A visualization practice to support you in quieting the movement of the mind and finding the underlying stillness that is always there and available to you. You will finish this restorative practice feeling grounded, centered and at peace.
Today I am honored to share an interview I did with Darla LeDoux of Aligned Entrepreneurs about my journey into living a Wholehearted life, and how I bring that into my business and daily life.
Darla is an inspiring entrepreneur who's mission is to support leaders in selling and delivering transformation, allowing them to use their natural, RICH (Right-brained, Intuitive, Connected and Heart-centered) skills. Her series, RICH Revolution speaks to this mission and I was lucky enough to be one of the leaders she interviewed. We discussed how I deliver transformation at my retreats, but also how you can live a life in alignment with your truth.
I am so excited to share the entire conversation with you, you can watch, listen, or read it here:
https://alignedentrepreneurs.com/ep-28-let-your-wild-heart-lead-with-ashlie-woods
Give yourself permission to shine, share the gifts that only YOU can share, dare to live the life of your dreams.
Tap into your infinite power to create. This practice will invite you to take in the world around you and as you do, notice where your attention is being pulled. In our lives, each thing takes a small demand on our awareness, which, once tapped into, will allow us to let go of attachments and leave us feeling centered and invigorated. This practice is ideally done while standing.
A trusted mentor once said to me …
“Notice what it feels like in your body when you tell the truth”
Tuning in to my body for guidance seemed like a radical idea. But it turned out to be the first step in my profound, personal transformation. And, the more I began to practice it, the more ready and willing I could feel the answers within my body.
Everything changed the moment I began trusting the wisdom within me.
I began truly listening to my heart and trusting where it desired to lead me.
This experience is what inspired me to create Whole<3’d: an online course designed to help you tune into what your heart is telling you so you can live the life that is calling you.
Find the courage to tell the truth and watch your life transform. Join me on the adventure to Whole<3’d living.
Not every day is a frolic through the lush green grass on a beautiful day.
Somedays it’s a swim in salt water during a storm while wearing steel boots.
AND you have tools for the storm. You don’t have to keep choking on the salt water.
A wholehearted life is a commitment to clarity and listening to your heart.
Not forcing a perfect life vision and bulldozing your way there.
I want to share with you a reminder that you have access to tools each and every day whether you have lush green grass, or salt water slapping your face. Take a moment now to STOP and go grab your calendar or notepad.
Get settled. Take a deep breath.
As you sit here at the beginning of your week I want you to tap into three things that are important to you or that you value.
This could be being present with your family, prayer or meditation, taking care of your body, connecting with friends, playing with a new business idea…. Or maybe it’s love, peace, joy, strength, courage….
Whatever pops up just let it be and write it down in your calendar or notepad.
Now I want you to visualize yourself in those moments. Maybe you are at the gym or carving out times in your day to pray or meditate. Perhaps you need time to decompress between work and home to get present for the evening. I want you to since into 5 actions this week that would support your values and place them on your calendar. These actions should feel aligned with your values that you created.
Now, put them in your week. I want them to feel light and supportive.
As you take this on, you do have tools by simply being part of the Wildhearted community.
If you are new to meditation and it calls to you, you can commit to joining theSacred Circle Meditation Group from Wildhearted. I promise you, we all started somewhere, so just let it be. If you feel pulled to guided meditations join us on Insight Timer. However your meditation looks, it is perfectly fine.
Journaling is a powerful tool for gratitude and reflection. Maybe you are new to journaling so we have created prompts for you within our community blog.
Dance is another great way to work the body AND to shake off the day! It’s a great way to create presence and children love it too! Visit the Spotify profile to access a few fun dance lists and MOVE THAT BODY.
If you crave connection with individuals committed to a joyful, wholehearted life, our Facebook page, Instagram page, YouTube and Twitter are all places we come together to circle up in uplifting conversations. Feel supported to play in any of these groups!
If you want to dive into a dedicated community of people putting both feet in for a wholehearted life, perhaps the Wholehearted online course is meant for you.
Wherever you are, let it be. Tell your heart “I hear you, I love you”
Driving? Click to Listen to the Audio
I hope you took a moment to watch the short training video on the micro-moves spreadsheet and that you spent a little time prioritizing the items on your list. If you didn’t, please pause now and watch the training. It’s super valuable.
It’s helpful to see what needs to happen first. It can be a relief to acknowledge things I think I need to do and realize “that can wait”. This enables me to focus on the most important actions needed to move forward.
I invite you to look at the top 3 actions you can take to get you closer to the result you’re after.
Assess your upcoming week. Where do you have time and space to work on this? Be realistic and intentional about what actions you can take this week.
For example, if you know you have a big chunk of time on Wednesday afternoon, and you work well in the afternoons, schedule something then. Personally, I work really well in the mornings, after my morning routine and meditation when I am clear-headed and energetic. It’s a great time for me to work on tasks that require a lot of mental focus.
Look at your list of micro-moves. Look at your week. Choose 3 action items/micro-moves you can commit to doing this week. Circle them, put them in your calendar, scheduling with others and yourself as needed.
Be sure that you’re tied into the intention behind those moves. Most importantly, how are you going to feel when you get that thing done? Infuse each tiny action step with clear intention and high energy.
For me, one of my actions might be: reconcile my accounts. The intention: clarity. How I’ll feel when it’s done is: like a badass.
I hope this has been useful. I would love to hear from you. Feel free to share in the comments, or connect with me on social media... what are the 3 actions you’re taking, what’s the intention behind them, and how are you going to feel when those are done? I would love to celebrate with you!
The next step in this weeks session is to work backwards... imagine standing in the future, having achieved your goal.... What do you have?
As I shared with you last week, I wanted to get clear on my business finances and be aware of my profits and losses. I was looking to produce that result and I knew I’d feel like a badass once I achieved it.
I ask myself... what needs to happen, for that to happen? Then, I write those things down.
Here’s a handy micro-moves spreadsheet I made for you.
How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. I know that’s a crazy analogy, but you get the point.
Big goals like launching a business, redesigning a website or planning a family vacation can feel overwhelming and daunting. It helps to break them down into smaller steps. Brainstorm and write down all the steps you can think of.
For me to become completely clear about my business finances, there is a long list of things that need to happen.
What steps do I need to take to get to financial clarity? I need to know what my expenses and projected income are. I need to reconcile my accounts. What kind of budgeting software can I use? What training and support do I need? All this and more would go on my list of micro-moves for me to get to the end result of what I’m really after.
That’s your work for this week. Use the spreadsheet. Brain dump. If you get stuck and don’t know what other steps to write down, be creative. Some of the steps could be to do a little research, ask an expert or find a mentor.
So, fill out your spreadsheet and I’ll see you next week!
KNOW SOMEONE WHO COULD USE THIS TODAY? SEND THIS TO THEIR INBOX
This is a meditation to support us in making the space in our lives and hearts for all of the delightful and fulfilling, opportunities and experiences to be had. When we simply allow 'what is', without resisting, we increase our overall sense of wellbeing and have the power and clarity to respond to any given situation.
Complete the form below to download and print this affirmation.
I’m confident that when you started looking at your life you saw all kinds of things you do that support you in living the life you want.
This week, we’re shifting our attention. Right now, I invite you to identify one accomplishment that you’d be delighted, excited and proud to have in your life.
Take a minute and look at a result you want to produce. Then, ask yourself:
How would it actually feel if you produced this result?
To give a personal example, one result I would be delighted to have is clarity in my business finances. My current system is to “ballpark it”, round up and estimate. In other words, there has been a lot of ambiguity for me in my business finances.
My goal is to track precisely how much money is coming in as revenue and exactly how much is going out due to expenses. To stop guessing and to have certainty. Initially, the idea of getting to clarity felt overwhelming. So it was the perfect place to work with micro-moves. How would I feel if I had crystal-clear clarity in my business finances? Like a total badass! And, I know it’s going to take new skills and stretching myself in new ways in order to get there.
What about you?
What’s the result you’d be delighted to produce and how will you feel when you accomplish it? That’s your work for this week.
Ignite a life of Passion with Micro-Moves: Part 1
Driving? Click to Listen to the Audio
Have you heard this term before? It’s one of my favorite topics to discuss at retreats.
We’ll start by looking at what a micro-move is and why it’s so potent. Then we’ll look at a result you want in your life and we’ll go through the process of choosing a life goal you want to achieve so we can break it down into micro-moves. Overall, taking a deeper look at the components necessary to get you in action..
First of all, what is a micro-move?
What we know about living a creative life, is that a clear intention matched with an elevated emotion is a recipe for creation. This comes directly from Dr. Joe Dispenza’s work.
A micro-move is a tiny step that is infused with clear intention and high energy.
I have created a simple tool that will help you get to the heart of this. It guides you to define the micro-move you’re committed to taking and to get clear on why you’re taking it, as well as how you’ll feel when it has been accomplished. In this way, you’ll be tied into your intention and you’ll know what energy is needed to get the best results. Download your Micro-moves journal prompt here.
Let’s begin our exploration of micro-moves by looking at what micro-moves you’re already making in your life and how they are working to help you achieve your goals. Micro-moves can be little habits or rituals, like making the bed each morning after waking up or drinking plenty of water.
Next week, we’ll look at something we want to accomplish and how we can attack it with micro-moves.
KNOW SOMEONE WHO COULD USE THIS TODAY? SEND THIS TO THEIR INBOX
In case you missed it:
Last month's exploration on Belief is now available on the blog. Catch up on the blog.
(P.S. I'd love to hear what you are discovering about Beliefs! Chat with me on social media or reply directly to this email.)
I Want to Know about Upcoming Retreats!
Follow me on Insight Timer and take my guided meditations with you where you go!
The hustle of the holidays are calming down. Perhaps you are traveling home, or plugging back into the flow of life this week. Often we begin to get a flood of emotions as the close of a year approaches and the creation of one is calling.
I invite you to acknowledge 2018 and manifest 2019 in a playfully collaborative way. I have created a 10 minute video and a journal exercise to help guide you in accessing your hearts desires for a powerful 2019. I am here for you. I want to hear what you create in this exercise and allow yourself to reach out. Embrace the support and send what you design with this practice to me directly at ashlie@ashliewoods.com.
Grab your Journal and follow these steps to bring into 2019 who you most want to be, Wild One.
Download: Reflect on 2018 to Manifest 2019
Your Heart is Able to be Trusted
Breakaway from old patterns and step into the life that is calling you forward.
Let's talk about BELIEF - Part 4!
How did that go? Did you play with your belief and come up with some new things that you could believe in this area?
To recap, I was working on the area of work, where I wanted ease but often felt anxiety. I was living inside a belief that anything worth having required sacrifice and hard work. This wasn’t a belief I wanted to hold on to. It was causing me to over complicate things. It was leading me to dismiss what came easily rather than embracing, celebrating and making the most of it.
I played around with this belief and various things I could say instead. Here’s what I settled on:
“Hard work is overrated.”
It has a quality of playfulness. I value hard work, determination, perseverance, commitment, grit and all that jazz; that’s already ingrained for me. This new thought, “Hard work is overrated” feels like a relief. It makes light of the issue, and it really works for me. It’s something I’ve started to say to myself over and over and to put into practice.
What’s the use of a new belief if it doesn’t then shape your actions and your results?
I began to catch myself overcomplicating things. I could see where a project was good and I had an impulse to tweak it to death, adding things that could enhance it but would also delay it. I started to ask myself, Is that necessary or can it be good enough as it is?
It allowed me to start dropping perfectionism and quit complicating the shit out of things. It let good enough be good enough.
It let done be better than perfect.
Are you, like me, someone who continues to work on things endlessly and never finish because you’re always messing with it? That’s overrated, too.
To take on the belief that hard work is overrated enabled me just to get shit done and have it be good enough. It made a tremendous difference in how I work and brought much more ease into my life and business.
How about you? What’s the new belief you’ve come up with and how are you going to embody it? What actions will you take to make it stick?
I invite you to make yourself a little touchstone, a physical reminder of a way of being that you want to adopt in your life. It can be anything from a sticky note on your bathroom mirror to a crystal in your pocket to an intention that you set every morning as you brush your teeth.
I’ll give you my example that you’re welcome to use if you like. I also suggest that you create one of your own that works for you. I’d create a touchstone - a note on my desk that says, “Let it be easy” or “Done is better than perfect” -- something that connects me to the new belief that I am embedding and embodying in my life.
GET YOUR THOUGHTS ON PAPER; DOWNLOAD THIS WEEK'S JOURNAL PROMPT HERE.
Thanks for joining me on this belief exploration. I’ll see you next time when we’ll be looking at a whole new topic. See you then!
Let's talk about BELIEF - Part 2!
How was your week? Were you able to see the thoughts you keep thinking that keep this belief in place?
I’ll share my own experience of a limiting belief and how I transformed it. One area in which I wasn’t getting the results I wanted was work.
I said I wanted ease, yet I was perpetually stressed and anxious.
I knew it was possible, somehow, to work with ease, as I could see other people doing so. But it just wasn’t happening for me. I began to look into what underlying beliefs might be keeping me from the ease I so desired.
When I did some digging around my beliefs regarding what it means to be successful, to have a business and to work hard, I discovered this strong, deep-rooted belief within myself: you can have whatever you want as long as you’re willing to work hard for it.
In other words, anything worth having requires hard work. While I definitely value the virtues of perseverance, discipline and effort as an entrepreneur, at the same time
I could see that this belief I was holding wasn’t always true.
I began to see that I was making everything harder than it needed to be, as if I didn’t feel I deserved something unless I worked really hard to earn it. I also dismissed things that came too easily. I couldn’t appreciate, accept or enjoy the things that came naturally to me, because they didn’t require hard work. This was costing me energy -- and the ease I said I wanted.
What’s the belief that you uncovered?
What is the impact of believing it?
What do you get to be right about?
What story do you get to keep in place?
In what way is this belief costing you?
What are you giving up?
Here’s a handy PDF you can use to brainstorm your ideas around these beliefs.
If you feel the impulse to share, by all means, reply to this email. I’d love to hear from you! Next week, we’ll answer the question, “What do I do to get rid of this belief I don’t want anymore?” See you then!