Don’t Forget to Do This before the year ends

goals love mindset Dec 18, 2017

During my One Life to Live daysmy home was in LA, but the show was filmed in New York. For a while, I commuted back and forth every few days. (Yes, it was a little crazy, but you can get used to pretty much anything.)

At first, I stayed with friends in New York, but as my character, psycho nurse Barbara, got more screen time, I knew I needed my own place. Just a small one, somewhere to sleep, eat, and drop by bag. A friend knew of a one-bedroom sublet, with rent so cheap that I had to ask him to repeat it. It was on the Upper West Side, just two blocks from the One Life to Live set. I couldn’t believe my luck.

Then I saw the place. It was on the ground floor, and the few windows it had were literally one foot away from a brick wall. You couldn’t even see if it was sunny or raining out. It was tiny, cramped, and as dark as a cave. But the price and location were right, so reluctantly, I took it.

I’ll just get some candles, and put up some...

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The gift idea you haven’t thought of

forgiveness love mindset Dec 04, 2017

Seven years after our divorce, my ex-husband gave me the gift I needed most.

A few years before, I’d had a sort of come-to-Jesus moment. A lot of people I knew were getting married, and at their weddings, I…let’s just say I couldn’t handle myself. I drank way more than I care to admit, which was unusual for me—anywhere else, I barely drank at all. Clearly there was something about weddings that triggered me.

My friend and mentor, Sheva, suggested that maybe this was the symptom of some issue I had with my own wedding. When she said that, it made me look closely at what I was hiding. There were things I needed to be honest about, things that I’d tried to bury, but needed to come to the surface.

Sheva encouraged me to reach out to Bob. We’d been divorced almost seven years, and I hadn’t spoken to him in at least four. I’d heard he was remarried and already had kids. I was with Stephen, and though I loved him, I had trouble...

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Magical Doorman of Building 222

gratitude love mindset Nov 21, 2017

Back when my kids were in preschool – we were always late for preschool – we used to walk (well, run) the same way every day.

One morning, I was more stressed than usual. My head was down, my brow furrowed. I’m sure it looked like I was pushing a Mack truck instead of a small child. I was just dreading the day ahead of me, when I heard, “Have a great day!”

I turned, looking for who that was for. Then I saw the doorman from building 222, and he was talking to me.

I shouldn’t have been surprised. Every day when we walked by, he’d call out to us, “Hello! Have a great day.” But when I saw that his “hello” was meant for me, something inside me softened. 

“Thank you,” I said. 

On the rest of the walk, I questioned myself. Why was I carrying this heavy weight around? What if I could have a great day? How can I make that happen? By the time we got to school, my energy had done a...

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How Can We Honor Our Values?

gratitude love mindset Nov 17, 2017

I had another blog planned for this week, but it didn’t seem relevant given the high emotions after the election. Since last Wednesday, 50% of the country has been happy and hopeful. The other 50% – which includes me – is devastated and scared.

That’s put me through all the states of mourning. Shock, sadness, questioning, anger, denial, trying to figure out what to do. And during my hours and hours of reading articles online, trying to understand, I came to an important conclusion.

My mom raised me and my two sisters mostly by herself. Even though money was tight, she managed to take us all over the world. Before I turned 18, I’d been to Egypt, Turkey, Mexico, Norway, and all over Europe. Her motto was, “If the locals can get there, so can we.” She has this insatiable sense of adventure, and it was all about trying to understand, appreciate, and integrate into other cultures. She made friends everywhere, even if she didn’t speak the...

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How to Believe You Are Good Enough

love mindset May 02, 2017

Last weekend, I went to a four-day certification course from Z Health about the neurology of fitness. Based on the topic, you’d think it was my cup of tea, right? I thought it would be, too – which is why I was so disappointed and frustrated when after the first day, I just wasn’t getting it.

I felt so dumb. I sat there throughout the presentations, listening, taking notes, trying to take it all in. But they might as well have been speaking ancient Greek. None of it landed for me. It was like everything went right over my head.

The same thing happened on Day 2. I can’t make it through two more days of this, I thought. Maybe I just shouldn’t come tomorrow.

Saturday morning, I woke up feeling grumpy and mean. My poor kids knew something was wrong as soon as I stumbled into the kitchen, and they scattered like mice to avoid me. Looking ahead to the next two days, all I felt was that awful sense of I’m not good enough for this....

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How to Keep the Magic Real

adventure gratitude love Apr 20, 2017

For months now, my son Ty has been on a mission to disprove the Easter bunny, Santa Claus, and all things magical.

A few weeks ago, when he lost a tooth, I snuck into his room and put some money under his pillow, successfully taking the tooth without waking him up. When I got back to my room (this was about five in the morning) I just put it in a bag under a sweatshirt, thinking I was safe to leave it there for the night.

It wasn’t even seven a.m. when I opened my eyes to the sounds of rummaging. As I sat up and rubbed my eyes, there was Ty, holding up the bag, with a look of supreme triumph on his face. Ha! his eyes said. Caught you.

“What are you doing, honey?” I said, opting for the “innocent-me” route.

“What is my tooth doing in your room, in this bag?” he said, his sweet voice dripping with accusation.

I shook my head in wonder. “I have no idea,” I said, as if I could not fathom such a turn of events....

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1 Question That Will Change Your Body Image

A few weeks ago, my team and I sat down to talk about the upcoming Love Your Body event.

What does it mean, we asked, to actually love your body?

I’m very action-oriented, so I reframed the question as this: “What would you do differently if you truly loved your body?”

When it was Lauren’s turn to answer, she said only one word: “Everything.”

“What do you mean?” I asked. “Like what?”

“Just…everything,” she said. “How I carry myself, how I walk into a room. How and what I ate. What I did during the day. My relationships, for sure.”

As her list went on, I found myself nodding in sympathy. Honestly, when I thought about it, that would be my answer too. If I really, truly loved my body, it would change everything.

As some of you know, I struggled with anorexia for over a decade. I was so obsessed with making my body “perfect” that I almost destroyed it. My sister said to me once,...

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How to Find True and Lasting Happiness (Really!)

Recently I came across a new mindset tool that I just love. It’s basically a happiness exercise, where at the end of the day, you recap what you’re happy about. But what I love about this one is that it takes it a step further, by asking “Why did that happen?” about each thing.

What I found while I was doing this, is that even such a simple question can have this global effect of changing how you see things. Suddenly, I saw my life in a more cumulative light, not just isolated events happening one day but not another. Something you did yesterday, or last week, or even years ago, can contribute to one moment of happiness today.

The first time I tried this was after I got confirmation that I’d booked this one particular speaking gig. I really wanted to do this, but it just seemed like it wasn’t going to happen—then it was, then it wasn’t, then it was again. Then, a couple weeks ago, it became official—success! So I was...

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How Sadness is a Crucial Part of a Happy Life

The other day, I took my kids to see the new Pixar movie Inside Out. It looked like fun, so I was looking forward to it, but I had no idea it would have such big life lessons in it—like, how sadness is an essential part of a happy life.

f you haven’t seen it, Inside Out takes place mostly inside the head of an 11-year-old girl, Riley. The main characters are 5 of her emotions: Joy, Sadness, Anger, Disgust and Fear. In the beginning, Joy is the driver, and therefore joy is the main focus of her actions and memories.

When Joy gets pulled from the ‘leader seat,’ she and Sadness have to work together to find their way back to Headquarters.

In the journey, Joy realizes that she needs Sadness to get back to where she was. The reflection and introspection, induced by Sadness, are ultimately what repairs the relationship between Riley and her family. Joy learns that Sadness helps you connect, rebuild and bring things together – if...

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