Connect Inspire Create
Welcome to Connect Inspire Create: The Mindset & Business Coaching Podcast. I'm Carol Clegg, your host and Progress and Accountability coach for women business owners.
Listen to conversations that delve into taking action, business and life coaching,
creativity, and different ways to foster a positive mindset. Whether you're a woman
solopreneur navigating midlife, seeking to overcome procrastination, or
striving for balance in your business, you'll find an episode or two on this show that will be insightful and motivating. That's the plan!
Let's embark on a journey to connect, inspire, and create a
space where our connections inspire us —welcome to Connect Inspire Create!
Connect Inspire Create
166 Transform Stress with the Magic of Gratitude with Arlene Miller
Discover the untapped power of genuine gratitude with our guest, Arlene Miller, a seasoned work-life balance coach and professional certified coach.
Arlene Miller brings a wealth of training and experience to help you compassionately and wholeheartedly lead yourself and create the life that works and feels right for you, a life where you experience less stress and more patience, kindness, and peace; a life where you experience more contentment and joy.
Does your life feel out of balance? Are you experiencing anxiety and stress? Are you wondering 'where to from here' or 'how can I feel more confident and self-assured'?
Go to Arlene's Website https://jewelconsultancy.com/
Connect with Arlene for your free discovery call by
texting 720-936-2634 or email arlene1@jewelconsultancy.com and mention that you listened to her on this show, Connect Inspire Create
Hello from your host, Carol Clegg. A coach for coaches! I work with women coaches to find balance with ease and flow, manage stress, cultivate self-empathy, and set meaningful goals that resonate with their individual coaching practices.
My clients often have too many ideas and struggle to decide which one to focus on first, leading to a HUGE BLOCK in just getting started. I love to help simplify the process, explore what is getting in the way and guide you to choose the next project, enjoy the journey, and celebrate progress while taking small, meaningful steps.
If you would like to take the complimentary Saboteur assessment to discover what gets in your way and then follow up with a complimentary coaching session to explore your results. Take your assessment here or visit carolclegg.com
BOOK your ✅ 30 minute complimentary exploration call HERE
Connect on LinkedIn and Instagram or join my LinkedIn Group Creative Ideas for Women Business Owners
Well, hello and welcome to Connect, Inspire Create. I'm your host, Carol Clegg, a progress and mindset business coach, here to help you thrive and flourish and turn those challenges into opportunities for growth. So, whether you're looking to find balance, say goodbye to procrastination or just in need of a friendly nudge towards your goals, Remember we're all on this journey together. So grab your favorite cup of something, be it coffee, tea or something else, and let's dive into this conversation today. Well, welcome everybody to Connect, Inspire Create and the next episode. Appreciate you being here and listening to the show, and today we're going to explore the topic of celebrating your victories and partnering with the law of attraction, and joining me today is my guest, Arlene Miller. So hello, Arlene, Welcome.
Speaker 2:Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1:I'm excited to be here, yeah we've got lots of interesting things that we're going to dig into, but I'd love to just let my audience know a little bit about you. And so Arlene Miller brings a wealth of training and experience to help you compassionately and wholeheartedly lead yourself and create the life that works and feels right for you, a life where you can experience less stress and more patience, kindness and peace, and a life where you'll experience contentment and joy. So just Arlene's background she is a work-life balance coach and a professional certified coach with the International Coaching Federation. Arlene is also a Colorado attorney, a certified meditation facilitator and has a diploma in transformational holistic counseling from Australia and I have to on that note of Australia, I think that's so interesting. Tell me a little bit how that ended up being your certification from Australia.
Speaker 2:Well, I was really interested in it and one of my I have a lot of friends in Australia and people that are like my family, who are actually my friends there, and one started the school with a diploma in transformational holistic counseling and I knew that you know I couldn't use it to practice in the United States, but I just felt in my heart of hearts that it was something a really good skill to learn and you just really learn, you know deeper listening and empathic, connecting with people, and so it's really helped me in all aspects of my life. Even though I can't go out there and be a counselor without getting a master's degree in the United States, I really am grateful for having had that opportunity.
Speaker 1:That's wonderful, and it is. I think, as a coach, it's so important to have a broad depth of tools that we can bring to the table when working with clients. So I had picked out a couple of topics that you had shared, and I know that you've certainly had a very rich and varied career, and I'd love the blend that you've brought this together from law to coaching and now mentoring. The word gratitude it comes up so often. You know it's a word that certainly does have a huge impact, I believe, on people's lives, and looking at it from many different ways. But we were talking about work-life balance as one of the things that you focus on. So how does, does gratitude, would you say, help play a role in this balance that us, as entrepreneurs, coaches, business owners, are always searching for? How would you put gratitude into that?
Speaker 2:Well, gratitude is a part of everything in our life. It's just, it's a very high vibration. If we really practice it from a heartfelt space, it's going to change our experience. Because if we're truly grateful for the blessings in our life and I'll explain like the foundational level where we can start in a moment it changes our experience. Because with work-life balance, you know, there's like life hacks and mom hacks, all these things that we can key into so that we're more organized, we have ways to save time.
Speaker 2:But if we don't change how we feel on the inside, we're going to still feel overwhelmed and stressed and maybe flat out on the floor. And gratitude is just such a high vibrational thing that if we key into that and we really feel it in our lives, it's going to change our experience. We're going to be coming from a different space when we're handling all the challenges and difficulties and obstacles in day-to-day life that we need to experience. And I think we all know that if we're really tense and uptight, it's really hard to get anything done. We cannot think. But if we're relaxed and in flow, it's a completely different experience.
Speaker 1:It is Arlene. I love the fact that you spoke about inside, because gratitude needs to be inside our heart. And then looking out, Can you talk a little into that, about you know recognizing kind of where is it inside?
Speaker 2:Well, I, instead of like trying to go well where is it?
Speaker 1:Where is it? I don't know where it is.
Speaker 2:Just to focus on, like start with, the foundations in your life, because we take those for granted. You have a bed to sleep in, you have a comfortable, safe bed to sleep in. You have food in your refrigerator, you have food in your pantry, you have transportation to get here and there, you have running water. You have all these. You have people that love you and you love them. We have all these things that we take for granted and I think people make the mistake of thinking I need to find something to be grateful for without just looking right beneath their nose.
Speaker 1:What's in front of all the things?
Speaker 2:that we have grateful for to be in our lives, that maybe we are a little bit taking for granted, right. And we can always be grateful for that you know a child or a dog, or even if your kids are growing up like mine, um, you can't help but feel grateful or even some special moments in your life where you you've just had an amazing, amazing experience so I have on that because you know, knowing that gratitude, I agree with you.
Speaker 1:It's, it's foundational, um, and it's certainly to me a very important thing to bring into a morning routine to actually set you up for success for the rest of the day. But what happens when, um, oh, I'd love to ask you what is the first thing that you reach for when you're feeling frustrated and overwhelmed?
Speaker 2:well, the first thing I reach for is breath work, because it's really hard to get to gratitude if you're, if we're like really really wound up, because when we're um stressed, when we're anxious, we go into this kind of shallow breath mode and we even pull our breasts and we're not probably even aware that we're doing this. So it's really important to go whoa, you really wound up here. And you can just start with something very, very simple, like you're breathing in through your nose, breathing out through the nose, and then the out breath is longer than the in-breath. Okay, logically we're telling our body hey, it's okay to let go of this fight or flight mode stuff, we can rest and relax.
Speaker 2:it really physiologically changes our body chemistry you know if we're really wound up, maybe for 10 minutes, but you can put in the check and land the grocery store. You don't have some someplace where you're just sequestered.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that feeling that you have to be sort of out in nature somewhere or quietness all around you before you can pull on, it's a gift because it's something that we carry with us all the way. So I love that what you explained, sort of the breathing in through the nose and then breathing out for longer on the exhale through the nose. Sometimes I get confused because I do a lot of meditation myself and I use a variety of apps and I've heard that the breathing in and out of the nose is actually more beneficial than breathing in through the nose and out through the mouth. Is there a reason that there's a difference between the two? I mean, I know sometimes out the mouth and you're letting out a sound which is also supposed to have a healing property it does, it does.
Speaker 2:It does. So I don't know if it's the better or worse. Maybe it resonates with some people more than the other, because if you do take a deep breath in and go, ah, and just let everything go, that is a way to let go of stuff as well. So I just feel like you know, hey, play around with it If you're really interested, see what works for you and what resonates with you. I don't like to have these rules that this is okay. This is not. Yeah, it's. Don't like to have these rules that this is okay and this is not.
Speaker 1:This is not.
Speaker 2:yeah, it's interesting, it's got these rules anyway, you know.
Speaker 1:Right, the one of them that I was introduced to was the box breathing, and there's obviously all sorts of different varieties, but I was getting myself recertified with my scuba diving instruction and I was incredibly nervous and I really, you know, couldn't get my mind into place. And it was quite fascinating because it was a woman's day that they were doing the certification, so it was all the women divers that were coming and we did a yoga session first and then they taught us this box breathing ahead of time, and then I subsequently have used that.
Speaker 2:I'm much more comfortable now in my being in the water and diving, but use that to actually calm myself down before getting, you know, into the water yeah, it's not one of the ones that I practice, but a lot of my friends love it and a couple of my yoga teachers have introduced it in class. So, yeah, if it works for you, that's fantastic right, right.
Speaker 1:Do you have any other go-tos besides the sort of inhale and then exhale on the longer?
Speaker 2:One way is called conscious connected breathing.
Speaker 2:And that's where you breathe into your nose and out through your nose with no pause between the in-breath and the out-breath, and what that is that you and I feel it. It helps you to like, align, to love, like you know, vertically and horizontally, centering your heart of hearts, like right in your heart, chakra. And so I love that kind of breath work and you just have to make sure that you're not forcing it. You're just naturally breathing in and out of your nose with no pause between the in-breath and the out-breath. And don't be hard on yourself. If you actually take a little bit of a breath, lightning is not going to strike you. You're just giving it your best shot.
Speaker 1:Right, yeah, yeah, it's just so simple but so powerful. I know that the other thing you shared when I looked at some of the information about where you've been and what you've done, and once again coming back to this work-life harmony being a working mom across all those different life stages how do you help, coach women now to sort of gracefully move forward and find harmony between their work life and their personal life, Because often that can be in conflict and we don't take care of ourselves. We get cranky and irritable and then work gets too much or personal life gets too much and we battle with trying to find that balance.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think what we need to do is give ourselves a break, because work-life balance is an ongoing process. There's no such thing as getting there, because if we have young children and they're growing up, or wherever we are in the stage of our life, life is always changing. Maybe we resist it, but it's always changing. So if they would just get somewhere, you know that's not true, and I think one really important thing is to find ways to be kind with ourselves and to give back to ourselves, because if we and what I can help people do, if I'm mentoring them, coaching them, I know that the answers are inside of them. Mentoring them more. Sharing my wisdom is that you know if you could visualize and feel and how your life would be five years from now if you stopped all your self care, all your self love, all your exercise, all your healthy eating because you have to take care of these other people in your life. What is that your life going to be like?
Speaker 2:you know, it doesn't take that much extra time to actually give back to ourselves. And I know from personal experience that I feel like passed down genetically, because I can remember when I was about 13 or 14, I noticed my mother always bought clothes for, you know, my brother and I, but she wouldn't buy them for herself. And I remember being like 15 and going Mom, go buy clothes for yourself. Because we're trained that way. It feels like it's sort of like genetically passed down from generation to generation and it doesn't take that long to be kind and patient with ourselves. You know, we can do a 20 minute chair yoga thing, exercise, they can go out for a walk. There's all sorts of things that we can do to make that time for ourselves, because if we don't fill ourselves up with love, where the heck is that love going to come with to share with the people that are dependent on us?
Speaker 1:Right, yeah, and I think also, just, you know, starting with baby steps, just as you said, doesn't need a lot of time, but if you just make sure that you you build it in and you allocate that time and then see where that goes, see that you know you might find that you can expand it or find another slot of time later in the day. But I'd love to come back to this, what we said, the celebrating victories and partnering with the law of attraction. So I agree with you that celebrating victories is super important. You're probably going to give me a more absurd feed certain parts of our body and our brain and everything that there's some reasons behind it all, but tell me more about you know, celebrating these victories and and recognizing wins that um well, I think into this.
Speaker 2:Okay, I'm sorry to interrupt, but um at all really really important is is that we're taught that we should have a victory in a celebration when we reach a big goal, we finish a project, you know, something big like writing a book or whatever it is, and I feel like that's a big, big mistake. I feel like the journey is is what we're here to enjoy. So every day there's little steps along the journey that we do. You know, maybe there's a telephone call that we made or a letter that we wrote out or something that we did that we can stop and acknowledge. So it's really really important every day, for every little step that we take along that path, to take a breath and acknowledge ourselves and I feel like women as a whole are pretty not good at that, and so we don't have to be like that.
Speaker 2:It's like oh, I did that, that's no big deal. Well, that's your talent and that's your gift. I don't know how to do that. I'm impressed. Acknowledge yourself and celebrate that success. We can find whatever works for you in the celebration. You know, maybe doing a happy dance or listening to some music or going out in nature. But just do a little something that day to go. Job well, done right.
Speaker 1:I kind of think of that, as you share that now, when you talk about sort of bringing it into your body, and physically bringing it into your body because we can say that we intend to celebrate or we can recognize what we've completed. But I think, finishing that with an action of some sort, and if it's mild, it could be something just like a smile to yourself and going you know that, yeah, I got that, I did it, I took that first step and you know, to help you move on. But I think many a time it, just as you say, we women forget to to celebrate and keep pushing. We keep going. Well, it's the next thing we need to get done and, okay, I made one step in the direction, but this project is so huge and so big, um, I need to keep going.
Speaker 2:I need to keep going and and not slow down and that's where we burn out, and that's where we like run our self-care cup dry, and so that celebrating is a part of gratitude to ourselves, it's a part of lifting ourselves back up, and it's important to give ourselves those little breaks. You know, even if it's a five minute break, we can just breathe, or just take a walk around the block or go outside and breathe some fresh air, or we live in a nice place.
Speaker 2:You know, whatever it is, we need to make that time, because we're going to be more productive, we're going to be happier, we're going to be more at peace if we give ourselves these little moments.
Speaker 1:Right, and also just giving up the fact that, thinking that this is selfish because self-care is not selfish.
Speaker 2:No, it's not. And you know women tend to feel really guilty about that if they give to other people. And you know, and there's been that undercurrent message for for women for so many thousands of years, you know, and so what we can do is to break that. You know, I got a lot of flack when I went to law school. I mean, my father thought I mean I love my dad, he just was a very traditional man, he thought that he was happy to help me go to law school but he thought that I would just go and have a family and I was a teenager and I got pretty upset with him.
Speaker 2:I regret that in hindsight but you know we can, and I think that was in my mother too about, you know, about not giving to herself. But when we give that self-care and we stop feeling guilty, I mean it hurts the people that we love because it ends up feeling depleted and resentful because we haven't filled our own cup up with love and that's going to affect the people that we love and we want to take care of the most. So it's not helpful.
Speaker 1:No, and you get to feel frazzled and it all just plays out and then you don't have much patience and people don't get to see the right side of you. One of the last things that I would love to just touch on is tools that you might recommend to help one feel more positive and have more hope in challenging times, Because even not in challenging times, but just even in life, I know that the statistics for negative thought processes and the amount of thoughts that we process, so you know any advice on positivity and hope.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because basically you know, we choose whether we want to be an inner coach or an inner critic. And the easiest way that I find, especially for women, to turn that inner coach on is if I was talking to my best friend or someone that I really cared about or knew me, and I was telling them all the troubles and challenges that I was having in my life and I was feeling down about it, or upset, or frustrated or angry. What would I say to my friend? How would I nurture her? Or upset or frustrated, or angry? What would I say to my friend? How would I nurture her? How would I uplift her? How would I support her? How would I champion her?
Speaker 2:We know how to do that for other people. It's easy for us. All we have to do is turn around and give that to ourselves, and it might feel naughty or like, oh, am I allowed to do this? At first, but the more we practice it and the more we play it, play with it, the more uplifted we're going to feel and we're going to see the benefits in all areas of our life, because it raises our vibration, it raises our confidence and self-esteem. And you know, yeah, maybe sometimes we need a little bit of tough love. You know that wasn't okay what you did, but how can we do it differently that next time?
Speaker 1:what can you learn from that situation?
Speaker 2:Right, yeah, we need to visualize and feel, if we make a mistake or a blunder, that next time experience of how we're going to be different, which is going to uplift us, instead of taking that whip and going bad girl, bad girl, whatever we do.
Speaker 1:And even, yeah, from the sort of analytical side, you're basically helping your brain rewire the neural pathways when you catch and then shift to that positive. So having empathy and compassion for yourself helps you, then, I think, have empathy and compassion for others, but as once again we come back to that, filling up your own cup, the self-care but it's certainly, I think it's important, as you say, say, to recognize how would you talk to somebody else if they shared that with you? So bringing compassion to to the game.
Speaker 1:So I mean I'd love to know, um, you know, where listeners can connect with you, where they can learn more about you. I know that you do have an offer, and I'd love for you just to share that um, for a discovery session.
Speaker 2:Um, so, for those that are listening to the show, tell us how they'd go about that so, um you can, you can text me at 720-936-2634 or you can email me at arlene1 at jewelconsultancycom, and I know you're going to put those down.
Speaker 1:I will do.
Speaker 2:And so the discovery session is basically a 45 minute plot of time. You just have to mention your show and I will do it for free. I will gift that to you, for your audience, for your listeners, and it's basically, you know, just exploring. You know where to from here. If I was going to engage in coaching or mentoring, what would I want to talk about, what would I want to focus on and where would I like to be by the end of our time together? There's no obligation, it's just my gift to you, and you might actually discover a lot about yourself and what you really need and the opportunities and things that are available to you in that time together. So that's my offer to you, to all your audience. Just remember to mention it, thank you, otherwise, that's the key.
Speaker 1:And yeah, so that's what I wanted to share.
Speaker 1:And I will make sure to have everything on the show notes along with your website, which is jewelconsultancycom, so you can head over to Arlene's site to explore and learn a little more about her and then take her up on that generous offer because a discovery call you can even just walk away with a little nugget that you don't know that's going to make the difference in your life and I always think it's important to have these calls that we can feel the connection, we can see how we work together and understand each other. So I appreciate that offer for the listeners and thank you, you, Arlene for sharing the encouragement.
Speaker 1:So, for those who've been listening to this episode today, if this has sparked a little curiosity in you, a little inspiration, I invite you to share this episode with others who could benefit too. And then I invite you to contact Arlene and just start the conversation. Arlene, and just start the conversation. And this week, embrace your own unique way of connecting, inspiring or creating. Hence the name of my show Connect, inspire, create. Let your choices this week bring a sense of ease and flow into your life. Until the next time, if you are looking for tools to build powerful habits around a lifelong positive mindset, then I'd love to explore what results you are looking for in your life and your business.
Speaker 1:Every coach needs a coach. I'm sure you've heard that before. As a mindset and accountability coach, I work with women coaches in midlife to find balance in their business endeavors and prepare their foundation for a positive mindset. By blending my personalized accountability and mindset coaching along with the powerful positive intelligence program, you'll learn about saboteurs and sage powers and gain lifelong tools to create a shift in all areas of your life, from from personal to professional, and reduce the negative self-talk and discover more self-love. Curious to know what your own saboteurs are. I invite you to take the free assessment provided by Positive Intelligence that you'll find on my website, carolcleggcom, and then book a call with me and let's explore the results, because I am here to support you on your journey. You can connect with me on LinkedIn Just search for Carol Clay or pop by my website, carolclaycom.
