Posts Tagged ‘mental health’

A.J. Mahari, an author and Life Coach, talks about the importance of now and how each moment is like a raindrop. What is, is now. Goals and dreams are important but what is it that keeps people blocked from their goals and dreams in ways that take them out of the now?

Do you separate out your goals and dreams and your experience in the here-and-now of your life? This can be a major contributor to being blocked and/or feeling stuck. What you aren’t aware of, in the here-and-now, can help you so much in further understanding yourself in ways that can and will help you get unblocked and unstuck – into action – and be the catalyst that propels you forward into to taking necessary action-steps to achieve and realize your goals and dreams.

• Change Your Thoughts – Change Your Life – 19 Coaching Exercises – End Negative Thought Patterns
• Self Help for Change – Healing and Recovery
• Loneliness is a Teacher
• Beginner’s Guide To Yoga and Meditation
• Achieve Your Goals
• Law of Attraction – Thoughts Determine Destiny

© A.J. Mahari, July 14 2010 – All rights reserved.

 Email This Post

Author and Life Coach, A.J. Mahari, in her Life Coach Zen series of videos, asks the question, “Where is there?” Is there some “there” you are trying to get to that you think is the destination that once arrived at will make everything okay? Do  you think that what you are needing or wanting, desiring, and looking for is out “there” somewhere?

Will make you better? Will make you happier? Will mean you finding the place at which all your goals and dreams are realized?

• Change Your Thoughts – Change Your Life – 19 Coaching Exercises – End Negative Thought Patterns
• Self Help for Change – Healing and Recovery
• Loneliness is a Teacher
• Beginner’s Guide To Yoga and Meditation
• Achieve Your Goals
• Law of Attraction – Thoughts Determine Destiny

© A.J. Mahari, July 14, 2010 – All rights reserved.

 Email This Post

Acceptance is a very  significant measure of your experience in life. If you can radically accept what is, you will find less resistence to the flow of who you really are, from the inside out.

The degree to which you resist practicing acceptance, letting go of judgment, thinking negative thoughts or taking action on negative feelings, will be the mesaure of your unhappiness.

 Acceptance of what is right now, as it is, and simply because it is what is, is authentically empowering.

Radically accepting and surrendering to that which you do not have control over, awakening to that awareness, is the middle-way to the power of now.

© A.J. Mahari, July 13, 2010 – All rights reserved.

 Email This Post

I have a new radio show. I am looking for guests too if you’re intersted. The show is called Psyche Whisperer. In many ways that what I do. In many ways, that’s what people have called me. In a sense this goes deeper than my life coaching work, however, the journey that I have taken from the brokenness of my childhood to where I am today has in fact given me a very profound understanding of many aspects of the human psyche. I have been told by many who know me and many who have appreciated my work, over the years, that I am somewhat of a whisperer.

However, that’s that. It’s a meaningful title to me. I hope it will be a meaningful title to listeners. At first it may be somewhat confusing, I don’t know. Time will tell.

I believe that everyone has the potential to be a psyche whisperer of sorts when there is willingness, openness, and awareness. So much of everything we experience in life, so much of what we focus on in life, all, at some point or other, in some way or other, does have to do with our individual and collective psyches.  This makes any and all topics relevant to this show.

If you’d like to be a guest on my show please email me at psychewhisperer(at)yahoo.ca and tell me about yourself and what you’d like to talk about. Perhaps you’ve written a book. Perhaps you have an active blog. Maybe you offer an interesting service. Perhaps you’ve had an interesting journey in your life thus far.

This show will be fairly ecclectic. So, really, no topic is out of bounds. What shapes my individual psyche and your individual psyche plays a part in shaping what Jung termed the “collective psyche”. In that way, I see many different topics as being much more related than perhaps many people think at first glance.

© The Psyche Whisperer – A.J. Mahari July 6, 2010 – All rights reserved.

In all the world there is only one you. You unique and worthy. Unique because you are who you are, just as you are right now. You do not have to fit anyone else’s mold or expectation for you to be who you really are. The only person that you truly need to understand is yourself. From there profound understanding of others and life itself will flow. You are unique. Unique if you succeed. Unique when  you fail. Unique when you are happy. Unique when you are sad. You are unique. You are worthy.

© A.J. Mahari, June 24, 2010 – All rights reserved.

 Email This Post

Looking For Space is looking for self is knowing self love and self acceptance. You are the space that you are looking for. You are the space that you need to occupy with love. You are safety. You are divine. You are wisdom breathing in and out in the moment. So much, yet often experienced as not enough. You are enough. Seek for that safe, loving, and wise space inside. Looking for space is an inside job.

© A.J. Mahari, June 22, 2010 – All rights reserved.

Gratitude is a way of being. Gratitude is an action undertaken. Gratitude is a both a blessing given and a blessing recieved. Gratitude is a love-boom-a-rang. What you have and give, share and set free – what you give will come back.  An attitude of gratitude is cultivated and nurtured when you accept yourself and when you are truly grateful for every thought, feeling, and experience, mindfully without judgment. Gratitude isn’t just about what you deem to be wanted or good. Be thankful and grateful for everything. Gratitude is a humble self-nurturing and lovingkind attitude that is your love in action to self and outward to others. Gratitude is possibility. Gratitude is mindful. Gratitude teaches. Gratitude heals.

© A.J. Mahari, June 17, 2010 – All rights reserved.

 Email This Post

Many people might be wondering what life coaching is all about. You may be wondering, why would I want to work with a life coach? What would actually be the point of life coaching? Life coach A.J. Mahari talks about how life coaching can play a central role in many facets of people’s lives, self help, personal growth, self improvement, mental health and wellness. Life coaching helps people to gain more awareness about what they need and/or want to change in their lives to have more peace, balance, and happiness. Life coaching with A.J. Mahari is client-centered and based in humanistic positive psychology. It is a sacred process between coach and client.

A.J. stresses the importance of her role as a compassionate, supportive, and non-judgmental listener. Life coaching supports the client and validates the client’s experience and concerns. A.J. sees her role as being a touchstone for her client’s personal growth. She reflects back to each clients what she hears them saying. She gives feedback and is also an educator. Life coaching is about living an examined life and learning new tools and skills to help you live a more authentic life. Life coaching also supports the client’s quest to identify goals, map out strategy to achieve those goals.

If you are asking yourself, what is life coaching, and or why life coaching? This just might mean you are interested. That you see potential to gain valuable insight and awareness into the kind of change you need and want to introduce into your life to achieve your goals and dreams. Asking about what life coaching is and why life coaching is a great beginning to taking the next step. An action step. Booking a session and finding out how A.J.’s life coaching can be helpful to you.

Coaching Sessions

1 Session $80.00 2 Sessions $160.00 6 Sessions $450.00 10 Sessions $750.00

© A.J. Mahari and Touchstone Life Coaching, June 11, 2010 – All rights reserved.

 Email This Post

Life Coach A.J. Mahari invites you to think about any illusions you may be operating from in your life and to awaken from them. Do you have doubts about choices or decisions that you’ve made? Are you feeling stuck and trapped in situations, circumstances, or relationships, feeling victimized because perhaps you aren’t as aware as you will benefit from being about the fact that you have indeed made choices. Choices that maybe aren’t serving you well. Are you stuck with these choices? Do you want to remain attached to that illusion? Or do you want to awaken to a more authentic way of living your life?

You can set yourself free from illusions about love, illusions about your past, illusions based upon how others may have defined you. Illusions are the inauthentic stories that we tell ourselves based upon negative experience or negative perception of ourselves through the ideas, statements, and opinions of others. Are you aware of your illusions? Are you kidding yourself about something? Are you choosing to remain trapped in painful denial of something? Your authentic self awaits your setting it free from any and all of your illusions.

© A.J. Mahari, June 10, 2010 – All rights reserved.

 Email This Post

How You Relate To Yourself Affects How You Relate To Others

Relationships are complicated. Relationships are often thought of as being vehicles to meet needs, share things with others, and more importantly for so many people, to not be alone. Relationships are often thought of by many as being central to what defines them. What happens if your relationship is defining you, whether you have been aware of that or not, and then your relationships is chaotic or troubled and/or fails or ruptures? The answer to that question will hinge upon how well you know yourself – who  you are really are. It will also hinge upon the degree to which you know how to be there for yourself – to soothe yourself, be kind to yourself, and to nurture yourself.

How can you know and experience healthy love with and from someone else if it isn’t a part of how you relate to yourself first?

Before you can really successfully address relationships difficulties with others you will first benefit from understanding much more about yourself. What is the state of your relationship with and to yourself? This is an essential question to pose that many benefit from exploring in the life coaching process. Seeking to answer this question can help you to identify and clarify your goals. In life coaching, I help people to not only identify and clarify their goals but also to then do the work necessary in how they feel and think about themselves that will help them to not be trying to relate to others as a means of avoiding Self.

Coaching Sessions

1 Session $80.00 2 Sessions $160.00 6 Sessions $450.00 10 Sessions $750.00

The understanding of love so many live with can be more of an illusion than it is reality. This creates toxicity in many relationships. Fighting harder through discord and distress and often even abuse will not make healthy love become reality. Life coaching can help you to understand how to unravel the nature of the patterns of relating you have become involved with that leave you looking for love in all the wrong places.

Relating to others as a means of avoiding who you really are, or as a way of trying to have someone else meet you needs for you, or you meet needs for someone else, is at the heart of so much codependence. Codependence is a not a healthy relationship model. It is not a recipe for happiness or contentment. It is a breeding ground for anger, hurt, frustratation, pain, chaos and turmoil – not to mention distrust, alientation and getting stuck. Unhealthy relating that can become toxic tears away at the fibre or who you really are. People lose themselves more and more to these relational dynamics.

• How To Identify a Toxic Relationship
• Break Free of the BPD Maze – Recovery For Non Borderlines
• Dilemma on The Other Side of BPD – Overcoming Denial about BPD and Love – Loved Ones of BPD
• Inside The Borderline Mind For Loved Ones of BPD
• Loneliness Is a Teacher
• Change Your Thoughts – Change Your Life
• Thoughts Determine Your Destiny
• Achieve Your Goals
• Beginner’s Guide To Yoga and Meditation

I life coach many people who, in the process of our work together, find their way out of this maze of trying to be filled up, understood, and/or validated by other people. I also work with many who are the person trying to fill up, validate, or understand the illogical in trying to meet needs for others that they need to meet for themselves.

This relational dynamic - this way of relating does not make room for healthy love. The fact that the struggle and the issues may feel familiar often gives people an illusion of being loved or of loving.

Can you relate to this? If so, do you want to free yourself from this painful way of  relating and having relationships? Do you want to be able to love yourself and meet your own needs? If you can relate to this and you are answering yes to these questions I hope you will purchase life coaching sessions with me so that I can support you in learning more about the lessons that relationships are trying to teach you and the many reasons why you haven’t been able, thus far, to find the relational peace and happiness you really want.

© A.J. Mahari, June 5, 2010 – All rights reserved.

 Email This Post

A.J. Mahari is a Life Coach who also understands that strategy is important to the client’s work. Developing strategy is part of the journey between the client and the coach as the client searches to identify what he or she needs. This means that as part of the coaching process I assist you in not only identifying your needs, goals, desires, and your dreams, but I also help you to plan a personal strategy that will work for you as the individual that you are. Strategy that works for you, that feels natural for you, that has meaning to and for you and that can help you to implement and design your strategy going forward.

In the life coaching process it can be very important to work with a coach, like A.J. Mahari, who is very skilled in the reality that change takes strategy to identify, implement, and support. Strategy involves the action steps that will drive your process of self-improvement, personal growth, coping more effectively, change, and/or recovery, moving forward.

“Water is never tired of flowing” You need not tire of growing. Believe in yourself and in what you know you want/need to change. Strategy is but one method of learning skills and of learning to use your strengths as tools to help you unblock yourself, and like water, that’s never tired of flowing, navigate your way effectively around the rock-like obstacles that are blocking you at this juncture of your journey.

For some clients it will take a little more time to awaken to actually strategizing – to be ready to do the work necessary to actually map out strategy. Some people really need to further explore where they are right now gaining more insight and awareness in the here and now. Your first action step is to purchase a coaching session. From there we can explore your next steps together.

Life coaching supports the client’s self-affirming strategy while also mirroring back to the client any negative or self-destructive and goal-blocking patterns, habits, ways of thinking that block the client’s ability to more clearly and productively implement an effective strategy to meet his or her goals.

© A.J. Mahari – All rights reserved.

 Email This Post

A.J. Mahari firmly believes that Life Coaching supports the client. The client is at the heart of this process. The journey is the client’s. Life coaching is the process through which, in relationship to one another, the life coach walks along your path, for a time, on a part of your sacred journey. It is a sharing. It is support. It is guidance and feedback. Life coaching is a very supportive process that provides a safe place for clients to explore a better or clearer understanding of self and a getting to know you they really are at a deeper and more meaningful and authentic level.

In my Life Coaching practice, support involves active listening. I offer compassionate and patient support. Support also involves asking questions that can help you to gain new perspective that can increase your awareness, give you food for thought, and help you to continue to cope with and/or understand what you are concerned about.

Support as it center, respect and a non-judgmental lovingkindness that is given freely to each client in a validating and understanding way. Support is crucial to the process of life coaching because validating the experience of the client is of utmost importance.

There are many different tools and techniques that employ in coaching clients. I do not try to apply a one-size fits all approach. I have a very ecclectic approach that supports the journey of each and every client for the individual person that you are. Some people are working to address what is blocking success or blocking recovery. Others are interested in transformative change, which is a process – getting from where you are right now to identifying and mapping out strategy to support your personal growth toward the achievement of your goals, needs, desires, and/or dreams.

Others are working to cope with personal circumstances and challenges in ways that can support their moving forward and feeling empowered.

Support is first and foremost about acceptance. As a life coach I meet and accept each client where he or she is and for who he or she is regardless of some of the difficult and painful things people need to talk about. I do not change my opinion of a client and my support does not waiver based on what is shared. My philosophy of life coaching means that my support and unconditional acceptance of the client is given freely and consistently. Each client needs to know that I am not going to judge what they have to say. I am not going to judge choices or decisions made.

In my life coaching practice, as a touchstone, involved in helping people to educate themselves more about what they need and how to meet those needs (or goals) I believe that mirroring acceptance not only provides safety but it also provides a positive psychology-based perspective to help the client re-frame any negative core beliefs, negative thoughts, self-destructive and/or self-critical behaviour and attitudes toward self that may well be important to understand in terms of what often blocks you from attaining your goals.

Support is central to life coaching. Life coaching is not about me, as your life coach, telling you what you need or what you should do. It is up to each client to find that out, and to define that and make his or her own choices. Life coaching is not about giving you answers. It’s about hearing you, supporting you, validating you and helping you to ask the questions that can help you to find your own answers and your own way forward.

© A.J. Mahari – All rights reserved.

 Email This Post

Life Coach, A.J. Mahari, works with clients who want and/or need to gain the tools and learn to the skills necessary to build and sustain emotional mastery. Core beliefs play a very important role in whether or not you can achieve emotional mastery. In the process of mastering your emotions it is important to be aware of what you are thinking. What you are thinking directly effects what you will be feeling.

For so many people who experience emotional pain, emotional chaos, emotional dysregulation, and so forth, it is not easy, or sometimes even possible to let go of what are negative and intrusive thoughts.

Thoughts that contribute to your feeling stuck re-experiencing emotions in ways that can leave you feeling anything from off-balance to very polarized and extreme emotions that cause suffering and that aren’t easily dealt with. These feelings are most often negative and stressful.

Negative and stressful emotions that can leave you feeling out of control or questioning whether or not you can trust yourself, your decisions, or your choices can often be the result of negative unresolved core beliefs. Core beliefs can often be hidden in your subconscious. This is why unearthing these core beliefs is an important part of learning to master your emotions.

Core beliefs are at the very center of what you think about yourself. Core beliefs are the foundation from which you experience your emotions. Core beliefs are also at the heart of how you experience others. How you view yourself, others, and your future.

Core beliefs are rigid, and strongly-held beliefs that are inflexible, absolute, and very polarized – very black and white. Core beliefs cause you to have a much more narrow experience of your emotions – often negative emotions. They also need to be understood and changed from within you if you are going to change the way that you interact and perhaps over-react to stressors or other people.

Your core beliefs effect that way that you think. The way that you think – what you think about – effects how you feel. If you are not aware of your core beliefs it can be difficult, if not impossible to understand your emotions. Identifying core beliefs the thought patterns that they perpetuate will help you to begin or continue the process of learning the skills necessary to practice and achieve emotional mastery.

© A.J. Mahari, December 20, 2009 – All rights reserved

Mental Health Coaching Services

Mental Health Coaching is a more specialized niche within over-all Life Coaching. A.J. Mahari has been working in this area of coaching for many years now. Her expertize comes from her own life challenges and experience, as well as some College and University education. A.J. is not a mental health professional, hwoever. A.J. is an excellent, compassionate, and validating listener. She provides her clients with support, information, feedback, well-informed questions, and helps clients to identify goals and strategize to meet those goals. Often for those with any form or type of mental illness, even where recovery is possible, the over-all framework of mental health coaching is one that stresses coping and education about the client’s mental illness and empowering the client to make choices that can produce positive change in their quality of life and ability to cope.

You may benefit from A.J. Mahari’s Mental Health Coaching if you feel out of balance in your emotional and/or relational life. Talking things over with A.J. can help you to clarify what you want and need in your life and what you can do to empower yourself toward identifying, meeting, and accomplishing those goals. Perhaps you aren’t happy in a current relationship and you want to get clarity. Perhaps you have identified some pattern in your relationships that is blocking you from living a more balanced, peaceful, and happy life. Maybe you want to become more interdependent. Many people are involved in relating in ways that are codependent and resultingly very painful and they don’t often realize this. Perhaps you still need to discover more about who you really are.

A.J. Mahari is an advocate for helping others to help and empower themselves by fostering and nurturing the liberation of each client’s authentic inner self. It is important to identify the path of change for each individual that is the way toward choosing and creating the change that they hunger for. It is the change that will further reveal each individual’s own personal path of ever-increasing authenticity. Change is a constant in life. We are always learning, growing, healing, and changing. Developing a personal style of mastery with one’s own change is not only a way to recover, heal, or grow, but it is the sacred path of spiritual change. It is the path upon which each soul seeks to leave its footprint in the ever-shifting sands of authentic self-actualization.

A.J. also works extensively with many clients with mental health challenges. Mental health coaching involves support for those diagnosed with a mental illness and/or their loved ones and actively involves exploring and identifying coping strategies. With an emphasis on the client finding his or her way forward in life through identifying goals, planning appropriate and needed action, and then supporting each client in following through on planned exercises and strategies to attain his or her goals. I support the client’s own determined choice and making of decisions that are the foundation of needed and/or desired change in coping, functioning, and living.

Each individual client I coach determines the pace and style of his or her own coaching process and experience. I offer mental health coaching services that are relevant for people with very different life experiences and mental health needs.

As a life coach I provide a caring, compassionate, safe, confidential, non judgemental, validating and supportive relationship within which clients can feel empowered to explore their present-day needs. I essentially act as a human mirror for my clients. I share with my clients an outside and unbiased perspective as to what I observe in listening to their feelings, experiences, and concerns.

 © Touchstone Life Coaching Services and A.J. Mahari 2002-2010 – All rights reserved.

 Email This Post