Recovery – Page 3

Girls – Masks Are Strictly for Halloween

I love this time of year, driving around and seeing all the colorful leaves in the trees, pumpkins everywhere displayed with colorful mum plants. I am such an orange chick. This is my power color so I am in my glory. Cute decorations are in all the stores and costume stores have popped up everywhere. I used to start planning early for an outrageous Halloween costume. A great deal of thought and accessorizing went into my costumes. It was one more way I could pretend to be something I wasn’t.

When I reflect on my previous crazy Halloween’s, I now realize that I have spent most of my life hiding behind a mask. It was easier for me to pretend to be someone else to fit in than be myself and be left behind. I would try to mold myself to another person’s expectations: try going white water rafting when it is freezing cold out, eating some God forsaken food just so I could be with that person. It went a lot deeper than that but I think you get my drift. I was doing things I couldn’t stand just to be accepted by someone else. It saddens me to think back how many times I didn’t honor myself just to keep a relationship going. I didn’t stand up for me or my beliefs but instead crumbled so I could be connected to another person. Does this sound familiar to you?

We stay in relationships that do not support us as divine women but instead strip away the layers of our integrity and self-respect. It is amazing what we will sacrifice for love and approval from another. Instead of enjoying real love, our hearts are torn open by the fear of being left.

How do we discover our truth and honor ourselves? Ask yourself these questions:

Whose needs are being met in this current situation?
Do you compromise or do you totally relinquish your desires?
Are you constantly fearful you will lose the relationship?
Do you feel the need to lie about what you want to keep the relationship?

The honest answers to these questions will be a huge eye opener to you as to whether you are in a loving and supportive relationship. You know you deserve better, so what is keeping you from getting it?

How long have you been hiding behind your mask so you could keep the current relationship you are in? The funny part of this is that men love women who love and honor themselves. So maybe it is time to take off the mask and let the real, divine beautiful you emerge and attract exactly what you want.

Live Faithfully,
Mal Duane

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.

September is National Recovery Month

Did you know that September is National Recovery Month?

Recovery Month began in 1989 as “Treatment Works Month”, which honored the work of the treatment and recovery professionals in the field. The observance evolved to National Alcohol and Drug Addiction Recovery Month (Recovery Month) in 1998, when it expanded to include celebrating the accomplishment of individuals in recovery from substance use disorders. The observance evolved once again in 2011 to National Recovery Month (Recovery Month) to include all aspects of behavioral health.

National Recovery Month educates us on the fact that addiction treatment and mental health services can enable those with a mental and/or substance use disorder to live a healthy and rewarding life. It spreads the positive message that behavioral health is essential to overall health, prevention works, treatment is effective, and people can and do recover.

I believe we are all recovering from something, whether it’s a mental or substance use disorder, or the loss of a loved one. It is so important to stay in touch with yourself and how you are feeling, so you can continue to recover in a healthy manner. So, during National Recovery Month, I’d like to encourage you to keep up your journaling practice at least once a day. Or, if you haven’t begun to write in a journal, I encourage you to start today! Keeping in touch with your emotions is so essential to a healthy recovery. I personally find it so liberating to write exactly how I feel.

Five of my favorite journaling questions to stimulate my writing are:

What can I let go of today that will release any limitations I may be feeling?
Why is this person or situation causing me to feel negative about myself?
Are other people’s opinions or perceptions controlling what I feel today?
What inspired action could I take to change the situation?
What is my vision for how I want things to be?

Guided journaling is also a great way to continue with your recovery. On our website www.AlphaChick.com, we offer the Alpha Chick Action Guide, which can help you let go of past pain and work toward your personal transformation.

National Recovery Month is a great time to begin work, or just to remember to continue working on your recovery. Journaling allows your authentic self to step forward and remove the dark shadows of living under others expectations. You can rebirth the voice of your true expression without fear, so you can develop clarity as to what you really want to attract into your life.

If you need help to start or continue your journey to recovery? Do you have an inspiring story to share?Please reach out, our community of Alpha Chicks are here to help!

Live Faithfully,
Mal Duane

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

Thankfulness

There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.” — Albert Einstein

One of my favorite holidays is celebrated this week. Thanksgiving Day is a wakeup call to all the wonderful things I have in my life. For so many years, I was unable to see the goodness in my life. I felt alone, unloved and helpless. Today, my life has transformed from those moments of self-imposed suffering.

I am looking out my window, seeing the bright blue sky and the rolling landscape known as “Beverly Hills”, California. I am here to spend Thanksgiving with my step-children and my nephew, Lawrence. There will be about twenty of us for dinner on Thursday. My assignment for the day is desserts; just perfect for the Queen of cupcakes. I am going to Magnolia’s, the legendary bakery from Sex in the City to scope all the goodies they will have. Then it will be the pie store to sample the pecan and apple pies. Oh well, somebody had to do it. Besides having an assignment I just love, I am really grateful for all the other goodness that I am experiencing in my life.

I am surrounded by people that love and support me in my vision.

I completed my book.

All the people I love are in good health.

I have the most sweet and adorable dog, Hannah. I wish she we here with us in Los Angeles.

I have the ability to make the most empowering choices in my life.

So my wish for you this week is to connect with all the miracles you have but may not realize. There is goodness in all our lives if we just look for it. Let go of all your fears and connect with the light and love that is within. Find a few of the small things you are grateful for and start to make your own list, adding a few more daily. Watch your energy shift as your list expands.

There is nothing like being an awakened, authentic and abundant woman… Yes an Alpha Chick.

Live Faithfully
Mal Duane

Mal Duane is a Certified Personal Life and Recovery Coach who has overcome devastating 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.
Please join Mal on February 7^th, 8^th and 9^th, 2012 for her Transformational Telesummit featuring such luminaries as Lissa Coffey, Joseph Rubino, Brenda Adelman and Christine Kloser as her guests. Her book Alpha Chick, Five Steps for Moving from Pain to Power is being released on February 14, 2012 on Amazon.com.

Resistance or Acceptance – Which Do You Choose?

Handcuffed to Resistance or Free from Acceptance?

Acceptance: noun “to regard as true.”

When you accept something, you are not saying that you approve, you are simply no longer resisting it. When you resist, you put valuable energy into a situation that cannot be changed. You are unable to rewrite the script. So why invest your valuable energy into something you cannot change? Why hold on so dearly to a situation that has no bearing on where you are today? Instead, accept the situation. By accepting you are able to release the hold that you have put on yourself. Once you accept, you can reclaim your power and your right to choose.

Many unbearable things may happen to us in life. The longer we resist, the harder we try to change the situation which results in more suffering. By accepting these unbearable situations, we can free our hearts and minds from endless days of anguish.

I personally carried disappointments and failed relationships around for years. They were the root of my self-imposed suffering. The pain I felt created an image of worthlessness and doom. I embraced alcohol to make myself feel better. At first that worked, but then the pain reoccurred. Before long I was consumed again and feeling there was no way to survive the pain. At a very low moment, I realized I could accept all the heartache I felt, as it no longer had any bearing on my current reality. The veil of illusion was lifted and an awakened woman emerged.

So much of personal suffering is tied to resistance. Open your minds and your hearts.Welcome in acceptance and feel the shift of your personal power rush though you. Step 2 of the Alpha Chick Process is to say “I accept disappointments, fears and sorrows so I may free myself from a past that no longer serves me, and I consciously change my attitude so that I may live the joyous life that is always available to me”.

How can you apply this to your own life? Please share some of your action steps.

Live Faithfully,
Mal Duane

Mal Duane is a certified Personal Life Coach with more than 23 years in recovery from alcoholism, who has overcome devastating 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 and attract that which they most desire, as she has, through a connection to the divine power within. Her book Alpha Chick, Five Steps for Moving from Pain to Power is coming in February 2012.

Be sure to subscribe to this blog for regular Alpha Chick updates and invitation to the Alpha Chick telesummit coming soon.

Consistency means “Adhering to Principles”

In Alpha Chick, my mission is to help you discover your path to purpose and power. One of the steps on the path involves establishing new principles in your life. Principles are like pillars; they create support and a solid foundation for your life.

Once you have taken the time to establish new principles in your life, adhering to them becomes easier. When you become distracted by painful events, pulling you off your path of purpose and power, you can utilize the principles you have instilled into your life. Everything in life requires support, our physical bodies, our minds and everything we engage in has a form of support associated with it.

If you do not take time from your “busyness” to create support for yourself, then your life becomes unmanageable and you lose consistency. Consistency can create comfort for many and enormous angst when it disappears.

How could you create consistency in your life?

1. Daily spiritual/meditation practice. Focusing within rather than concentrating on external circumstances.

2. Accepting yourself just as you are and understanding that all that happens has a purpose for your individual growth.

By developing powerful principles to live by and utilizing them, you empower yourself and attract that which you seek. Consistency is not a daily “habit”. It pulls much more divine energy into it for personal fulfillment.

Start to establish consistency for yourself and please share with us here the rewards you receive.

Live Faithfully,
Mal Duane

Be sure to subscribe to this blog for regular Alpha Chick updates and invitation to the Alpha Chick telesummit coming soon