Vision boards have helped me set goals for my business, accomplish personal athletic goals that I could not initially wrap my brain around, find my soul mate, and most recently deliver both my children naturally. It is amazing when our mindset is in line with our dreams what can happen.

Some of the things I put onto my vision boards never surface or become reality. However, it is not about crossing things off my list, as much as it is about, opening myself up to possibilities of new things to come into my life.

My way of creating vision boards with scissors, old magazines, cardboard and a glue stick (or sometimes tape when I can’t find the glue!) works for me. However, if that is not your style or you don’t have the time or just can’t seem to get started, there are some newer methods that I have come across that maybe of interest to you:

1. This is Jack Canfield’s website where he has created a vision board kits. Great to check out if you have a problem getting started on your own. Sometimes a DIY Kit helps to get the ball rolling. http://www.dreambigcollection.com/

2. There is also this other great company that I discovered a little while back called http://www.visioningyourworld.com They do online vision boards so that you can have stock images and words on your computer. It gives you a mini-video of your vision boards. Not sure if you can load it up onto your little handheld devices.. but I am sure it is probably possible.

3. The other option is to find yourself a coach to help you. Many coaches lead group vision board workshops. Sometimes when you just can’t get started, joining a group of people and watching them do it will motivate you. If you are in the Lower Mainland, Miriam Evers is an amazing Coach that sometimes leads workshops from the Windsong Co-housing Community in Langley. http://www.joyousrenegade.com/

You can also try to google: vision boards, personalized vision boards, vision board kits, video vision boards for more companies or options.

Journals:

The other method of keeping on “purpose” is to write in a journal. Journalling has been such a powerful tool for me over the years. I used to keep a daily log, but now with time constraints, I usually journal every few weeks to months. I love to go back and re-read my entries to see the mind-space I was in just a few weeks before.

I journal or jot down quick inspirational ideas as well. Or I write in words how life would be in a perfect world… right down to the feelings of how it would feel. Sounds a little bit “out there”, but what it does is it gets the energy flowing where your thought are going.

And finally, writing in my gratitude journal is one of my favorite things to do. Being content with right now and also grateful of what you have is the fastest way to get out of rut and the best way to connect you to that positive energy that aligns you with little miracles that happen.

So the next time you are searching for the Miss/Mr Positive, hopefully you won’t have to look for very long.

Thanks for reading.

Over the holidays, I wrote about being more committed to living “in the moment” for 2009. I have 2 young children (7 months and 19months). To them, everything is only “in the moment”… They are my gurus on how to live both “in the moment” and with pure joy.

For me, however, it takes a little more focus and concentration to live that way. In the past, (there I go again wandering into the past!) I have written a gratitude journal to help me hone the energy to be in the moment. A gratitude journal is just a journal of all the things that I am grateful for in that day.

So this weekend to practice living more in the moment for 2009, I decided to take a moment to record a list of things that I love about my kids in this stage in their life and a list of what I love about my relationship with my husband at this moment too.

Things that I hope I never forget because at this moment, they just bring me to that place of pure joy and most importantly a big fat smile to my face!

For example: When my son hears any kind of music, no matter what he is currently doing, he can’t help himself but start to shake his head, legs and bottom to the beat. Or my daughter, the way she is just sitting next to me right now as I am writing this talking away a million miles an hour …a) like there is no tomorrow and b) like I understand every word. And for my husband, the way he is able to get my son to laugh and giggle like we are the funniest people in the world.

These things mean nothing to anyone else, but the world to me. When I think of my list, it gives me that whirly almost giddy happy feeling. With that, the other things that I think I should be worrying about, just don’t seem that important. And with the laws attraction in action, I have just opened up myself to more wonderful giddy, happy feelings to come!

So with that, I throw out the question, “How are you living in the moment today?”