Tag Archives: Success

37 Questions Worth Asking

By Amira Alvarez It’s nearing the end of the year.In the quiet time between Christmas and New Year’s, I like to assess what’s transpired over the last year and set myself up for an amazing coming year.Do you have a similar end of the year practice?If not, or even if you do, here…
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Coaching, Mindset, Unstoppable, , , ,

It’s nearing the end of the year.

In the quiet time between Christmas and New Year’s, I like to assess what’s transpired over the last year and set myself up for an amazing coming year.

Do you have a similar end of the year practice?

If not, or even if you do, here are some questions I ask myself. Feel free to use them and let them inspire your own end of year assessment.

  1. What went well? What were my big wins and successes?
  2. What felt divine and exquisite?
  3. What did I love the most about this past year?
  4. What am I most proud of?
  5. What is the lesson in that?
  6. What am I the least proud of?
  7. What was the lesson learned in that?
  8. Did this past year live up to my expectations? Why and why not?
  9. What led to my biggest successes?
  10. Will I do those same things again? If so, how and towards what end?
  11. What led to my biggest (if any) disappointments?
  12. How would I change my approach given another opportunity?
  13. Who in my life did I love spending time with?
  14. Have I expressed that to them?
  15. How can I create more opportunities to be with them?
  16. Who in my life did I like spending time with the least?
  17. How can I eliminate or improve these interactions?
  18. What was missing in my life?
  19. What do I want more of?
  20. Where am I limiting myself?
  21. Where am I setting myself up for failure?
  22. What patterns of behavior are no longer sustainable and I want to let go of?
  23. What new habits do I want to create or build upon? (Next week I’ll share 10 habits I’m working on creating.)
  24. How do I want to invest in myself?
  25. How do I want to invest in others?
  26. How do I want to spend my time?
  27. What projects are the most important to me?
  28. What am I most grateful for from last year?
  29. What am I most grateful for for next year? (Yes, you can be grateful in advance.)
  30. What elements of creation do I need to bring into my life more?
  31. What is the feeling I’m searching for in my life?
  32. If there was one thing that would make next year a success, what would it be? (Truth: I can never pick just one but trying to is a really interesting exercise.)
  33. What is my word of the year?
  34. Am I excited about next year? Why? What am I looking forward to?
  35. My highest and best life looks like this…
  36. Am I committed to living my highest and best life?
  37. Who do I need to be in this coming year to create all that I want in my life?

This last question is the most important. If you can dial this in, and then hold yourself to that level of beingness, everything else unfolds beautifully.

Now, living this new level of beingness? Well, that takes attention and a deep commitment to your next level life.

That takes not letting yourself off the hook but also having fun with it.

That takes wanting what you want more than the ease of slipping back into your habitual way of being.

That takes understanding the process and falling in love with it.

Totally possible.

You’ve created so much already. Now let’s put that amazing focus onto this.

———

Want to experience more as an Unstoppable Woman?

Be sure to check out the Unstoppable Woman podcast. If you’re ready to step into an exquisite life, schedule a call to discuss how we can help you step into your next level of growth.  

Want to let go of those 10 pounds? (Yes, I’m talking about weight and the power of expectation.)

By Amira Alvarez Creating what you want in both your personal and professional life requires being clear on what you desire and having an unwavering expectation that it will happen.You can’t want the new initiative to work… and think the person running the project is going to drop the ball.You can’t want to…
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Coaching, Inspiration, Mindset, Unstoppable, , ,

Creating what you want in both your personal and professional life requires being clear on what you desire and having an unwavering expectation that it will happen.

You can’t want the new initiative to work… and think the person running the project is going to drop the ball.

You can’t want to meet your quarterly numbers… and think you don’t have the marketing to support it.

You can’t want to hire that killer employee… and think that good people are hard to find. 

These are all examples of expectations that are in opposition to what you actually want, which I imagine on more generally is ease and flow in quickly creating what you desire. 

Right now I’ve caught myself doing this with my weight. Calling myself out. :) 

I’d love to let go of those 10-15 pounds that have creeped on in the last few months.

It’s not that I don’t think it can happen. Of course it can. 

It’s that I have the expectation… 

That it’s going to be hard.

That I have to struggle.

That I will have to deny myself.

And this I know doesn’t work. You get what you expect, not what you say that you want.

So in this case, I’m simply going to get the hard, the struggle, and the denial, not the svelte body. No bueno!

I’ve had to work through contradictory expectations in so many areas of my life and business. Here’s a sampling of places where in the past I’ve wanted something yet thought it was going to be hard to make it happen: 

Taking Fridays off.
Doing marketing in an aligned way. (No bro marketing!)
Charging higher fees while working fewer hours.
Being professional and taken seriously, while still feeling sexy.
Making money without dysregulating my nervous system.
Running a business while having a lit up, hot relationship.
Finding ambitious, entrepreneurial minded friends.

I’m happy to say that I’ve created all that I’ve desired in all of these and more.

But in each case, I initially thought it was going to be hard and I had to overcome my own contradictory expectations before I was able to manifest the outcome I wanted with ease.

This requires aligning our desires and expectations and is part of the Exquisite Life toolkit I mentioned last week. 

So how do we better align our desires and expectations? 

  • Get really honest with yourself. Where are you actually expecting something you don’t want? Your spoken or unspoken fears, doubts, worries, and complaints related to a topic will show you exactly what your expectations are.
  • Bring moment to moment awareness to when you are expecting in opposition to your desires. This can’t be an afterthought, you must notice yourself in the act.  
  • In that moment, shift the conversation you’re having in your head or out loud to what you desire. Find an outcome that you can actually believe.

Because the truth is… it’s easy to let go of weight, just like it was easy to take Fridays off.

———

Want to experience more as an Unstoppable Woman?

Be sure to check out the Unstoppable Woman podcast. If you’re ready to grow a life and business you love, schedule a call to discuss how we can help you step into your next level of growth.  

From laser-focus to search light and back

By Amira Alvarez If energy flows where attention goes…And the more energy you put towards something the more power there is behind it and thus the faster you will create it…It would make sense then that we’d want to put our attention on what we want to create in our lives.But if you’re…
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Coaching, Mindset, Unstoppable, , , ,

If energy flows where attention goes…

And the more energy you put towards something the more power there is behind it and thus the faster you will create it…

It would make sense then that we’d want to put our attention on what we want to create in our lives.

But if you’re anything like me, you have A LOT of things you want to create in your life. You’re always going for more, expanding, and challenging yourself.

It’s a buffet of desires.

So, do you focus on one thing at a time or do you focus on all the things?

Like a laser beam, if you concentrate your focus, your power intensifies.

It would appear then that laser-like focus is the answer. I would hazard that this is what most (all?) of us did to build our companies and careers.

Focus, focus, focus to almost the exclusion of everything else.

We called it our passion. (Which it was.)
We called it discipline. (Which we built.)
We called it a short-term trade off. (Which it may have been.)

And then when we got to “success” and we found that we didn’t know another way.

We had conditioned ourselves to focus predominantly on this one aspect of our life in the name of financial success and mastering the game of business. 

Nothing wrong with that until we ask ourselves, what about the other aspects of our lives? This is where we start searching and asking ourselves…

What happens after “the success”?

What do we focus on now?

And do we even go about it with the same type of laser-like focus?

The answer is yes and no. 

Giving your energy to what you want matters. 

Giving your energy with a high level of intensity matters.

But giving it WHILE GIVING UP on your buffet of other desires does not work.

Your search light beam has already shown you that you have a plethora of desires. 

And at some point, single focus is a game of diminishing returns. It becomes pushing hard and not getting anywhere. The traction (or the fun) is not there like it used to be.

This is the time to broaden your skills and learn new tools.

I’m going to call this the toolkit for an exquisite life. 

Master these and you master the creation of whatever you want.

Over the next few weeks, I’ll be sharing more about these tools that allow you (the already successful, driven, ambitious women) to use your focus in a different way… 

A way that allows you to create exactly what you desire so much more easily.

It will feel like magic but it’s not.  ;-)

———

Want to experience more as an Unstoppable Woman?

Be sure to check out the Unstoppable Woman podcast. If you’re ready to grow a life and business you love, schedule a call to discuss how we can help you step into your next level of growth.  

Time Can Be On Your Side If You Allow It

By Amira Alvarez The other day, my man and I were hustling to get out the door to go have a leisurely breakfast at this super cute, quintessential French bakery that I had just discovered.I really wanted to show it to him…I really wanted to get out of the house for the housekeeper…And…
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Coaching, Mindset, Unstoppable, , ,

The other day, my man and I were hustling to get out the door to go have a leisurely breakfast at this super cute, quintessential French bakery that I had just discovered.

I really wanted to show it to him…

I really wanted to get out of the house for the housekeeper…

And really wanted to get there and back before my first meeting of the day…

But we didn’t have much time.

So I was pacing by the back door, waiting impatiently. 

When he noticed this, he graciously spoke to it saying, “I didn’t realize we were in a time crunch.” 

To which I snarkily replied, “Yes, you did!”

Ouch!

I immediately regretted it and apologized. 

But why did that come out of my mouth in the first place? 

That’s not who I am and yet that’s what I said.

And this brings us to the topic for today… Our relationship with time. 

Although it may be true that time is a non-renewable resource that we never get back… 

Have you ever noticed that sometimes you feel like things flow so smoothly, you get a ton of stuff done, and it seems like you have all the time in the world?

While other times you’re worried about time, everything takes longer than you expected, and more to-dos just pile up? (And you end up being stressed and snarky.)

Our experience of time changes based on how we are relating to it. And in turn, our experience of life changes based on how we’re relating to time. 

Sometimes we feel spacious and divine… and other times not so much.

So the next day, I tried a different tack… one that ALWAYS works better for me.

I decided what I wanted to get done but reduced dramatically the time-sensitive constraints I put on myself.

In fact, I choose to commit to only one time specific activity, giving myself much more flexibility.

The result? 

One of the best days ever, full of flow.

Now I’m not suggesting throwing out your calendar, blowing off meetings, or ignoring your task list.

But I am asking you to choose your highest priorities, commit to that, and then trust the flow of life more. 

It’s not about discarding structure but rather about infusing it with trust and adaptability. 

It’s about testing out what the least amount of time-based structure is that you need to get your work done in this world. 

It’s about being fully committed to your highest and best life, and not living a compromised, time pressured version of it.

With some practice, you’ll find yourself creating days that resonate with the essence of living exquisitely. Stack those and you’ve got an exquisite life… one that’s truly worth living.

It’s time to lean into that, yes?

———

Want to experience more as an Unstoppable Woman?

Be sure to check out the Unstoppable Woman podcast. If you’re ready to grow a life and business you love, schedule a call to discuss how we can help you step into your next level of growth.  

How I Stay Elevated: It’s a Conscious Decision

By Amira Alvarez I sit here on a quiet fall morning, on the first day back after Thanksgiving contemplating the highs and lows that we all experience. In this case, I’m not thinking about the dramatic highs and lows – the ones we feel with the big successes or the profound losses–rather, those quite…
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Coaching, Mindset, Unstoppable, ,

I sit here on a quiet fall morning, on the first day back after Thanksgiving contemplating the highs and lows that we all experience. 

In this case, I’m not thinking about the dramatic highs and lows – the ones we feel with the big successes or the profound losses–rather, those quite mundane daily ups and downs. 

The ones that have you say… What happened? Why am I in such a crappy mood? Or, I’ll take it but where did all this abundant joy and energy come from? 

You can be flying high one day, then wondering what happened the next. 

As a high-performer, you absolutely always get the work done no matter what even if you’re “in a bad mood”… but wouldn’t it be nice to understand how to get off this roller coaster? 

Although I’m still a work in progress (and I wouldn’t have it any other way), here’s how I step off the emotional roller coaster. 

First, a framework within which to understand the action you must take… 

We have an individual set-point. This is the mood, state, or level of well-being where you come back to over and over again. 

You go up a bit, then come back to your set point.

You go down a bit lower, they come up to your set point.

This set-point is your emotional norm. 

Even if this norm isn’t how you’d like to feel, you keep coming back to it.

Your norm is the known, conditioned, habituated Self. 

It’s the way of being that you’ve conditioned yourself to recognize as you.

She has the same complaints… same frustrations… same habits of thought… same perspectives… same reactions and actions… and the same conversations in her head. 

Here’s a good example…

I woke up in a GREAT mood. Then I went to get tea instead of coffee, a change I consciously decided to make yesterday…

And on my way to the kettle, I recognized a conversation in my head that was mopey and complaining. Not enough time… don’t want to do it… it’s going to take too long… and so on.

These are familiar thoughts of the old, conditioned Self. 

But here’s the thing to know… These thoughts weren’t really related to the “tea rather than coffee” decision. Not at all.

It’s that my Conditioned Self felt I was too far above my set point so it engaged in an internal conversation of conditioned thinking about the most convenient topic at hand to bring me back to “myself.”   

This moment, when you realize that you’ve been hijacked by your Conditioned Self, is your moment of TRUTH and you have a DECISION to make…

Change or stay complicit with your Conditioned Self.

And it’s so seductively easy to keep thinking those habitual thoughts and taking those habitual actions because they feel right. You’re so used to thinking them that they’ve become your emotional comfort zone. 

And yet if you want off the roller coaster, you must intentionally change your thinking. 

Which is what I did this morning. I replaced those familiar thoughts with thinking as I truly wanted to be and am: Grateful. Happy. In love with life.

The result?

A delicious cup of tea AND… a steady stream of feeling in the flow, in love with life, one with the Universe.  

This is the process I’ve been using for years to continually uplevel my personal set point and yet I’m astounded how every time I uplevel, there are new places that my conditioned self rears up. (Really? Making tea is going to set you off? Lol!)

I’m also astounded by how easy it is to stay complicit and go along with the Conditioned Self.

It’s surprising how much discipline it requires to consistently recognize the habitual patterns that bring you down to your set-point. 

Yet when you do, you free yourself from that emotional roller coaster and start living a truly exquisite life.

———

Want to experience more as an Unstoppable Woman?

Be sure to check out the Unstoppable Woman podcast. If you’re ready to grow a life and business you love, schedule a call to discuss how we can help you step into your next level of growth.  

Success is Just the Beginning: A Real Conversation About Purpose

By Amira Alvarez Tailored for impact: Heads up! This is meant for a very specific individual – the brilliant entrepreneur or C-suite-savvy woman. If that's you, keep reading.  You know how to build a business. You’ve done it. Perhaps even multiple times. That’s not where the challenge lies. The challenge lies when you…
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Coaching, Mindset, Unstoppable, , ,

Tailored for impact:

Heads up! This is meant for a very specific individual – the brilliant entrepreneur or C-suite-savvy woman. If that’s you, keep reading. 

You know how to build a business. You’ve done it.

Perhaps even multiple times.

That’s not where the challenge lies.

The challenge lies when you look beyond what you’ve accomplished and ask yourself what’s next? 

Do I start another business? Step into another role in another company?
Does that even light me up? What do I really want to do?

You more or less have the time and the money to do what you want.

And you’re certainly not short of ideas. 

You keep cycling through what you could do with your life and you’re frustrated by why it’s not clear.

You land on an idea, one that would serve the world and you could probably do that very successfully, BUT…

Something’s not lighting you up about any of it… and you can’t put your finger on it. 

Is it worth the effort? Can I rally my energy for that? Do I even want to?

And here’s the thing…

You don’t really want to work like that any more. You don’t want to keep chasing the goal, being driven by urgency, stress, and not letting others down. 

You know that intuitively.

And yet… you ask… how do I motivate myself if not by the urgency created by setting another big ass goal?

Well, you can’t do it within the same paradigm.
It’s by approaching it in a totally different way.

It starts with…

Getting at the truth of who you are.
Understanding what you truly want. All of it.
Recognizing your purpose.
Figuring out what to do with that.
Unraveling the reasons why it can’t work, so that it does work.
Then walking the uncharted path and having a lived experience of a life that actually lights you up.

If this appeals to you, I’m taking two clients right now on this journey. Is one of them you?

This is for those who want to create their most exquisite life…
Who want to make good on the unconscious promises of how their life would be that they made to themselves in childhood…
Who do not wish to tolerate a compromised life any longer…
Who are willing to be present to what needs to unfold and do the deep work…

To see if this work is right for you, and if you and I are a good fit to work together, email us that you’re interested.

My team will have a 15 minute alignment conversation with you. If we think it’s a good fit, they’ll set up a time for you and I to have an in-depth conversation.

May your spirit guide you to what’s right for you.