Casey Berard

122 things I value about me

I started working through Kate Northrop’s “Money: A Love Story”. One of the exercises was to write down three things you value about yourself a day. Something about the way she described this exercise made it sound really important and nourishing so on February 13 instead of just writing down my appreciation and gratitude for the day I added in three things I value about myself. Here is about a month’s worth:

I value my ability to be in the moment
I value my habits of doing dishes
I value my ability to be open to opportunities
I value myself in the moment
I value my insights
I value my skills
I value my body
I value my faith
I value my commitment to myself
I value my anger
I value my bravery and courage when I am scared
I value my skills and ability
I value my hopes
I value my being in the moment
I value my faith in divine timing
I value my commitment to myself
I value my courage and insight
I value my loyalty to myself
I value my ability to flow
I...

Ready to work on the guilt you feel? Let me walk you through the process that I have and do use with myself and clients for over 10 years. Plus there's a PDF to go with it. 

Enjoy. 

Download your PDF Worksheet here. 

Do you procrastinate beautiful feisty soul, and then feel guilty?

OH my goodness. I had to laugh as I was setting my intention to write to you. First off, I felt guilty for not wanting to talk about guilt anymore and I felt guilty cause I was procrastinating and I really care about our relationship!!

OH the irony. A spiritual mindset coach is always a feisty soul too.

So, I review my own philosophy on guilt…

1. Guilt is about a behaviour or action. Check
2. Can I name the behaviour: Yup! I said I would do a series on guilt and now I don’t want to. (picture my cute inner 5 year old stomping her feet!)
3. How do I get back into the now and reinvest in my focus?

Well…I remember how much I want to share with my fellow feisty souls that feelings won’t destroy us.
I remember my commitment to myself and my mission.
I refocus. I get clear and back in the now.

In that space I can say, “oh, Casey, I forgive you for leaving the newsletter till the last minute....

Can you feel summer in the air?

I find this time of year leads to a chruning of my spiritual, physical and emotional growth. I notice patterns and clutter waiting to be ditched, leaving room for newness and beauty.

One of the areas I look at often are times when I feel guilty, really guilty.
I have done something that has hurt someone and it was not my intention. It could be as simple as being late or forgeting to do something I had said I would do. Regardless, as a sensitive and feisty soul it is eating me from the inside out and I know from Gabor Mate’s personal and professional experiences in the book, “When the Body Says NO” that this can lead to illness on all levels.

So let’s stop. Let us change what we can change.
Let’s make a list of 3 of our guilt inducing actions and change them. Pick the lowest and ripest hanging fruit. It’s that thing you just need a little push to change: a kick in the avoidance mindset!

1.
2.
3.
Done!
Congrats…now...

I’m a feisty soul and spiritual mentor who believes that our feelings are good and that guilt can be good too.

Go ahead, you can laugh at me but over the last 10 years I’ve been working with guilt and really understanding it from a mindful place. Turning it on its head and looking at how it can be good for me.

Let’s talk about good guilt today: the stuff that motivates us in life.
-Guilt is a feeling that makes us feel awful in the pit of our stomach and in our hearts.
-It warns us that something about our behavior is not working.
-It’s not about who we are. It’s about our actions, our behavior, and the choices we’ve made.

The cool thing about this is it means I have all the power. I can transform guilt. I can take guilt from being something that feels yucky to something that actually allows me to create something new in my life.
Here’s an example:

I’m a mother, an entrepreneur, I have my own hobbies and I have two high needs...

I love gardening. It keeps me sane and healthy.

It also reinforces my faith in the flow and timing of Universal Forces. It teaches me so much about life.

Have you noticed how resilient plants are?

I have been trying to excavate an invasive plant from my yard and the neighbor's yard for 4 years now. It felt like survival of the fittest for a while, who was more determined to create the landscape.

I fought inner demons through this process. I suffered spiritual truths. I wondered who am I to evict this clearly determined plant from my garden. The plant taught me about assertive boundaries and persistence!

I learned that I could decide who or what came into my space and how I would share it. I did not want this rapidly growing (yet beautiful and lush) green plant to suffocate my other plants. It had clearly become the unsuspecting bully in the garden. And I was clear that I wanted everyone to get along, sharing resources to water, sunlight and oxygen. This plant was not sharing.

I...

It seems we either love it or hate it. Whether you cringe at the word or you ignore the word, most people have very specific thoughts when they think of the word exercise.

I am really excited to let you know that there is lots of evidence-based research that shows that

30 minutes of “exercise”
a day can help prevent depression, anxiety, diabetes, heart disease, and a bunch of other signs and symptoms that we suffer from. It also boosts our immune system which is such a great thing to have as a parent of children who bring home yucky germs all the time.

So today I was walking my dog and thinking of all the ways I've found to flow with "exercise".

It really changes in the life of a mother. Finding time and motivation let alone inspiration when kids, partners, work, friends, and pets are wanting your time too.

So I've explored all sorts of options.

Many forms of moving your body count!

Your mind, body and spirit will thank you.(nudge nudge wink...

Greetings wise beautiful soul!

Oh to know wisdom. Learning from our life, our truth, our inner knowing can lead us down a highly satisfying and joy filled path! Join me?

I have to say, it is not the easiest path. Especially when we know we have an ego!

Wisdom is often quiet.
In my experience, if you will let me personify wisdom, it doesn't yell, stomp or throw things to get my intention. It whispers quietly or gently taps on my shoulder.

My ego on the other hand, can get quite dramatic. It has a flare for big, loud expressions of what I really need right now!!! It is often impulsive and requires me to apologize a lot.

Wisdom is softer, it is housed in our cellular vibration, our DNA perhaps.

I often call it alignment.

Alignment feels good.

Ego feels hungry. (And never satisfied.)

The quickest ways to know wisdom:
1. Meditation

Meditation is about the now; whether it be a breathing meditation, a visualization or a point of focus meditation, the experience or attempt of single focus...

4 Steps to Compassionate Communication
Hey beautiful soul!

I am about to speak compassionately with you about my darker side. I call it my shadow side (Carl Jung inspired.)

It's the side of me that doesn't always practice what I preach.

Or speak clearly. It is the side of me that gets easily scared and defensive--especially when I need to speak my truth.

We all have it.

If you deny it, the shadow will get worse.

Big deep breath of self compassion here.
(Cause you know shame is screaming at me that---"I am not enough if I type that...that people will destroy me and my children will starve because of my imperfections!!" --Oh ya, shame.)

Warning:
If you are not feeling compassionate, empathetic, or enough, this writing may trigger the crap out of you (or bring out your shadow side: judgement, criticism, comparison, etc).

Feel free to skip down to the 4 steps to speaking compassionately now.

You see I am about to be really vulnerable, to speak really clearly, to admit I am not perfect...

What is shame and why does it lie?
A painful feeling of humiliation or distress caused by the consciousness of wrong or foolish behaviour--yup, I felt that.

Blah...shame lies. It is not telling the truth of who you are or what you are capable of. Once you recognize it's voice you can tell it where to go!!

I was looking up the definition of shame and you know it actually has purpose:
used to reprove someone for something of which they should be ashamed.
I am thinking of stealing, lying, illegal behaviour
And truthfully, Brene Brown's research shows that using shame is not effective in changing behaviour...GUILT works better (wink)
want proof, Brene's got it? video here, article here
The difference you might ask?
Shame is about us at the core. That we are not enough.

Guilt is about our behaviour: something we have control over.

Brene is clear that it's not just semantics, her research shows that:

"Shame is highly, highly correlated with addiction, depression, violence, aggression,...