This is taken from Chapter 3 ~ Overcoming Limiting Beliefs from “Choosing the Life You Were Born to Live:  How Changing Your Thoughts Will Change Your Life” by Chris Sopa, published by Balboa Press.  Click here to purchase your copy!

“One great way to see where your fears lie is to bring them up in your mind for a brief moment in time so you can shed some light on them.

A wonderful exercise I have my coaching clients do is to list seven things in your life you want so bad but are scared to death will never happen:  Your “Seven Impossible Things.” Why seven? Because seven is a very sacred number and there is a certain power in having to force yourself to think of more than just three or five things. You have to go deeper into your mind and deeper into your fears.

The key to the exercise is to list the seven things you want and then walk through all of the reasons why you think it won’t happen…what you fear will get in the way of it happening. Then, in a column next to it, list all of the reasons how it could happen.

When you take the time to really think through and put on paper your fears and then possible solutions to those fears, the fears lose their power. The fears turn simply into obstacles that can be easily overcome with a plan and a little faith. You then are also focusing on what you want to have happen instead of all of the reasons why it cannot happen, using the power of your thoughts to manifest exactly what you need.

Having a plan, is one of the ways to overcome fear; another way is to understand and know that Divine is there to help you on your journey. You are never alone.”

Chris Sopa is founder and owner of Chris Sopa International, Inc. You can learn more about her at www.ChrisSopa.com. Find her at Facebook.com/ChrisSopaInternational, Twitter @ChrisSopa, LinkedIn, and Google+.

Row, row, row your boat gently down the stream.  Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily life is but a dream.

We all remember this nursery rhyme.  I honestly never really understood what it meant or when it was appropriate to sing it (seriously, how many times are you in a boat as a child?), but nonetheless, it was a popular one.  Like all nursery rhymes, as we get older we find that they have hidden and deeper meanings.  When you take them literally, they make no sense.  When you look deeper into the meaning, it all becomes clear.

Much like life, the literal usually makes no logical sense.  Me moving to Arizona for instance; logically, it seemed like the most ludicrous idea ever.  I was leaving the large business network of people I worked 8 years to build, clients, my dear friends, my two adult daughters and a life that seemed to be moving along just fine.  A few bumps here and there, but bumps make life interesting.  The 10,000 foot view (or the symbolic view); my heart has been yearning to live west for the past 5 years.  The pull has gotten stronger and stronger every day and the energy of where I was living just seemed to go stale – even though everything around me seemed to be “flowing” just fine.  Or was it?  When I looked deeper into my life, I was unhappy, working way too hard and finding it harder every day to maintain a sense of joy and wonder.

“See into life – don’t just look at it.” ~Anne Baxter, Academy Award winning actor

The best view of life is one from the nosebleed seats.  A view where we can see as much of the big picture as possible.  From that view, we can see where the pieces connect.  When our nose isn’t right to the dirt we can allow life to gently flow along as it is supposed to without needing to know all of the answers before we choose.  When we allow this flow, we merrily float through each day and find that sense of joy and happiness that we have been desperately searching for outside of ourselves.  When we finally realize that the answers we seek are in the present moments, we all of a sudden find that we are living our dream.  When we look back down the road we traveled, we see all of the synchronistic events that lead us to where we are and finally recognize the people who helped us along the way were the angels and teachers sent by God to guide us ever so gently along our stream.

Make a list today of those things in your life that bring you joy (that make you merry).  Then, make another list of those things you feel have gone stale.  The second list may be harder than you think.  We tend to have things on our “stale” list we are not yet ready to admit are stale.  Do it anyway.  Awareness is always the first step to transformation.  Do your job and then God takes it from there.

Dreaming as I gently flow merrily along my stream,

Chris

For more information about Chris Sopa International, Inc. go to www.ChrisSopa.com.

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When you wish upon a star
Makes no difference who you are
Anything your heart desires
Will come to you

If your heart is in your dream
No request is too extreme
When you wish upon a star
As dreamers do

Fate is kind
She brings to those who love
The sweet fulfillment of
Their secret longing

Like a bolt out of the blue
Fate steps in and sees you through
When you wish upon a star
Your dreams come true

Fate is kind
She brings to those who love
The sweet fulfillment of
Their secret longing

Like a bolt out of the blue
Fate steps in and sees you through
When you wish upon a star
Your dreams come true

[ From: http://www.elyrics.net/read/d/disney-lyrics/when-you-wish-upon-a-star-lyrics.html ]
(these lyrics are submitted by Cora Hume)

For more information about Chris Sopa International, Inc. go to www.ChrisSopa.com.

Most of the time, when I talk about “dreams,” people think I am referring to their night time, sleeping dreams.  And although I am not, your sleeping dreams play a very big role in helping you navigate what steps to take on your journey to manifest those waking dreams that you hold in your heart.

We all dream every night whether you remember your dreams or not.  Dreaming is one of the ways the conscious mind clears itself from all of the millions of things it takes in during any given day.  Each one of us has our own “dream language,” so to speak.  Our dreams use symbolism to get messages to us from our guides and angels.  Even deceased loved ones use our dreams to visit us and send us messages.  The key to being able to interpret your dreams is to take the time to learn your dream language.  You can do this by keeping a dream journal every night and jotting down images and basic notes of what you can remember from each dream.  You do not need to write a story, just what you remember:  colors, people, places, how you felt, odd things such as you weren’t wearing shoes, animals, weather, etc.  Look for patterns in your dreams and record the time you had the dream and the date.  My daughter did this for a while when she was having very vivid dreams and noticed that she always had the same type of dream every Monday night for several weeks in a row!

The more abstract your dream, the more powerful the message so it is important to be able to understand what your dream is trying to tell you.  Especially try to remember your dreams if it is repetitive, extremely vivid or wakes you up…those are “red flags” that the dream has a very important meaning.  There are some things that have general meanings in dreams for everyone, such as colors but there are other things that are meaning-specific just for you.  For instance, I know when I dream about a tornado that something major is about to come into my life and how I am going to handle it depends on where I am in relation to the storm in my dream:  am I outside facing it or am I in the basement of a house hiding from it, etc.

Some basic general meanings for you just for fun:

Colors:    

Red = intense emotion
Yellow = change/creativity
Blue = peace/harmony
Green = healing
Purple, White or Gold = spirituality
Pink = love
Orange = action/actualization
Gray = uncertainty/indecision

Most popular things dreamt about and what they represent:

House = indicates yourself (inside of the house is how you see yourself and outside is how others view you.)
Water = inner emotions or your feelings toward life
Falling = fear of losing control
Flying = psychic abilities coming to the surface
Being chased = a problem not being faced
Loose teeth = changes coming around the corner
Snakes = your energy drive and the ego
Death = a new beginning is coming

So, start a dream journal tonight and see what comes up for you while you are sleeping.  Sleep is our healing time and it is also a time where all of our ego patterns and conscious mind get a break and we are closest to our true selves.  Learn who you are through your dreams and let them help you on your “journey back to self!”

Yawning yet as awake as ever,

Chris

For more information about Chris Sopa International, Inc. go to www.ChrisSopa.com.