Jan 25, 2019 | Your Relationships
The idea that I’m happy all the time (a reflection on smiling too much:)
A couple of months ago, a colleague shared with me that she didn’t know how to relate to me because I always had a smile on my face.
This comment really gave me pause. I had to ask myself, “Was my smile genuine? Did my smile truly reflect how I felt on the inside?”
Often smiling is a function of our upbringing. It’s ingrained in us at an early age. This maybe more true for me than most, since my childhood home was also a Bed and Breakfast.
Smiling was part of my job description. 🙂
I admit, it’s sometimes my default response to smile.
However, my colleague’s comment made me do a bit of soul-evaluation. I came to the conclusion that my smile is most-often a true and natural reflection of who I am. I am a glass-half-full-kinda-gal.
But being present means it’s ok to feel and express all our emotions. Even the ones we often suppress like, anger or sadness. We absolutely must give ourselves permission to not smile all the time!
So here’s a little test…
The next time someone asks you, “How are you?” carefully consider your answer.
The knee-jerk response for most of us is, “I’m fine. How are you?”
When I’m asked this, I pause and respond truthfully and catch someone off guard when I say things like, “You know I’m struggling a bit today with ________.” Or, “I realized the news story I saw this morning has really made me feel sad.”
Next time you get asked this question, stop and tune in with how you are in that present moment. Respond genuinely, honestly.
When you do, something amazing happens.
It opens up genuine and authentic conversation.
It gives the other person permission to be honest with you in return.
Let’s practice…
“How are you?”
Hit REPLY and let me know!
To your honest and unbounded potential,
P.S. Even though I’m still in India, I would still love to know your responses. Don’t be shy! How are you?
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Reflections, Ahas and Lessons Learned on Hosting the First Unbounded Mastermind Retreat
At the time of recording this episode, I am just still landing from hosting our first ever Unbounded Mastermind retreat a couple of weekends ago. I wanted to record this episode to share what I’m still processing from the retreat, how it went, some of the lessons learned, and some of the highlights. In last week’s episode, we had Kerry Dobson on the show, and if you listened to that episode, you’ll remember that I shared with her that I was feeling vulnerable going into hosting this first ever in person retreat for the mastermind. I had a lot of expectations and hopes for how it would go and sometimes my own anticipation and pressure I put on myself can get in my way, so we workshopped my own blocks on our podcast episode together. It was so incredibly helpful, reassuring and affirming that I was on the right track. So I actually wanted to record this episode and give you the download and behind the scenes of how the retreat ended up going as well as some of my own takeaways as facilitator and some of my own personal insights that were reflected back to me. I know many in my community have shared their own dreams of wanting to host a retreat of their own, so I hope you’ll find this conversation helpful as you consider what to include in your own.
Visit this episode’s show notes page here.
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The Prosperous Empath® Podcast is produced by Heart Centered Podcasting.