Ask Others, Trust Yourself by Elisa Balabram

On June 25, 2015

Dance

During my childhood, if someone would have asked what I wanted to be, I would have said a ballerina. It wasn’t meant to be. It’s likely that even if I hadn’t experienced the negative feedback I did, as you will read in this article, I still wouldn’t have done it. I was five years old when I participated in a few dance performances, and the above pictures were taken.

A few years later, when a dance company opened a ballet studio three blocks from my parents' home, I signed up for their modern ballet yearly program. Every year, we would perform at the theater for family and friends, and I loved it. Towards the end of my third year, the teacher approached me and said that she was recommending that I repeated the year. I didn't say a word. I've always been shy and had no idea how to speak up for myself. What hurt the most was that, throughout the year, she never said anything about my performance or how I could have improved.

The Habitual Self-Talk – How to Shift It

On June 18, 2015

Self-Talk On Friday I attended another Paint Nite event. I wrote about my first experience here. I had planned to arrive 15 minutes early, but the 6:19pm bus I was going to take never came. The next bus arrived at 6:43pm and I ended up getting to the bar 12 minutes late. On my way there I was dealing with my feelings, trying not to cry and negotiating my options. I asked that I could mend time and arrive on time. When it became clearly impossible that it would happen, I asked that the instructor would start after I arrived.

I got there, and as soon as I gave my name to get a blank canvas, the instructor started the class. I didn’t miss a thing! I sat down and started painting with everyone else. I briefly thanked this miracle and moved on. I didn’t take time to breathe though, or to ground myself. Perhaps the painting would have been nicer if I had done so. It was a very humid evening, and I chose to have my hair in a ponytail and wear a headband. The painter’s assistant asked to take my picture while I was painting it and I said sure, even though I was self-conscious about my hair, and my smile was as fake as it can be, as I remained emotionally charged throughout the evening.

What comes first? How to move forward from stuckness and resistance into creativity and joy.

On May 18, 2015

What comes first?

What comes first? I’ve been thinking about these questions for the last couple of months, while dealing with being stuck:

The will to change or the change itself?
Happiness that leads to action or action that leads to happiness?
Despair or the unwillingness to do something about one’s current state?
Trust that things will be different or things actually turning out differently than expected lead to trust?
Procrastination or depression?
Healthy eating habits just because or thanks to a health scare?
Unstuckness by itself or the movement towards changing the status quo?
An unexpected insight or an openness to inspiration?
Do you get yourself stuck by not taking action or by taking action and failing? Or both? Or is stuckness related to lack of action or resistance to simply allowing?

What comes first?

A Blank Page – Allowing the Creative Mind to Flow with ease (or not)

On April 22, 2015

I haven’t posted anything in several weeks. It’s not that I haven’t written anything. I’ve worked on a few blogs, and wrote two full articles. The two articles I wrote and haven’t posted are: “I’m a writer” and a week later I wrote “Failure”. I wrote the article “I’m a writer” and explained why it’s been hard for me to say that. I also challenged myself at the end of the article, to introduce myself as a writer at a networking event I was attending that evening. I totally forgot about it, and introduced myself as a coach and lecturer. Perhaps that’s why I haven’t posted it, as I haven’t done what I said I would.

The other one called “Failure” I wrote because a campaign I ran with synchronized third party tweets, group sharing on Facebook, and other strategies to promote “Mending a Broken Heart: Lili’s Magic Journey” failed. In the article I included the definition of the word, and also how it feels. Then, there were a few dilemmas: which post do I share first? How can I post an article calling myself a writer, when a book promotion failed? Perhaps that’s the real reason why I haven’t posted either article.

The Sand Poem – Clearing Internal Pipes

On March 5, 2015

Sand Poem I spent a weekend in a healing workshop in Cape May. During the weekend, I was able to notice how I was experiencing it all. How at times I felt confused, while other times I felt as clear as ever. I also made a decision beforehand that I would find joy in the little things, and I took the time to enjoy the paintings around the house where we were staying, and to be present with the group.

On Saturday evening I saw a warning note on the bathroom door (this blog post’s image) that started with Sand… I thought the note was a poem about sand, and I decided to read it carefully, imagining I’d be inspired with a cool message, perhaps something like:

A Labor of Love

On February 15, 2015

heartraku Writing and publishing my new ebook has been quite an experience. I wrote the first draft not long after I experienced a heartbreak a few years ago. I wrote about the heartbreak here. Writing “Mending a Broken Heart: Lili’s Magic Journey” was a healing tool for myself.

I consider the ebook a labor of love, my way of going through my feelings, my way of making sense of what had happened, my way of potentially giving light to someone else who could be having similar experiences. Publishing it also had a deep meaning, the ability to transform something that once was so painful, into something that could become a source of inspiration for others to focus on self-love as they heal.

How to transform “dog poop” (or mind chatter) into a fertilizer for your business

On February 2, 2015

Dog Poop/Mind Chatter

I have been writing my dreams as soon as I wake up, and asking about the meaning of it, and one of them made me keep thinking of its meaning. The dream was of me going outside, and seeing that the top of my car was filled with dog poop. At first I thought: who could have done it and why? but soon I shifted into thinking what I could do about it. I got in the car, accelerated into a field, and then hit the brakes, so that the poop would fall, and go into the soil (this was a dream after all). The idea I had within the dream was that this way, the poop could be used as a fertilizer, and something good would come out of it. Then I proceeded to wash the car.

When I woke up, I wrote the dream, and the question: What does it mean? And the answer I got was clear and simple. Nobody had put the dog poop on my car; the poop was a symbol of my own stuff, a cloud of negative thoughts, fears, challenges, and the feeling of stuckness I had been caring; and the fact that I used it as a fertilizer showed my readiness to move forward.

How to Allow Miracles to Happen

On January 11, 2015

Sun1 On the last day of Hanukah I received three or more miracles.

The first one was a change to my flight back home. I bought the tickets with mileage, and I was scheduled to travel from New York to Cincinnati, to Miami and then to my hometown. A couple of weeks later American Airlines changed the flight, now I was going to Norfolk, Virginia Beach, then Miami, then my hometown. Because that happened, I thought: wouldn´t it be nice if the flight was changed again, and I would only have to travel from New York to Miami, instead of the extra stop? And the day before my trip, I received an email from them that the flight had indeed changed. Instead of having to leave my home at 11am, I could now leave at 3:30pm with plenty of time to catch my flight. It was a double blessing, as the final flight was delayed from that night to 8am the next morning.

Honoring the Creative Process