A quote to remember

I gave a workshop this week and the title was "How to keep your power through difficult times". It was a great experience because apart from the fact that a couple of people who had never opened up to some hidden aspects of themselves, did so and did so publicly (sharing yourself in front of others is VERY powerful), something very curious happened.

One participant waited for everyone to leave so he could tell us (myself and my colleague who was presenting the workshop with me) that he felt extremely annoyed about what one person said and it was our responsibility to have stopped that person from speaking.

I asked him: "What stopped you from speaking up and sharing your thoughts about it in the group instead of waiting for everyone to leave?"

I will not get into the details about where that conversation led, yet the importance of what I am sharing is that OUR THOUGHTS have the power to stop us dead in our tracks or to help us fly higher than we ever imagined possible.

Have you ever stopped to think about the quality of your thoughts?
How is your precious energy (in the form of thought) being spent most of the days?
Do you have any control over them? Do they know who is BOSS? By the way, who is boss, you or your thoughts?

If you are willing to slow down from the hustle and bustle of life and sit quietly for a short while, you will realize the vast amount of thoughts that cross your mind at any given moment. They keep coming, all the time, all random thoughts. The bad news is they are mostly negative (it is our human nature to have negative, fearful, worrisome, doubtful thoughts) the good news is that one can practice and through practice, perfectly go beyond his thoughts. Like any other thing to be mastered, it takes practice to control and focus your mind, yet it is no doubt the biggest gift you will ever give yourself! Much better than attaining a gym membership for one year,  much cheaper than joining a yoga studio and oh so much more powerful than listening to anyone's motivational speech.

I can't stress enough the importance of the book by James Allen, "As a Man Thinketh" published in 1902. This is a gem of a book and every page is important.

James Allen talks about the power our thoughts exert upon us and focuses the reader's attention on the quality of her own thoughts. Allen goes on to talk about how important it is to have a purpose in life. A purpose that will have you longing to get somewhere, do something, be someone and through that keep your thoughts focused and far away from fears, worries, doubts and judgements.

Today, a few lines from the book stood out for me and I will share them with you.

"As the physically weak man can make himself strong by careful and patient training, so the man of weak thoughts can make them strong by exercising himself in right thinking.
To put away aimlessness and weakness, and to begin to think with purpose, is to enter the ranks of those strong ones who only recognize failure as one of the pathways to attainment; who make all conditions serve them, and who think strongly, attempt fearlessly, and accomplish masterfully."

Practice noticing your thoughts. Practice focusing your thoughts. Practice makes perfect! If you encounter failure along the way, think nothing of it. Thank your lucky stars for the learning opportunity and carry on practicing!

Inspiration, inspiration wherefore art thou?

I hear people talk about not having inspiration. Not being inspired to do their best in their job, not being inspired to start or continue writing (I've been through "a few" of those days myself), not being inspired to paint the next canvas, not being inspired enough to help change the world.
We've all been through it in one way or another. Feeling a lack of inspiration, as if inspiration were something that comes from the outside and will fall upon our heads if we procrastinate long enough and do our best to pretend we aren't worried about it.


The secret to becoming inspired in order to create (anything) is to always be creating. Creating at all times, even if it doesn't look like inspired creation. Creating in the form of taking action. Taking action even when you hear the inner voices saying nothing great will come out of it or reminding you of all those negative self beliefs you have collected and come to believe throughout your life.
Taking action frees us from being stuck in our negative thoughts and allows the body to express itself as it so desires.

If it is writing, sit down to write at a certain time everyday, or choose 5, 4, 2x a week and do it when the day and time come. Even if you have nothing to write, write about it. Write about not having anything to write, write about the table you are using to write. Write about the floor or any patterns you see outside your window.

If it is selling, call your next potential client. If it is painting, put up the canvas and start scribbling, if it's creating a movement, share your influential idea with one next person.

As Steve Chandler, personal success coach and author, puts it, creativity is about the body, not the mind. It has to do with the actions you take. After taking action, the mind follows with new ideas, in the form of inspiration that you will then act on.

To illustrate my point, I share a contemporary urban story.


I have the pleasure of knowing a very talented young musician, Katerina Polemi, who like myself, is an anglo saxon educated, Greek-Brazilian girl that now lives in this crises ridden yet breathtakingly gorgeous country - Greece.

In one of her shows I attended, Katerina shared with her audience how one day she was having some difficulty feeling inspired to write a song. What makes this such an impactful example is that Katerina took steps to create without being inspired. She took action and started playing around, writing a few verses, talking to inspiration itself. She didn't wait for inspiration to shine down upon her like a ray of light. She took action, got herself inspired and created an incredible song.

Watch below, what amazing melody came out of this mental doodle.

A Powerful Prayer for Easter!

Happy Easter! It is Orthodox Easter (I am half Greek, the majority of Greeks are Orthodox). In Greece, Easter is a very special time. 

I love easter time in Greece! It is no wonder why the Gods chose this country!

With the unmistakable smells of white and colorful flowers blooming, the sun beginning to bless us with his shine for more hours everyday, and the sea that from a very deep blue starts turning brighter and brighter until the turquoise of the Mediterranean makes your heart skip a beat when contemplated upon. 

A time of true rebirth, just like the one we read about in the Bible. 

I want to share a prayer that in my view has a lot to do with Rebirth! 

"Oh Divine Providence, I ask not for more riches, but for more wisdom with which to use the riches you gave me at birth in the form of power to direct and control my mind to whatever ends I desire." - Napoleon Hill 

Let's pray that the discipline and self love required to acquire the power to direct and control our minds be reborn in us every single day.

And may in celebrating Easter, Jesus's teachings be reborn, even if coming as messages from other enlightened beings. Watch the video below, you will find exceptional use in Napoleon Hill's  words. 

Follow your passion

Do love what you do? 
Do you get up in the morning with a smile on your face because you know you are lucky to have found and to work with your passion?
Regardless of all external circumstances do you feel, deep inside, that through your work you are sharing your most amazing gift?
Does your body feel free and curious to go to work every day?


A great read on how to THRIVE, not just live! 


How to Find Your Purpose and Do What You Love


Highlights: 

Steve Jobs: "Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.”


Hugh MacLeod: " The best way to get approval is not to need it. This is equally true in art and business. And love. And sex. And just about everything else worth having.”


Alain de Botton: "One of the interesting things about success is that we think we know what it means. A lot of the time our ideas about what it would mean to live successfully are not our own. They’re sucked in from other people. And we also suck in messages from everything from the television to advertising to marketing, etcetera. These are hugely powerful forces that define what we want and how we view ourselves. What I want to argue for is not that we should give up on our ideas of success, but that we should make sure that they are our own. We should focus in on our ideas and make sure that we own them, that we’re truly the authors of our own ambitions. Because it’s bad enough not getting what you want, but it’s even worse to have an idea of what it is you want and find out at the end of the journey that it isn’t, in fact, what you wanted all along.”


Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi has a term for the quality that sets labor apart from work: flow — a kind of intense focus and crisp sense of clarity where you forget yourself, lose track of time, and feel like you’re part of something larger.

http://shop.holstee.com/pages/about#the-holstee-manifesto

Are you a man or an ostrich?

So here's the situation: you have a client who is not satisfied with your product/service. He sends you an email complaining or sharing his discontentment. What do you do? Do you answer him straight away or do you leave answering him on your to do list, secretly hoping that the problem will go away?

Another situation: You have promised a friend you will meet for drinks or dinner to catch up. At the end of a busy day you are really tired and all you want to do is go home, take a shower and crawl under the covers. What do you do? Do you call and let him know how you're truly feeling? Do you decide not to call him and hope he won't call you either? Do you avoid him and let the phone ring when he calls thinking "I'll call him tomorrow and give him a good excuse"?

Third situation: You are casually seeing a man or woman and decide that you don't want to take it any further. Fair enough. How do you deal with it? Do you think of a way of telling the person? Do you decide that you will never answer his phone calls or her emails again and that will hopefully get your message across? Or do you pick a fake fight so that the person can hate you forever?

There are times we don't want to deal with the situations that come our way. It's only human to want to let things pass or let the days go by, wishing the other person will forget or will think about it more lightly. What we tend to forget in these situations is to put ourselves in the other person's shoes. How would I feel if I asked my friend to meet up and she didn't answer the phone? How would I feel if I wrote to a company's service center and got no answer in return? How would I feel if I were casually seeing someone and they just drifted out of my life, leaving things unsaid?

It takes courage to face up to situations we don't want to deal with. What's important to understand is that this courage, the one needed to face circumstances we would rather forget, is the same courage that's needed for creating anything in our lives. Because when one lives with courage, he lives with courage in all situations, not only one or another.

Living with courage means being responsible for your words, your actions, your commitments. Knowing that what you say and do can affect someone and what you DON'T say or do can too.  Living with courage is about being transparent. Being transparent allows you to be in touch with your personal power. You are most powerful when you don't have to "hope" that someone won't see you, or "wish" that another person won't call you or "pray" that someone else will just forget about what happened between you.

You are what you are and you let the other person know. If he likes it, that's great! If she doesn't, that's great too! At least you will both know that you can't take this relationship (be it personal or professional) any further. When you have all situations settled, even when they are hurtful, even when you would much rather not deal with them, you can walk with your head up high.

How powerful is an ostrich? How much power does he exude by burying his head in the sand? How powerfully are you showing up? Do you want to be remembered as a great (wo)man or a great big ostrich?

How to keep on keeping on

I was having a conversation with a wise friend last night who gave me a simple yet very valuable advise. She said: "You can always press the reset button"!

That made me think of all the entrepreneurs who have given their all at times and have only gotten no's or have gotten very little interest for all the work, energy and love they've put into creating their project. I've been there, I know how it feels!
It's very frustrating when you give, give, give and receive nothing (ok, maybe next to nothing) in return. I have had several clients tell me their biggest derailment is that they have given so much and have gotten way too little back. Together, we work on how to identify, understand and surpass feelings of disappointment and fear. The disappointment is often so enormous it stops great ideas in their tracks.

Here's the thing, as a society we are programmed to talk about and follow only success stories. They sell! They are the ones that keep us daydreaming, away from the here and now, wishing we were like X or had the brains of Y.
Startups that have bloomed "overnight" seem fascinating to us probably because of the magical quality we assign to them.  If you look close enough though, you will always find a tired and still motivated entrepreneur.
Entrepreneurs who believe in themselves and their product or idea always press the reset button, even after their hopes have been shattered time and time again.

Pinterest, the new talk of the town social network, had "catastrophically low numbers" for some time, as CEO Ben Silbermann puts it. In January of this year, it was said to have 16.1 million users in the USA alone.

Brent Hoberman, cofunder of Lastminute.com didn't have the company's domain name even after having raised money for his venture. The original owner of Lastminute.com refused to sell the name. He received a "NO" four times before being able to convince the seller it was a good idea to pass the name over. Do you keep on trying even after you have received a "No"? Two "No's"? Three "No's"?

Pressing the reset button requires courage. Courage to try one more time. To try even if your idea has been scrutinized, ridiculed or simply (sometimes the hardest of all) ignored.  To try even if you are tired and all you would rather do is go to a sandy beach, lie under the sun like a tough skinned lizard sipping coconut water.

On the other hand, pressing the reset button is immensely liberating! You know that however bad things might seem to be, however discouraged you may feel, you have a chance for a new beginning. A new possibility. If that fails too, you can press the reset button again, and again and again and again! Your amount of courage and energy to press the reset button is regulated by you alone, and that, is an entrepreneur's most valuable weapon.

How a baby step can affect your dream

I had a dream, a secret dream, for many years. I don't discuss it much, probably out of fear. I have a Greek background, where the "Evil Eye" is a very real thing and sharing our desires and accomplishments is sometimes forbidden. Someone might project their evil eye on you, and then believe me, you are in big trouble!   

Back to the dream, which I have shared with only a handful of people and have right this moment decided to announce to the world! Since I was a little girl, curiosity has been my greatest companion. I am curious about every single thing that comes my way. I want to know everything about everything. If you ask me the reason, I won't be able to explain it to you. I have now learned to say: "it's my nature to be curious" which has helped me accept this characteristic. Curiosity is accompanied by another gift - that of pursuing information. At times, I have gone through great lengths to track information that wouldn't affect my life in the least bit. At other times, the information I gathered was life changing. I guess that's how my dream comes in. Enough stalling, my secret dream, ever since I was a young girl, was to work in a secret intelligence agency! All the famous ones have crossed my mind! All different situations as well!

So one of these days I caught myself thinking: you are a coach, you help people follow their dreams and make things happen for themselves in a courageous way, why is it that you have never tried to make this dream come true?

And this is what I want to talk about today. 

The difference between a dream and a project!

I know of so many people who have dreams just like mine. Impossible dreams some might call them. I have come to the understanding that there is no such thing as an impossible dream and I will share with you my thoughts on this. 

If you have a dream and you really want it to come true, you have to turn it into a project. 

The difference between a dream and a project is that the dream is always in our mind. On the other hand, the project requires steps to be made.

The first step that I took in order to evaluate if I really wanted my dream to become a project, was to ask myself: "what will have to change in my life in order for this dream to become a project?" The moment I took some time to ponder on this question, I knew that working in an intelligence agency would remain a dream forever. So many things had to change in my life if I were to pursue such a dream, that the dream suddenly became more appealing than the project. 

So I invite you to ask yourself: what will inevitably have to change in your life if you are to transform your dream into a project? If you decide that you are happy about the changes that need to occur, then I ask you the following question: what is the next step you can take to turn your dream into a project. 

No dream will become a reality if you don't take the next step forward. It doesn't have to be a big step. Baby steps are just as welcome, because they are steps no less. The secret is to get into action. Inaction will at its best, allow your dream to remain a dream forever.

To get out of the dream and into the project, you have to take a step forward. What will your first step be? What about your second step? Can you think about that one? It's imperative that you start writing down your steps. Writing things down is a way to ground your thoughts and also gives you a good milestone, a great way to check where you were and where you are at every given moment. Also, by getting it down on paper you can create a strategy, list important aspects such as the internal and external resources available and needed that will help you make things happen. 

All this starts with a next step. Never underestimate the power of a baby step! It will make the difference between living in dreamland forever or realizing the project that will have you proud for the rest of your life!