How often have we looked back at events in the past that caused us trauma and wished that they had never happened, that we had done things differently. And that’s when those words pop up: IF ONLY. ‘If only I had done this instead of that; if only I had thought before speaking or acting; if only I had tried harder’. If only….

These thoughts and deliberations are pointless because you can’t change what happened in the past and asking these questions fill you with regret and guilt. Guilt is one of the emotions and states of being that vibrate very low and can sink you to depths of depression and agony.

Get this: you did the best you could at that time, according to the person you were then, according to where you were in your journey of life, according to the knowledge you had then. You did the best you could under those circumstances.  And there had to be times in the past when we knew less, lacked certain positive qualities that we have now or were less equipped in whatever way than we are now. That is what the journey of life is all about. We have to mess up, sometimes badly; we have to fail, in order to learn vital life’s lessons and in order to grow, learn and develop.

The important thing is to learn the lessons from our mistakes and ensure we don’t repeat them. That is how we become better, stronger and wiser people and gain a heightened sense of self awareness, spiritual awareness and develop character. If things always go our way and if we don’t fail and are not challenged, there will be no need for us to move out of our comfort zones and old programmes. We will not change and grow and that is a pointless existence.

I have found that the best thing to do is to make peace with whatever happened in the past and move on. Acceptance. That is a very liberating word. Acceptance is an acknowledgement of our human frailties and the vicissitudes of life. It’s being able to let go and forgive ourselves and move forward. It takes us to a place of growth and strength. Beating ourselves up internally makes us miserable and depressed and anxious about the future. It brings down our self esteem and hinders our ability to achieve any goals because we’re so busy lamenting our actions in the past. And it wrecks our health.

This life is short. Don’t compound your failings by giving them more time than they’re worth. Give time to your healing and achieving instead.

This blog is about the importance of letting go of negative emotions and thoughts.  As an introduction, I’d like to briefly touch on the book ‘Letting Go’ by David Hawkins and what it has taught me about achieving emotional and spiritual healing. Hawkins has written some ground breaking, phenomenal books on spiritual growth and consciousness and healing and … just how to be the best version of yourself. I’ve learned a lot through his books and ‘Letting Go’ resonated with me in particular and we studied its teachings at length in my Masters life coaching course. Hawkins book is about letting go of negative emotions and in so doing, moving up the scale of consciousness, which he also introduced to the world. Basically, Hawkins says that as you let go of emotions like shame, guilt, hatred and anger for example, you heal yourself immensely and in so doing, attract all positives to your life (like love, joy and peace). So letting go of negativity can profoundly change your life for the good.

So – Why are so many people carrying around so much negative emotion? People are just repositories for years, even decades of past bitterness, hurt, grief, anger. So much pain. Because of layers of these taking hold inside of you over years. How does this happen? We experience trauma, hardships, abuse, terrible experiences and leave us with great hurt and pain and other emotions. Of course we do, because we’re human and we’re supposed to feel emotions. But, we need to take the lessons in them and move on, not store them in our cells to take out and dwell over. But we don’t let them go. Why? Is it serving you.  No, quite the opposite. Why do this to yourself? Chuck them out.

See, the first thing you have to realize is that is life! Yes it is. Life is not about us having it easy and everything being sweetness and light all the time. Life is a series of challenges that we have to overcome in order to grow and develop into the highest version of ourselves. Once you accept that, you will accept all the negativity, deal with it, learn the lessons and let go of the crap. Eventually, you will get to a point where you attract more and more good into your life.

The other thing is when someone says or does something horrible to us, we take it personally. Ok, of course we do because it is directed at us, but understand that  often, it is not about us, but about them. It is about all the negativity that they have harboured in them. Why are we giving that person such power over us to allow them to hurt us to the point of damaging ourselves – our mental and emotional health, our self esteem? Of course, it can also be about you – that you have hurt someone or done something wrong  and they reacted to you. In that case you need to make amends and do some reflection, learn the lesson and improve. And then move on. But there are also people who are determined to hold grudges and be negative even if you have apologized and tried to make amends. That’s their issue and their journey.

We also beat ourselves up for past mistakes – over and over again. Stop doing that. The past is over. You did what you did because that was who you were then. The important thing is that if you realize your mistake or hurt you’ve caused someone or yourself, do the necessary and then again, move forward. Learn from the mistake and don’t repeat it. Handle it differently next time. But don’t keep guilt and shame and regret inside you.

Let it go! By getting rid of negative thoughts and emotions, you will feel lighter and freer. And you will, literally, change your life. I have helped so many clients through this process and would love to hear from you if you are battling with this.

21^st February is Healthy Lifestyle Awareness Day. So when I was pondering about what gems of wisdom to share with you today, I thought, everyone speaks about diet and exercise but there are other important factors that are not given the same attention but are a huge problem to a lot of people and one of them is sleep. For some reason, more and more people are really battling with insomnia. And besides it being really frustrating to be lying awake at night, we just have to sleep for optimal health – it’s when our bodies rest, heal and repair. We need at least 7 to 9 hours of quality sleep. Not getting this can lead to ill health. So what do we do about elusive sleep?

Well, I can tell you what not to do to start with and I want to say it upfront because it’s most people’s first port of call. Don’t take sleeping pills. Especially the ones with chemicals in it and not natural substances. They are bad for your health, don’t give you actual restful sleep and are very addictive. Many doctors prescribe it for acute insomnia and they can be useful if taken in small doses for a short while. If you need to take something, especially for a longer period, a better option is a natural product like chamomile tea or Valerian root which is very effective.

The best way though to aim for a good night’s sleep is to create a conducive lifestyle. The first thing is creating a healthy circadian rhythm. Your body responds to light and dark cycles and is programmed to be awake and rest accordingly. It is essential to get enough bright light exposure during the day and on the opposite end, you need to avoid bright artificial lighting after sunset, as light will impair your melatonin production. This is very difficult with our lifestyles so at least try and dim the lights at least an hour before bedtime.

Also, try to sleep in complete darkness, or as close to it as possible. Even the tiniest bit of light in the room, such as that from a clock radio LCD screen, can disrupt your internal clock and your production of melatonin and serotonin, thereby interfering with your sleep. So, close your bedroom door, get rid of night-lights, cover any LCD screens and your windows. Then, keep your room temperature at around 21 degrees celsius.  Scientists believe a cooler bedroom may be more conducive to sleep, since it mimics your body’s natural temperature drop.

The next point is very important to take note of because almost everyone is guilty of this:  Eliminate electric and electromagnetic fields in your bedroom. EMF exposure has been linked to neuron changes that affect memory and your ability to learn and they also harm your body’s mitochondria, so sleeping in EMFs all night, every night, can cause or contribute to virtually any chronic ailment, including premature aging. Put your cellphone off at night. If you need it for your alarm, put it on flight mode and keep it as far away from your bed as possible. Also, turn your WiFi off at night. It’s harmful to your body and you don’t need Wi-Fi while sleeping, so this is a wholly unnecessary exposure that is easily remedied by turning it off. And remove the television, computer, laptop and digital clock from your room. Keep your room free from all this and it will definitely contribute to giving you a better night’s sleep.

If you do all this and you’re still struggling, there is something else going on and it’s usually happening inside of you. The biggest enemy to sleep is stress, worry and anxiety. All these negative thoughts just keep going around in your head and you wish you can shut it off. It’s awful. If you don’t address these, it’s very likely that you’ll never be able to conquer your sleeplessness. It’s one of the things I offer in my life coaching, so contact me for a free session.

It’s Valentine’s Day again and everyone is doing the love thing. It can unfortunately get really corny with all the red hearts and chocolates and mass produced Valentine’s paraphernalia. I know some people get really irritated by all this and I get them. The true meaning of love is lost amid the huge commercialization and commodification of love on Valentine’s Day.  This in itself is mostly harmless.

But there’s another aspect that’s more concerning.  I have seen lots of clients who have made me rethink this whole Valentine’s thing, this whole over emphasis on romantic love and expressions of it. Popular culture has really made romantic love into the most important thing to aspire to – it’s glorified in books and movies and magazines and online. But I’m seeing clients who got into relationships and marriages with stars, or rather hearts in their eyes and then find after a few weeks or months, after the novelty has worn off, they come crashing down and wonder what happened.

That’s because real love that lasts is about more than romance and moonlight and roses. It’s about experiencing all kinds of challenges and hardships – financial, health, extended family issues, dealing with children… and sticking with each other through it all. It’s about the bad times as well as the good. I had  a married woman come to me for coaching and she was experiencing severe depression and anxiety. Her husband was supportive for a short while and then got frustrated as, according to him, it’s not ‘what he signed up for’. You can imagine what did this for her emotional health and her self esteem. Her husband was another person who just didn’t get the memo – marriage is not about being there for the good times only. It’s literally, for better for worse.

Most stories in books and movies have happy endings and happily ever after. We don’t hear about Cinderella having to cope with Prince Charming’s bad habits, for example. And we find that many young couples are just not prepared for this today – dealing with the harsh realities of being in a long term relationship. Unfortunately, Valentine’s Day, with its emphasis on the superficial romantic aspects of relationships, just makes the problem worse.

If you’re one of the people celebrating Valentine’s Day – by all means do it. Just don’t go believing the hype and kitsch. Real love is about much more than this.

Today I am really excited to share with you a health and exercise programme that I have been using. You may have picked up by now that I am quite health conscious and am mindful of what I eat and of doing daily exercise and addressing all aspects of my life in order to gain maximum wellbeing. But since the beginning of the year I put together a few different things that I have been doing on and off and followed it rigorously as a programme. It includes diet and exercise and certain lifestyle modifications.

So let me tell you where I’m coming from. I’ve been fortunate when it comes to weight and body shape, because all my life I could literally eat anything and as much as I liked and not put on any weight. My friends were NOT impressed. When I was expecting my first baby one of my friends said ‘oh thank goodness, maybe now you’ll put on weight and be fat like me’. Much to her disgust, I lost all my pregnancy weight.  So, you get the picture. But in recent years I have been putting on weight. It’s to do with that horrible thing called ‘getting older’. It was okay at first because the weight was evenly distributed, so I still looked fine. But, in the last year or so, I started putting on weight on my tummy. And I hated it. It was noticeable and I just couldn’t lose it! Beside it being unhealthy because visceral fat is one of the worse for heart health.

So I tried a few things but nothing worked. But last December was crunch time! I indulged in delicious food which was as fattening as it was delicious and I saw the results on my tummy. That’s when I said ‘enough is enough!’ and decided to try something different and be very disciplined and serious about it. I sat down at my desk and did some research – which is probably the only time you should be sitting down for long (sitting for long is not good). And I went through all the stuff I had learnt and researched over the years and what I’d taught to my clients and I juggled a few things around and then came up with something. I devised a programme and decided to follow it rigorously. Through bad days and tired days and busy days and craving days. I stuck to it. And guess what? Two things. It’s a simple plan, not complicated at all, because I knew that with my busy lifestyle I did not want anything complicated to follow and, it turned out to be really doable and easy to follow. It stuck to it, the diet, not just what I ate but when I ate, the exercise, and the few lifestyle practices. And…..the results have been phenomenal! My tummy has gone down, yay! I feel more toned, healthier, fitter and more energized.

I am in the process of starting my clients on this and a few friends as well. I don’t want to tell you anything more about it now, because it’s different for everyone and it depends on where you’re at in your life and health status as well.  For people who have specific health challenges or diseases, we will have to work with your doctor. But, if you are on my page and want to bring about some change in your life with regard to health and wellness, I’d love to see if I can help you. Contact me for a free session.

February is Healthy Lifestyle Awareness Month. This is something I’m passionate about and it is one of the niche areas in my coaching. I feel strongly about the benefits of pursuing a healthy lifestyle because I have seen the positive results in my life personally. We need to realize the power we have to maintain good health by our own agency – eating healthily, exercising, getting enough sleep and sunlight. These are things we hear about all the time but during the month of February, I will try and discuss as many aspects as possible in my blog.

Too many of us have the wrong idea about health and wellness. We lead unhealthy lifestyles, eating badly, being inactive, adopting bad habits and then when we get ill, we wonder why and then go to the doctor and put chemicals in our body to heal. Of course we have to see doctors for a wide variety of ailments, but many doctor’s visits can be avoided if we paid attention to maintaining our health in the first place.

I have helped many people achieve healthy lifestyles and maintain it. Many of my clients came to me for my basic coaching programme and I discovered that a lot of their challenges were related to their lifestyle. After addressing these, everything else in their lives improved. Many were astounded to realize that their depression for example was caused to a large extent by the foods they were eating and correcting this brought instant improvement. Many emotional and mental challenges are indeed very dependent on nutrition.

There are too many outside factors that can mess up our mood, our feeling of wellbeing, our physical and mental health. We have no control of those factors, but we can control how they affect us. We can control our own lifestyle and we can control how well we feel. Don’t throw away the power you have.

Before I go, I must mention that 4^th February is World Cancer Day. Cancer is a dreaded disease but it is also one that many people have beaten by healing themselves. More and more, it is being realized that cancer is also a lifestyle disease like diabetes and heart disease, as it is also affected by how you live your life on a daily basis and the choices you make. Moreover, stress plays a huge part in the cause and spreading of cancer. Stress can equate to negative thoughts and emotions and renowned inspirational figures like Louise Hay and Brandon Bays have healed themselves by undergoing an inner healing and transformational process and have inspired countless others to do the same. I have also followed their teachings after being diagnosed with and beating breast cancer many years ago.

I look forward to connecting with you more during this month on all aspects of living a healthy lifestyle.

I have been coaching more clients with financial difficulties recently and this is not surprising given the state of the economy.

As much as our financial circumstances are undoubtedly affected by the economy and other external factors, we can still play a huge role in improving the situation through our efforts. By  this I am not talking about the obvious things like saving, spending more frugally, budgeting etc. These are all useful steps to take and that are well known. But there are other ways that many are not aware of and don’t practice; yet they are highly effective and indeed can change your circumstances for the better.

It has to do with mindset. And people don’t realize how powerful this is.  The first thing to work on is negative beliefs. Why? Because our beliefs dictate our behavior and influence our reality!  So it’s not necessarily circumstances that prevent us from having abundance or financial freedom, it’s our beliefs. They get in the way and they form a ceiling above us. Like a belief that financial freedom is for others, and that we don’t have it in us to be rich. And one might say: but that’s true. It’s not true! Beliefs aren’t necessarily true. They are energy in our minds and body and electrical system. So it is critical to change your belief system. And my coaching system changes your mindset. It changes the energy in your body around finances, so that you can attract abundance for the rest of your life, not just for a short period, or to give you a windfall.

You might even think you don’t have negative beliefs around money; that you believe you can be rich and wonder why you’re still not making it. The thing is – there is your conscious mind, and your subconscious. And very often we are not even aware of what beliefs are running us as they have been programmed into us at some stage, and running in the background in our subconscious mind. So this is what you have to get at the bottom of. You might even have tried really hard to find work and weren’t able to because jobs are scarce and the economy is in a slump. I read a very interesting story in Catherine Ponders ‘The Dynamic Laws of Prosperity’. She said that even in the  midst of the Depression in the US, when jobs were extremely scarce, people with an abundance mindset were working at two or three jobs and earning well. Indeed, there have been countless people in challenging financial circumstances who have overcome them and made millions. See the thing is, the key is to never put the blame or reason outside of yourself. Take responsibility for everything in your life. When you do that, you are empowering yourself. When you say some external reason is responsible for your situation, you are disempowering yourself.

If you are unemployed, change your energy by getting rid of negative thoughts and beliefs. You will then attract opportunities as you’re not coming from an attitude of scarcity, anger, ‘I hate the economy, I hate the company that fired me’. So it’s all about changing your energy to become abundant because you can’t get what you are already not feeling in your body, mind and energy. Infuse yourself with positive thoughts and beliefs, believe that you deserve and have abundance and prosperity and watch it flow into your life.

It’s January and back to school today for many children. For some it may be a time of excitement and happy anticipation of what the new school year has to offer –new challenges to conquer, new friends or seeing old ones again, new opportunities to excel. But sadly, for others, it is a time of anxiety and apprehension. I am concerned by how many young people I am seeing recently for a variety of issues. They are presenting mainly with stress, anxiety and depression and these are due to issues like bullying at school or on social media, work overload, not performing at school or to their parents’ expectations, eating disorders, major self esteem and confidence issues, drugs and other addictions. The list goes on. And I am saddened and puzzled. Teenage years are supposed to be mainly carefree and happy ones and although every age has its challenges, I don’t think our teenagers have been this lost and troubled. There are a number of reasons of course, related to the sheer nature of the times we’re living in, but the important thing is that our youngsters are crying out for help.

I have been touched and shaken because I can say without exception that every child I worked with had a beautiful soul. They are lovely young people who are battling so many demons, some more than others of course. It concerned me greatly that at their tender age they were having to deal with all this. I took them through my programme, specially modified for teenagers and the results were beyond my expectations. Depending on what their particular challenge was, every teenager left my programme either having overcome their problem, or successfully equipped to do so on an ongoing basis.

What struck me was how receptive these young people were to guidance and counseling. They are more receptive than adults because they are more open to and better equipped for learning and change. Also, addressing serious problems early on is vital to laying the foundation to a healthy, productive  and successful adulthood.

I have since added this to my niche area as I realized that working with teenagers is so rewarding. If you have a teenager who is struggling, get in touch with me.

It seems that happiness is everyone’s goal. In my life coaching practice I am seeing so many people coping with unhappiness, depression, anxiety and misery. It cuts across all social sectors and ages and is prevalent in men and women. I am seeing more men in recent months who are battling to cope with feelings of deep inadequacy and angst. Everyone has different challenges and problems; different ‘causes’ for their unhappiness. I put the word ‘causes’ in parenthesis because I always tell my clients that nothing should actually be the cause of one’s unhappiness. In the same way that you should not wait for certain things to happen, or for you to achieve something , in order to be happy. You see, happiness is a choice. You can choose to be happy right now.

Did I hear some ‘yeah rights’? Have you heard this before and haven’t been very successful in managing to acquire much eluded bliss? Let me give you a different perspective and see if this helps. For most of my life I thought that those espousing eternal cheerfulness were out of touch with reality and were just encouraging everyone to be happy because it’s just so much better than being sad (yes, really). Until I learnt that it’s not this at all – that there’s a scientific basis for this belief and that choosing happiness is the best way to ensure that you attract more joy into your life. How does it work?

One of the many Universal Laws is the Law of Attraction. I’ve explained exactly how the law of attraction works in a previous article. Like attracts like. Whatever is in you is what the universe will bring you more of.  Your subconscious is programmed to bring you more of what is already programmed in it. Don’t you think then that it makes much more sense to choose happiness instead of sadness, positive thoughts instead of negative, depressing thoughts? In so doing, you will attract more of those to you. You will become happy because you have already chosen to be happy and to experience that emotion of joy. Own your power. Don’t give it away to some other person or to circumstances. Don’t allow your state of mind to be dictated to by external factors. Be grounded and powerful within yourself so that you are not buffeted easily by life’s happenings.

And believe me you will be tested. I get often told by my clients that ‘it’s all well and good to say “choose happiness”, but it’s so hard’! Of course it can get hard at times – for everyone. Understand this: we are not here to have it easy all the time. Part of the human experience is to go through challenges and difficulties, even severe trauma and hardship. Those who have experienced the latter have just experienced the full meaning of what it is to be human. But it is a test. We have a choice of which path we want to travel, how we are going to deal with these challenges. And it is the path we choose that determines our growth as individuals. And persons who have overcome hardship, dust themselves off and forge on positively, have achieved a victory not to be sniffed at. It’s all about choice.

But we all need help from time to time in guiding us through those challenges and choices. One choice is seeing a life coach.

Contact me for a free session.

https://www.raeesamahomed.co.za/contact-me/