Your Monday Minute - Stop Sabotaging Your Joy!

Welcome back to another edition of Your Monday Minute! Do you ever find that you second-guess your choices when it comes to enjoying yourself? You take time out for self-care, but then you "should" on yourself? I shouldn't have ordered this, I should have ordered that! I shouldn't be having that second glass of wine or I should really be paying more attention to the kids/partner/boss/friends... the list seems endless! 

This week, I'm encouraging you to knock it off! Commit fully to the choice you make with your joy in mind and then... enjoy! Watch and learn, my dear friends! And remember how much you matter! 

It's time for Your Monday Minute, your weekly dose of motivation and inspiration to create a life you love! This week we're talking about how we tend to sabotage our joy right when we mean to be taking care of ourselves!

Practice immersing yourself in the joy of the moment this week and share your thoughts! 

Your Monday Minute - Say It Out Loud

Over the past several days, two men that I went to high school with have taken leave of their Earthly bodies. Both were far too young to die, both leave behind wives and young children. These are the moments that I was talking about last time, in Look for the Gift. 

The gifts that come from loss are plentiful, though often hard to see through the haze of pain and grief. Situations like these, however, connect near and perfect strangers together. Compassion pours from our hearts for those left behind. Compassion and connection... those are gifts. 

This months' Monday Minutes have been all about gratitude and Thanksgiving is just days away. This week, just a few miles down the road, there will be funerals one day and holiday celebrations the next. This is life. The sad, the joy, the ebb and flow of life. And with it the reminder that it's about more than just knowing what matters, it's about saying it out loud. 

Say it out loud. What is gratitude if kept inside and private? I'm here each week, reminding you how much you matter. Loving you with the intention of you knowing your beautiful worth.  Love and gratitude spread like wild fires and only when we love ourselves enough to share that love and our thoughts and feelings with others. 

So, today, I ask you to be courageous and say it out loud. Tell the people you love how you feel. Show appreciation and say it out loud to the stranger who holds the door for you. Call someone up and tell them you're grateful for them. Give a genuine wave of courtesy and a smile to the driver who lets you go first. Look around you and thank the screen in front of you, the shelter you reside in and the people and animals that share your space. Say it out loud. Spread not only the words of gratitude, but the energy of it. 

It's time to put your gratitude into practice on this week's Your Monday Minute! Read more at www.tamaravellozzo.com/blog

You matter. Let others know that they do, too. 

I love you! 

Day 5 - The Gratitude Spiral

Day 5! What are you grateful today? 

Getting into an "attitude of gratitude" is fun! Challenge yourself to be grateful at unexpected times, especially when something is starting to get on your nerves. Take that thing (or person!) that is annoying you and flip-it! Start thinking of ways that irritant is actually such a blessing. 

Example: I was on hold for AGES today, working out new medical plans for my kids and me. The kind of 'on-hold' that lasts so long your ear begins to ache and itch. I noticed the urge to start complaining about it. Fortunately, my intended rant to the only other person around was interrupted by being taken off hold. After I was put back on (a much briefer) hold, I started thinking about how grateful that I was for this phone that makes my 'to-do' list get knocked down in minutes or hours, instead of the weeks it used to take to send a form or drive back and forth to an office somewhere. 

When you start doing that, gratitude begins to spiral. Suddenly, I was grateful for the customer service agents taking care of things for me, the pen that allowed me to jot down their names and the details they gave to me, the fact that waiting on hold allowed me to just sit and be still for a few minutes and sip on my afternoon cuppa... I'm even feeling grateful just to have so much to be grateful for! 

Now it's your turn! Go on and let gratitude spiral... what comes out? Share it with us! 

Your Monday Minute - Get into Gratitude

It's November! The holiday season is officially on its way with Thanksgiving as the kick-off! You might be surprised to learn that November 1st is actually the first day of the Celtic New Year. To me, it is the perfect time to begin a practice of gratitude and start your 'new year' off right! 

By the time the holidays of Thanksgiving and Christmas are upon us, we'll already be basking in the glow of gratitude and thanks-giving. But why is Gratitude so important? Because when we live in a state of gratitude we are happier and healthier. It's a fact. Even Web M.D. says so!

Watch this week's Your Monday Minute for more on the power of gratitude. Then, join in on my 30-day Gratitude Challenge on Facebook or right here on the blog. Just post what you're grateful for each day! 

But don't take it from me. Try it for yourself and come back and tell us about it. Joining in? I invite you to leave a commit by leaving a comment below! I love you!

C'mon Get Happy!

Imagine yourself, just 30-days from now, being happier than maybe you've ever been before? Would that be wonderful? 

"Engaging in a practice of gratitude for just 30-days actually raises your Happiness Setpoint." 

I'm closely paraphrasing Marci Shimoff from the incredible The Hidden Riches event that I attended this past weekend. If you want more happiness in your life, how easy is that?!! 

This is what the feeling of happiness looks like to me! What does it look like to you? 

Many Americans begin making regular posts on social media in the lead-up to Thanksgiving, but then stop cold turkey when the holiday passes. (That pun was totally intended!) Why not commit to starting this practice and keeping it up long after November ends? While you don't need to share your gratitude with the world, announcing your practice out loud and in print makes you feel more accountable. 

Plus, writing it down, whether on Facebook or in a Gratitude Journal (which doesn't have to be pretty - sticky-notes work as well as anything else) allows you to look back on darker days when you may need help lifting up your spirit.

I invite you to follow my posts on Gratitude and Happiness during the month of November on Facebook and Twitter to help you stay focused on your own happiness. I'll share tips to really step into experiencing gratitude on the deepest level of your being. This one simple thing could change your life forever. 

5-minutes a day is an easy way to a happier life, isn't it? 

Leave a comment and commit! 

Do you practice gratitude? Tell us how! Ready to begin? Leave a comment and commit - it's harder to let it slide if you've told the world you'll do something (and me, because I'll be checking in with you!).  

Connecting with Source through Movement

Do you feel disconnected? Disjointed? Unable to focus and achieve peace of mind and calmness of the body? Are your moods up and down and left and right? Do you find yourself snapping at others and feeling tired?

Among everything else that contributes to those feelings, you're probably experiencing a disconnect in your relationship with Source. Source, Source Energy, God, the Unified Field, the Universe... these are all different ways of calling the same thing - that which is all... all things, all life, all energy. 

A "Passion" that comes up for many clients is this desire to have a deeper relationship or connection with God. We want this because we want, more than anything, to feel good.

You can pray more, you can read the bible or other religious text, or a deeply moving devotional, or you can move. For me, my connection with Source Energy is strongest when I turn inward and flow through movement. 

If you want to have a deeper connection to Spirit, you have to move your body.

Your body is the package in which your spirit has chosen to manifest in this incarnation of itself. Your body is the house of your spirit, the house of your soul and the house of God, because God-energy flows within and throughout us. 

Cherish the house of your soul. Care for it, love it, and when you want to hear the voice of God clearly, move your body to silence your mind. 

My favorite way to do this is through a slow-flowing yoga with beautiful music in the background, or Kundalini Yoga - an intense form of yogic meditation. "Yoga" in Sanskrit actually means "union." Some sources translate it as a "union with the divine," and this is exactly what it feels like for me. 

How about you? Do you meditate to achieve a deeper connection with Source? Or are you still in the "thinking about it" phase? Wherever you are, it is exactly where you are meant to be. Please, share your thoughts and comment below. 

Your Monday Minute - Self Love in 3 Simple Steps

Love, self-love, is my religion

Your level of success in life stems entirely from your level of self-love. "Success" is a word that is completely objective, by the way. To me, a successful life is where you feel good most of the time, you are happy and experiencing love, joy, fulfillment and an overall sense of well-being. 

Many of us settle for happiness in one area of our lives at the cost of another - a successful career at the expense of a happy home-life or vice-versa. When you practice self-love, success naturally follows in all areas of your life because you don't even know how to settle for less. 

This doesn't mean you won't hit bumps in the road of life, but with a deep sense of love for yourself, you'll recover from them faster and more easily. 

Because we've been conditioned to believe that loving ourselves is narcissistic and selfish, many of us don't even know how to do it. But don't worry, I'm here to help. Find out the 3 keys to beginning your practice of self-love in today's Your Monday Minute! 

Your Monday Minute - Get Off Your Bum!

Welcome to Your Monday Minute - a weekly reminder about how much you matter! Creating a life that you love is all about feeling good. Feeling good requires a little bit of effort, but honestly, not that much. Watch this week's short video and get inspired to move! 

Your Monday Minute is the weekly series by Life Coach and Speaker, Tamara Vellozzo, reminding you how much you matter! Why not subscribe and watch? It only takes a minute!

Inspired? Motivated? Have Olivia Newton John's Get Physical stuck in your head? Me too!

About 4 months ago I got serious about getting into better shape. It could be that a certain milestone birthday is approaching or simply that I finally gave into the fact that when I get physical exercise I feel better, but I finally started exercising regularly for the first time in my life (unless dancing for hours on end several times a week during my University years counts).

Like any endeavor, exercise is something that you'll never find the time for; you have to make the time. Because I'm a mom of 3, I choose to get up early to get my workouts in before the kids are up. Since I have an early-riser, this means waaaaaaaaaaaaaay earlier than I ever actually want to get up, but since it makes such a dramatic difference in how I feel, I do it anyway (usually). 

The yoga that I do every morning is just 7-minutes long. Unfortunately, I can no longer find the video at chopra.com, where I found it, but there are plenty of short routines all over YouTube. When I wake up early enough, I add a Kundalini Kriya (also easy to find on YouTube - there are plenty!) to the mix and feel amazing afterwards. Spotify and Gabrielle Bernstein help me with my music selections!

How to you work exercise into your daily routine? Don't have a routine? Start one today and come back in a week or two to tell us how you're feeling!