Dr. Marie-Claire Moreau

Educator, Coach, Life Strategist

Stop running. Start living.

I keep spiral notebooks and writing papers all around my home and office, and in my car. I can go for weeks without writing a single word. Then suddenly, like an avalanche, a moment hits, and I can’t stop writing. It might be for a minute or it might be for a week — I just write until there’s nothing more to say. Sometimes I write it once, but other times I have to write it over and over, or in big letters, or in tiny print, or spread across the page.

It just depends what comes out.

Where do Messages Come From?

Do you keep a journal? It’s okay if you don’t — a lot of people don’t. I wouldn’t call what I do journaling, even. My thoughts flow out in other ways that don’t involve writing, too. Removing the rules and the pressure gives me the freedom to trust whatever this process is. It just is.

Like a month ago, something blurry was moving around in my brain. It popped out of my head onto my notebook, as this:

Stop running. Start living.

It actually didn’t even mean anything to me at the time. So, I just wrote it a few times, and didn’t think about it again.

Until recently, when something called me back to that page. I’ve looked at that silly page every day for the last 2 weeks:

Stop running. Start living.

The words look really loud to me now.

Living in The Moment

I realized I haven’t been living in the present. For at least a couple of years.

Though I’m embarrassed to admit it (I should know better…there’s that should again) I’d been moving way too quickly towards goals and plans again. I was missing things, waiting for things, delaying things, rushing through things. I’ve done this before, and darn it, I did it again. I’ve been looking so far ahead that I forgot to feel the ground right underneath my feet.

Weird thing, or maybe not so weird — I hurt my leg recently. It’s an injury that has kept me off my feet for the last 8 weeks. I’ve been completely unable to do all those things I was trying to do, reach all those things I was trying to reach. I can’t move forward right now, even if I wanted to.

There’s that message again.

Sometimes things come into our awareness for reasons we cannot understand. Or sometimes they’re so obvious we wonder why we hadn’t noticed them before. This one didn’t make sense until it hit me on the head, er, on the leg. So, I’ve recommitted to start living from this moment forward. Because running isn’t possible. But, also, because I no longer want to.

To noticing, connecting, awakening…

As a coach, writer, recovered over-doer and busyness addict, I understand the challenges of creating a balanced, healthy lifestyle while the mind tries to sabotage your success. In my journey to vibrant health, I created a personalized health system of nutrition and supplementation, lifestyle changes, and I retrained my mind and the energy of my body. I view my success as the formula to my happy, healthy life. I now empower other women to create their own personalized formulas, including the tools and strategies just right for them! Amazing life shifts come from our relationships. I look forward to helping you, too!

Grounding and support (includes activation exercise and free poster)

Anyone can feel lost or disconnected at times. During busy or stressful times, or when we neglect our healthy practices for a few days, we might notice a big difference in the way we feel.

Symptoms

Though everyone is different, when I neglect self-care, I quickly begin to feel irritable. I might scramble to find the right words, or feel unable to collect my thoughts. At my worst, not being grounded leaves me wanting to be alone and with a strong urging to go outside. Interestingly, I experience a lack of balance just trying to stand on my own two feet.

My body sends very clear signals when I’m not well grounded, and I’ve learned to recognize them and what they mean.

Have you noticed your clues?

Activation Exercise:

Remember a time recently when you felt a little “off”. Maybe someone noticed your behavior and mentioned it, or maybe you noticed that you just weren’t acting like your normal self. 

Try to recall what you did/didn’t do that day, or what you did/didn’t do several days prior. 

How did you cope? (Sit the feeling out? Power through it? )

How long did the feeling persist?

Did anything make it worse?

Did anything help you “snap out of it”? 

Luckily, barring something more serious, a lack of grounding is easy to address. We can start by reminding ourselves that Mother Earth is loyal, loving, and always supporting us no matter what. There are other simple practices to re-establish that necessary connection. I doesn’t take long to balance and reconnect if we know what works best for each of us.

Grounding Practices

Easy ways to ground ourselves include:

  • Walking barefoot in the grass or on a sandy beach
  • Sipping tea outside among the trees
  • Breathing exercises, using aromatherapy if desired
  • Observing the night sky
  • Meditation
  • Qigong
  • Visualizing strengthening the root chakra
  • Tapping certain acupressure points
  • Tracing certain energy meridians
Easy ways to ground yourself, plus a beautiful visual reminder:

Click To Tweet

Some people find that going for a walk, doing yoga, or exerting themselves through vigorous exercise brings them back to themselves. We all have to experiment to find what works best for us.

If ever you feel disconnected, use any method you like, then quickly reconnect back to the Earth.

I’ve created a lovely reminder for you to hang where it’s visible:

Print your visual reminder HERE

If you need help, please schedule a video call and I’ll teach you some very effective techniques.

In awe of Mother Earth,

As a coach, writer, recovered over-doer and busyness addict, I understand the challenges of creating a balanced, healthy lifestyle while the mind tries to sabotage your success. In my journey to vibrant health, I created a personalized health system of nutrition and supplementation, lifestyle changes, and I retrained my mind and the energy of my body. I view my success as the formula to my happy, healthy life. I now empower other women to create their own personalized formulas, including the tools and strategies just right for them! Amazing life shifts come from our relationships. I look forward to helping you, too!

Surrounding ourselves with positivity (includes activation exercise & free poster)

Have you ever noticed what happens when you witness love, kindness or compassion? For me, my heart fills with beautiful emotion. I often get teary-eyed soaking all that goodness in. I always feel nourished — more like renewed – after moments like that. The feeling lasts longer than just the moment itself.

How about you?

Vibrational Experiences

Did you know that being around positive people and situations can literally raise your energetic vibration? Not just in that moment, but long-term. That’s because positivity goes deep into our bodies and minds. It affects us on a sub-level most people aren’t even aware of.

Fortunately, we’re all born with the ability to feel the vibrational energy of others, and we can tune into it with a little practice. If you’re not a believer, think about how good you feel in the presence of some people (or pets), but how “off” you feel in the presence of others.

It’s easy to step back into the field of energy that has been lost. In a moment, you’ll learn another exercise to help you tune in even further.

How positive people and situations can raise your energetic vibration:

Click To Tweet

Maintaining Positivity

On the opposite end of the spectrum, unbearable upset can come from seeing or hearing that which is negative. In an instant, we go out of alignment with how we desire to feel. Just as a kind act can uplift us, it takes only a single upsetting act to throw us off for the whole day. To maintain the power of positive energy, we should strive to infiltrate our beings with as much of it as possible. Surrounding ourselves with positive people and situations — even just reading about them – is one way to produce that effect. And though it’s not always possible,  limiting exposure to toxic people and situations is crucial to our well-being.

Exercise: 

Recall seeing something beautiful, positive or uplifting. Take a minute to define exactly how it made you feel. Were you smiling? Laughing? Warm? Can you actually feel some of those same emotions right now?

Now, recall something upsetting. Take a minute to define exactly how it made you feel. Are there areas of tension anywhere in your body (jaw, chest, stomach)? Look in a mirror. What physical evidence do you see while recalling the upsetting event? 

Free lessons and printable affirmation posters:

Click To Tweet

Knowing the deep impact of situations, it’s essential to limit exposure to negativity if we can.

Take a moment to print this important reminder, as a gift to yourself and your well-being:

Print your positivity poster

In positivity,

As a coach, writer, recovered over-doer and busyness addict, I understand the challenges of creating a balanced, healthy lifestyle while the mind tries to sabotage your success. In my journey to vibrant health, I created a personalized health system of nutrition and supplementation, lifestyle changes, and I retrained my mind and the energy of my body. I view my success as the formula to my happy, healthy life. I now empower other women to create their own personalized formulas, including the tools and strategies just right for them! Amazing life shifts come from our relationships. I look forward to helping you, too!

What to do when you stumble (includes activation exercise & free printable)

Change takes time. But, you already knew that.

Or maybe you forgot. Because when the pain of a situation is great, it’s normal to become impatient for change. When we’re desperately wanting results, it can be really, really hard to wait it out.

Look back to a time in your life to see what I mean:

Exercise:

When was the last time you made a pretty big change? Think back to a time when you either changed your diet, did a detox, made a career change, experienced major weight loss, started an exercise program, made a relationship change, or anything else that comes to mind.

Think for a moment about where you were at (physically and/or emotionally) when you first started and why making that change was so important at the time.

Now, try to remember when you first started noticing results. Remember any other times when you noticed change, growth, or saw visible results in whatever you were doing. 

How long did it take to notice that first subtle shift? Days, weeks, months? How about the next time?

How long did it take for you to believe — really believe – change might actually be coming?

Did you consider quitting any time along the way?

While some transformations are immediate (just ask my EFT tapping clients), others can take quite a while. To make matters worse, some things even get worse before they get better.

When making big change, a natural reaction is impatience. When results are slow to appear, we can lose faith that anything is happening at all. For many people, there’s a point when they simply decide to give up.

When reaching that level of frustration, especially if quitting is imminent, I recommend the following:

  1. Being kind to ourselves, since change truly isn’t easy. I’ve written about how to treat yourself like a good friend. At times like those, self-love and care is essential.
  2. Remembering that growth isn’t always pretty at first, but that it’s beautiful and worth it at the end.
  3. Having a reality check, by looking back to exactly where we started, and noticing how far we’ve come in a short period of time.

When clients tell me they’re struggling, I remind them of those 3 things and then we celebrate! Struggling is a signal of budding growth. Discomfort often precedes a major breakthrough.

Struggling is a signal of budding growth. Discomfort often precedes a major breakthrough.

Click To Tweet

If you stumble, bring yourself back to where you started from. It’s amazing how quickly this little reminder can be an an incentive to keep on going.

I designed this poster to be that reminder for you, too:

See and/or print it here

It says, “When I stumble, let me always remember where I started from”.

Keep moving forward,

As a coach, writer, recovered over-doer and busyness addict, I understand the challenges of creating a balanced, healthy lifestyle while the mind tries to sabotage your success. In my journey to vibrant health, I created a personalized health system of nutrition and supplementation, lifestyle changes, and I retrained my mind and the energy of my body. I view my success as the formula to my happy, healthy life. I now empower other women to create their own personalized formulas, including the tools and strategies just right for them! Amazing life shifts come from our relationships. I look forward to helping you, too!

Beautiful things (includes activation exercise & printable poster)

I’m in the midst of decluttering our home (again), so I’ve been donating boxloads to local thrift stores, and bagsful to lovely people in my community who distribute items to those in need. Though I declutter all year long, I tend to do it more when ultra-busy or stressed. Which describes this entire year so far. Which explains why my family can’t fit in my car right now.

Perhaps you find it counterproductive to take time away from really important things to spend time cleaning and organizing. I don’t. Since clutter is so distracting and stressful for me, spending time getting rid of it actually frees up space in my heart and head. I can focus much more clearly on other things once all the extra stuff is gone. Just like I can’t work at a messy desk, I can’t function in a cluttered environment, either.

Too much “stuff”actually works against me. You might say (as I do), clutter just drives me nuts.

This isn’t just me. Walk by any book store or search for minimalist bloggers. Many are now recognizing the benefits of having less. If you haven’t tried it, I highly recommend spending a few hours in the nearest closet or junk drawer.

Great benefits come from having less. I highly recommend an hour in a closet or junk drawer.

Click To Tweet

People have their own rules about decluttering. Mine include asking my children before giving anything away, asking myself whether anyone has used it in the last 2 years, and trying to predict if I might feel compelled to replace it after I give it away.

But the most important question I ask myself is this one:

Does it bring me joy?

Whether I’m thinking of acquiring something new or getting rid of something old, the joy question is usually the deciding factor. Because if it doesn’t bring joy, nothing else really matters. Joy is the only reason I’d ever want to move something, clean something, find a home for something, or otherwise keep track of something I own. When I boil it down, joy is pretty much the only reason I ever want to spend money, either.

To me, the joy question undercuts everything else. No joy means less value. Less value means weighing how much inconvenience it causes to me or someone in my home. Or how much inconvenience I’m willing to put up with, if there’s a least some amount of joy in having the item to begin with.

What each one of us finds beautiful is different. But, how beauty affects us is the same. Gazing on something beautiful creates positive emotions, and with time, positive associations. Otherwise, in my mind, it’s just clutter. Practical, necessary clutter, maybe. But without beauty, since clutter has the potential for adverse effect, weighing that is crucial before bringing it into our lives.

Keep in mind, other beings can be beautiful, too. Unless they’re not. Now there’s something big to think about.

Exercise:

Identify 3-5 objects or beings in your home environment. These can be items on a kitchen counter, small artifacts displayed on shelves, or any items found in drawers or closets. These can also be people or other beings you associate with on a regular basis.

One at a time, think how it makes you feel.

Is it beautiful? By what definition?

Does it have a purpose (what is it)? Is its purpose honorable or meaningful in a way that justifies it being in your home?

Does it make you think of something? Is that something pleasant?

How would you feel if it were no longer there?

Use these results to aid in decluttering. If decluttering isn’t possible at this time, use the results to limit contact with certain objects or beings that don’t bring joy.

Still struggling with the concept of reducing clutter and surrounding yourself with beauty? Grab my PRINTABLE REMINDER to aid in the process of eliminating that which doesn’t serve your highest self:

I surround myself with beautiful things

Standing with you as you move toward greater beauty,

As a coach, writer, recovered over-doer and busyness addict, I understand the challenges of creating a balanced, healthy lifestyle while the mind tries to sabotage your success. In my journey to vibrant health, I created a personalized health system of nutrition and supplementation, lifestyle changes, and I retrained my mind and the energy of my body. I view my success as the formula to my happy, healthy life. I now empower other women to create their own personalized formulas, including the tools and strategies just right for them! Amazing life shifts come from our relationships. I look forward to helping you, too!