What's stopping you - limiting beliefs

Growing up I was told “Money doesn’t grow on trees”, so I grew up believing it was very difficult to acquire money and therefore aspiring to become a millionaire was too slim of a possibility to even truly consider. I was told “there’s always someone else smarter than you out there”, so I learned that competition would be fierce and that I would never be the best at whatever I set out to do. It is pretty difficult to succeed, believe in yourself and stay motivated when our beliefs are so negative and really just working against us!

Such beliefs stop us from taking the next step; we even end up by sabotaging ourselves in the process of getting what we want. We do this for a few reasons; let me name a couple right now:

1^st Your mind gives you more of what you focus on. If you believe that achieving a certain goal is very difficult then your mind will go out of its way to prove you right. In other words, if your thoughts and feelings are focused on how difficult it is to reach a specific goal your mind will find ways to sabotage your trials – it will help you give up and fail. Why? So it can support your limiting thoughts, and you could then say: “See, I told you there would be someone better out there!”, “See I told you, you wouldn’t make it!”

Imagine if you did not have those negative beliefs or fears roaming inside of you but instead you would have complete and ultimate confidence in your abilities to succeed and believed that your success would bring happiness and positive contributions to yourself, your family and your community. If this was your reality, you would see each obstacle and failure as an opportunity to learn and grow. Through the power of your positive mind and your positive beliefs you would be propelled to your desired success - to your best life possible!

To explain another reason why our limiting beliefs would stop us I would like you to consider the following scenario.

Imagine you have come to believe that most people who become successful have done so to the detriment of their marriage. What if you believed that successful people spent little to no time with their children? If these were the thoughts quietly driving your subconscious what would you do if an opportunity presented itself to suddenly become more successful? Would you jump both feet in? Probably not, because in the end you wouldn’t want to do anything to become that person! You would probably start finding reasons why it wouldn’t work for you and find a way to talk yourself out of that opportunity without even realizing that you were doing it.

Here are two things you need to do to overcome your limiting beliefs.

1^st Rewrite your limiting beliefs into positive, motivational beliefs. For example, if you believe rich people get rich by taking advantage of poorer people then you could rewrite your statement this way: “As a rich person I can be of help to my community and become a positive role-model for my children”.

2^nd Repeat and visualize the new motivational beliefs you have just created. You get more of what you focus on, so focus, visualize, think about what you want in the form of positive statements, positive visualizations and positive beliefs - and you will start to notice opportunities cropping up around you.

To become aware of your fears, your limiting beliefs, your internal dialogue and start making a shift for the best, a life and business coach is powerful resource. As a coach, not only am I able to help you recognize what is stopping you but I help you find the very best steps to achieve your success - fast and effectively.

Don’t go through the pain and confusion of it all by yourself. Let my knowledge and my skills work for you.

Believe in yourself!

Gaby Da Silva

Professional Life and Business Coach

The opposite of being overwhelmed is being happy

We all know what being overwhelmed feels like. For some, being overwhelmed has become so entrenched in their life that they no longer identify it as stress or being overwhelmed, but simply cave in to the old saying: “that’s life!”. Unfortunately not calling it stress doesn’t dissolve its consequences. The consequences of stress come at different levels: cognitively, emotionally, physically and even behaviourally.

Some of the symptoms of being overwhelmed or stress are moodiness, irritability, inability to concentrate, sense of loneliness, general unhappiness, anxious or racing thoughts and possibly physical pain or discomfort such as intestinal problems, nausea, dizziness, loss of sex drive and frequent colds.

You know you are overwhelmed when you are feeling some or all of these symptoms at the same time, when you feel others have a hard time understanding what you are going through or simply, you know that the way you are presently acting, the life you are presently living is not your real self or the life you want to be in – you know it could and should be better.

There is more to overcoming feeling overwhelmed than learning to be calm and organized. Consider this, the opposite of being overwhelmed is not being calm but being happy. This is the most effective way to regain control of your life. There are actions that should be taken right away to overcome stress, such as exercising, adequate sleep and controlled breathing but to truly regain control of your life, deeper, more meaningful work must be done. You need to live an authentic life; the life that you truly want to be living.

Let me explain. Think of the worst possible task you could be asked to complete, now imagine performing that task all week long. How would you feel at the end of that day? Now think of the best possible task that you can imagine, how would you feel at the end of the week if you spent all week performing such a task? It’s common sense, but too many of us have put our desires, our needs and what is of most importance to us on the back burner. We put our family’s needs and work’s needs ahead of us. We don’t have to choose between work, family or ourselves. Our life is meant to be lived harmoniously in every area. We just need to learn how, commit to being honest with ourselves and commit to taking the steps required to unfold our best life.

Gaby Da Silva is a professional Life and Business Coach. She educates, empowers and supports women to achieve success, growth and live their life to the fullest. www.gabydasilvacoaching.com

Being overwhelmed

I am not going to lie, I too feel stressed, overwhelmed, unfocused. I will not pretend to be at Deepak Chopra’s level of internal serenity. I am starting my own business and I have two small children, so I do feel stressed. But I can’t let my stress build up for too long, my body won’t allow it, I have what you may call a sensitive immune system – I react to stress like some would react to a strong virus that would leave you physically ill and mentally exhausted.

I have decided to see this ailment as a blessing in disguise. I have spent 23 years of my life wondering why I was cursed with this syndrome. I now understand that this curse has forced me to learn how to deal with stress quickly, and although my body doesn’t know how to cope with stress my mind is more powerful and beneficial in this situation than my body. My mind has the ability and power to tell my body how to feel and how to cope with stress.

I have 23 years of experience in experimenting with different ways to cope with stress. The result is not a person that no longer feels stressed but someone who recognizes it quickly and that knows how to react to it, how to manage it and how to shift the stress response of the body into a thoughtful, relaxing and focused response.

Your health may not be at risk, I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. But we all get to points in our lives where stress, responsibilities, tasks or emotions overwhelm us. We lose our focus, we become the parents that we never wanted to be, our relationships suffer and we don’t like who we presently have become or what our lives are turning into.

Trying to handle our stress or emotions can be time consuming. Just the time it takes to find the right literature on stress management or regaining control of our lives is overwhelming and then finding the time to read it all seems impossible. And once it is read, do we apply it to our lives? Most of us don’t, we let things naturally settle down until the next wave of stress overcomes us weeks or months later.

Let me help you, I have done the research, I have seen many doctors, therapists, read too many books – I have done all of the hard work for you in the last 23 years. So now that you have found someone who understands what you are going through and who knows what needs to be done at this moment and that can help you stay committed and accountable throughout your learning period, please take this opportunity and call me, come be coached by someone who has lived through your difficulties and who knows how to overcome them.

I will:

• Teach you how to manage stress and your emotions
• Show you, hands on, how to incorporate and use specific techniques
• Coach you through your own personal situation

I am offering you a break. A quick way to get results, information and support from someone who will not judge your emotions or reactions but that understands them and solely wants to help you get refocused and return to being the person that you should be.

Live the life you want
Be who you want to be

Gaby Da Silva
Professional Life and Business Coach.

An Exercise to Add Time to Your Day

When I meet with clients there is a recurring topic in our conversations: the desire to have more time. Be it time with the kids, time with the spouse, time to work on the business, time to organize the house, time to exercise or time to relax.

How is time being spent? What makes it so difficult to get it all accomplished? The answer is in the question. How are you spending your time? Find out by analysing what you are doing with your time and compare it to what you would like to be doing.

Try this exercise as a way to awaken your consciousness to how you are spending your time.

Write down everything that you do from the moment you wake up to the moment you go to bed for one week. At the end of the week, analyse your time log. It will help you see how your time is being spent, you will then start noticing time that is being misused or wasted. Look for the tasks that you could be delegating, sharing or postponing.

After analysing your tasks and deciding which ones must be done by you, prioritize them by rate of importance. Which ones are urgent and must be done immediately, which ones must be done today and tomorrow and so forth and do the same priorities exercise for each day. Make sure you add to your priority list all of the tasks that you may not be presently doing but would want to do. By doing this you will notice how you suddenly have more time to do everything that you wanted or needed to do.

The best way to stop being overwhelmed is to schedule a time and date for all that needs to be done. Once it is on paper it is out of your head, allowing you to think more clearly and better perform on your other tasks and enjoy the present moment. You no longer need to worry about what you have to do since you have scheduled a time for each one of your tasks.

We often search for time to share with our family, our friends and even ourselves, unfortunately, our schedules don’t always permit for a lot of free time. So schedule a specific time with the ones you want to see, even if it is short, even if it just for one hour before bed, what is important is that during that time you are completely involved in being with them, be present in that moment, don’t try to multi-task, like emailing or making quick calls, reserve that time for them and you. Remember in this case quality is better than quantity.

So remember, set a time for each one of your activities, get those tasks out of your head and on paper, be completely present during each task or activity, delegate what you can, ask for support and prioritize what only you can do.

If you would like to receive help with prioritizing your life or your business, please contact me at www.gabydasilvacoaching.com or 450-458-4341. Let’s bring your life and your business to its highest success.


Gaby Da Silva
Professional Life and Business Coach.

The 4 Steps to Helping Mommy

Everyone is stressed nowadays, mothers especially. Today’s new mom puts a lot of pressure on herself. She wants it all: a thriving career, a strong relationship with the one she loves, a family with one or multiple kids. She wants to be available for the doctor’s appointments, the extra-curricular activities and the homework while still being reliable and highly-performing at work and attractive and interesting to her hubby. As a professional life coach and mother myself, what is overly apparent when gathered in a circle of new moms are mothers who are drowning; some have decided not to go down without a fight but some are quietly drowning within their own lives.

If you want a better life for yourself then you need to realize that change is within your control and that only you can get yourself into the life you desire. Here are 4 steps to take command of your life:

1. Know your values and live by them

Your values can be seen as the qualities of life that you cannot live without, for example, I value altruism and respect. As a parent, we lose our patience when we are not living within our values.

Once you know your most important values you can make better decisions. Your decisions should be preceded by this question: “Does it comply with my values or does it go against my values?”

To find out what your values are, ask yourself:

• Who do I want to be as a mother, wife, professional and person?
• What gets me most upset? When you get upset it is often because someone is violating one of your values.

2. Clarify your goals

Develop goals that will get you to live within your values, goals that will improve yourself in every aspect of your life: family, personal and professional.

Guidelines for developing goals and action steps:

• Make sure your goal is within your control to attain
• Make it specific
• Describe it with positive language. Instead of deciding not to “yell” at your kids, say: “I will use a calm voice to speak and discipline my children.”
• Have a deadline for each goal


3. Write down the action steps for achieving your goals

Write down all the steps you need to take to achieve your goal. Do this for each one of your goals. Each step should meet the 4 guidelines previously mentioned. Analyse each step and list all the possible obstacles that could stand in your way and then find solutions for each obstacle.


4. Ask for help

As a mom you are needed around the clock, especially with little ones, you are pulled in every direction: emotionally, physically and spiritually – you could use the help. There is no shame in asking for help. Think of it as a manifestation of your strength and commitment to your family.

You are responsible for your own life - so take the necessary steps to overcome your barriers and don’t strive for perfection but for better each day.

If you would like to work on getting to where you want to be, please contact me for a free introductory session at 450-458-4341.


Gaby Da Silva
Professional Life and Business Coach
www.gabydasilva.com

Quick, tell me about your business!

You meet a potential client at the store or at a networking event and they ask you: “What do you do for a living?” What’s your response? Are you ready to fire up your best “elevator speech”? Can you remember your elevator speech? There is a lot of marketing material that needs to be developed when you are an entrepreneur. An elevator speech is one of them, a tag line is another but how do you develop this material? You start by developing your very first marketing piece: your mission statement. And no, a mission statement is not obsolete in today’s social media world.

Your mission statement allows you to clarify your purpose as a business to your employees, your potential clients and even to yourself – since we sometimes lose track of why we started it all. It is a perfect piece to insert in your profile on facebook or linked in. A mission is a short and concise declaration of what your business offers, it is your “raison d’être”. Although it no longer requires being just one sentence, still, it should not be too lengthy. The best mission statement will be to the point and inspiring to you, your employees and your clients.

Your mission statement is the second most important step in developing your business. The first is your vision. You need to know where you are going with your business to be able to get there. Why have a mission if you have a vision? Think of your business as a trip, without a mission you are navigating to a beautiful destination where you may know the location of your destination but you’re not quite clear on where you presently are in the middle of the ocean – which makes it difficult for you to navigate and tell your coordinates to those who need it. You need two points of reference to succeed – a beginning and an end - where you presently are and where you are aiming to be.

Your potential clients can only know what you tell them, so if you are not clear on who you are and what your purpose is then neither are your potential clients.

A great mission statement will convey the essence of who you really are. Start by asking yourself the following questions and then develop a sentence that will best embody your answers.

• What do you do?
• Who are your clients? Who are not your target clients?
• Why are you in this business? Why is it important to you? This question will keep you motivated when the going gets tough and if the reason is honourable, share it with your client – it may just be the marketing hook that you need.
• How are you helping your clients? How do you provide your services?
• Where are you offering these services?

Make sure to review these questions periodically. Your answers may change along your journey therefore, your marketing material will need to change too – make sure to update it when needed.

Here is what I do: I help you maximize the success of your business and your personal life. I am a professional coach who offers public speaking, one-on-one coaching and seminars. Feel free to contact me – I’ll help you, that’s what I do.

Gaby Da Silva Coaching
www.gabydasilvacoaching.com
450-458-4341

Happiness

I'm curious to know, when are you happy?
Do you feel it in your life every day or is it reserved for special occasions?

I'll tell you what I noticed in my life. In the past, happiness was a feeling saved for special occasions. I felt it mostly when I went out with my friends or when something amazing happened to me. I was always looking for the next event or situation that would bring me happiness. I have since then come to understand that happiness is a feeling felt throughout our life journey. I realize how ordinary and overused this comment sounds but it must be said over and over to be understood and most importantly LIVED. Like anything else, living a HAPPY life takes effort, but it is well worth the dedication, energy and practice. Have you ever stopped to listen to the self-talk you have in your own head? That is the first step to happiness - listen to yourself. You will then realize how often you let yourself feel happiness. Humans are a tough breed - we are hard on ourselves, we demand more and more and forget to appreciate our lives, our friends, our situation and our possibilities.

Coaching sessions are perfect to help you realize your happiness, see it, appreciate it and see the opportunities it brings you. Have you ever heard the expression: "A happy mommy makes for a happy family"? That's because happiness is contagious: when you smile, people around you smile and when you laugh, people around you laugh. So with that logic, if you were to live your life in a happy state...who do you think would benefit from your new state of happiness? And for the purpose of taking it just a little further - think about what opportunities would come to you or would you then notice if you were living a happy life? Your mindset is a powerful tool!

If you are ready to shift your life or shift your business, then take the first step and call me for a free strategic exploration session. I look forward to talking to you.

Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us

What an amazing book. It was a beautiful read and a motivator in itself to live the life I want to live.

The content of this book helped me coach myself while trying to make a life changing decision. I was recently offered a position where the work would be reasonable and the pay, the benefits and the pension would be amazing! I was left with a life changing decision to make; do I work for a steady pay or do I continue on my path as a coach and be my own decider of income?

I chose to continue to be a coach. It was not an easy decision, but coaching motivates me and brings me happiness at a much higher level than the offered position ever could. Obviously, money is not the best motivator.

The author of this book, Daniel H. Pink, explains that what motivates us, especially in the 21st Century, stems from intrinsic factors like our values and working for a greater purpose than ourselves. So not so much the rewards and punishement system we have been taught to use al our lives - that system still works with routine work but it is not working for work that requires deep thought, creativity or interactions with others like sales. Pink describes the three variables of intrinsic motivation as autonomy, mastery and purpose.

Are you living these variables at work or in your personal life? I am fortunate enough to live each of these variables as a coach.

I am autonomous: I decide how I want my business to be run, I decide when and how I put in my hours and I decide how best to use time and tools in each coaching session.

I am working towards mastery: I am thrilled to be constantly learning, I enjoy the learning process and I thrive on the prospect of constantly bettering myself.

I have purpose: my work allows me to make a difference in someone's life and in my community. For that reason, I am driven to live this life and be the best I can possibly be.

The teachings in this book demonstrate that people are "okay" just as they are, they are not broken and therefore they don't need to be fixed. As a matter of fact, left to their own demise people will make the best decision and therefore there is no need to micromanage them. Unfortunately, today's type of management may just be hindering and negatively affecting organizations and people's productivity, creativity and motivation.

Pink says that our basic nature is to be active and engaged, curious and self-directed. Self-direction is what we as coaches offer clients when we ask them to visualize a desired outcome. Visualization is a catalyst for reaching your desired outcome, it provides the motivation needed to continue on the chosen path and achieve mastery. In a coaching session just like in an organization it is in everyone's bst interest to figure out what is important to each individual employee or client right from the start, since different individuals have different desires and hence will be motivated by different things.

I found Pink's book particularly inspiring. At the end of the book he offers specific startegies for individuals and organizations to implement his theories into their environement. It is without a doubt an adjustment for many people , especially for those who have worked with a rewards and punishment system for so many years. But it is a necessary adjustment that will force its way into our lives and our organizations whether we like it or not. And as a coach, I want to help facilitate these changes - that, I have realized, is my purpose.

Gaby Da Silva

Welcome!

Welcome to my Blog!

I will be using this creative outlet for my thoughts, to share my knoweldge in business and self-development and in hopes of creating a community that is interested in the same things that I am.

I am a life and business coach, a mother of two beautiful little girls and a very lucky wife.

Come back soon for my comments on the book "Drive", by Daniel H. Pink - a wonderfully written and insightful book on motivation.

You can also visit my website: www.gabydasilva.com