August 2018 - Sedona Soul Adventures

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One Thing You Can Do Now Right Now to Get Happy

Today I want to talk to you about something you can do right now to get happy. It’s very simple, but it’s one of the most effective things I know to get happy and stay happy.

I’d love to have you try it and let me know how it works for you.

I hope this helped, and if you got value from this video, please like, share the video and subscribe to our channel.

I’m talking with you today about One thing you can do right now to get happy.
In this series of videos, I’m talking about concepts from my book, The Journey to Happy– How Embracing the Concept that Nothing is wrong can transform your life.
I hope you’ve been following along with these videos about the concept of Nothing is Wrong, because that will make all this make a lot more sense.
To recap, it’s not what’s happening to us that is causing most of the problems in our lives, it’s our reactions and responses to what’s happening:

  • How we’re thinking about it
  • How we’re talking about it
  • How we’re feeling about it

What  I’ve found in my own life, and with the thousands of people that we’ve helped through Sedona Soul Adventures, is that the more I drop my resistance, the more I am able to go with the flow, and the more things happen that are almost miraculous.
It’s a shift out of the energy of “Everything is Wrong” and into the energy of “Nothing is Wrong” that changed everything in my life.
The question is, how can you do that? How can you flip that switch?
And the answer is simple: Make the decision.
Make the decision that Nothing is Wrong.
Make the decision that you are going to start living your life from this belief and this perspective.
And I’m going to give you an easy way to implement that decision It’s a process called Change your story, Change your life.
If you stop thinking and talking about what you don’t want and start focusing and talking about what you do want, the energy shifts and amazing things can happen.
This is actually one of the Nine Stepping Stones that I give you in The Journey to Happy and I’m giving you the one that you can start using immediately, and that can have the biggest impact right now. Stop talking about what’s wrong. Just stop. And don’t get involved in conversations with other people who are talking about things that are wrong, or that are not okay, or that you don’t like.
If you do this for a few days and start to notice how much you do it, I think you will be humbled and embarrassed. And then you will start to notice how much other people talk about things that are wrong, but remember, Nothing is Wrong with other people thinking and talking about what’s wrong. It’s a free country, everybody gets to be just as miserable as they want to be. Everybody has a choice.
And if other people notice that you’re not speaking negatively, don’t tell them what you’re doing. Most people are so attached to their unhappiness, they don’t want to see other people coming out of it, so just keep your new thoughts to yourself. The Bible says that after Jesus did one of his first miracles he told the disciples, “Go and tell no one,” because he knew their faith wasn’t strong enough yet to deal with all the negativity they would receive. Don’t set yourself up for someone overwhelming you with their objections to you getting happy.
For now, this is your decision and your life – just keep on practicing.
And if you’re feeling really adventurous, in addition to NOT talking about what’s wrong, you might start actively talking about things that you like or things that you appreciate. There is always something to appreciate, even if it’s just that you’re alive – and how fantastic is it that you’re alive?
Do this one simple thing and notice how things start to shift as you flip that switch.
We had a woman who came for a retreat a few years ago and she had had a really difficult life. Both of her parents were physically and emotionally abusive, her father was physically abusive and her mother was emotionally abusive. They had both passed away and she felt that she never really had a chance to confront them about what they did to her. She talked about it all the time. She referred to herself as a victim. When she came to Sedona she was still filled with hate (which was completely understandable), but it was eating her up inside and she knew it.
We did a number of sessions with her that were designed to move out that old energy and then the most amazing thing happened. In her Inner Breath Journey, both of her parents came to her, one by one. They asked her forgiveness. She cried and cried. She told me, Debra it was definitely them.
She was flooded with forgiveness and love, and after that, she didn’t even have the desire to talk about it anymore. She got home and she realized that she simply didn’t have this story anymore. She quit talking about it, not because she was stopping herself, but because she just didn’t want to talk about it anymore, it didn’t serve her, it just made her feel bad. She realized that with most of her friends, they were so happy for her and they loved that talking about this negative stuff wasn’t part of the baggage of their friendship anymore. But she had one friend who, after a few months, just vibrated out of her orbit because this person wanted to talk about negative stuff and wanted to talk about her own negative story, and without the stories and without them feeding off each other, they didn’t really have a friendship. She told me awhile ago that she didn’t really realize just how much energy she was losing over this and how Changing her story, stopping the story gave her her life back.
I hope this helped, and if you got value from this video, please like it, share the video and subscribe to our channel.
And If you want a more direct path to getting happy and staying happy – then go to SedonaRetreatGuide.com and get your complimentary copy of The Sedona Guide to Spiritual Retreats today.
Or if you’d like to talk to someone about doing a retreat that’s custom designed for you call us at (928) 204-5988. You can have the life AND the relationship you want – I know it.

How to do Ho’oponopono – incredible results!

Have you ever heard of Ho’oponopono? It is the most incredible process that can yield almost unbelievable results in your life. Watch my short video and see how this simple forgiveness process can change absolutely everything around.
Try this and if it works for you, let me know – I love hearing those stories!

I hope this helped, and if you got value from this video, please like, share the video and subscribe to our channel.

This is one of two videos where I’m talking to you about Learning How To Forgive. If you haven’t watched the other one on Radical Forgiveness, be sure to do that.
One of the hardest things in life is learning how to deal with a situation when someone has hurt you. Especially if it’s someone who you love and care about,` and who you thought loved and cared about you. Like a parent, a spouse, or a friend.
And it doesn’t even have to be from someone we care about. It happens all time in life, where we feel like we’ve been wronged or someone has done something to mistreat us – like getting into an argument with a neighbor or having a situation with another person that just seems to be something where you can’t get along with this person no matter what you do. And if it’s someone like a fellow employee or your employer, that can be really difficult. Having to be around someone who you constantly seem to have problems with is draining and makes life not fun.
If that’s your situation, I want to tell you about Ho’oponopono. This is an ancient practice  developed by the kahunas, the spiritual teachers of Hawaii. It’s a very simple practice but it’s incredibly effective. This was popularized by Dr. Hew Len. Dr. Len grew up in Hawaii thinking that all this spiritual stuff was really weird and he didn’t believe it, but then some things happened in his life and he started studying Ho’oponopono.
Ho’oponopono is very simple. When I tell you this, you’re going to think something like “Debra, that’s ridiculous, that can’t really work”, but just stick with me.
The Concept of Ho’oponopono is all about consciousness and about taking total responsibility for everything that comes into your consciousness. So, for example, if you have a car accident and you tell me about it, now that it’s come into my conscious awareness it becomes my responsibility. “Now wait a minute, Debra”… I’m sure you’re thinking, “If one of my friends tells me about their car accident, how does that become my responsibility?” Well, it has to do with consciousness and energy, and clearing the energy of things that are not in the highest vibration.
So again, it’s very simple, with Ho’oponopono, here’s the way it works. You think about the situation and you say either out loud or silently:
I’m sorry
Please forgive me
I love you
Thank you
That’s it. You just do that over and over again and watch how things change. Dr. Len’s story is probably the most dramatic about this.
After he began working with Ho’oponopono, he was asked by the State of Hawaii to work in the Hawaii State Prison for the Criminally Insane. This was a very violent place filled with people who were murderers and rapists, plus they had been found to be insane. Conditions there were terrible – inmates were constantly attacking the staff, employee turnover was constant, the energy was so bad that plants wouldn’t grow, and get a load of this, paint wouldn’t stay on the walls, they would paint the walls and it would peel off.
They asked Dr. Len to join their staff and he said okay, but he wouldn’t see patients, he wouldn’t do rounds… he just sat in his office with the files of the people in the prison. He would read over what happened, all the murders, the rapes and he would take on full responsibility for everything that had happened. Then he would say:

I’m sorry
Please forgive me
I love you
Thank you
Over and over.
He did this for a few months and everything started to change in the prison, the energy started moving and there was a transformation that started to happen. First, the prisoners became less violent. The attacks on the staff stopped. The prisoners had all been heavily medicated before, they discovered they didn’t need as much medication or with some people, none at all. Plants started growing. The paint started staying on the walls.
And incredibly within 4 years, the prison was closed down. Many of the prisoners were adjudicated as sane, stood trial and were imprisoned. But a huge majority were healed and released for time served. Within four years, the place was completely emptied of all the negative, horrible energy.
And the only thing that was different was that Dr. Len was sitting in his office bringing this into his consciousness and saying:
I’m sorry
Please forgive me
I love you
Thank you
Over and over.
We teach this practice in our retreats and we’ve had incredible success with it. We had one woman come on a retreat because she said she was going to leave her husband because he simply would not help her. She had a demanding job, they had 2 kids, and he wouldn’t do anything at all to help her with running the house and taking care of the kids. That led to lots of anger and upset, nagging and disconnection, and finally she’d had it. And he was sick of the nagging and also ready to walk out the door.
She said she wanted her retreat to focus on getting strong enough to leave. But when she was here, we uncovered that she really did love her husband and she didn’t want to split up her family. We did some clearing sessions with her and taught her Ho’oponopono, including all the underlying dynamics.
She went home and just kept doing the Ho’oponopono with her husband. She said that 2 days after she got home he started doing the dishes. She hadn’t asked him, he just started doing it. Then he started helping with the cooking, cleaning, and child care. One day he just came in and said, “Is there anything I can do to help you?” and she just about fainted. She started crying and told him what had happened. He told her how much he loved her and that the last thing he wanted was a divorce. That was over a year ago and their marriage has completely turned around.
We had another person come to us who had a fabulous job – she loved what she did, she made a lot of money and had a lot of freedom, but there was always something going on with her boss. Her boss was always criticizing and always doing things to cause her trouble. He couldn’t fire her, but he was making her life miserable. She came for a retreat and her focus was on “should I leave my job?” We did some other clearing with her and taught her Ho’oponopono. When she got back, her boss said to her, “We missed you”. Suddenly her boss wasn’t just being neutral with her, her boss was being kind and deferential. Six months later she got a huge promotion, largely based on the recommendation of the boss she’d had so much trouble with before she started doing Ho’oponopono.
Try this for 28 days and see what happens. It works. Don’t tell anyone. Certainly don’t tell the person you’re having the trouble with. Just do it.
Just think about the situation and say:
I’m sorry
Please forgive me
I love you
Thank you
Over and over.
And the amazing thing is, you don’t even have to actually feel sorry. I did a 5-day workshop with Dr. Len a few years ago and he told us, you don’t even have to feel like you’re sorry. The energy just moves from doing this. And it works with every kind of person and every kind of situation.
Try it and send me an email to let me know what happened. I love getting stories like that.
I hope this helped, and If you got value from this video, please like, share the video and subscribe to our channel.
Forgiveness can be a really tricky and difficult thing to do. And if you find that you need some help, or you need to go deeper, connect with us.
Go to  SedonaRetreatGuide.com  and get your complimentary copy of The Sedona Guide to Spiritual Retreats.
And if you’d like to talk to someone about doing a retreat that’s custom designed for you call us at 928/204-5988.
You can have the life or relationship you want – I know it.

A Radical New Way to Forgiveness

Forgiveness can be a hard one. I know, because sometimes it can be a hard one for me.
I love what Nelson Mandela said:

“Forgive others, not because they deserve forgiveness, but because you deserve peace.”

In this video, I talk about a radical new way to learn to forgive. It’s helped me a lot. I hope it can help you.

I hope this helped, and if you got value from this video, please like, share the video and subscribe to our channel.


One of the hardest things in life is learning how to deal with a situation when someone has hurt you. Especially if it’s someone who you love and care about, and who you thought loved and cared about you. Like a parent, a spouse, or a friend.
In this video and the next one, I’m going to talk about two different processes which have made a huge difference in my life. I don’t know how you are, but for me, forgiveness has been a hard thing to learn in my life. I’m an 8 on the Enneagram – if you don’t know what that means it’s okay, we’ll be talking about it in later videos. But for here what that means is that as an 8, my emotional identity is hard-wired to hold grudges and not forgive people. And I’ve discovered over the years, that’s a recipe for a very unhappy life. So in the next two videos I’m going to give you two amazing processes.
The first one is called Radical Forgiveness and it was developed by the author Colin Tipping. His book is great.
The premise of this book is that before we’re born, we make soul agreements with each other, designed to aid in our soul’s healing and progression. Our souls get together and have this cosmic meeting – think of it as a big conference in the sky.
In this pre-lifetime conference, soul agreements are made – “Okay, last time you killed me, so this time I’ll kill you,” or “Last time you killed me, but this time I’ll do something to break the cycle (such as forgiveness) so we’re off of this particular karmic wheel.”
Just imagine for a moment that it’s true, then think about your relationships. What if the person who did something terrible to you was only doing it because of an agreement that you both made prior to coming into this lifetime? It’s an arrangement that you (that Highest part of you) not only agreed to, but also considered to be in your best interest for the highest evolution of your soul.
Wow! That turns everything on its head.
Suddenly, the people who are “doing” things to you, are actually giving you a huge gift – the gift of awareness and higher consciousness.
Even better, once you see it this way, you can stop it. “Okay, I got the lesson, I don’t need any more of that.”
So who do you need to forgive? Has someone cheated you? Maybe you cheated them in a past life? Has your mate cheated on you? That’s a really big one and one that many people can’t ever forgive, but think about it. If it’s true that virtually everything that happens to us is the result of agreements that our souls make before we even come onto the planet, maybe you need to re-think your decision to not forgive your spouse.
Understand, I’m not saying you don’t hold people accountable and you let everyone walk all over you. I’m talking about you making the decision to whether or not to hold onto grudge, hold onto the negative energy, hold onto the energy of “I won’t ever forgive you.” Because I’ll tell you, that energy is tearing you apart; that energy eats away at you.
Don’t forgive the other person to let them off the hook. Forgive them so that you can let yourself off the hook. Forgive them so that you don’t have that horrible energy consuming you all the time.
Nelson Mandela was put in prison for over 37 years. When he was released he said, “As I walked out the door toward the gate that would lead to my freedom, I knew that if I didn’t leave my bitterness and hatred behind, I’d still be in prison.” You can keep yourself in prison, or you can give yourself the freedom that comes with peace. Mandela also said, “Forgive others, not because they deserve forgiveness, but because you deserve peace.”
We had a couple here last year who came to us because the wife had been unfaithful and the husband simply could not get over it, which is completely understandable. The retreat was a last ditch effort to save the marriage. As we worked with them, we realized that she had married someone just like her father — very judgmental, very critical, not demonstrative, and when she couldn’t get love and approval from her husband, after a few years she went and got it somewhere else. Even more amazing, was that this exact thing had happened to his father. When they both realized they had been playing out this pattern and playing out the same situation as his parents, they were both flabbergasted. He saw what his criticism and lack of demonstrating his love had done. He went into total forgiveness with her and with his own mother. She was finally able to forgive herself. Their marriage was completely re-born through this forgiveness.
Who do you need to forgive? Your husband, your wife, your parents, your friend? God? Yourself? It may take more than a simple decision like the one Nelson Mandela made, but there is peace on the other side of that decision, I promise.
I hope this helped, and If you got value from this video, please like, share the video and subscribe to our channel.
If forgiveness is an issue for you, we can help. Like the couple who came to us, you may not realize all the layers involved. Connect with us — go to SedonaRetreatGuide.com and get your complimentary copy of The Sedona Guide to Spiritual Retreats.
Or if you’d like to talk to someone about doing a retreat that’s custom designed for you call us at 928/204-5988.
You can have the life or relationship you want. I know it.

    What To Do When Your Marriage Is In Trouble

    Most people know that 50% of marriages in the US end in divorce, but did you know that 67% of second marriages and a whopping 73% of third marriages end in divorce in this country?
    I was a divorce attorney for over 20 years and now I’ve spent over 16 years helping couples through Sedona Soul Adventures, and over and over again, I see the same things.
    If your marriage or relationship is having problems, or even if you’re just not feeling it like you used to (which is the beginning of really having some problems), then watch my video.
    I hope it helps.

    I hope this helped, and If you got value from this video, please like and share the video, and subscribe to our channel.



    Let’s face it. Marriage or being in a long term committed relationship is hard. Even if you start out really in love and really committed, the day to day-ness of life can take the sizzle out of any relationship.
    And if you have a situation or a crisis, for example, if you have infidelity happening, then you’ve got a real problem on your hands.
    The question is, what to do? Well for many people, say 50% of the population, they throw in the towel and get a divorce.
    But what most people don’t know, is that the divorce rate for 2nd and 3rd marriages is even higher. 67% of second, and 73% of third marriages end in divorce.
    And why is that? Because people aren’t learning from the mistakes from their first marriage or their second marriage.
    I was a divorce attorney for 20 years in Omaha, Nebraska, and I can tell you that divorce is not the answer. Divorce almost always ends up harming people emotionally and financially, not to mention what it does psychologically to the children involved.
    So what do you do when your marriage is in trouble? The simple answer is, you’ve got to do SOMETHING.
    You have to start talking to each other, you have to start communicating with each other, you have to reach out and do SOMETHING to start moving things around. And the sooner you catch it, the better your chances are.
    But here’s what you’ve got to do if you don’t want to become one of the statistics. You’ve got to get underneath and figure out what the real problems are. What’s causing all this? What’s triggering you?
    And after 20 years as a divorce attorney and over 16 years of doing couples work with Sedona Soul Adventures, I can tell you that what you’re fighting about is never what you’re really fighting about. What’s really happening is that the unhealed and damaged little boy is trying to get love from the unhealed and damaged little girl and when you’ve got 2 damaged and unhealed little children, it’s pretty difficult to have a conscious, loving relationship.

    Have you seen this sculpture that was done by at Burning Man a few years ago? I love this image because it perfectly illustrates exactly what I’m talking about. Almost all of our struggles, but especially within intimate relationships, is just a cry for love. The wounded little boy and the wounded little girl are just trying to get love. But because we’re coming from a place of wounding, it can be really hard to get the love we want in the way we want it. Then we divorce the one who’s not giving it to us, we find another one hoping to get it, but because we’re still wounded, we don’t know how to have a healthy, conscious, loving relationship, so then we divorce that one and become one of the 67%.
    It keeps on happening over and over because we’re not getting at the root cause that’s creating all the trouble – the wounded little boy or the wounded little girl.
    You have to get underneath the issues and figure that out – that’s what brings people back together.
    In the 20 years that I was a divorce attorney, I sent all my clients to therapy and it never did anything for any of them, not in one situation. Because it was just talking – not really getting to the deep underpinnings of the problems.
    We had a couple here last year who were breaking up over the wife’s infidelity. He was able to forgive her, but he felt like she didn’t really love him. When we dug deeper, we discovered that she had grown up in a home where she was never able to please her father, no matter what she did. She had then married a man who was also hyper-critical and who never demonstrated his love for her. Just like her father, her husband felt that providing a nice home demonstrated his love.
    Likewise, he grew up in a home where his mother never expressed love for him. She was demanding and always making him feel like he wasn’t “good enough” if he wasn’t getting perfect grades or being a star athlete.
    So both of these people grew up in homes where they didn’t feel loved and they both married people who didn’t express love, and so they both felt “I’m not loved.” The wife even realized that the man she had the affair with and was thinking about leaving her husband for was the same way – hyper-critical and undemonstrative.
    In their retreat, we took them each through individual sessions that cleared out those blocks and filled in those holes. Because that’s what happens when you have a childhood like that – it’s as if you have a hole that can’t be filled. But those holes can be filled and that’s what happened with both of them. Once those holes were filled, they suddenly saw each other in a new light. He understood why she had sought love somewhere else. She saw that he truly did love her, but he had blocks that made it hard from him to demonstrate that. With the blocks gone, she saw how much he loved her and he saw how much she loved him. That’s what can happen when we heal those unhealed parts.
    So when your marriage is in trouble, you need to look underneath what you’re at odds about and figure out what’s causing the real trouble. Where are your unhealed parts showing up?
    That’s pretty hard to do by yourself. Most of us can’t see our own stuff, even when it’s right in front of our face. But that’s what you need to do.
    I hope this helped, and If you got value from this video, please like and share the video, and subscribe to our channel.
    If you need some serious help – then go to SedonaRetreatGuide.com and get your complimentary copy of The Sedona Guide to Couples Retreats.
    If you’d like to talk to someone about doing a Couples retreat that’s custom designed for you call us at 928/204-5988.
    You can have the life or relationship you want. I know it.

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