Your Feelings Are Real

Your soul is your mind, your will, your emotions, and your consciousness. It's what makes up your unique personality. Some of us are outgoing and gregarious, and some of us are quiet introverts. Neither one is right or wrong. It's simply part of how God made you, you.

You are spirit first. Your soul is a beautiful part of who you are, but it was never meant to run the whole house.

Day in and day out, we feed our soul. We watch news that is full of fear and loss. We gossip, and it changes how we feel about someone. We tell ourselves "nobody loves me" or "I'm not good enough." All of it affects our emotions.

God created you to be vibrant, to thrive, and to enjoy life. He also gave you free will and emotions. What you choose to focus on matters.

Recently, a woman shared with me how angry she was at a family member after her father's funeral. The more she talked, the angrier she became. So I asked her what was really underneath it all.

Grief is a funny thing. Rather than admit we've been hurt, especially in public, we often reach for an emotion that helps us cope. For her, that was anger. Underneath was rejection, and the pain of feeling left out of her own family. The moment she saw it, the tears came, and so did the healing.

Emotions are a blessing when they lift us up. But when we keep focusing on the things that hurt us, they can shape how we see everything.

Think of a woman who was betrayed in her marriage. Twenty years later, the word "love" still stings, because that painful memory is attached to it. Over time, she has trained herself to believe that love is dangerous and that she shouldn't give her heart away again.

I work with women who have battled rejection, betrayal, and feeling "less than" for decades. My job as a coach is to help them break the link between an old event and the emotion still tied to it.

When seatbelt laws first came out, I put sticky notes in my car that said "Put on your seatbelt." I read them over and over until buckling up became a habit.

The soul works the same way. Think of driving the same route to work every day. You arrive and realize you don't even remember the drive, because you were running on habit. Our emotions can run on autopilot, too. With practice, we can build new habits of thought that serve us instead of hurt us.

This is the heart of my novel, The Guardian's Secret. As young Cahan and her guardian travel through life together, they learn to tell the difference between what is spirit and what is soul.

Life coaching usually begins when something in the soul is in crisis or conflict: depression, grief, heartbreak, or feeling stuck. Together, we look at what you're focusing on, what keeps running through your mind, and what you need to let go of so you can live the vibrant life you were created for.