Archive for the ‘Self Help’ Category

Personal Change and facing your fears to gain control of your life and/or recover or get well from challenges in your life means learning to cope with the process of change and the how to stop fearing your fears. It involves learning how to soothe yourself, be kind to yourself, take good self-care, love yourself, and becoming more aware of how, what, and why you think what you think. What you think creates how you feel. How you feel determines your experience in all areas of your life.

We’re all human and therefore we all have fears. Some of us fear death, others fear being alone, and others fear social situations. If you can think of it, there’s someone somewhere that’s afraid of it. But fear is a normal part of life. It’s what protects us and keeps us safe. There are times, though, when fear can hinder us and stop us from enjoying life and experiencing new joys.

All fears have their roots somewhere inside based upon negative thoughts and association with past experience. It is how you have internalized and perceived those experiences that dictates how much fear you have right now and how you may be doing some extreme things in your life to avoid that fear. Things that really are not healthy and won’t help you but will only cause you more pain and actually increase your over-all negative experience and your fears.

When your fear starts to limit what you do in life, you need to conquer that fear. Does your fear of flying stop you from traveling to visit family members or prevent you from taking the vacation of your dreams?

What about socializing with coworkers after work? Have you turned down social invitations simply because you were anxious about not knowing anyone in the group? If your fears are stopping you from taking advantage of the new opportunities in your life, then it’s time to regain control of your life and disallow your fears from paralyzing you. After all, you can’t live in a bubble! It’s time to start living your life instead of watching life passing you by.

To help you gain control of your life, here are a few tips on how to get over your
fears:

First, identify your fears. Get a piece of paper and write down exactly what you’re afraid of. It doesn’t matter how long the list is, whether it has one thing or 15 things on it. And it doesn’t matter if these fears sound irrational. No one needs to see the list other than you. This is about you taking control and getting over your fears.

Next, figure out why you have the fear. Try to remember a specific incident that might have caused the fear. Maybe your fear of flying intensified because you’ve been on a turbulent flight. Or maybe your fear of dogs stemmed from being bitten as a child.

If you’ve blocked out these memories because they’re too painful to remember, a professional can help you reach those memories and decipher their meaning. A professional can also advise other forms of treatment, such as hypnosis or the emotional freedom technique (EFT).

Now the hard part begins: overcoming or conquering these fears. Be patient and be prepared to do some work because, just as the fear took time to manifest, it will take time to
conquer.

• Personal Change and Coping Audio and Workbook
• Change Your Thoughts – Change Your Life – 19 Coaching Exercises – End Negative Thought Patterns
• Developing Self Awareness and Creating Personal Life Change
• A.J. Mahari’s Coaching Guide/Ebook/Workbook – Quest For Self Awareness & Creating Your Story of Success Audio
• LONELINESS – Its Challenges, Lessons, Purpose and Meaning Ebook
• The Power of Gratitude – Nurtures Healing, Recovery, Self Improvement – Ebook and Audio 
• The Importance of Observing The Moment Mindfully – Effective ways to Cope with Stress
• Unresolved Abandonment
• 1 – 60 Minute Life Coaching Session
• Audio About Borderline Personality
• Audio For Loved Ones of Someone with Borderline Personality

All content of all Ebooks, Video, Audios, and Workbooks are © A.J. Mahari and Phoenix Rising Publications/Life Coaching

Take Baby Steps

In the movie What About Bob? there was a therapist who had a patient who was afraid of everything. The therapist used the baby step approach with this patient, which simply
means taking small steps, one at a time, to gain more confidence and eventually overcome the fear.

What would your baby steps be? It depends on your fear.

1. If you’re afraid of social situations, slowly start going to different events. Start with small groups, perhaps in very open environments, then transition slowly into larger gatherings. The purpose here is to prove to yourself that there’s nothing for you to fear.
2. Socialize with a small group of friends you already know. Polish your social skills among people who already know you. You have less to lose and won’t feel as if you must say the right thing at all times.
3. If you’re afraid of dogs, take this same approach by visiting a friend who has a dog. Small dogs are much less intimidating (although they might bark more frequently). If your friends don’t have dogs, ask your local vet’s office or animal shelter if you can visit.
4. Fear of flying is much more difficult to conquer because of the expense, but you can look into hypnosis. Also, some airports or flight schools might have classes in airplane simulators that help you feel like you’re in an airplane. That type of plan will take more research but will open the world to you.

By facing your fears and finding a way to overcome them, you will open up your life to many more opportunities. Take control of your life and take action and change what has you depressed, change why you aren’t in a relationship or a healthy relationship, change how you feel about yourself and others. Facing fear, in and of itself, is the way to  make a new choice for personal change and learning to cope with it today. The only thing there is to truly fear is fear itself. That can take over your life if you let it. If you feel like fear has taken over your life, like you are blocked and stuck and want more out of your life, then it is time to embark on a journey of personal change.

© A.J. Mahari and Phoenix Rising Publications/Life Coaching, February 4, 2012 – All rights reserved.

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Price: $22.99

Developing Self-Awareness is a chosen journey that for some is about further personal growth and development and for others is about healing, recovery, getting to know themselves and then taking the journey of further personal growth and development. It is about finding, knowing, and living in and through your authentic self in a way that flows with life and not against it. It is knowing that you are interconnected to all beings and things in the universe.

Life Coach, BPD Mental Health and Self Improvement Coach, A.J. Mahari in this 2 hour and 50 minute Audio, that is accompanied by a Workbook, takes you on a positive, enlightening, and empowering motivational journey of just how you can begin or continue to develop self-awareness and why it is so important that you do. How to begin to empower yourself to create the change that you want in your life and the role of the journey that developing awareness plays in change and personal growth.

Purchase Discover Self Awareness Audio and Workbook for Personal Change and Development

© A.J. Mahari, December 2011 – All rights reserved.

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Author, Life Coach, BPD/Mental Health and Self Improvement Coach, A.J. Mahari now has her Thought Changing Affirmations Handbooks 5 Volume Set available. Through the use of these positive affirmations, one a day, or one a week, you can learn to change your negative painful thoughts into more positive pain-neutral and/or happy contented thoughts. Whatever the mind can conceive it can achieve. If you want and need to stop suffering and to experience more peace, more calm, less to eventually no emotional dysregulation in your life than Mahari’s 5 Volume Set of Changing Your Thought Positive Affirmation Handbooks will be invaluable to you in your recovery process. A natural way to help empower your own recovery. A natural way that you have control over to change your negative thoughts into positive ones. You will feel so much better about yourself. Thoughts define our experience. What you think really controls what you experience, your pain, difficulty in relating to others, in relationships, in knowing who you are and so much more. It is all generated by the rigid thought patterns you’ve built up from a very young age and added to over the years. Affirmations might sound silly, or hardly like a hopeful solution to improve the quality of your life, but take it from Mahari who not only knows this and witnesses incredible change in the clients she coaches but she knows this first hand having recovered from BPD in 1995.

You can use these “Positive Affirmations” – short positive statements targeted at a specific subconscious set of beliefs – to challenge and undermine negative beliefs and to replace them with positive self-nurturing beliefs. How we think creates our experience. If you are thinking largely negatively you will create and perceive your life experience through a negative lens. If you are thinking more positively the exact opposite will manifest in your life – your thoughts, experience, relationships, and your over-all life experience.

READ MORE and Purchase by CLICKING HERE

© A.J. Mahari, May 14, 2011 – All rights reserved.

Getting out of debt is a positive healthy priority right now that too many people are ignoring, avoiding, or leaving for some future time but in the meantime they continue to compound and add to their current debt and all the while worry about it and often being stressed out often by it. Is that a quality way of living of your life? Getting out of debt will help your physical and mental health. It will help you to be happier, believe it or not, even if you have less money or work to save more and commit to spending less. Getting out of debt will free you from stress, depression, anxiety, and worry.

© A.J. Mahari, May 9, 2011, – All rights reserved.

I envision myself debt-free.

I envision myself debt-free, owing nothing to any man or institution. My books are in order and my accounts are balanced. I know that I can be free from debt because I am committed to my plan and I am responsible enough to make it happen.

I take pride in making sure that my family’s financial future is safe. I am working toward leaving my children an inheritance of blessings, instead of financial ruin. The steps I am taking today will ensure that my family will be free from the burden of debt for generations to come.

Manage Your Money More Effectively – A Common Cents Guide to Financial Stability

The way I spend my money is a direct reflection of my priorities therefore I strive to invest in things of value and refrain from insignificant purchases. When I want to buy something, I wait until I have saved enough money to make the purchase instead of buying on credit and acquiring more debt.

I have the ability to pay off all of my credit cards and loans by sending extra payments whenever I have surplus in my budget. When I pay off a debt, I stay away from new debt; instead I use the extra money for my savings and wealth building.

Temporarily, I have to make difficult cut backs in my spending in order to pay off my debt. I am simplifying my life and finding joy in things of true value. I refuse to accumulate more debt because I work hard for my money and deserve to be debt-free.

Today, I choose to be wise in my spending in order to be free from financial burdens. I see myself without debt; free to invest in my dreams. Free to give to others.

Self-Reflection Questions:

1. What is my plan for becoming debt-free?
2. Am I willing to make the necessary sacrifices to achieve my financial goals?
3. How can I spend more wisely?

Manage Your Money More Effectively – A Common Cents Guide to Financial Stability

© A.J. Mahari, May 9, 2011 – All rights reserved.

Manage Your Money More Effectively – Life Coach A.J. Mahari’s “Common Cents Guide” to dealing with debt, budgeting and surviving without financial worry and stress even in a tough economy or tough times. There are reflections and journal exercises that you can do to help you to gain some competent discipline where perhaps you have been spending to make up for how you feel, or even spending because a decrease in your income has you depressed to do to difficulties in the economy right now and how hard it is to find jobs. This book also talks about various aspects of your finances, Savings and information about credit systems with helpful and informative links to even more information that, on this aspect of the Ebook, is especially relevant to people living in Canada, The United States, Australia, The United Kingdom and India. Generally this Ebook has many helpful suggestions for managing your money more effectively no matter where in the world you live.

Whether you are in debt or often worried about your personal finances this Ebook will help you to create an effective and workable plan to handle your finances in a “common cents way” that will ensure that you are not having to worry or be stressed out about money 24/7.

Purchase This Ebook

Ask yourself if you make too many emotional purchases. Are you buying what you want, and maybe too often versus saving and buying only what you need and can afford? What is your relationship with and to money?

Do you spend money to influence others? Do you spend  money in an effort to maintain status or image? Are you in credit card debt. This Ebook is a practical and common “cents” guide to help you get your financial life in order so that you can relax, and even find ways to make more  money while you are being wiser with the money that you have.

Purchase This Ebook

• Set up a realistic budget that you can live with and stick to
• Cut your living expenses without living like a monk and without sacrificing the lifestyle you desire (and deserve!)
• Save money for short term goals like vacations, renovations, and high-tech toys
• Build wealth for long term goals like your children’s college tuition and your retirement
• Refinance your mortgage, when it’s the best option for you (and when you absolutely need to avoid it!)
• Get rid of debt once and for all, so you can start building up your financial assets
• Improve your credit rating, even if you have debt
• Protect yourself from identity thieves who can cripple your financial life
• Make more money, even if you don’t switch jobs or get a raise

Purchase This Ebook

© A.J. Mahari and Phoenix Rising Publications, May 9, 2011 – All rights reserved.

Robert Whitaker, author of Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America was the keynote speaker on February 10, 2011, in Portland Oregon. It was a “Rethinking Psychiatry Event”. Psychiatry must be given more than a second or third thought these days as it is driving itself off a cliff and becoming less and less a viable realistic ethical or trustworthy vehicle to actually treat and help patients. The focus on the “medical model” of psychiatry, known as Biopsychiatry is doing more harm than good prescribing medications that are harmful in many cases without full disclosure of the potential harm of many psychiatric medications and doing so it would seem more to earn Big Pharma money than to actually help people with recovery and getting well.

More than 450 people filled the Unitarian Church in Portland Oregon February 10th for the Rethinking Psychiatry event. Robert Whitaker keynoted the evening, followed by a panel with Beckie Child, Director of the Mental Health America of Oregon; Cindi Fisher, Movement of Mothers Standing – Up – Together: Taking Back Our Children; Chris Gordon, Assistant professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, Medical Director of Mental Health Advocacy; Gina Nikkel, Director of the Oregon Association of Community Mental Health Programs; and Will Hall, Director of Portland Hearing Voices.

Listen to the entire evening’s talks here: http://www.madnessradio.net/audio-extra/RethinkingPsychiatryPDX2-10-11Complete.mp3

Listen to Robert Whitaker’s talk here: http://www.madnessradio.net/audio-extra/RethinkingPsychiatryPDX2-10-11RobertWhitaker.mp3

Listen to Will Hall’s talk here: http://www.madnessradio.net/audio-extra/RethinkingPsychiatryPDX2-10-11WillHall.mp3>

Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America

Relationships can be complicated. There are types of relationships that are healthy and others that are toxic. Many people aren’t exactly sure which is which depending upon their own childhoods and what is familiar to them. How can you find the strength to move on after a relationship break up and also learn from it and make wiser choices in the future. One thing that is very important after a relationship ends is that you take the time to heal and to understand what happened. If you don’t, you might just find yourself in a pattern of going from one toxic, unhealthy, and/or unsatisfying or even abusive relationship after another. Author, Life Coach, BPD and Mental Health Coach A.J. Mahari on relationship break ups and life after them.

Life After a Breakup – Searching Within for the Strength to Move On

It’s perfectly understandable if your recent break up is really taking an emotional toll on you. So much negative energy takes center stage in our lives after a break up and it can be very difficult to overcome it. However, the good news is there are ways to use your inner strength to help in the healing process so you can move on. Of course, it sounds much easier than it is, but what’s important is taking the healing process in stages and only move on to the next stage when you’re absolutely ready.

Try these helpful strategies to reconnect with your inner self and identify the path that will lead you to full recovery and closure:

1. Find a spiritual connection. One of the most effective ways to develop the strength to heal after a break up is to develop your spirituality. Being spiritual involves becoming in tune with the true desires and needs of your soul. Once you’ve made that connection, you’ll likely realize that the relationship was hurting you instead of helping you. Then you can begin to focus on what you can learn from the relationship and how you can increase your self-awareness and insight about what you want and don’t want, what you need and don’t need in relationships. It is also important to look for any unhealthy patterns that may exist if you’ve had several relationship break ups that have had a significant number of factors or issues in common.

• Turn to your church to help you find the true meaning of your existence.
• Read books that help you get in touch with your inner self.
• Spend time meditating on what’s really important to you.
• Maybe get yourself a Coach and fast-track your understanding and insight and speed up your recovery

2. Get motivated. A really bad break up can make anybody feel down in the dumps, and that’s probably how you feel right now. However, you must do what you can to motivate yourself to move on. What really motivates you?

• Do you feel motivated when you achieve goals that are important to you?
• Will successful completions of projects at work or school get your enthusiasm going?
• Are you inspired by the success of those closest to you?
• Maybe you need to reconnect with people in your life you may not have communicated with in the relationship

3. Don’t compromise your happiness. If any aspects of your past relationship compromised your happiness, then it wasn’t the right relationship for you. Remember that you’re a beautiful creation and you’re supposed to be happy. Strive for relationships that fill you with joy. Heed red flags and if something does not feel right learn to trust your instincts and stop going against them when you know better.

4. Accept support from your friends and family. Relying on those who are most important to you is a great way to gain the strength to heal. They can bring you words and deeds of comfort and kind reassurance. And that reassurance will help to convince you that you deserve the chance to move on from this break up and find happiness.

Change Your Thoughts – Change Your Life

How To Identify a Toxic Relationship

Loneliness

Self Help for Change – Healing and Recovery

5. Review what went wrong. Often times, both parties in a relationship are just not compatible. If you spend some time reviewing what went wrong in your relationship, such insights may help you in future relationships. Plus, identifying the flaws will definitely motivate you to move on to something and someone better. It could also be that you have something to learn about yourself if you, for example, a relationship was toxic and/or abusive and you stayed trying to rescue your now Ex and perhaps you’ve really lost touch with yourself and maybe you didn’t see your friends and family as much while you in the relationship. It is important to really understand your own role in what type of relationship it was, how long it lasted, and how it ended and what difficulties you may be experiencing now.

Searching within yourself for the strength to move on after a break up essentially means identifying what you stand for and what makes you truly happy. It also means getting to know yourself better so nobody else can tell you who to be. It also means making sure that you have high enough self-esteem, self-worth, and self-care to identify, implement, and maintain boundaries that will ensure you do not lose yourself in a relationship or compromise yourself, your values, beliefs and so for the sake of rushing into another relationship. Do you spend enough time getting to know the person you enter into a relationship with?

Admittedly, break ups are very hard to deal with, but coming to terms with the fact that the relationship is over is the first hurdle to clear. After that, gathering your inner strength and reflecting on your true desires can make it possible to confidently take the next step of moving on. It is important to embrace your sadness, your grief, and whatever else you may be feeling. Healing and in some cases needed recovery after relationships (especially if it was a toxic one) can take time and is a process. Nurture yourself. Be kind to yourself. Give yourself understanding and practice self-forgiveness. Whatever you do, you do not need to beat yourself up. You need to support and validate yourself. Give yourself time to feel the full-range of emotions that are quite normal after a relationship break up.

© A.J. Mahari, February 22, 2011 – All rights reserved.

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This audio program by Life Coach, BPD and Mental Health Coach, A.J. Mahari is very much geared to any person really who wants to create positive healthy change in his or her life. In this audio program along with a general focus on self help and self improvement A.J. Mahari also references how those diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) and/or BPD Loved Ones, anyone who has other forms of mental illness or who has been sexually abused can take this journey of healing that is attracting abundance into your life. You can go from the abyss of seeming nothingness and pain and suffering of mental illness to living your life in more balanced ways – thinking in more balanced ways – that will help you to feel more balanced, know yourself better, and help you attract the abundance in your life that you desire, deserve, and are so worthy of. Motivating, inspiring, and practical Coaching information and tools for you to get on the road to positive healthy change in your life.

This audio program, by A.J. Mahari has 3 tracks.

Track 1: 57:29 minutes – Attracting the Life You Desire or want. How can you go from where you are right now to wherever you want to go and be in your life, mental illness, BPD or BPD loved ones, or people with blocks who have issues keeping them stuck in areas of their lives. How to begin to understand how to attract the life you desire by first understanding where you are in your life right now and what about that you do not desire or want. What is keeping you stuck? What is blocking you? What perpetuates your suffering? How can you attract the life you want? What is the life that you desire? Do you know? What is the state of your life right now?

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• Self Help for Change – Healing and Recovery
• Change Your Thoughts – Change Your Life 19 Coaching Exercises – End Negative Thought Patterns
• Unresolved Abandonment

Track 3:  38:00 minutes – Gratitude, Promises, Mind Altering Tools To Change Your Life, Getting Into the Action to Help you Change Your Life, and Creating and Implementing an Action Plan. In this track A.J. Mahari talks about the afore mentioned and I also outline some of how I work with my coaching clients on getting into action, mind altering tools that will help you change your life and creating and implementing an action plan. Coaching tools that you can apply to your own process or that you can explore further with A.J. Mahari if you decide to book a coaching session or sessions.

BUY NOW

© A.J. Mahari, February 22, 2011, – All rights reserved.

Life Coach, BPD and Mental Health Coach, A.J Mahari gives you examples of how to say no assertively, yet with respect for yourself and the person you are saying no to. Mahari points out that saying no is a healthy limit and is needed at times in our lives. We can’t always put others first and we can always put ourselves last. You can only be responsibile for your choices and saying no assertively and kindly is a limit-setting and boundary setting way that enhances your self-care.

• Quest For Self Coaching Guide/Ebook/Workbook and accompanying audio copyright A.J. Mahari
• Change Your Thoughts – Change Your Life 19 Coaching Exercises – End Negative Thought Patterns copyright A.J. Mahari
• The Power of Gratitude Nurtures Healing, Recovery, Self Improvement – Ebook and Audio copyright A.J. Mahari
• Change, Healing, and Recovery Audio copyright A.J. Mahari

Coaching Sessions

1 Session $80.00 2 Sessions $160.00 6 Sessions $450.00 10 Sessions $750.00

© A.J. Mahari, January 22, 2011 – All rights reserved.