Personal Blog~Sharon Stephens - Life Coach

Real Happiness comes from "feeling" our feelings.  Quite literally. If you can track your feelings they will reveal the lies and expectations that shackle us to our unhappiness.  So they are a gift.  The greatest learning and light comes in those moments of shear consciousness of "what our feelings mean". So feelings are an indicator of where we are at AND what we need to change. Change comes from not being afraid of our feelings.  Fear of our feelings is what causes us to kick into a behavior.  When we have pain, it feels like it will kill us.  So we kick into getting and protecting behaviors.  Real Happiness is "I feel therefore I grow and learn".  Not "I feel therefore I medicate".  If we medicate our feelings we never learn our light.  We never make it to the next level of our lives.  We never live to our potential.  We repeat the same patterns over and over again. Sitting with a feeling for as long as we need to without medicat

This is my first entry really telling the truth about myself and sharing on a different level than before. As I practice real love or just any spiritual practice I get Aha's that I would like to share and haven't really done that at a personal level as it pertains to me.  I went about two weeks ago to the doctor and found out I have shingles.  It's the chicken pox virus that stays in our body dormant through out our lives.  If it comes out later again, it shows up and transforms itself in a different way.  It is shingles.  I got it on my face.  I got it around my eye.  Left side.  The outside appearance of rash and itchy stuff is the first symptom.  The other symptons are non-visible.  The disease is nerv driven and causes a lot of pain.  Since it is near my eye, the doc told me it is "ocular" shinlges and I could loose my eye.  He told me the pain is severe and some people have committed suicide because it messes with the brain and causes depression.  So

How does real love make a difference? Shane, my son, came in to my room at 3:00 am this morning. Keep in mind he is 19 years old. He said he needed something. I said, “what’s up?” He said, “Mom, I took a cab home because I had a couple of drinks at the party I went to and I didn’t want to drive.” I said, “ok, good choice.” (I thought he was asking me for money next to pay the driver) He proceeded to tell me that the cabbie was downstairs waiting for him because he needed a “Real Love” book. I kind of shook my head trying to wake up, take in what he had just said and said “what?” He said the cabbie was from Somalia and spoke very little English but was reading a book about relationships. Shane said the cabbie was very down and spent time telling him about real love. Shane asked, “Please Mom, can I gift him a book?” So I said, “of course” .  He said "I will pay for the book." So he went back downstairs and was gone for a while. I am amazed at a boy, who at age 14, wa

There is complete freedom with being ok with being flawed with ourselves and others. That is what unconditional love is. And in that is the ultimate freedom. When we can see that others are doing the best they know how, to see their behaviors as empty and drowning, its easier to not take it personally but to move to having compassion. Compassion is freedom. Everytime we are upset with someone we are saying " there is no love in the world but the tiny piece you are withholding from me right now". This is simply not true. The truth is there is an infinite supply of love waiting for us. The freedom comes from knowing where to get it, knowing who does have it for us and having complete compassion for those who don't. Flaws are the gifts that help us learn. We need each other to see ourselves. We are flawed. We are human. and I am ok with that.............

Trying to change someone is a waste of time. The very thought of changing someone is saying that they are not good enough as they are, and it is soaked with judgment and disapproval. That is not a thought of appreciation or love, and those thoughts will only bring separation between you and that person. You must look for the good in people to have more of it appear. As you look only for the good things in a person, you will be amazed at what your new focus reveals. http://www.reallove.com/ http://www.sharonawinningham.com/

Pulling over to a gas station! “People talk about the reality of their life as if it is important. And we want you to understand, it’s only the temporary indicator. Do you go to the gas station-your gas gauge is on empty-do you go to the gas station and look at your gas gauge in horror? “How did this happen? Why, why, why did this happen to me?” Do you lay your head on the steering wheel and just sob? “Oh, look what it’s come to. I’m finished. I’ve lived all of this life, and look where I am.” Or do you just fill up.” ~ Esther & Jerry Hicks from the Law of Attraction Our emotions are our indicators. It is an indicator that we will stay in the same place as long as we hold on to those lies (focus on what is today). Do we have a bad feeling, even sometimes unidentifiable? Pull over to a gas station and trust the process........ tap in to source energy...make a real love phone call....for a phone call list of volunteers who will teach and guide you .....   swinningham@reallove.

Greg Baer.......... Imagine that I tell you I love you. I smile at you, speak kind words to you, and perhaps even present you with a gift of some kind. Understandably, you enjoy this, as we all would. Five minutes later, however, I storm into the room describing a mistake that has been made, and while shaking my finger in your face and scowling with rage I say, “Are you the one who did this?!” How loved do you feel now? That feeling disappeared the moment I entered the room, didn’t it? We’ve all experienced moments like this. For most of us, in fact, this has been a lifelong pattern. This kind of “love” is very disappointing and unfulfilling, because it vanishes when we make mistakes and when we fail to meet the expectations of those who “love” us. This kind of “love” is conditional. There’s only one kind of love that can fill us up, make us whole, and give us the happiness we all want: unconditional love or true love. It is unconditional love or true love that we all seek, and som

Can a person feel loved by incoming calls? Yes, it is possible to feel someone's love via a phone message. Imagine how you would feel, for example if you heard this message on your voicemail: "Hi, Sharon! I was thinking about you at this very moment and wanted to express what a blessing you've been to me. Thanks for teaching and showing me RL." But your heart is open to such expressions of love, gratitude and appreciation. You can recognize happiness when you see or hear it. You're accepting of the nature of love, its power to heal your own life, and the peace it can bring. Someone with a pride-filled and hardened heart, however, won't feel anyone's love for as long as they choose to push it away regardless of the medium. Persistent attempts to smother the hard-hearted with "love" only hardens their resolve to be 'right' because fundamentally we are refusing to accept their choice in that moment to refuse love. Our constant effo

It's inevitable that we will hurt each other.   It's a part of the human experience.  We are not perfect and we will make mistakes that cause others to hurt and other's will hurt us. This is a real opportunity for us to learn in these moments.  When someone does something to cause us discomfort or pain, we can look at our level of reaction and use this as a learning tool to evaluate our own level of happiness.  If we react really badly then it's a sign that we really are needing more unconditional love in our own life.  We can then look at what we could do differently to gain the fullness we need. We can also evaluate the other person for signs of fullness or emptiness and gauge how close we should really be with them intimately according to our own capacity to be loving also.  It is an ever fluctuating dynamic but a great tool to "see" ourselves and others and to potentially learn and make better decisions.  When we hurt someone and feel regret we gener

The Big Idea — (Emotional) Fuel Gauges “When the fuel gauge on your vehicle indicates that the tank is empty, you do not criticize the indicator. You receive the information that it has offered you, and you do something about adding more fuel to your tank. Similarly, a negative feeling is an indicator that your current choice of thoughts has you offering a vibration that is so out of harmony with your Source Energy that you are currently disallowing your full connection to that Energy Stream. (You could say your tank is reaching empty.) Your emotions do not create, but they do indicate what you are currently attracting. If your emotions are helping you know that your choice of thoughts is not taking you in the direction that you desire to go, then do something about that: Replenish your connection by choosing better-feeling thoughts.” ~ Esther & Jerry Hicks from Ask and It Is Given That’s really cool. A big theme of the great book, Ask and It Is Given, is the fact that our

Greg's Blog Post on January 10, 2007 In the absence of sufficient Real Love, we tend to marry our partners with the expectation that they will make us happy for the rest of our lives. Regardless of the words actually spoken at the wedding ceremony, what we hear our spouses say is this: “I promise to make you happy—always. I will heal your past wounds and satisfy your present needs and expectations—even when you don’t express them. I will lift you up when you’re discouraged. I will accept and love you no matter what mistakes you make. I give to you all that I have or ever will have. And I will never leave you.” Neither partner is consciously aware of making this bushel of promises, but each partner still hears them and insists that they be fulfilled. When both partners lack sufficient Real Love, however, they can’t possibly make one another happy, and then their efforts to do that yield only disappointment and anger, no matter how hard they try. I have been asked on several

People are starved for love.  Starved to the point of ruin, anxiety, lonliness, disorders and addictions.  Every day people come to me spiraling out of control and beg "please help me".  I love them and support them.  I give them loving guidance and tell them all the same thing.  The thing that is hardest for every single one of them.   Tell the truth! Truth>Seen>Accepted>Loved The one thing that everyone needs most to do, they can't do it. Why would you not want to be happy and GO AFTER IT WITH A VENGENCE! Here it is:  If you want to feel loved by me, then I have to accept you just as you are.  There is a catch.  I have to be able to see you first to accept you.  But how can I see you thus accept you when you won't tell me who you REALLY are.  Tell the truth!  So let's look at this from another angle.  In order for you to feel really loved you must know I really know you.  In order for you to FEEL it!  So our job is to line up a million p

This I do know. Being an observer of our own life is only possible when we give up victimhood. Living in the flow allows us take every opportunity to learn and learn some more. What a fun day. We went to the Mall. We wore our Free Hugs t-shirts and WE LEARNED more about real love and ourselves. Each hug or rejection of hug gave us a deeper understanding about ourselves and how we operate in the world. It gave us an opportunity to discuss it with each step we took and each hug we gave. We saw that within ourselves there is an innate fear of rejection, a sense of unworthiness. What if someone says no? Is it really about them or about me? Everyone who joined in the exercise was comfortable at different levels to reach their arms open and approach someone. Those who were fuller found it easier because we did encounter rejection over and over. Then we began to see how open people were and excited to get hugs, as well as people very closed off and could not possibly let anyone in.