It doesn’t fully look like Autumn yet, but it’s beginning to feel like it with the slight chill in the air and the days getting shorter. It feels cozy but not in a lazy kind of way. It feels like newness, inspiration, motivation, new beginnings. Do you feel it?
This feeling comes with an energy that rumbles, gets a grip and gnaws at you till it’s put to good use. It feels like an engine revving. I love this feeling, this is when I want to start a million new projects and have to be mindful about what I choose to take on. They all feel exciting, important, and fun.
This is when the minimalist concept I like to play with comes in. I’ve actually updated this to the concept of Essentialism… Where we focus on what is important, what gives the fastest and better results, what has the most meaning, the most value, the most impact, and such… This is one of my growth places for I like complex things, I like to be busy, I like to tackle a lot, and such… I’m known for this in my circles. LOL
But, I recognize non-essentialism and its related pain a mile away now for myself, and others. I’m aware I’m on the spectrum with this, and I like it that way. I’m not shooting for complete, pure essentialism (I might one day, one never knows!). I am though shooting for continued movement towards more sustained ease, peace and joy. And, this is where the pursuit of essentialism holds a lot of promise…
As the new season, back2school, and Q4 are here, these are dangerous times. This is when the revving rears its ugly head. In anticipation, I tackled some of this towards the end of the summer in my writing, posts, sessions, and of course my personal and professional life. But, it’s feeling imminent to be more direct and assertive about it now as I watch those around me being seduced by the allure.
There are a few factors that play out in this magnetism to our demise. We make decisions in a vacuum, we look at each instance on their own merit and not as part of the whole. We make decisions based on our values but still following the more is better approach. We pursue our commitments blind, unprepared, un-resourced, and alone. We take a “spaghetti against the wall” approach when looking for solutions.
We react, put out fires, try this and that in an effort to fix issues that are more systemic in nature. We meddle, mingle, dabble without enough knowledge and commitment for our efforts to make a difference. You get the gist. This is a life lived by default… There is no overarching structure, plan, Design…
I’m witness, as I’m sure you are, to people running from one commitment to another. They are double, and triple booked. They squeeze in something into every second of the day. They try to do it all. They say yes to everything. And, even if they don’t they say yes to a whole lot.
There is no guiding master plan. There are no in-betweens. There is no just being. There is no milking the moment. There is no ease. There is no flow. There is little inspiration. And, what little inspiration is there it can’t be acted on because there is no room to do so!
Then there is another breed, that might think they don’t fall into the category of the above because they pursue only what they want… But they way overdo that! They end up in the same boat and missing out on other Opportunities…
Where do you fit in? Is your life demanding and you are now recognizing that it’s too full, even of the good stuff? Did you have good intentions of not overdoing it again this season but here you are with a spilling over plate again? Are you so stretched out that you can’t even think straight to begin to remedy the situation?
Are you so taxed that you can’t sleep, don’t feel emotionally well, and even physically well? I have seen these people’s lives not pan out as they desired. Their health suffered. Their marriages didn’t make it. Their children were impacted. Does this make any sense, to pursue a full life that ends up being too full for our own good?
Here is where the concept of essentialism can help. Can you get on the spectrum? Can you be curious about the concept? Can you start playing with it? Can you put on the “essentialism lens” and run your decisions through it to prevent overdoing it?
Can you take it a step further and use the lens to review your current lifestyle and see what feels like too much, even of a good thing…? Start there. Start by assessing and beginning to get a grip. Then, it’s ok to let this momentum get going, and start streamlining… This is good to entertain. Your Life depends on it!
Remember to complete the MetroRelationsip™ Assignment below to help you effortlessly implement this, make changes and immediately start creating your Successful Relationship and Meaningful Life…
Share your experience by leaving a comment below!
Happy Streamlining!
~ Your MetroRelationship™ Assignment
When do you feel the most frazzled? When do you become the most irritable? When do you feel like throwing in the towel and running away? When do you collapse from exhaustion?
What commitments, projects, teams, groups, responsibilities, get on your nerves? Frustrate you the most? Zap your energy and creative juices?
What areas of your life suffer from lack of adequate attention? What areas of your life do you wish you had more time for? What areas are getting a lot of coverage and others not enough, according to your value system?
Start making the necessary adjustments to live the life you want!
Add this to your Tool Kit…
Copyright (c) 2018 Emma K. Viglucci. All rights reserved.
Want to Use this Article in Your Own Website or Publication?
Be our guest! Here is how, you MUST include: Emma K. Viglucci, LMFT is the Founder and Director of Metropolitan Marriage & Family Therapy, PLLC, a private practice that specializes in working with couples, she is the creator of the MetroRelationship™ philosophy and a variety of Successful Couple™ content that assist couples succeed at their relationship and their life. Stay Connected™ with Emma and receive weekly Connection Notes in your inbox with Personal Growth and Relationship Enrichment insights and strategies, visit: www.metrorelationship.com.
And, how are You doing? What theme do you have currently going on? What new approach, system, structure, plan, routine, and such have you implemented for a smoother Autumn? Do you recognize any old patterns rearing their ugly head yet? What can you do differently to nip them in the bud this season? Do you have a fun theme in the mix? Mine is Socializing!
All my commitments, involvements, and projects have a Social gathering aspect attached to them right now. Ha! So fun!
It’s interesting how we might not realize how many “networks” we actually belong to. Unless we are purposefully trying to engage with a lot of people to build a business or sell Girl Scout cookies, we don’t necessarily pay attention to this. Now a days we pay a lot more attention to how many Friends we have on Facebook, Connections on LinkedIn, or Followers on Instagram.
We are a lot more focused on our Social Media audience, not even our other online communities. I guarantee you belong to at least 10 (on- and off-line), go ahead count them. The point of this is that there is so much fun and opportunities to be had when we fully engage in our world… We don’t have to reinvent the wheel, we just have to show up…
The deal is that we might get mired down with negativity in our life to the point that we don’t know how to appropriately engage in our world and actually enjoy it…
We might hold resentments, compete with ourselves and/or others, do comparisons, make judgements, strive for perfection, self-neglect and even abuse, have unreasonable expectations, be demanding and critical, be controlling, have ineffective boundaries, entertain drama, you get my drift… All these serve to sabotage our awesome life.
All these block our Light. They don’t allow us to leverage our Resources… They hold us back from our full potential. They conspire to create a mediocre and unfulfilled life at the end of the day. And we have a ton of these littering our mind every moment! We are feeding a toxic environment between our ears, that color the whole of our existence…
This negativity informs our mindset, influences our feeling state, generates our biochemistry, impacts all our organs and physiology, and that’s before we even speak with anyone or take any action…
This negativity influences all our choices, our decisions, our interactions, our behavior; our approach to everything. It is a lens we unknowingly put on that we don’t know to take off… We might have hints that we have it on, like: not feeling emotionally well, actually getting sick, being chronically ill, things not going well in certain areas of our life, having issues with people, not making progress on projects, things breaking down all around us, and such…
If you notice this going on, it’s time to take stock of what is renting space in your head… And, it’s time to start doing some evicting!
It is absolutely rewarding to start catching the negativity and shifting it, to let go of it, to stop it in its track. Notice what brand of negativity you tend to carry around and address its source. Eradicate its roots to prevent it from coming back. We don’t want you working hard at this, be smart about it. Address it and move on to the fun in life!
Remember to complete the MetroRelationsip™ Assignment below to help you effortlessly implement this, make changes and immediately start creating your Successful Relationship and Meaningful Life…
Share your experience by leaving a comment below!
Happy Eradicating!
~ Your MetroRelationship™ Assignment
List all the ways you recognize that you are negative, what negative thoughts you entertain, how you sell yourself short, how you might beat on yourself and others, and the like…
Choose a particular way you do negativity that takes a significant toll in your life to address first. Process for how this serves you…, and how it holds you back…
Then make any necessary changes to replace how it serves you… and any necessary changes to remove its trigger…, so it can no longer hold you back.
Copyright (c) 2018 Emma K. Viglucci. All rights reserved.
Want to Use this Article in Your Own Website or Publication?
Be our guest! Here is how, you MUST include: Emma K. Viglucci, LMFT is the Founder and Director of Metropolitan Marriage & Family Therapy, PLLC, a private practice that specializes in working with couples, she is the creator of the MetroRelationship™ philosophy and a variety of Successful Couple™ content that assist couples succeed at their relationship and their life. Stay Connected™ with Emma and receive weekly Connection Notes in your inbox with Personal Growth and Relationship Enrichment insights and strategies, visit: www.metrorelationship.com.
As we continue to settle into September, Back-to-School and the Hectic/Q4 Season, it is paramount that we are in tip top shape to handle the demands and opportunities of the Season. We all have different expectations for ourselves, our relationships, our family, our home, and our business.
We all have different ambitions, wishes, and dreams. We all have different definitions of what being in tip top shape means as well. But most importantly, we all have different motivation, energy, resources, skills, support and such. We are our own worst enemy and usually hold ourselves back if we are not intentional about our approach to our life…
In your quest to get yourself in better shape to gracefully and joyfully navigate the Season, you might want to address and clear feelings that might be driving and glitching your “operating system”…
Some of these feelings include: guilt, shame, anger, resentment, rejection, loneliness, abandonment, sadness and grief. The energy generated by these feelings course through our body and inform our state. They even lodge themselves in our body when left unprocessed. This causes the body to function poorly and eventually break down, causing dis-ease (ungraceful aging and a shorter life-span to boot!)…
The issue with this is that it’s not as simple as getting over the feeling… Our thinking patterns keep generating the same feelings over and over!
Our thinking habit is the culprit. The way we choose to interpret the events in our life, the way we give up are personal power, the way we allow others to take advantage of us, the way we allow others to take us for granted, the way we plow through inconsiderate of others and the like, all generate feelings that we don’t process or address properly.
A lot of times we are aware of the feelings but continue to go about our situation the same old way in the pursuit of resolution. The same approach will always create the same result! So, unless we are proactive, intentional and mindful in our attempt to take care of ourselves and do right in our life, not much will change. If we have lofty dreams, they might go unrealized… And, what a shame that would be!
When we are habitually angry and resentful – we are the only ones hurting with our insistence of holding on to these feelings! This habitual state of being means you are processing your world with a victim, poor me, I don’t matter and the like kind of lens that generates these feelings. This lens needs cleaning and your boundaries need reinforcing…
When we generate guilt and shame feelings we are filtering our life by beliefs that don’t serve us – guilt has to do with doing what we consider a good deed, shame has to do with what we consider being a good (worthy) person… We might have all sorts of funky beliefs driving these… We need to set clearer and more compassionate expectations… Also, we might be great at guilting and shaming others. Ugh! Clean this up immediately.
We don’t want this done to us, so why would we do it to others. Through mirror neurons, what we do to others we also are actually doing to ourselves… Stopping this relational habit is the quickest way to start cleaning up the negative related energy running through our bodies…
Rejection, loneliness and abandonment are similar to anger and resentment. We can choose how we perceive the event, and most importantly how much meaning and power we give to it… We can also go about getting connection, belonging, and acceptance needs met differently than how we are expecting them to be met currently that is dissatisfying…
Sadness and grief usually follow a loss of some sort. Sometimes the loss is not so obvious, or what we traditionally would consider a loss… These include things like – loss of childhood, youth, success, progress, outcome / certain experience, what was, what could have been, etc. Transition periods cause this inherently, even when the transitions are positive.
Here our role is to honor the feeling. Rituals, traditions, processes, and the like are excellent for relieving this.
It is imperative to make sure we are in tip top shape to smoothly, effectively and productively tackle our Autumn Agenda. Addressing our feelings and our habitual feeling state is a must to get out of our own way, and ensure a peaceful, delightful and rewarding Season. Minding our feelings clears the way for a better way of Being and an enriched life. Go ahead, you’ll be super happy you did!
Remember to complete the MetroRelationsip™ Assignment below to help you effortlessly implement this, make changes and immediately start creating your Successful Relationship and Meaningful Life…
Share your experience by leaving a comment below!
Happy Minding!
~ Your MetroRelationship™ Assignment
Identify what is your habitual way of feeling…
Anger, resentment
Guilt, shame
Rejection, loneliness, abandonment
Sadness, grief
Start cleaning up your lens/script/beliefs, how you interpret events, how you allow events to impact you, how you choose to feel, how you choose to respond, how you are proactive about addressing your circumstances…
These feelings are your friend. They guide you to where you need to make changes…
Add this to your Tool Kit…
Copyright (c) 2018 Emma K. Viglucci. All rights reserved.
Want to Use this Article in Your Own Website or Publication?
Be our guest! Here is how, you MUST include: Emma K. Viglucci, LMFT is the Founder and Director of Metropolitan Marriage & Family Therapy, PLLC, a private practice that specializes in working with couples, she is the creator of the MetroRelationship™ philosophy and a variety of Successful Couple™ content that assist couples succeed at their relationship and their life. Stay Connected™ with Emma and receive weekly Connection Notes in your inbox with Personal Growth and Relationship Enrichment insights and strategies, visit: www.metrorelationship.com.
Woohoo, happy September! How are you doing? Feeling overwhelmed, anxious, and frazzled with back2school and back2hectiness? Transitioning back into the hectic season is not easy sometimes. You might be experiencing vacation brain and are not ready to jump in.
You might be experiencing regret at not having had the summer you wanted and feeling like it went too fast. You might just be overwhelmed by the flipping of the switch and being back-on. And, add the pressures inherent to Q4 if this is on your radar. In any case, whether it’s these or other reasons that you are not feeling so hot, you are not alone.
I’ve already been providing suggestions on how to set up your Fall for success, and how to go into it with ease and grace. Here is a quick recap:
Have a last Fun Activity or Outing to say goodbye to Summer
Intentionally close the summer addressing summer locations, wardrobe, paraphernalia and such
Create a Fall routine that supports you, keep it simple and streamlined
Proactively select the habits that make up your routine to enrich your lifestyle and promote wellness
Review what you’ve committed yourself (and your family) to and reassess, take something out…
The idea is to minimize the hecticness, the overscheduling, the running and rushing around, the saturated bandwidth, and the like that create stress and breakdown in health, wellbeing and relationship(s) satisfaction. Which at the end of the day are what life is about. We tend to miss the boat on this!
Here are a few other suggestions that when implemented help create the ease, flow and joy we tend to undermine with the usual way we go about our life:
Have a Family Night (or Couple Night or Me Night depending on your current life stage)
Have two week-afternoons or -nights per week where there are no extra-curricular activities
Implement Reading and other types of Down Time
It does not make sense to have two sports activities back-to-back on the same day… Schedule differently or pick one!
Don’t double or triple book anything! Leave time for processing, regrouping, breathing, transitioning, and such…
Implement intentional transitions – from school/work to personal time, from day to night/sleep time, from weekdays to weekend, from weekend to weekdays
Create time for silence, to interact with others, to linger, to be bored…
Allow yourself and your family time to savor life…
When you start embracing this more minimalist kind of lifestyle, you actually get to Live your life more…
As you embrace minimizing the noise in your life, you’ll notice a significant improvement in your stress level, wellbeing and life and relationship(s) satisfaction… Your mood and health will be much better. Your efficiency and productivity will increase. Doing less is actually doing more!
But because we do have an overdoing-it ingrained approach, to embrace a more minimalist one is not so easy. Your train has already left the station and you are riding that ride… And, feeling the impact of it! So, as you try to slow down that train to get on a different track, you might need additional support to manage the damage already done.
To manage and address the negative feelings and state of being that might be kicking your butt. This translates into swapping Doing for Self-care… Add lots of self-care to your routine to help manage and reset your mood and feelings…
Here is a wonderful guided meditation, and energy clearing, to add to your repertoire for processing negative emotions… Nourishing activities like this one make all difference!
Focusing on feeling well, versus continuing to do more of the same and pushing through it, is the key to managing negative feelings. Removing noise and demands, nourishing your body and spirit, and Being in your life goes a long way in feeling well and living a life well lived.
Set yourself up for an amazing Fall. Remember, less is more. Take care of and be nice to yourself, and your loved ones!
Remember to complete the MetroRelationsip™ Assignment below to help you effortlessly implement this, make changes and immediately start creating your Successful Relationship and Meaningful Life…
Share your experience by leaving a comment below!
Happy Well-Feeling!
~ Your MetroRelationship™ Assignment
Take a close look at your current daily routine and lifestyle.
Lovingly, gently and intentionally revise it to support you and your loved ones better.
Streamline, simplify, systematize, delegate, and outsource.
Focus on keeping large chunks of time for just Being and enjoying… Safeguard these times as if your life depends on them. Because it does!
Add this to your Tool Kit…
Copyright (c) 2018 Emma K. Viglucci. All rights reserved.
Want to Use this Article in Your Own Website or Publication?
Be our guest! Here is how, you MUST include: Emma K. Viglucci, LMFT is the Founder and Director of Metropolitan Marriage & Family Therapy, PLLC, a private practice that specializes in working with couples, she is the creator of the MetroRelationship™ philosophy and a variety of Successful Couple™ content that assist couples succeed at their relationship and their life. Stay Connected™ with Emma and receive weekly Connection Notes in your inbox with Personal Growth and Relationship Enrichment insights and strategies, visit: www.metrorelationship.com.
It is my sincerest wish that you have gotten everything you’ve wanted out of the Summer Season this year. If as you read that statement there is a little voice that says, I wish, or, Yeah right, it’s not too late! Regardless of which camp you are in, look at the next two weeks of August as a time to milk the last of the Summer Season.
Make it good! Now is the time to review your Summer Bucket List and squeeze in any activity or experience you would still like to have. Get in touch with what would make it a successful, satisfying summer at the end of the day and go for it!
As we are beginning to wrap up the Summer Season and setting up for a smooth, productive, and abundant Fall, I’m playing with the concept of success habits… When it comes to doing our everyday actions, we usually go about our day in autopilot and through habits.
This is great because it allows us to use our energy, focus and mental bandwidth for higher executive endeavors. The caveat with this is that our automatic habits were created by default, reactivity, and on the fly. This lack of intentionally sets us up to undermine ourselves as we go.
The lack of intention on how we set up our days, the routines we follow, the vices we allow, the thoughts we entertain, and just how we show up in our life creates a mediocre, or downright horrible experience. I too often witness people bumping along in life… They have no ownership, no clarity, no direction. They go through the motions, they aspire for little, they sell themselves short, they get in their own way…
These same people don’t have much life satisfaction and meaning, experience poor health and relationships, their life is riddled with drama and excuses. They move slow and don’t make much happen. They are not really living to their full potential, to their greatness, nor experiencing life the way they were meant to. They are not fully Living their human experience…
We want to systematize and automate as much as possible, so our bandwidth is available for more meaningful activities and not just the management of life… The key is to own our system and our automation, for us to program, instruct, and set up how the program is to run…
They key is also to set it up efficiently, streamlined, and on target. We all have ways we do things, but how much thought went into creating that way. Does the way actually support, serve and honor us at the end of the day?
This is where Intentional Habits™ come in. Intentional habits flow from our values and are meant to automate the building blocks of our daily life, allowing us to experience an amazing Journey. When the basic of life is intentionally set up, we create a strong foundation from which to build the Life we want. What is important to us in our life?
Loving and nurturing Relationships, health and longevity, financial and other abundance? When we identify what is important to us and what we value, the rest of our decisions flow from there… These decisions include how we do our days.
We don’t want to overthink every decision to make sure it lines up with our values, or to overthink every behavior or action we take. That’s way too much work. This is why we set up routines as we identify and implement Intentional Habits™.
We want to get rid of any habits that undermine our wellbeing and our desires in life, what we value…
We want to create habits that support our wellbeing and our desires in life, what we value…
We want to build routines (systematization, automation) around these for ease of implementation and sustainability.
Clean-up, set-up, line-up and move on!
Every action, every behavior, every thought, everything we do every day is what creates the fabric of our Life. It behooves us to own we do, to intentionally choose it all, so we create what we desire. It behooves us to get out of our own way, to stop sabotaging ourselves, to stop holding ourselves back. Embracing Intentional Habits™ makes this possible, makes our life well Lived possible. Don’t choose to just survive, choose to thrive!
Remember to complete the MetroRelationsip™ Assignment below to help you effortlessly implement this, make changes and immediately start creating your Successful Relationship and Meaningful Life…
Share your experience by leaving a comment below!
Happy Thriving!
~ Your MetroRelationship™ Assignment
Start out by identifying immediate, blatant habits that undermine you. Tackle these with a vengeance. Eradicate them! Start with one or two at a time, be gentle and compassionate with yourself as you go.
Replace undermining with supportive habits, implement Intentional Habits™. You choose the habit (mediating, exercising, juicing, giving hugs, sending Hello texts, date night, family night, reading, cutting expenses, adding to savings, etc.) and add it to a thought out simple yet powerful daily/weekly/monthly routine…
Add this to your Tool Kit…
Copyright (c) 2018 Emma K. Viglucci. All rights reserved.
Want to Use this Article in Your Own Website or Publication?
Be our guest! Here is how, you MUST include: Emma K. Viglucci, LMFT is the Founder and Director of Metropolitan Marriage & Family Therapy, PLLC, a private practice that specializes in working with couples, she is the creator of the MetroRelationship™ philosophy and a variety of Successful Couple™ content that assist couples succeed at their relationship and their life. Stay Connected™ with Emma and receive weekly Connection Notes in your inbox with Personal Growth and Relationship Enrichment insights and strategies, visit: www.metrorelationship.com.
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Emma K. Viglucci, LMFT has been in the mental health profession in varying capacities for the past 20+ years. She is the Founder and Director of metrorelationship.com a psychotherapy and coaching practice specializing in working with busy professional and entrepreneurial couples who are struggling getting on the same page and feeling connected. The work helps couples create a radiant and successful relationship and meaningful life by becoming a strong partnership and increasing their connection, intimacy, and fun. Emma is the creator of the MetroRelationship™ philosophy and the Successful Relationship Strategy™.
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