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Freedom From Telling Your Story

How to set yourself free from the past: Tell Your Story!

When you are able to tell your story, you free yourself from the bondage of the past. Revealing is healing. It is a process of cleansing the soul of any old and unnecessary debris from the past. Sadly, most of you do just the opposite. You spend precious time supposedly living in secret, burning a hole in your heart as well as your stomach.

This season on Reclaim Your Life Event, you have the opportunity to listen to 18 women, including myself share our stories. We talked openly and honestly about intimate and very painful experiences. Some of my guests revealed details about rape, parental murder-suicide, death of a loved one and various addictions and illnesses. There was a common thread in each one of these amazing stories. Each women was empowered and inspired the by the pain she had experienced. Today they are serving humanity in a way to help eliminate pain and suffering.

I hope that you as the listener learned something from the raw honesty of each guest. I know I did. When you live by the truth, you can outshine any experience from the past.

Another beautiful example of pure honesty is the amazing movie the Anonymous People which shares the stories of real people (some of them are famous) and their struggle with addiction. This movie can now be purchased on DVD or downloaded from Vimeo. To be in recovery is no longer a demeaning association. I am personally so grateful for my 25 years of recovery. This is what inspires me to do the work I love with women.

April is National Alcohol Awareness month. Who do you know today that maybe over indulging on a regular basis? Becoming aware of alcohol abuse can dramatically prevent the tragedies which occur as a direct result of it. Who can you lend a supporting hand to? Encourage them to be honest with you so they can begin to recover and heal. The first conversation is always the toughest.

There is nothing more powerful than good old fashioned honesty to overcome the hurdles in your journey.

I would love to hear from you how telling the truth has helped

Live Faithfully,

Mal

If you like our content sign up here for updates and a free gift!

Mal Duane is a Best Selling Author and Personal Life and Recovery Coach who has overcome life challenges using the steps in the Alpha Chick Process. Her personal mission is to help women excel in all areas of their lives from business to personal relationships. Mal has been featured with Fox 25 Boston Morning Show, CBS Radio, Aspire Magazine, Healthy Living and Metrowest Daily News. She has also been a featured guest on over one hundred Blogtalk Radio shows discussing recovery and personal transformation.

Mal’s book, Alpha Chick, Five Steps for Moving from Pain to Power, is a best selling book and is available on Amazon.com.

It’s Time To Break Out Of That Shell

Spring is here. It is a time of rebirth, rejuvenation and transformation. The snow is almost gone and there are green tips in the garden waiting for the warmth of the sun. What can you do to break away from old patterns and start a fresh beginning this spring?

When we have the courage to step up and the desire to play a bigger game, the world can become a very different looking place. No need to hide behind the false images from yesterday that may feel comfortable. Break out and get uncomfortable while you feel the true potential that awaits you. Personal growth requires that we may feel un-easy. The fact is to move forward and transform your life is not easy. It takes intention, commitment and a level of personal discipline you may not have employed before.

So what can you do to crack that old shell and start creating the life you deserve?

Make a list of the things that are holding you back from your dreams.
Which ones are real? Many of our hurdles exist only in our own minds.
Identify the action steps necessary to realize your dreams.
Start implementing one step at a time. Have an accountable timetable to do so. This means a deadline. TIP: Best way to do this is to schedule dates into your phone or on a calendar. Your subconscious now knows that to be in integrity with yourself and others – you HAVE to meet that deadline.
Start to feel the energy in your body as if your dreams have happened. BELIEVE they are coming. Connect to that feeling daily. Feel the gratitude for everything that is coming your way.

The biggest problem we have when we start trying to create something in our lives is that we don’t feel we deserve it or we don’t believe it will happen. Well, dump those thoughts and replace them with positive affirming thoughts.

Your life will be a reflection of your thoughts. Now that you have stepped out of that shell, it’s time to be the Alpha Chick you were meant to be.

Live Faithfully,
Mal

If you like our content sign up here for updates and a free gift!

Mal Duane is a Best Selling Author and Personal Life and Recovery Coach who has overcome life challenges using the steps in the Alpha Chick Process. Her personal mission is to help women excel in all areas of their lives from business to personal relationships. Mal has been featured with Fox 25 Boston Morning Show, Aspire Magazine, Healthy Living and Metrowest Daily News. She has also been a featured guest on over thirty Blogtalk Radio shows discussing recovery and personal transformation.

Mal’s book, Alpha Chick, Five Steps for Moving from Pain to Power, is a best selling book and is available on Amazon.com.

Authentic empowered women sharing!

I want to thank you all for participating in the Positive Mental Shift Teleseminar. To everyone – I am so blessed and thankful to each of you. To the beautiful speakers, your vulnerability and courage inspired me. To my listeners, your emails and comments really touched my heart and I want to share one with you that stood out to me.

Jane L. wrote:

“I just listened to Jodi Chapman’s story (@jodi_chapman), and although my circumstances are different we have learned the same things, in adversity we grow if we are open to it. A power is always there to redirect out paths as I discovered, and whatever I need will present itself in a myriad of ways. I hear voices direct me, i.e. Thanks for these ladies sharing their lives and to you for making it happen!”

I would love to hear more from you, the listeners. Who was your favorite speaker and why? Who would you like me to interview next? Should I be interviewing you for the next PMS? Please reach out to me and tell me why!! @alphachickbook or mal@alphachick.com

I want to plan another series and I want it to impact your life and your business in a positive way. I want you to walk away feeling inspired, empowered, full of creativity and less alone and shamed. More than anything, as Jane wrote above, I want you all to be able to tap into that inner guidance system, God, spirit and shift your thinking to thoughts that work FOR you. To stop whatever negative spiral your brains is on, and get it to only speak loving, supportive, kind words to yourself. I know it’s possible and all of the speakers on PMS have made this incredible shift in their own lives.

Knowing you have everything you need inside of you, and being able to tap into that (because you have cleared away self-hating talk) gives you the power to make the small shifts that will lead you to the life of your dreams. You will have a peace and a hope that you can have the relationship, job, whatever is your heart’s desire.

Those of you who heard my interview with the amazing Katana Abbott, @KatanaAbbott, know that she was helping me with my nonprofit organization that I am very excited about. It is called Holly’s Gift. I am in the process of filing papers for the approval as a 501(c)(3).

We have commitments from some online educational companies to help train women in recovery to become virtual assistants. They will be trained in the necessary computer skills to be eligible for employment as a virtual assistant when they are released. This will help the women remain accountable, give them some responsibility and boost their self-esteem. Many of these women have no financial resources, do not have cars or wardrobes so this is a perfect way to get them back into the job market.

Rehab can be a scary, lonely time of facing painful truths and consequences. My hope is that we can give these women the skills and the encouragement to begin to create the lives of their dreams and gain financial independence. Recovery does not mean just stopping the substance, behavior etc. It means creating an environment where the behavior is no longer desirable. I’ll be sharing more about Holly’s Gift so sign up for my newsletter or tweets for updates. Let’s make rehab a time of relaunch and reclaiming our lives!

Live Faithfully,
Mal

If you like our content sign up here for updates and a free gift!

Mal Duane is a Best Selling Author and Personal Life and Recovery Coach who has overcome life challenges using the steps in the Alpha Chick Process. Her personal mission is to help women excel in all areas of their lives from business to personal relationships. Mal has been featured with Fox 25 Boston Morning Show, Aspire Magazine, Healthy Living and Metrowest Daily News. She has also been a featured guest on over thirty Blogtalk Radio shows discussing recovery and personal transformation.

Mal’s book, Alpha Chick, Five Steps for Moving from Pain to Power, is a best selling book and is available on Amazon.com.

Love or Fear

All of life comes down to one thing. Choosing love or choosing fear.

So how do we learn how to deal with fear and choose love? Here are three ways to do this.

Recognize its voice

To know if you are in love or in fear, listen to how you are talking to yourself. The voice of fear is always rushed, fast paced. The thoughts come quickly, and the questions are never followed up with possible solutions, just more questions. For example,

You are working on starting a blog. Fear will start talking down to you as such,

You are never going to finish that piece. You do this every time. Why don’t you just give up, you are going to fail. You are going to amount to nothing. (Laughter)

Fear blows things way out of proportion and speaks in absolutes like always and never. You’ll notice your stomach start to tighten. Fear demands big, overnight success type progress. It’s all or nothing.

Love speaks more slowly. It will give you a glimpse of joy so pure it’s scary, like a flash of your book on the shelf at Barnes and Noble. Your stomach tenses but in an excited/nervous way. Love will try to charm you and say,

Look, you aren’t writing because you are scared and that’s okay. You always get scared but you always manage to do a little bit. Maybe you should go outside for a walk and come back to it.

Love doesn’t badger you, it offers suggestions and yet, it is firm and will not let you off the hook. Love points to other people who started small and had huge success.

Stop Blame and Criticism

One of fear’s favorite aliases is blame. It works like this. You’ve got a deadline to meet or a great new opportunity presents itself to you. You are scared you might not be able to pull it off. The fear will lurk silently until your significant other innocently comes home from the office and you read them the riot act about embellished offenses such as:

We never do anything together anymore
Your mother/brother/boss has an attitude towards me
You never help me

Fear wants to take away our biggest supporters and waste our time and creativity on arguing.

We have to praise our allies and commit to ourselves that we will not blame them. This can be extremely challenging at first, sort of like cutting off a drink from a drunk. Take this option off the table though, and you are back in your personal power.

Take action – any action

Linda Joy spoke yesterday on Positive Mental Shift about being invited to an author conference in New York City. It was celebrating one of her spiritual mentors, Louise Hay, and was a dream come true for her. However, her fear stepped right in to try to mess it up for her. It tried to tell her she couldn’t get there because she wasn’t a big city girl.

But Linda took a baby step and booked her Amtrak ticket. And guess what? She “suddenly” remembered a close friend who lived there who said Linda could stay with her. And, the friend drove her to the event! So, as Linda said, she took a baby step (buying the train ticket) and the universe lined up all of the other support.

This works even if you are not being invited to author parties in NYC {yet}. If you are very depressed, than your action step might be taking a shower or throwing on sweats and going out for a coffee.

It might be crying yourself to sleep tonight but deciding not to drink for 24 hours.

Sometimes, our only next step is to set an intention or to pray for help.

But we always have a next move.

Take it and step into Love!

Live Faithfully,
Mal

Mal Duane is a Best Selling Author and Personal Life and Recovery Coach who has overcome life challenges using the steps in the Alpha Chick Process. Her personal mission is to help women excel in all areas of their lives from business to personal relationships. Mal has been featured with Fox 25 Boston Morning Show, Aspire Magazine, Healthy Living and Metrowest Daily News. She has also been a featured guest on over thirty Blogtalk Radio shows discussing recovery and personal transformation.

Mal’s book, Alpha Chick, Five Steps for Moving from Pain to Power, is a best selling book and is available on Amazon.com.

Alpha Chick: Christine Kloser – Her Story of Transformation

Christine Kloser is a Spiritual Guide, Award-Winning Author, and Transformational Book Coach whose spot-on guidance transforms the lives of visionary entrepreneurs and authors around the world. Her passion is fueled by her own transformation in January 2011 when letting go of the last shred of stability and security in her life was how she discovered her truth. From that place, she fearlessly (and faithfully) went on to quickly create the most abundant, impactful and joyous success of her life. She now blends her passion for personal and global transformation with her gifts as a transformational book coach – and as a result she’s impacting tens of thousands of messengers across the globe. Learn more at //christinekloser.com/

We all experience life challenges that looking back we can see were the catalyst for living a deeper, more authentic life. What has been your greatest personal challenge that you’ve overcome that served as your pivot point to transformation?

The greatest personal challenge I faced was the demise of the business I’d built by trying to do everything right. I’d seen all the “guru’s” and learned what seemed like the “sure-fire ways” to grow and build a big-time business. I did everything I was “supposed” to do. I built my list, I positioned myself as an expert, I introducedd a high-level six figure coaching program, I hosted a big live event, I enrolled clients into a year-long mastermind program, I had a half-million dollar year. It looked like a dream come true for any aspiring entrepreneur. But, inside something didn’t feel right.

In fact, I had gone to my coach in the middle of it all and outright said, “This doesn’t feel right.” I was quickly assured that I was “nuts” and everything I was doing was great. Yet, my heart continued to ache, the lack of peace and joy in my business continued and the challenges followed as quickly as the success came. Challenges with clients, my business partners (at the time), the economy and “credit crunch,” my marriage, my finances… everything started to crumble. At first it was a slow crumble over the course of a few years, and then in December of 2010… that slow crumble turned into a final and fast CRASH!

When I was in the middle of this challenge, it appeared as though the problem was my financial situation. But, now, looking back I clearly see that the financial challenges were a result of other things. They were a result of my desire to make everyone else happy, at the expense of my own happiness. They were the result of being afraid to stand up for myself. They were the result of my lack of self-worth and lack of belief that I could succeed if I did things “my way.” The list could go on and on.

Basically, I was lost inside and continually striving for external “success” to fill that place inside of me that felt empty and not good enough. The decisions I made came from this wounded place as did the people I attracted into my life.

It was a very difficult time of my life – to lose everything. Yet, it was also the most powerful time of my life. I wouldn’t wish these challenges for anyone, but I can honestly say that I’d do it all over again myself if I had to… because without this challenge I wouldn’t be living the life I am today. And, I truly love my life… and my business!

Describe the transformational moment or wake-up call when you realized that life change was necessary? For many, it’s a spiritual awakening, an emotional downfall, or a life-altering experience that shakes us awake.

The moment that truly changed everything occurred at about 10:30 AM EST on December 1, 2010. I can remember it vividly. That was the moment that thing got worse… after I thought they were already at rock bottom. If you’ve ever experience that feeling of having the rug pulled out from underneath you when you already felt like the FLOOR was gone… that was my experience.

You see, in June 2010, my husband and I had to make the most difficult, and gut-wrenching decision of our lives. After my business crumbled around me, it left me with basically no income (aside from the little I made from the publishing part of my business, where I’d brought a partner in to help me with that piece). It became clear that there was no way that I could support my family, and cover our bills on what I was making in that partnership. And, I was mentally, and emotionally incapable of trying to sustain my own business that had been crumbling for a few years. So, after months of trying to see if there was any way to avoid it… there wasn’t… and we filed for a personal bankruptcy.

It took months to make the decision because we just couldn’t imagine going through that. We’d lose our house, have our credit record ruined, and I’d have the “stigma” of being a financial failure.. at least in my mind. But, the day came on December 2, 2010 (my birthday) that it was time to sign our papers and allow the next chapter of our lives to unfold.

And, as I share this next part, I truly have to thank God for working so miraculously and powerfully in my life to give me the exact experience that would literally throw me to my knees in despair…. this moment changed everything.

On December 1, 2010… less than 24 hours before I was going to file bankruptcy papers (something I felt I could do knowing that I could then focus on the partnership I had to serve authors and make enough money to support my family) – I received a FedEx letter from my business partner’s attorney stating she didn’t want to be partners anymore and wanted to buy my shares of the company.

You would have thought a football player slammed into me and knocked me down… that’s how powerful this news hit me…. like I had been smashed to the ground and left to lick my own wounds. I was in a fog, certain that this couldn’t really be happening… but it was. And, over the course of 6 week of trying to flip things around and buy out her shares (I’d put 6 years into building that part of my business prior to inviting her to join me)…. I finally surrendered to God’s will. I let go of it. I surrendered the last thing that felt like any security or stability in my life. I felt like I was left with nothing.

But, soon discovered that I finally had EVERYTHING I’d ever needed… and more!

After experiencing your personal wake-up call what were the most powerful steps you took to change your life?

There were many things I did to help transform this time of despair into the most fruitful, peaceful, joyous and fulfilling time of my life! The first thing I did was “rally the troops.” By that I mean I leaned on my closest friends for support, I let them love me and remind me of the light that was still within me.

I also allowed myself to feel the depth of the despair, pain and anger that was coursing through my veins. I didn’t shy away from it, I dove into it. I went through a gazillion boxes of tissues. I wrote many letters to God to release the pain inside of me and burned them ceremoniously as I prayed for this feeling to leave my heart. Which leads me to the next thing… I prayed nearly non-stop! I was well aware of the fact that if I were to make it through to the other side, that I couldn’t do it alone, nor could I do it just with the support of my family and friends. I began to lean on God ever more than my friends and would spend several hours a day in prayer and meditation. It was in these moments where the peace and joy began to fill me as I learned to trust that everything really was happening for my highest good.

I truly had never felt more peaceful and happy (at least at that stage in my life) than when I was filing for bankruptcy, losing my home, going through a difficult partnership dissolution, having challenges in my marriage with all the stress we were under financially, etc. The only thing I can say is that it was GRACE that saved me and helped turn things around.

Even through these challenges, I would see signs of grace EVERYWHERE and in ABUNDANCE! It’s as if suddenly I had eyes that could SEE what was really happening. It felt like nothing short of a miracle to witness so much grace. Oh, it was magnificent!

This peace and joy that I came to feel allowed me to move on and open up to new possibilities. I allowed my intuition to finally guide me more than my rational mind. I listened to the nudges, followed the guidance I was receiving and moved forward on faith. And, it was astonishing to then have things change in warp-speed for GOOD in my life! Every ounce of the challenge was worth it because the gifts so far have far surpassed anything I could have done had this challenge not happened. God truly does work in incredible ways to get us exactly where we’re meant to be.

Please share a Positive Mental Shift tip that woman can implement today to support them on their journey of transformation and empowerment.

Change your perspective! As soon as something challenging happens to you, immediately begin to ponder what the GIFTS could be in that challenge. When you look at everything that happens as SERVING your highest good… you can open your eyes to see things from a much higher perspective. A perspective that will bring you much peace on your transformational journey.

HEAR her powerful story of transformation on the
Positive Mental Shift FREE teleseries and CLAIM HER FREE GIFT!