There Came a Time When I Had to Line Up What I Have Been Reading and Put It to Good Use in My Own Life

I now really believe that life is both a process and a journey. It’s funny – I have been listening to great inspiring speakers for many years, reading amazing books and spending much of my life looking at what makes me/us tick and how  I/we can live more conscious satisfied lives.

I know many of us have been doing the same. My own life has been my main test laboratory and I have also been honored to work with many women who have also taught me much in these areas. Yet this past year has presented me with number of tests that have forced me to look deep and hard at how I am living my life and, because of this personal inquiry, I have something that I want to share with you — my personal new learnings that are transforming my life.

I have been writing a lot these days about how we rush around and live our lives without being in touch with who we are, with what we really need and with what we really have to offer in the way of our greatest gifts and talents.

I stopped this month to look closely at how I am living, what is working and what is not working and took time to look closely at three key principles that, now that I am using them in my practice, have been changing the entire quality of my life! I am now convinced that when these three qualities below are all lined up together  in my day, amazing things happen.

These qualities are:

• Gratitude with a very focused intentional approach
• Conscious choices, the vehicle of our daily actions
• Self awareness  of our personal destiny

Recently, I have been looking at specific ways to create greater ease in my own life and I have been working  daily with all three principals and have truly been able to slow down, smell the roses (of summer) and accomplish way more with ease.

I am convinced that life can be lived with far greater ease and that it is our responsibility to create the elixir of attributes and qualities that we need to focus on and live within our lives daily. This is true consciousness!

I invite you to revisit gratitude and her close friends and supports, particularly now because I believe she holds essential potential that may be very important to your success and how you are currently living your life.

I believe that there are a number of key universal principals that need to come alive and off the pages of the books we have been reading in order for the world to become a better place. I also believe that we women need to show up and lead the change that is so needed in our world today!

Oh, by the way, we will be looking at this essential and amazing lineup in detail in our July Essential Feminine Living Room. This is a great place to start to deepen your awareness of how you are choosing to live your life and why the outcomes you are receiving may be as they are.

Join me in this Wednesday, July 18 at 12 pm PST in The Living Room for The Power Of Gratitude: The Golden Key That Transforms Your Life!  Things may never be the same for you after the next Essential Feminine Living Room!

I hope to see you there!

Register here.

Maureen Simon

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The Power of the Summer Solstice: Where is the light brightest in your life?

The Power of the  Summer Solstice: Where is the light brightest in your life?

Sun-stone’s kiss, midsummer pleasure, Welcome all and some. At the hele-stone sing and gather, Every blessed one. ~Caitlin Matthews

The solstice presents us with wonderful opportunities to take note of where the light shines brightest in our lives.  As we reach the longest day of the year we can take inventory of where our greatest gifts of light live in our lives.  This special week take notice of the midsummer sun.  Absorb the warmth.  Light a candle.  Appreciate the light. I am becoming very clear that when I am very grateful for the riches in my life – more riches follow. The light is everywhere now. Shine it on what you are most grateful for .

Happy Summer Solstice! ~ Maureen Simon

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WIN A LIFE’S MAKEOVER WITH MAUREEN SIMON

Enter to win a life’s makeover with Maureen Simon.

Divine Destiny- Live Your Calling: Come Alive!
The follow up course to our Talent.Me Seminars where 6,000 women registered…Learn you have a special reason for being here, create a plan to incorporate this gift into your daily life. Bring your life alive with contribution, satisfaction and self assuredness. Learn how to measure the success of each day against what you most value. Join us for our next tele course which will be held May 10th and 17th. Noon PST.

 Click photo above to enter to win your free makeover!

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News Flash: Circles- Forming Around The World To Awaken Our Essential Feminine?

I was rereading a blog that one of our most prolific bloggers Judie Fouchaux did a while back and was inspired by it. I guess because I have myself fully re-submerged myself in my own– Awakening the Essential Feminine Claiming your Influential Power. I have just completed designing our new course –The Essential Feminine Facilitator Training-      http://theessentialfeminine.com/events. I am so excited as the course has within it –the very ability to transform the world as we know it today!

The facilitator Training is designed for therapists, counselor’s doctors and women who serve women and for women who want to create circles where women can learn about specific assets that we naturally have — that are very much needed in our world. Join us for a four week certified training beginning on March 15^th…. You may never see the world in the same way again!

Judie blog that I mentioned – quite inspiring!:

Often we live our lives busy with the details and overlooking the big picture.  We are making things happen, taking care of business, ourselves, our families.  We overlook some things in favor of what appears the next necessary thing to do.  In this way, important parts of us can fall asleep or can hide rather like dust bunnies in the corners of our nature.  These are the parts of ourselves that Maureen Simon addresses in her new book “Awakening The Essential Feminine: Claiming Your Influential Power.”

Impossible!  Not so.  As bright young women fairly sure of ourselves we move out into a world which is dominated by a masculine mind set.  Sometimes we are actually told, “You don’t think the way I do, with the implication that the way “I do” is the superior way to think.  After all it is “logical”.  Looking around at society it does seem to be the preferred way of thinking.  With that influence around us, it is no wonder that we have devalued our gifts, our natural way of being in the world to take on a costume that all too soon becomes our reality.

However, by going in that direction, we are leaving behind valuable gifts that were meant to be a balance in the world, a balance we need now more than ever.   As Maureen points out, these gifts were given to us in greater proportion as women.  They are as important to our being women as the other attributes that differentiate us from men.  They include our way of thinking.

Women’s thinking is naturally collaborative, inclusive, interconnected, intuitive, empathetic, and flexible.  Her brain makes it so.  When Professor Higgins asks, “Why can’t women think like a man?” he overlooks a basic fact.  They weren’t meant to think like men.  We were meant to think like women and bring balance and harmony in the world.

Now with the world in such chaos it is time to awaken our dormant attributes.   By awakening The Essential Feminine within we can begin Claiming Our Influential Power.

Judie Fouchaux

The book is available at:  http://www.amazon.com/Awakening-Essential-Feminine-Claiming-Influential/dp/0615413005

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Some Thoughts For Thanksgiving Week

Our world seems overwhelmed by chaos.  The problems we face are monumental and interconnected to the rest of the world and we don’t seem to be able to hide our heads under the blankets any longer and have them all go away.  In fact, the only solutions seem to be ones in which we take collaborative action; actions requiring us to put aside our inner fears, our negative approach and to move into unfamiliar waters.

Collaborative action is based in putting aside personal interests and needs for the benefit of a larger goal.  It takes inclusiveness, seeing oneself as part of a larger whole, walking in someone else’s shoes.  These qualities are especially strong in women.  By their very nature they are peace makers, interested in building strong relationships, looking for common bonds and shared interests.  These are just some of the feminine attributes that women possess which we need to rely on to overcome the chaos.

Many women are taking a more powerful stance today.  If you haven’t viewed “Women, War and Peace” yet, be sure to see this amazing documentary showing what women in war torn areas of our world have been doing to change not only their lives but all our lives.  These women are using their attributes in a positive way.  Now is the time for us to realize that these natural attributes, too long overlooked and/or negated, are crucial for positive change today and in the future.  We need to encourage ourselves and our young women to value our feminine perspective.  It is only through the addition of the feminine perspective that we will achieve balance and peace in our world.

Judie Fouchaux

Guest Blogger

http://crosseeyes.blogspot.com/

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Private consultations with Maureen Simon are available

PRIVATE CONSULTING AVAILABLE AT THE ESSENTIAL FEMININE® COMPANY

Private consultations with Maureen Simon are available to support you in designing the life and business you truly desire. If you are interested in working with Maureen – you can obtain –a one-time Clarification Session to help you prioritize your specific needs and desires. Listed below are the areas of life and business that Maureen focuses on in her work. Her work is informed and supported by her experience working with hundreds of women –individually- in these areas. Maureen supports women to learn, claim and live with their natural Essential Feminine gifts and talents. She believes that this is essential for women to “know thy self “from the depths of the soul in order to reach long lasting-deep rooted success and fulfillment. More information on this leading edge approach and philosophy can be found in Maureen’s book-“Awakening The Essential Feminine: Claiming Your Influential Power”.

Private Consulting available in our Shop

• Life Design
• Business Design
• Destiny and Legacy Design®
• Awakening to Your Essential Feminine® in Business and Life

Life Design

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Formula For Change: Urgency – Diagnosis – Steps To Take

In a recent blog posted by Christine Lagarde, Managing Director of the IMF in response to the Annual Meetings of the World Bank Group and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), she wrote that:

“I feel strongly that the global community is beginning to respond.

Why? Three reasons: a shared sense of urgency, a shared diagnosis of the problems,

and a shared sense that the steps needed in the period ahead are now coming into

focus.”

These three reasons promote change.  If we in ourselves have a sense of urgency concerning a problem, clearly understand what the problem is and the steps needed for change – change can happen.

In our world today, the economic crisis is only one of the chaotic situations that we face.  All around us we are beset by problems in international relations, education, health care, and unemployment – a seemingly overwhelming array.  It’s enough to make you want to get in bed, pull the covers over your head and hide.  That won’t get us through this.

However, all around us there is something else stirring; a force, a movement that like young seedlings making their way into the light is happening.  Women are waking up to their possibilities.

There is definitely an urgency to make change now.  The diagnosis appears to be a great imbalance in the world from years of living from a masculine perspective.  (Aggression, hierarchy in business, etc.)   The steps needed to create that change rely on developing a greater feminine perspective in our lives.  The steps for this to happen, for women to take the lead and to begin to influence now, include discovering who they truly are beneath all the socialization, claiming those attributes and bringing them forth into our world.

Do you feel the urgency?  Share the diagnosis? Are you willing to take the steps, claim your birthright and make a difference?

Judie Fouchaux

Guest Blogger, The Essential Feminine

P.S. For more information on your feminine attributes, see Maureen Simon’s book, “Awakening The Essential Feminine: Claiming Your Influential Power”

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There is Harmony In Autumn

“There is a harmony
In autumn, and a luster in its sky,
Which through the summer is not heard or seen,
As if it could not be, as if it had not been!”
- Percy Bysshe Shelley

Autumn for me is delicious–rustling leaves—extreme colors—crisp air –new apples and sweaters. The season arouses many senses and provides me-year after year- with an opportunity to start anew—to come alive –to re-ignite my life. I am so grateful for this time of year. Autumn for many marks a new beginning. Activities rekindle while the day darkens and shortens. This is a wonderful time of year to regroup as we sit ¾ the way through 2011. Ask yourself what has your life experience been so far this year? Could you consciously make change now that would improve your life? What does this change look like?

The autumn has an inner and outer perspective –we need to honor both. As new things ignite—classes, meetings and the like –we can enjoy this newness of the outer side of autumn. Also remember to look inward –read, contemplate have long restful baths- take time to feed your soul.

Autumn is delicious  George Elliot agrees in his comment:

“Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns”.

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Dreaming of Consciousness–

When involved in self-actualization work, one often hears metaphors and analogies involving the rhetoric of sleep.  Here at The Essential Feminine Company, our wonderful leader Maureen Simon, Founder and Creative Director, often encourages women to “wake up!”  And earlier this week, she wrote a blog about the vital importance of following our dreams.  So, what do we make of this theme?
The experience of sleeping is considered unconscious, being awake, conscious.  However, even when we are awake, we may not be living a conscious (as in intentional) life.  Terminology gets more complicated by the fact that we are able to dream while, apparently, unconscious.  Thus we are left with a rhetorical headache and philosophical query: what does it actually mean to be conscious or unconscious?  I haven’t the answer, sorry to disappoint.  Though, I cannot help but find the idea of dreaming fascinating.  Dreams are born out of our unconscious; most will agree that we have little control of our dreams (I am talking about both definitions of dreams: sleepy experiences and hopes/wishes).  Yet, it takes a certain level of consciousness to be able to decipher a dream.  Once deciphered, to fulfill a dream takes clarity and bravery—a highly conscious being.
So, what do we take from the theme?  That we must strive for full consciousness in order to decipher our dreams, and in following our dreams we support the fulfillment of our soul.  Easier said than done, as always.  Just remember: with each blink we open our eyes to a mind-boggling reality and with each breath we fulfill the need to be alive.  Our only limit is our own consciousness.  As the Chinese proverb says, “When sleeping women wake, mountains move.” (Awakening the Essential Feminine, Claiming Your Influential Power).

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How Far Should We Go For Our Dreams?

Should we ever let go of our dreams?  Last week I was speaking about setting The Essential Company up and some of the lessons I learned.  In thinking about it this week, I realize that the last two years have been among the most challenging times in my life.  Creating a company – self-funding it – building one of the world’s most amazing teams – listening intently to women and what they most need now – and designing programs to answer those needs has been one of the most honorable challenges I could have been given.  My day job is business consultant to business leaders around the world.  I’ve been doing this for the last 15 years and have been honored to work with some of the world’s finest women.  The Essential Feminine Company®  took me in a whole, new, unexpected direction.  Once I heard the answers from women regarding what their heart most desired, I learned what my true dream is.  I think I’ll go further and say the true reason I’m here on this planet.  Following the dream of creating something from scratch has always made me wonder is it sensible, good business practice to create something from thin air even if it is a heart-felt dream.  Many would say this is a foolish folly.  I disagree.  Sometimes life calls us to do things that we ourselves do not understand.  All the logic in the world cannot make us relinquish our dreams.  I must say with a few bruises on my knees and scratches on my elbows, I am delighted to be a part of this amazing company and to have deep connection with so many women from around the world.  So, how far should we go for our dreams?  For this answer, we must follow our heart, realize we may need to take risks but know that if we really believe in what we are doing guidance and support will be there like the wind beneath our wings.

Maureen J. Simon

Founder and Creative Director

The Essential Feminine™ Company

Author

“Awakening The Essential Feminine: Claiming Your Influential Power”

maureen@theessentialfeminine.com

http://theessentialfeminine.com/shop#living

www.theessentialfeminine.com

 

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