YTL Hotels Debut New Spa Village Playlists

Honoring regional healing traditions and customs, the award-winning Spa Villages of YTL Hotels deliver individual and authentic therapeutic experiences that combine natural local ingredients and age-old practices, resulting in one-of-a-kind luxury retreats. To bring each Spa Village into the homes of guests past, present, and future, YTL Hotels recently released new curated Spa Village playlists. Available on Spotify, travelers are able to get a glimpse of the rest and relaxation offered at Spa Villages across the globe. 

Nestled alongside the Straits of Malacca and located three miles off the West Cost of Malaysia on a private island, Pangkor Laut Resort offers a unique retreat that extols the healing cultures of the region. A haven for nature lovers, this paradise wonderland weaves together the beauty of luxury and the wilderness. Surrounded by beaches and glowing sunsets, the resort features Spa Village Pangkor Laut, offering an abundance of Malay, Chinese, and Indian practices and treatments. The Spa Village Pangkor Laut playlist sets the mood for the ultimate retreat.  

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Expert Tips for Managing Profit in a Changing Economy

Wellness industry financial expert, Monte Zwang of Wellness Capital Management, is here with insight on this important topic:

Are you wondering why your profitability has changed post-pandemic? You are not alone. Our world has been and continues to be rocked. The pandemic changed everything and continues to do so. Are rules and regulations changing what services we can even provide? Your guests’ lives, economics, and lifestyles are changing. Capacity, staffing, purchasing, profit margin is changed. How can we plan our profit?

Afraid to read the news? Welcome to our new reality. interest rates, labor shortage, supply chain, increasing prices, unemployment. All of this affects us. We’ve never been here before.

• Now is the first time in my career that my clients are planning for the short term. Once we see how that goes, we can look longer term.

• The landscape is changing. Our relationship with staff and vendors is changing.

• Each news issue requires a new path from here.

• One issue compounds another and another.

It’s rough out here. Our businesses are affected daily by the labor shortage, supply chain issues, product price Increases, lower customer service frequencies, inflation, gas, and housing prices. Sounds like our headlines, doesn’t it?

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Yield management: how your hotel & spa data makes you money

For industries with fixed capacities, such as hotels, airlines, and spas, yield management can spell the difference between mediocre returns and roaring success.

In today’s hyper-competitive business environment, tapping into the power of data-driven decision-making is more crucial than ever. For industries with fixed capacities, such as hotels, airlines, and spas, mastering the art of yield management can spell the difference between mediocre returns and roaring success. Book4Time has seen revenues by customers that use our yield functionality increase by more than 35% in the first six months of using the feature.

Yield management, at its core, is about leveraging data to optimize pricing and capacity utilization based on fluctuating demand and availability. By understanding and capitalizing on these patterns, businesses can boost their revenue potential, approach maximum capacity utilization, and enhance the overall customer experience at your spa and for your hotel or resort’s other ancillary revenue streams.

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Unveiling the seductive side of KPIs: metrics that make business sizzle

The term “KPI”, or “Key Performance Indicator,” might at first glance seem like dry, corporate jargon. But if you delve deeper into these amazing little metrics you should find that this isn’t at all the case. KPIs tell you everything you need to know for your business to succeed. This isn’t boring. It’s actually pretty exciting.

KPIs are the crucial signposts that steer businesses towards their ultimate goals. More than mere metrics; they’re the narratives that chronicle a company’s journey, highlighting achievements and flagging areas for improvement. By diving into KPIs, companies can celebrate milestones, understand setbacks, and benchmark themselves against industry peers. In the world of business, KPIs are the silent architects of towering success stories. Just looking at your numbers and plotting how you’re going to improve them should make you dizzy with excitement. 

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Findings of the latest State of Spa Report are issued

The Good Spa Guide has revealed its State of Spa Report 2023, entitled, Do sustainability and wellness matter?

Created in partnership with SpaSeekers, the report surveyed 8,827 people in the UK who use spas through either the Good Spa Guide or SpaSeekers. More than 90 per cent of respondents were female.

The white paper focuses on two key areas. Firstly it investigates how much people are willing to spend on spa trips during the current financial crisis.

The second focus is around key industry buzzwords – sustainability and wellness – and how important they are to spa-goers at the time of booking.

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US is world’s top wellness economy – worth $1.2trn, reports GWI

The Global Wellness Institute (GWI) has penned a new report about the US wellness economy after partnering with the National Academy of Sports Medicine (NASM).

Valued at more than US$1.2trn (€1.1trn, £994.3bn), the report names the US as the top wellness economy in the world. It boasts the largest markets in nine out of 11 of the wellness sectors assessed by the GWI – spanning physical activity, healthy eating, mental wellness, beauty and personal care, wellness tourism and more.

According to the new report, the US wellness economy contracted from US$1.4trn (€1.3trn, £1.2trn) in 2019 to US$1.2trn (€1.1trn, £994.3bn) in 2020 – a number that is expected to continue its upward trajectory. 

Findings also showed that the physical activity segment in the US experienced an 18 per cent contraction in 2020, yet remains number one in the world at US$215bn (€201.5bn, £178.2bn).

The physical activity sector includes consumer spending associated with planned physical activities performed during leisure and recreation, including three recreational activity subsectors (sports and active recreation, fitness and mindful movement) and three enabling subsectors (technology, equipment and supplies, apparel and footwear).  

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Feeling Stuck

Greetings Tribe! It’s been a while since I posted my last article and although I’ve been wanting to write so many times, my brain had too much and I did not know what to start with … or let me reframe this, I had many topics in my head but I choose not to try putting them in order, I allowed to be held back from the joy I find in writing and I choose not to write. Sounds pretty straight forward, right? It is easier to find excuses than accept the simplicity that when something is not happening the way we want it to happen is because we choose to.

This year has been a difficult year for many of us, for some more than for others. For me it hasn’t been just learning how to live with the consequences of this pandemic, I also lost my dad on his recent short battle with cancer. I was not ready, neither expected to experience living during a pandemic, but I definetely wasn’t ready to loose my dad or even imagine there would be travel restrictions and I would not be able to be there with him during his last breath. This fucked me up. I haven’t manage to be fully myself again, and I still feel something is holding me back, I feel stuck.

Why we get stuck sometimes?

We get stuck through our internalized fears, when we are lowering our expectations and self worth or when we are worried or afraid to make important decisions in our life and taken away from our comfort zone. What help us get un-stuck?

1. Recognize you are stuck. Acknowledgment is a sign of courage, and a step forward to wanting to do something about it, otherwise we would not care. Once we recognize we are stuck, our brain is telling us we are going through a moment we don’t feel comfortable with, and we have the choice of analyzing how we can get out of it without self judgement so we can start thinking making positive changes with confidence. One of the biggest mistakes we make when feeling stuck and we don’t recognize it, is that we wait for change to happen to us without understanding that change doesn’t happen to us but it comes from within us, regardless how scary and painful might be. Acknowledgment opens opportunities.

2. If you are grieving, allow yourself to grief. Whether is that you lost someone you love, lost your job, going through a divorce, lost your financial stability. Sometimes more than one thing happens in a short period of time, and we don’t give ourselves the opportunity to process it. The important and healthy thing to do while you are grieving is to acknowledge, accept and understand your emotions. Allow yourself to feel and find your support system, don’t be alone and if you need to seek for professional assistance it is ok.

3. Stop living in your past, and stop blaming yourself or others when things did not happen the way you wanted. Learn from your past and your mistakes, and know you might make new mistakes, but try not to make the same mistakes twice. Let go of your past and live your present moment. What is gone is gone, so allow yourself to forgive and accept that is ok, and that now you are at a different time where you can make new choices.

4. Understand your reality and listen to your inner voice. Allow yourself time to reflect and understand where you are and where you want to go. You can control the way you think, the choices you want to make and the attitude you want to adopt. Practice meditation, talk to your best friend and expand your perspective over the bigger picture you want to see yourself in. Any practice that gets you paying attention to what’s going on around you and inside of you, is going to engage your parasympathetic system, which is what keeps our body and mind cool and relaxed. This allows you to have a better perspective of your reality and recognize new opportunities. Ask yourself, if you go around trying to live within a comfort zone in order to create safety for yourself, how is it that you can make major changes in your life? How do you break through your limitations? How do you expand your comfort zone to conquer and accomplish new things?

5. In order to change your behavior, learn to be flexible. Flexibility is gained by applying new knowledge and finding new applications of previous knowledge. It allow us to unlock doors, become more effective, powerful and influential. The ability to change behavior until getting the desired outcome is the source of personal power. It’s not magic, it just makes sense and takes a lot of emotional resourcefulness to remain flexible and open to options when things don’t go our way.

6. One brick at the time. Start creating small changes. Changes stimulates parts in your brain that improves creativity and clarity, so let it flow. Take your time and don’t rush, live your moment and the experience of how every small change affects your outcome, and celebrate it, because every small step counts.

7. Believe. Believe in yourself, believe in life and in what is happening around you. I understand that doing what you really want can be difficult, uncomfortable even sometimes embarrassing, but the second you state something, you claim it. The moment you want your dreams to be true starts with the courage to state them without diminishing them and in order to make this happen you need to believe you can. Life happens for us not to us. Trust that you can reach your expectations and get out of your comfort zone. Expect self sabotage will happen sometimes, and that is ok as long as you recognize it and understand sometimes in order to keep moving forward we need to take two steps back. Make sure you also recognize your successes and write them down on a gratitude journal, so you can go back to it when you are feeling low, to remind you, change is possible regardless the challenges or obstacles.

“Thank you daddy for being partially responsible of giving me life. Thank you for rocking my world, sometimes with pain and others with joy. Thank you for coming back to me after so many years of being almost estrangers, that time you dedicated to me and my family was priceless. Thank you for being the annoying and loving grandfather to the light of my life. Thank you at last to be honest and so careless of what others would think you never wasted your time, but above all thank you for letting us see and understand the simplicity of life through your choices of living your life. I’ll always miss you but you will always remain by my side, I know you are still here with us. Know you were not alone, and there was so much more love around you than you could have ever imagine.”

Trusting Your Intuition

I’m sure it is very often a friend or a family member has told you to listen to your gut, I know I have told you many times. Recently I met one of my best friends for breakfast and while we were enjoying a yummy cup of coffee she suggested to go and have the palms of our hands read for fun. I never have gone purposely to do this before, but there was this time in my life when without asking, someone approached me to tell me something incredibly amazing about my life in an spiritual way, and I can tell you that since I met that woman 20 years ago everything has happened the way she told me it would. Anyway, we both thought it would be fun so we did it. One of the things that resonated with me the most is when she said: “You have a great intuition and you should trust your gut more often, it seems you know what you should do but you keep ignoring it, listen better to your intuition”. It took me just half a minute to have a flash back of the last 20 years of my life and know exactly what she was talking about. And my question is, why when I know my gut is right I do completely the opposite? Intuition, is our immediate understanding of something; there’s no need to think it over or get another opinion, we just know and it is very unique to each person. Trusting our intuition is the ultimate act of trusting ourselves, right? But sometimes, there is something that definitely gets in our way and we miss the opportunity; Here some reasons why:

Overthinking: Since listening to your gut is defined as the ability to understand something instinctively without the need for conscious reasoning, overthinking is one of the biggest enemies. Putting excessive thought into every decision and walking through countless scenarios can lead you away from your intuition, especially when you are overthinking in order to rationalize or justify something.

The programming of our identity: This happens when we operate from quick judgements that the brain automatically makes based on past experiences instead of based on reason or actual experience. As a result, we block ourselves to tap into the experiential nature of intuition.

Fear: Fear is also a sensation we get in our gut and sometimes we get confused. How do we recognize what is what? Fear usually brings anxiety and darkness and intuition feels reliable, compassionate and affirming.

When you really want something badly: This could be to be loved, acceptance, validation, confidence … that strong desire to fill in something that is greatly missing in your life.

So what did she tell me I should do in order to get the best of my intuition flowing again?

Slow down: we rush and multitask in everything we do in our lives, so take a step back and allow your mind to clear and live each moment as it is without thinking ahead. Slowing down helps you with the process of assimilating information more efficiently, so clear the way and declutter your mind to make space for intuition.

Listen and feel the sensations in your body: Intuition is grounded with the sensations inside of your body, so learning to recognize what’s going on within your body is important to develop your intuition. Like when you are angry, your body gets tight, your heart beat rises, your body temperature gets hot and you have the need to scream. Learning creating awareness of how the body reacts when we go through the different emotions. Meditation helps creating this awareness.

Learn to know yourself better: What is important for me? What are my non negotiable boundaries? How do I want to feel in my life? Be curious about what you need and and you want. Concentrating on these needs helps to more easily connect with your intuition.

Isn’t it amazing! We all have an intuition, but to develop it we need the awareness and meditation to understand it.

Another thing she told me that made me smile was: “ Do you write? and I said well, not really, well, sometimes … I have a page where sometimes I like to express myself and I write. She smiled back and me and told me: continue writing”.

“I believe in intuitions and inspirations...I sometimes FEEL that I am right. I do not KNOW that I am.” ― Albert Einstein

Passion is Energy, Not a Destiny

I think for everything I have done in my life I have used the word passionate, and if you know me well you are probably smiling now. I would write my resume and I would describe myself as a passionate professional, I do a team meeting and we talk about doing what we do with passion, I start a relationship and I start with passion, I organize a sleep over for my daughter and her friends and I do it with passion, but what passion really is? How long can we keep ourselves passionated about something?

Passion isn’t a person or a place or a thing, and you won’t ever find it outside you. Passion starts within yourself, passion begins with curiosity and then energy. You grow into the things that interest you thereafter passion is about the pursuit and not the end game.

What is really fascinating is that there is only one of us, one of you, and there will never be another-one. That is your power and only yours. So whether you decide you want to follow your dreams, your goals or who you truly want to be, you do it with passion or you don’t.

Passion is the energy within us that makes us love something we are doing, this is passion. What you might have been doing with passion for the last 20 years is not necessarily what you are feeling to continue with passion today. How much longer of your time are you willing to sacrifice ignoring knowing what you are truly passionate about?

We get scared when we loose our passion. For me it is like the world has been pulled from under my feet, and I have lost my purpose.

Fear is what betray us . We live our lives with fear, and we don’t like to recognize it in most of the cases. It is not enough to think positive, in order to silence your fears you need to understand them. To understand and to overcome your fears we need more talk and a few coaching sessions because you would need to dig deep into your life, into your thoughts and beliefs and what is part of your programming created by your childhood. Fear triggers old patters, and these old patterns can take you to get stuck and not know what else is there for you in your life, in your purpose, in your dreams.

For me being busy and working tons of hours do not mean I am in control of who I am and what I really want, neither that I’m living my passion. For me being busy is an excuse driven by my fears. When you are driven by your fears, there is a clear sign you need to take a step back in order to live your life to the fullest.

But coming back to learning what your passion is; I want to help you figuring it out. The first thing you need to do is ask yourself:

What are the things that naturally energize me? What do I like to learn about? What would I do for free for living if I could?

Once you figure out some answers , ask yourself, how can I add more of these things into my life? What depletes me or stops me from getting this done? And if there is something that does, how can I remove one of these things today? This might not come in a few hours, and you might need days or even months to figure it out.

Getting your passion back into what you do in life is not easy, like it is not easy living your life, or facing your fears. But nobody told us it would be. The question is, are you ready to take the risk to listen to your heart and do what you really love to do and feel energized about it? Every beginning comes from some other beginning’s end and every moment is a fresh beginning.

Stress in Your Body

I find it fascinating how stress is affecting our lives today. Our minds are overstimulated daily with new information and on top of this we often attempt to push unwanted feelings out of our awareness creating more stress. I recently read an article by Sean Grover, the author of When The Kids Call The Shots, regarding tension areas in your body for unwanted feelings and resonated with me in many ways so I wanted to share it with you. Enjoy the reading!

Lower Back relates to ANGER if you sit on frustration, the lower back is a common place for storing repressed anger. For relief, learn to constructively articulate frustration and address conflicts with others in the moment.

Stomach & Intestines relates to FEAR when you’re afraid, you tend to tense your stomach and intestines. Sayings such things as, “I’m sick to my stomach” is usually bodily responses to conflict. The more you deny or repress fears, the more physical reactions you’re likely to manifest. Begin by acknowledging your trepidation and talking it through with someone you trust. Consider all your choices and outcomes. The more you can express the fear in words, the less of a hold it will have on your body.

Heart & Chest relates to HURT, mostly linked to love and relationships. If you have been hurt do not ignore your broken heart. Mourn the relationship and honor your sadness. After this release, the tension in your chest will finally lift away.

Headache relates to LOSS OF CONTROL If you’re a major or minor control freak, you’re in for a real challenge. No matter how strong-willed you might be, an emphasis on control will eventually lead to burnout and splitting headaches. Not all difficulties in life can be solved by intellect or trying to control everything. In fact, many problems are exacerbated by controlling tendencies. Letting go, accepting what you can and can’t control, and developing a mindfulness practice are the steps you need to take to cure your headache habit.

Neck /Shoulder Tension relates to BURDENS & RESPONSIBILITIES Shouldering too many responsibilities is a pain in the neck. If you suffer from neck and shoulder tension, it’s likely that your overly burdened. Rather than ask for help from others, you’re likely to do everything yourself. This most often leads to neck and shoulder tightness. Learn to delegate, ask for support, decide what is really worth taking on, and for goodness sake, share responsibilities with others.

Fatigue relates to RESENTMENTS Resentment stresses your entire body and does more damage to you than the people you resent. Blaming others, playing the victim, reliving the events–these are the empty calories of self-expression. Resentments keep you from living in the moment and experiencing the benefits of being present. When you focus on those who wronged you, you are giving in them free real estate in your head. Instead, try to focus on forgiveness or at the very least, moving on. Strive for more fulfilling relationships, add a healthy dose of self-care, and you’ll feel years younger in no time.

Numbness relates to TRAUMA When we’re overwhelmed by an event, we tend to numb our feelings. This is our psyche’s way to disassociate from overpowering pain or danger. Traumatic events are not always life-threatening—they can result from a brush with real or imagined danger or a history of  childhood abuse or neglect. Over time, if you don’t process the trauma, the  memory of it gets lodged in your body. As a result, you deaden your feelings when vulnerable; trusting others is impossible; and true intimacy is lost. Any situation that makes you feel unsafe causes you great confusion; you freeze up or go blank. The first step toward freeing yourself from trauma is recognizing the power it has over you and asking for help.

Breathing Difficulties relates to ANXIETY Breathing difficulties, a panic attack that leaves you gasping for air, a suffocating feeling when anxious. Anxiety is caused most of the times by overwhelming feelings and stress. Freeing bottled-up feelings is like sucking in a dose of fresh oxygen. It’s refreshing and liberating! Practice deep breaths to control oxygen going to your brain. Meditation and yoga are also great options.

Voice & Throat Problems relates to OPPRESSION Oppressed people are not allowed to have a voice. If you grew up in an oppressive atmosphere, speaking your mind or expressing your needs was dangerous. You also carry around a harsh inner critic. As a result, as an adult you tend to withhold feelings. When you have the impulse to speak up, you resort to your childhood tendency to silence yourself and repress your voice. This clash between the impulse to speak and the impulse to withhold causes much tension and often manifests in throat and voice problems. Journal writing is a great way to expose your inner critic and start talking back to it. Also reading poetry out loud (poetry has a profound connection to the unconscious) is a way of gaining confidence in your voice. Hopefully, you will soon realize you have the right to be heard.

Insomnia relates to LOSS OF SELF . When you go through life-changing events–good or bad–people tend to lose sleep. You experience anxiety when your life circumstances are in flux. This can happen during times of stress or times of great personal growth. For me, sleepless is most often associated with the fear of the unknown. Write down your fears or, better yet, talk them out with a close friend. Learn to work with change, rather than repress your fear of it. When you work with it, you’ll be able to hit the pillow and have sweet dreams.

When you take better care of your feelings, you take better care of yourself and those you love. You come to appreciate and value your relationships more. Take the time to consider how you manage your feelings and what your psychosomatic pain is trying to tell you. Not only will you feel happier and less stressed, many studies show you might even live longer. 

Achieving Your Goals

There is only one way to go when it comes to achieving your goals, and that is believing optimistically you can, and adopting willpower and perseverance. This is my opinion, but of course it also requires to have a very clear image of what your goals are, why you want to achieve these goals and what are you expecting from your personal and professional life to make them happen. Most people do not get to complete pursuing their goals because they forget what their purpose was in the first place and they loose motivation. They were not ready in their mind and they didn’t have any expectations. Today I would like to share with you a few steps to get you ready to start setting up your goals and make them happen.

• First you need to understand your goals. The best way to describe them is asking yourself a few simple questions: what do you want? How does it make you feel? Why it is so important for you to achieve it? Once you achieve it what do you see and feel? Start writing all this in a piece of paper and try to do it in a quiet moment where you could also close your eyes and visualize it. The more visual you make it the more attainable it becomes, and don’t worry, even if now you may see it unattainable, believe it or not, nothing is impossible and you can never know what tomorrow may bring.

• Start creating a plan to make it happen. Break down everything you have previously written and start thinking how are you going to make it happen. Ask yourself also what obstacles you might find in the way and anticipate how you will work around them. Learning to be resilient is important too, there will be probably more than one time you will be challenged to get out of your own comfortable way to get into a new and uncomfortable situation. Is like when you are planning to go to the gym every morning and you anticipate is going to be dark and cold and you might prefer to have a snooze. Something that might work to remind you snoozing won’t drive you towards your goals is setting up in the alarm one of your favorite songs so it can remind you to make that initial effort to get up. That’s why is important to enrich your plan with realistic and actionable steps. Make sure you write your plan down as well so you can really have a start point to begin committing to your plan.

• Now that you have a plan, take action! This is going to be your big day, the day when everything you always dream of is going to start taking shape. Make a note of this day, something I would suggest for you to do is to take a video of yourself and save it. In the video share what you are about to embark into, show your excitement and your commitment. This is great, because anytime you feel low you can go back to it to find inspiration. It is also great to watch it when you have achieved your goal.

• I understand at some point in your journey you might feel overwhelmed and that is why is going to be important to acknowledge it and take a moment to clear things out. Take a step back to think and prioritize and then move forward again taking one step at a time. Ask yourself, what is happening now? Why do I feel this way? what would be making me feel better without taking me away from this journey? Break it down, our human brain has several defense systems that tell it to avoid the things that make us uncomfortable. By breaking it down, and investing short time-frames of uninterrupted work in each task it becomes a lot easier to maintain your focus and do the work without feeling overwhelmed.

• Remember you are not alone. Once you have completed your plan, think who is going to be your support system and share your goals with this important people. I believe everyone in life should have 3 type of people in their support system and is important to be very clear of who is who.

  • The Encourager - Helps you feel good about yourself the way you need to feel.

  • The Speed Bumper - Will be giving you different views, and make you cautious with the decisions you make.

  • The Rock - Will be there for the good times and the bad. They care about you. Someone you can trust with everything you do regardless what it is. 

• Track your progress, it is important to appreciate every milestone you complete. Understand if you are falling behind and if you need extra support at any time to continue with success.

• Celebrate every single step that takes you forward in your journey! and remember don’t beat yourself up if sometime in the way you fail. Remember to get up again and learn from it to make you stronger. Failure is a natural part of the process, so something you also need to anticipate. But above all celebrate your wins, appreciate yourself and remember, you are doing it for yourself.

• And love yourself, because that is who you will be spending the rest of your life with. And to learn how honest you are saying you love yourself ask yourself this question first: If I ask you to name all the things you love, how long it would take for you to name yourself?

  And if you haven’t been told this today: you are loved, you are ridiculously beautiful, you are smart, you are talented and you are enough. So love yourself first and then everything else will fall into place. Good luck achieving your goals!

When Things Don’t Go the Way You Want

“We all have problems, the way we solve them is what it makes us different” Beautiful quote. Once upon a time it felt like I had so much time in my hands, and suddenly I reached certain age and goodness! what happened with time? As you get older it seems as if time shrinks on you without even realizing it. Nobody likes change, and I know change makes us uncomfortable, sometimes insecure, it take us away from our comfort zone, out of our expectations, our plans, dreams, wishes …. but what is our reaction when we go through a change we didn’t expect? Most of the times we run away and reactively fight the change and victimize ourselves instead of opening our eyes, clearing the space open to the new possibilities. Here a few tips that have worked with me every time something didn’t go my way :

1. Take a step back - Since you were a kid, you made decisions about you and the world that still influence the way you relate to the world around you today. Sometimes we are too emotionally charged to look at the challenge we are faced in a positive way. We just need to step back and gain a fresh perspective.

2. Stop going over the problem over and over again - Let it go, and embrace what is about to come. Transformation is a continuous process of letting go. This step is all about giving you a way to releasing old beliefs and create space for new ones. Becoming resilient will be one of your greatest gifts.

3. Process your emotions - One of the techniques I would recommend you to be successful in letting go is doing tapping. Tapping to release judgement and set yourself free. There are many videos in youtube that will guide you on how to do it. I personally love the one by Gabby Bernstein.

4. Focus on realistic and actionable steps - And ask yourself who are you being when you take action? When you make decisions, who are you choosing to be? Empowering action is authentic truth in motion, so don’t let your fear stopping you from setting actionable steps to take your new direction.

5. Give yourself a break - Be grateful for yourself and for who you are, don’t be that hard on yourself. “Health is the greatest possession. Contentment is the greatest treasure. Confidence is the greatest friend.” ~Lao Tzu. So trust your gut and move on, sometimes change is the risk we need to take to push ourselves to the next level. In this case I like to think that regardless the circumstances somehow I trust the Universe has my back.

A Myth or a Reality, Women’s Midlife Crisis

Some women find themselves facing a challenging time in their lives usually between the 40’s and 50’s, and we freak out!! Certainly for me happened exactly at 43, what I named my mid-age crisis. It is true we go through different crisis along our lives, but this time was different for me. Is that moment when you stop and start asking yourself deep probing questions. Sometimes it happens in a hidden way and we kind of ignore it and leave it on the side behind the scenes, and sometimes like it happened to me, something would trigger it, and your life suddenly turns upside down. It was during one of my coaching retreats where we were practicing a new coaching sequence technique within the Transformational Coaching method, where we transformed judgement into curiosity and self love, that I had my biggest break through. In other words I felt the need to give myself a strong evaluation about where I wanted to be in life versus where I actually was and suddenly I had a stronger desire to listen to my soul, and the outcome was so scary that made me wonder if I’ would ever regain my sense of self and purpose.

The risk of searching for this desire is that sometimes this makes you take rushed decisions and in consequence feel you are loosing your mind, that’s why is important to take a moment to reflect once again and analyze your pros and cons. The great news is that in theory you are half way in your life and a light came to you to offer you a second opportunity to turn the steer wheel around. At the end of the day is about reflection and acceptance, so don’t sit down in a corner and have pity for yourself, don’t wish things would be easier, instead make yourself stronger and repeat this mantra to yourself “ I’m worthy, I fully accept myself and love myself exactly as I am”, and go with what your gut is telling you, because 99% of the times is right. Nobody said life would get easier, but as you get stronger and more resilient and more positive and truthful to yourself and your purpose, you will find challenges getting smaller. One of my dear friends, Carla, posted something beautiful to wish us Happy New Year that touched my heart and I want to share it with you all, thank you Carla for touching our hearts, here we go:

“ I was thinking what else I could wish all women that are in my life, other than health and happiness …. I wish you peacefulness and restful sleeps. I wish you lots of coffee moments in good company. I wish you that if you need to go to the Pharmacy is to buy cosmetics and not medicines, and if you go to the supermarket is to buy chocolate and not diets. I wish you to be loved, appreciated and respected. That the men in your life take away the lipstick in your lips and not your mascara. I wish you so many things ….. that you will sing really loud when you are in the car alone, and that you have a year with beautiful holidays and getaways with priceless memories. I wish you won’t find yourself in need, and that nobody will take anything away from you. I wish you laughters that make you cry …. laughters that throws your fears away and erase all your wrinkles. I wish you all the very best!!!! “

So don’t wish for less that you deserve, every moment, feeling and experience is perfectly orchestrated for your evolution. Nothing happens to you, everything happens for you. And remember desire is not selfish, it’s wise. It’s a compass pointing you in the direction of your life purpose.

And with this and more to come I wish you you all a beautiful, prosperous and fulfilled to be 2019!!

The Truth About Happiness

Being happy now or later? The human dilemma, is happiness ever enough? What is the meaning of happiness to you? Is being happy later making you happy now? Like many quotes say:

Sing like no one is listening.
Love like you’ve never been hurt.
Dance like nobody’s watching,
and live like it’s heaven on earth.

Or I’ll wait until the kids go to college, when I win the lottery, when I buy my dream house, when I find my true love, when I lose 20 pounds, when I start working out again… Is this dilemma getting in your way of living your purpose in life and be who you really want to be? Wouldn’t be easier to be happy now, so the NOW can make us happy later?

We don’t like to be judged. I think people who judge you are the people who live their lives more unhappily and judging makes them feel better, more empowered. At the end of the day the people who truly love you and know you, those who can read you even before they look at you, will always be there regardless. However being judged hurts, and is something sometimes we can’t help.

People always saw me as a strong woman with the perfect family and the perfect life, and truly I’m tired of it. I’m not perfect, I don’t have a perfect life, I’m not lucky I worked very hard to be where I am now, and I’m not always happy, I have suffer in silence like many of you and I have live my unhappiness with happiness because every time I chose to. In my case I think the fear of disappointing someone was always my biggest deal, and still is. But this is what happiness comes to most of the times, it is a choice. We are ungrateful! We have so much! A beautiful life the Universe gave us to live, and the opportunity to live it in a body, a body regardless how perfect or imperfect it is a body to live our lives in!

Making decisions is never easy. Taking you away from what is comfortable is not easy, but sometimes is worth having the guts to take that step forward.

We keep saying life is to short, and it is, so drop it! Do what really is making you happy now! Who cares what people will think? what will happen once they judge you? whatever it will happen it will pass. The true friends that love you unconditionally will still be there for you with whatever decision you make and the ones that maybe one day they cared but maybe not enough to understand you, let them go, because in the end quality is better than quantity, and I would rather have only one true friend who doesn’t judge me regardless than 100 that would fake it and will judge me later.

Someone said one time, a true friend is the one who will always have your back when someone talks bad about you and you are not present.

The choice of being happy with the thought of knowing life is too short is up to us, we can choose to keep sacrificing what we truly want now and leave it for later or we can be happy now, simply because the now is what we have, and the tomorrow you never know if it will arrive.

I never regretted a thing of my life, with all the ups and downs I’m fortunate to feel truly grateful for every moment, because every moment took me to where I am now. It taught me a new lesson, it showed me a new way it gave me a different experience, whether it was something good or bad, it was part of my life, and I’m grateful for every second I had.

Thank you to everyone that made the story of my life possible, sorry if I hurt you, I never meant to, if you know me you know I’m a good person. I’m thrilled if I inspired you but above all thank you to the ones who stood for me regardless, blindly or with open eyes, but simply because you believed in me and never judged me.

So if you love someone don’t waste a second without telling them how much you love them, and show them! and if you don’t be honest because we all deserve to live the truth and have other opportunities to truly be happy. If you don’t have a big house today, enjoy what you have that is little and enjoy every second while you work towards your goals of achieving your dreams, because you will be even happier. And be grateful, gratefulness gives you happiness and there is always a reason for everything. So, never stop believing, because if you believe you will make it happen, remember your beliefs will become your reality, so what do you want your reality to be?

Happiness should not depend of all the external factors we condition ourselves to. The truth of happiness starts within yourself. When you can master a mindset of inner balance and live from a place of alignment within your most authentic self, you’re proactively creating your environment by choosing how you want to see the world around you. Happiness starts within yourself.

I Can’t Afford to Get Sick!

Are you one of those super woman that never get sick and when you do your entire World come down to your feet? What is my boss going to think? Oh no! I’m weak I can’t show weakness! I feel awful, I can’t take it! Well, that is pretty much me. I can consider myself blessed with my health, but it is another thing most of the time I take for granted, because I keep going and most of the time is like playing black jack in a casino, I feel good, I feel strong my body is taking it, that means I can keep going, I’m winning! Well, all I can say to you is good luck!

We don't just have a body and a separate entity called the mind. It is mind and body, or body and mind, and it is the connection between the two that is continuously balancing our health, our feelings, behavior and emotions. In our busy lives, maintaining performance over time is one of the biggest challenges we all face, and at the same time one of our biggest opportunities.
It is important we create awareness of this balance. Is about being realistic of what is the most sustainable way of operating rhythm to make it work. We need to look at the quality of our given time to work, are we introducing small periods of reflection and recovery when we sense and feel we had enough? This is not easy, specially if you are the controlling freak finding it already difficult to disconnect, and that is why sometimes the moment we stop to go on vacation we tend to get sick!

Like in my previous posts, everything is about creating awareness, acceptance and taking action. When taking action we talk about eventually creating habits, and creating habits means to consistently create practices that eventually become naturally you.

Believe it or not cortisol levels created by stress somehow maintain immunity higher, that is why when we stop producing it at high levels, something that our body is used to in regular basics, we tend to break down ( this is my theory). So the key is keep the balance and keep the movement so you avoid crazy spikes!

Practice activities that stimulate the parasympathetic nervous system like yoga, meditation, diaphragmatic breathing or just get activities or interests outside of work.

Taking Vitamin C and echinacea makes white blood cells more active, and helps lower the risk of common sickness in people under heavy physical stress. Don’t think that taking it for a month is going to give you a miracle, you need to build it in your system and be consistent for good, my friend Corey swears by it and he has been taking it forever!

People who have sex on a regular basis may have higher levels of an immune system protein called immunoglobulin A (IgA), so don’t give it up!

Eat a wide variety of healthy foods and build your meals around non-starchy vegetables.

I get it, we like coffee, and I’m not asking you to give it up. I take just one cup of coffee in the morning and if I have cravings in the afternoon or want a hot drink at night I tend to have green tea that increases the number of an important type of immune cell, called regulatory T cells.

Drink plenty of water and keep hydrated! simple but we still miss the point most of the time.

Don’t hold it in, cry it out, talk to a friend, building resentment and worries do not help your immune system overtime, so again process it, accept it, allow healing process and keep moving forward with positiveness.

Onetime someone told me if you live with an specific fear the universe is going to think that is what you want and you will get it, so breakdown those walls and rather than being fearful be wishful.

And you know, if you get sick, accept it with the same strength you carry your every day on your busy life! Is not the end of the World, but an opportunity for you to take a moment to reflect and listen to your body and mind.

Living the Moment

Living the moment, is that a reality? Well the truth is that is totally up to us, but the problem is how? Is so easy to get overwhelmed with the everyday to do lists, but really are we allowing ourselves to take a moment to breath, or we rather chose to live our days finding excuses of why we do not? We live in a world with too many distractions, superficial materialism and working too hard trying to fit in while not understanding life is happening NOW. So often we let the present slip away as we worry about the future, when we are at work we think about our next vacation, and when we are on vacation we are stressed for what will await for us at work. Living the present moment is learning to practice mindfulness. Here a couple of things to kick you start practicing mindfulness:

If you want to avoid worrying about what is coming next, simply focus on your present! That could be while taking a shower, drinking your coffee, taking a walk, watching your children play, admiring your love one. Enjoy and feel how the warm water nourishes your muscles and cleanses your skin, taste every sip of your coffee and get involved with the flavors, breath the air while you walk and smile to people, to the trees to your environment, feel the love, and while you are enjoying the moment, do not interrupt it to look at your phone! What you are doing is creating awareness on your senses, your mind, your body.

There is no better way of bringing yourself to the present moment than to focus on your breathing, so breath! Breath consciously, isn’t it amazing we are always breathing? But we take it for granted. Schedule yourself time at work to focus on your breathing, put attention on your breathing while you eat or before you go to bed, be grateful an fill yourself with pure happiness for breathing and having your life.

We are so deeply committed to schedules! Choose to lose track of time sometime! Allow yourself moments to enjoy what you like most without having to worry about time. Meet with a friend without plans and go with the flow, book yourself a spa day, go hiking, anything that makes you want to experience every second.

Recognize your emotions and deal with them rather than running away, the solution is acceptance, since the present moment can be only as it is, whatever it is remind yourself it is ok and there is always a reason to feel that way.

Mindfulness isn’t a goal, because goals focus on the future. That doesn’t mean we should not have goals or wish for a future, that is important too, but is about finding the balance, that is why mindfulness is a practice. One of my favorite quotes says “The past is behind learn from it. The future is ahead prepare for it. The present is here, live it”. Mindfulness is to set your intention of paying attention to what is happening at the present moment, and making this choice is how you will be living the moment.

Transformation is a Journey

Many times I've been asked for help with transforming someone's relationship with food. Typically is someone wanting to lose weight or getting over their emotional eating, someone tired of trying every diet you can imagine. I get it, but most of the times the expectation is to be told what to eat and what not to eat, set up a meal calendar, and here we go. I get it, but if you want to get involved with long and lasting healthy eating habits is more complicated than that.

I'm not sure if this happens to you, but sometimes I find it so hard to be creative with what to eat, specially when you have kids and believe me if we are picky they can be pickier.  We are on the go all the time! Get up early, prepare meal for school, take a shower, healthy breakfast, eat it, take the dogs out, exercise, get kids ready to school, get ready for work, get stuck in traffic, I can't be late! run in and out, come back, stuck again in traffic, prepare dinner, homework, down time ... maybe, and start thinking about the next day. Do we really have time to do all this and have the luxury of enjoying living the present moment? Nowadays living an authentically healthy life is almost a myth but it is possible to do it if we we believe we can. Why am I telling you all this when I am talking about transforming your relationship with food? Because the condition of your mindset is your foundation. In order to transform your relationship with food and keep it consistently and naturally into your lifestyle you need to have the right mindset. If I'm stressed out I crave for sugar, if I'm tired I don't feel like going to the grocery store, if I'm overwhelmed I don't feel like cooking; you know what I'm talking about.
What we need to understand is that we truly are what we eat. We live in a World full of toxins and horrible diseases, the most scary one for me is cancer, and most of the time we are ready to take action when is too late, when we get sick. Why taking the risk of getting sick when we can prevent it? Do we love ourselves enough to care to the point of prevention? What is the meaning of life to you, are you truly grateful for everyday in you live, or you take each day for granted? Life is too short, and we already compromise ourselves to live our lives up to the society expectations most of the times, sadly. Are you truly living your life the way you would love to? Are you truly fulfilling your purpose? Once you get some clarity by taking a moment to reflect and understand where you are at your life and what is it that you want,  you will be then taking the first steps. Transformation doesn't happen in a day or two. Transformation is a journey.