How To Get Unstuck And Start Moving Toward The Life Of Your Dreams

                                         You can't start the next chapter of your life,
                                              if you keep re-reading the last one.

I remember an incident that happened many years ago when I was in my early twenties. I was out driving in the country with one of my friends. At this time, I wasn't the most experienced driver. It was wintertime in Sweden and at this particular time that I am talking about, it was quite a bit of snow on the ground and very cold weather. I can't recall why my friend and I decided to take a drive in the country. Due to all the snow and ice roads, I wasn't driving very fast. As we were driving along and having a good time I decided to turn onto a very small and narrow road. I slowed down to make the turn but I didn't slow down enough. I didn't realize that the road I was going to turn onto was covered with ice. As I made the turn the next thing that happened was that the car hit the ice. I tried to keep the car on the road, but unfortunately the car started to slowly slide sideways, into the ditch. A few seconds later my friend and I looked at each other quite surprised at what had happened. We got out of the car. No one was hurt. Luckily for us a guy had seen what happened and he came over and offered to help pull us out of the ditch. We gladly accepted his help and a few minutes later he returned with his tractor. About fifteen minutes later the car was pulled out of the ditch without even a dent in it. We thanked the guy very much for pulling us out of the ditch

By now you might wonder.....where I am you going with this story?

Let me explain.
Think of the car as your own life. Sometimes in life we will end up in the ditch by some unforeseen incident, setback or crisis. Something happened that we didn't expect. Usually it is a loss of some kind that will get us off track and into the ditch. Maybe a divorce, death of a loved one, health problems, a severe illness, financial loss, job loss or betrayal just to name a few.

All of us will end up in the ditch at some time during our lifetime. No one will go through life without setbacks, obstacles and full blown crisis.
Do we remain in the ditch?
Of course not. We will look around and try to figure out how to get out of the ditch.

Unfortunately, I have met many people in my life and in my own coaching business that ended up in the ditch due to something that happened to them in their life. The sad thing is that 5, 10, 20 or even 50 years later they are still in the ditch. These are the people that will always tell you about how unfair everything is, how bad their life is, how terrible people are and how badly they been treated their whole life. And if it wasn't for bad luck, they wouldn't have had any luck at all.
Do you know someone like that? Or maybe it's sounds like YOU?

I get it that sometimes people can be very mean and they will do horrible things to us, but continuing to focus on what they did or didn't do, will only make us stay stuck in the ditch. And after a while no one will care that we are stuck in the ditch. The only people we will have around us are other people who are also living in the ditch. Birds of a feather will flock together.


                                        "Uncover the truth about where you are and  
                                you can begin to draw a map to where you desire to be."
                                                           - Valorie Burton


Now how do we get unstuck?
We get a tractor to pull us out. The tractor is representing a compelling future that we must create for ourselves. Something that will pull us forward when things get tough. We know where we are (stuck) but we must figure out where we want to go in the future.

What happened to that big dream that you had in your twenties or thirties? Maybe it's time to dust it off, create a game plan and then begin to take some new steps towards accomplishing your big dream? Maybe you need to set some goals and then take action on these goals? Maybe you must change our habits.?You must stop certain unhealthy habits and create better habits for yourself.
The solution(s) is the tractor. Yes, I am in the ditch right now, but what can I do now to get out of here?
Stop focusing and on the problem. Stop talking to everyone about the problem and start focusing on solution(s)

Without a vision for the future it will be easy for us to drift, get stuck and to remain stuck.

I speak from experience. I have been in the ditch many times. A few times it took a little while to get out of the ditch. In 2012 I had a complete smackdown that caught me off guard.  It was a huge betrayal by two people very close to me and it took sometime to heal from that one.

Sometimes I end up in the ditch over something very small. But if I relax and focus on where I want to go,  the next day I am usually back on track again. As we experience ending up in the ditch a few times, we usually get better at getting up, and we also usually get back up and back on track faster too.

If we have a great life plan for our life it is a lot easier to get out of the ditch and we won't remain there very long. If we don't have a life plan or we have allowed someone else to plan our life, we might stay stuck a lot longer and sometimes even forever. And we don't want that to happen.

Create an amazing vision for your life so that you won't be drifting. If you have a vison for your life, you know where you are going and if you happened to end up in the ditch you know that is only temporary and soon you will be out of the ditch and back on track again.

It's time to get unstuck and start moving towards the life of your dreams.

                                                        www.karinglannstam.com

Detours - The Unpredictable Path To Your Destiny

                                                    Part of reaching your destiny
                                                   is understanding your detours

Many years ago as I was going to take a trip and visit my parents in Växjö, Sweden (I was born and raised in Sweden and moved to the US in 1987), I was forced to change my travel plans. In other words I hade to take a detour.
I was flying out of Houston, via Chicago and then to Copenhagen, Denmark. In Copenhagen I had to get on another plane that would take me to my final destination which was Växjö, Sweden.

I had flown this route many times and I was excited to get on the plane and go home and visit my friends and my family in Sweden.

But as I was checking in at the airport in Houston they told me that were no airplanes going to or leaving Chicago that day, due to severe weather. Of course I was disappointed because I was ready to go. "What should I do now?" I asked the lady at the ticket counter. She told me that I could go home and try again tomorrow. But they didn't know if the weather was going to be any better tomorrow.
Or I could come back in about ten hours and then I could fly with a different airline and I would have to connect flights in London, England instead of Chicago. And after, I would fly from London to Copenhagen. But of course I would be delayed over ten hours or maybe even more if I encountered any other problems on the way.
Or I could just decide not to go at all, and forget about the whole trip.

I told the lady to book me on the flight through London instead. I went home and ten hours later I was back at the airport ready to go again. And this time the plane left on time and I was on way to Europe. When I arrived at Gatwick airport in London, they informed that I had just missed my connecting flight to Copenhagen. But they told that they could get me on a bus that would take me to Heathrow airport and that there will be a flight available there that would connect me to get to Copenhagen.
Another detour.....should I stop now and go home? Of course not. I got on the bus and a little over an hour later, I was at Heathrow airport. I got on my plane to Copenhagen and then the final flight into my hometown in Sweden. I made it to Växjö and I had a wonderful visit in Sweden.

Would you have stopped at the ticket counter in Houston when they told you that your flight had been cancelled due to bad weather? Of course not.
Would you have stopped at the Gatwick airport in England when they told you that you had missed your flight? Of course not. You would just simply find another route that would have taken you to your final destination.

So why do most people stop pursuing their goal when they run into an obstacle, setback or detour? Why don't most people apply the same principle as in the example below? Instead most people give up when they encounter a temporary setback. Or they quit when they have to find a different path to get onto because the other path is not available any longer. They give up and tell themselves that is wasn't meant to be. These people often feel like a failure and they bury their dream way back in the mind so they don't have to think about it anymore.

A goal is the final destination to where you want to go. You have a great plan on how to get there. You start your trip towards the goal and bad weather hits in the form of an obstacle or setback. Should you go back to where you started? No, you simply take a step back. Look at the situation and figure out a different route that you can take that will take you to your final destination

                                                "Lessons often come dressed up as
                                                     detours and roadblocks."
                                                            - Oprah Winfrey

A detour simply means another route. It should never mean surrendering your goal.

I can't tell all the times that I had to change my route when I was flying either from the US to Sweden, or back home to the US. Not one time did I quit or return home. I simply found a new route and I always made it to Sweden and back home to the US.

When you come to a roadblock.....take a detour!

                                                             www.karinglannstam.com

You Have The Right To Be You

                                          When you stop trying to change others
                                               and work on changing yourself,
                                             your world changes for the better.

You have the right to be you..... but at the same time you must also allow others to be who they are.

Thinking everyone should be like us is one of our biggest problems in relationships and it causes a lot of wrong thinking and wrong attitudes that are damaging to healthy and fulfilling marriages, friendships and work relationships.

Do you think you are the perfect standard of what you think people should be and act like?

Are you having trouble getting along with others, especially if they don't think and act like you do?

Do you have the confidence to be who you were created to be, or do you feel like you have to apologize for how you see things and what you like and dislike?

Do you give the same freedom to others? Do you allow them to be who they were created to be or do you try to change people, they way they think and what they do?

All of us are very different and we must learn to accept that not everyone is the same.

If everyone were the same, liked the same things and did the same things, can you imagine how boring life would be.
We are created differently for a reason, and sometimes we might not understand why some people were created in a certain way, but we have to learn to accept people the way they are, without thinking that something is wrong with them, because they don't fit into our idea of normal.

What is normal anyway?

Normal to you..... might not be normal to me. Does it mean that you are wrong and I am right. Of course not. We are just created differently. We think differently and we act differently.

What if all people looked alike, behaved the same way and had the same temperament.
What about if all dogs and cats look the same. All the flowers and trees were the same. What if we lived in the same looking houses, drove the same kind of car, dressed alike and we all did the same activities and hobbies. Would you be bored?

Learn to appreciate the variety this world has to offer. Differences makes life interesting and it gives us the opportunity to learn, expand  and grow.

How many people have we shut out of our life, criticized and made to feel inferior simply because they didn't fit our standard of what we believe is normal?
More than we probably want to admit.

Of course we connect more with some people that we do with others and we don't want to be best friends with all people. But it doesn't give us the right to judge, criticize them and make them feel inferior and insignificant.

                                                                www.karinglannstam.com

The Connection Between The Mind And The Mouth

                                                         "The words you speak
                                                    become the house you live in."
                                                                   - Hafiz

Do you pay attention to the words that come of your mouth?

Do you speak words that will inspire, empower, uplift and bring joy to yourself and others?

Or do you speak negative words? Words of doom and gloom, gossip, judgmental or critical words?

Think before you speak.
I am sure you have been taught this by your parents when you were a kid.

But do we think before we speak?
The truth is that we don't have to say everything that comes to our mind.

If we don't pay attention to what comes out of our mouth, especially when we are angry, disappointed or hurt, we can seriously hurt and damage our relationships with others with our own words.
Once we have spoken the words it will be difficult to take them back, no matter how many times we apologize for using the wrong words and saying things we should have kept to ourselves.

It's difficult to control our mouth unless we learn to control our minds. A word is a thought revealed. What is in the mind will come out of the mouth.

If we think about something frequently, we will eventually say it. In an unguarded moment we might blurt it out and cause some serious damage to someone else.

If we constantly think angry thoughts and speak angry words, we will eventually feel angry and might even display angry behavior towards others or even ourselves.

On the other hand if wee think and speak words of kindness, joy and love, we will also feel and display these words in the form of kindness and love towards others and ourselves.

When we determine that words have power, we will become more aware and more careful how we use them.

What we think and what we say out load will influence our own destiny.


                                      "What comes out of your mouth is determined
                                                  by what goes into your mind."
                                                            - Zig Ziglar


Words have great influence. They reveal what is in your mind.
Words can hurt or heal.
Words can encourage someone to keep going or give up.
Words can build people up or tear them down.
Words can put a smile on someone's face or make them cry.
Words can bring comfort.
Words can bring love or hate.
Keep your word to others
Sometimes we have to eat our own words and deal with the consequences.


TIPS!

Fill your mind will good things. 
If you constantly think good, empowering and thoughts of love, there will be no room left for bad thoughts to enter your mind.

Use your words wisely. 
Learn to discipline your mind and what comes out of your mouth. Pay attention to your thoughts and your words or you can easily fall back into the bad habit again. 

Break the habit by thinking and speaking of what you want and who you want to become. 
Never what you cannot be or what will never happen.

What you constantly meditate and dwell upon, good or bad, will influence your destiny.

                                                        www.karinglannstam.com