It's a great day to learn about freedom!

Freedom through Forgiveness is the 3rd Foundation of Courageous Self-Care. 

If you missed Foundation 1 (Shifting your Relationship with Time) or Foundation 2 (Gratitude Changes Everything), simply click the link for either one to learn more.

 Now, about Forgiveness and Freedom...

I love this expression about Forgiveness; blaming others is like drinking poison and expecting them to die.

If we're holding onto grudges towards others, or ourselves, we are draining away precious energy. It takes so much energetic tension to blame and to hold onto things that happened in the past. 

Forgiveness is a gift you give yourself. 

My favourite forgiveness practice is the Ho'Oponopono, an esoteric Hawaiian Healing System. I made a video about it that you can watch here. 

In my experience, the most powerful forgiveness experience is when we choose to forgive ourselves. We can be mighty hard on ourselves, right?

Take...

A great deal of Courageous Self-Care involves the words we choose to think and speak.

When we're aware of the words we use, we can significantly change our vibration, because words are incredibly powerful.

Each word, whether thought or spoken, has its own vibration, meaning that it resonates with energy.

If we constantly think and speak words with a low vibration, such as coarse language, we're actually draining our energy and putting out a low vibration frequency.

Because like attracts like, whatever energy we put out comes back to us, so we then attract people and situations that reflect that low vibration back to us.

Conversely, when we choose higher vibration words to affirm to ourselves and to share with others, we then experience more situations and people who fill us up with positive energy.

For example, consider the phrase, "I'm sorry." I'm all for using it as a sincere form of apology, but many people, especially women tend to apologize as a habit.

They utter the...

I was on my way to a business meeting recently and found myself with a few minutes to spare. Woohoo! I love it when that happens!

I had missed my morning meditation so I decided to pull over on a residential street and meditate there.

Several minutes in, a lawnmower that had been running turned off.

The silence that ensued was profound. The funny thing was, I hadn't noticed the noise until it stopped.

That's just like energy drains. We generally don't notice our energy draining away until we take care of the leak. Once we do that, the resulting energy boost is noticeable and transformative.

In the Courageous Self-Care model, there are 10 ways that we tend to drain our energy without noticing it. I've created a mini-course on those energy drains and I would love to give it to you as a gift. 

If you're curious about where your energy leaks are, click on this link.

Once we take care of the energy drains, we shift from running on empty to renewable energy.

Just like the lawnmower...

What are your first thoughts in the morning?

For most people, their thoughts have something to do with lack.

• Oh My God, it's morning.
• I didn't get enough sleep. I'm so tired.
• I have so much to do and so little time.
• Today's going to be busy.
• I have to do this and this and this...
• Do these thoughts make you feel excited to get out of bed?

More likely they make you want to burrow deeper under the duvet and hit the snooze button.

How can you shift those thoughts so that you want to get out of bed, no matter what kind of night you had?

In my experience, Gratitude.

If you can change your first thoughts to be ones of thanks, your day will start off with abundance and 'plenty' rather than 'not enough' and lack.

I've automated my thoughts to begin with gratitude each morning so that I can start my day by feeling thankful, even when I'm in that place in between sleep and waking.

Does it take courage to be in gratitude? Absolutely.

It would be so easy to follow my old habit where my mind...