May 17, 2010 | 2:57 pm

Who Will You Choose to Be?

Posted by Misha Henckel

Follow me on

Interesting times, these. I’m finding that we are, most of us, in some state of transition. And we are having to get very comfortable with not knowing. It’s not easy having to deal with so much uncertainty. But we must adapt. 

For centuries, we have been programmed to take control of our lives by planning, working hard, and doing everything we can to safeguard ourselves from future challenges. Of course, life never works out the way we plan it. And while dedication and focus are key components to success, truly skillful living has always required a goodly amount of capacity for SURRENDER. And by that I mean, the ability to LET GO of control and allow the best outcome to emerge. In today’s world this is not something we can avoid practicing. In fact, for our lives to work these days, we need to quickly master this. And that means learning how to be PRESENT, accepting what IS, and trusting that we are safe and secure and that life will work out, even when we don’t know how. 

While on the one hand we need to LET GO, on the other, we need to HOLD ON. We need to hold on to what is highest and truest within us: to a deep belief in ourselves and our capacity to transcend any challenge, to our talents and gifts and our inherent value, to the practice of kindness, understanding and love, to the discovery and fulfillment of our higher purpose, and to the awareness of the spark of light in ourselves and in everyone we meet.

That’s a lot to hold on to ...

The world around us continues to morph, but perhaps we can let go of trying to control it, and instead focus on the things we can control - becoming and being the kind of person that we truly want to be.

Email me with your questions misha@mishahenckel.com and I’ll be happy to respond. Answers will be anonymously posted to the blog.

0 Comments — Leave your comment

Share this post: del.icio.us Digg Facebook Google Reddit StumbleUpon Technorati YahooMyWeb

March 30, 2010 | 10:44 pm

Choosing Happiness

Posted by Misha Henckel

As Americans we are quite ingrained with the notion of the pursuit of Happiness. It is part of our cultural DNA.  And why ever not? After all, it is enshrined in our Declaration of Independence as an unalienable right. And so, as good upstanding citizens, we spend most of our lives in said pursuit of Happiness. Until one fine day, when, if we’re lucky, we finally wake up to the realization that if Happiness is pursued, it only eludes us - somehow keeping just ahead, always beyond our fingertips, barely, but perpetually, out of reach. If we’re lucky, we wake up… We wake up, and we find out that Happiness is as simple as a choice. And it is simply a choice.  One can choose Happiness or not. Our circumstances do not create the Happiness, we do.

A dear friend of mine recently made the Happiness choice, and once she did, an entire realm of possibilities, ones that she had never before seen, opened up for her. Those possibilities were always there, but she could not see them until she chose to experience her life differently. She’s now awakened to the understanding that her life is what she chooses it to be, in the smallest of ways…, and in the biggest of ways.

We can have Happiness (and Peace, Joy, Love, and Fulfillment) not by chasing after it, nor by denying its possibility. We can have Happiness when we are ready to choose it. And that is our unalienable right.

Misha works with a select group of clients and leads seminars and workshops in the Los Angeles area. She can be reached via email at misha@mishahenckel.com.

1 Comments — Leave your comment

February 3, 2010 | 12:53 am

Taking Matters Into Our Own Hands

Posted by Misha Henckel

President Obama gave a most fitting State of the Union Address last week. I did not get to see it, but I listened to him on my car radio as I drove to pick up my son from basketball practice. I was delighted. He faced the issues squarely, and responded comprehensively. He clearly outlined the steps required to turn our economy around and explained why certain unpopular actions were necessary. All in all, it was a first class address to the nation and just what we needed to hear.

It is always so critical to have leadership that echoes the hopes and wants of the People. When our leaders can voice what is in our minds and hearts, compelling opportunities for new possibilities can emerge.

But… President Obama said, “I cannot do it alone.”

For me, this was one of his most significant statements, Wednesday night.

While Obama can begin to hold the forces of corporate greed and power at bay, it is up to the rest of us to step up and fill the void. We are the ones who will create the future of America – the new America, not Wall Street, General Electric, Warren Buffett, or the real estate market.

I think we know, by now, that things are not just going to right themselves, and there is no going back to what they were. No… We have to move forward, and to do that, we must take matters into our own hands. We must create the new industries, the new businesses, and the new sources of funding that are needed. We must claim our power to do what is necessary to make our economy and our country work the way we want it to.

How?

We have to come together, identify a problem or need, and pool our minds, hearts, and resources to create the solutions.

I believe that one of the main obstacles to us getting on track and moving forward is the ingrained attitude of competition, the keeping up with the Joneses, and the practice of making ourselves feel okay about ourselves by proving that we’re better than our neighbors. The days when that sort of thinking had any place in our society, are over. A good dose of humanity and humility would help us to understand that we’re all in the same boat, here. And we have to come together to figure the way out.

One of the positives that is emerging from the tragedy in Haiti is that more and more people have opened their hearts to their fellow human beings and are learning that we not separate – we are one humanity. Whatever plagues another is also our problem, and we must reach out and help.

A similar approach is necessary here at home, as we seek to rise up from the economic downfall, or as I prefer to say, as we create a new economy, one that will rise out of the ashes of the old.

These are exciting times, when courage, bold action, and real social and economic innovation become the groundwork for the cultural evolution required for us to move ahead.

If you are facing some particular obstacle or challenge for which you cannot find the solution, do not hang your head in despair, or just sit hoping that the answer will come, or give up altogether. Perhaps you need to innovate – create an entirely new solution, something that’s never quite been done before. Necessity is the mother of invention and innovation, but for us to create new solutions, we must first stop waiting for someone else to fix the problem. We must take matters into our own hands.

Misha works with a select group of clients and leads seminars and workshops in the Los Angeles area. She can be reached via email at misha@mishahenckel.com.

2 Comments — Leave your comment

January 6, 2010 | 1:43 pm

A New Year. A New Decade. New Possibilities…

Posted by Misha Henckel

We’ve come to the end of a year, and of a decade. What a decade it’s been, and what a year was 2009! I’ve been spending time looking back and then looking forward. And I’ve been contemplating what I’ve learnt in the last 10 years, lessons, that last year really brought home. I’m not sure if 2010 will bring any less uncertainty than 2009, but I feel quite confident that if it is as challengeful as last year then we may have been well prepared.

For what has the decade taught us? And what did last year require from us?

I believe we’ve been learning how to handle intense degrees of change. We’ve been adjusting to a coming new way of life on this planet. We’ve been learning how to live in the present moment, how to come from our hearts and not our heads. We’ve been having to re-evaluate what is important in our lives and become far more authentic beings. We’ve been learning to take our power back from wherever it was lost, and from whomever we gave it away to. And we’ve been learning to be truer versions of ourselves. We’ve been learning the value of community, and that cooperation and not competition is the way forward.

If we practice what we’ve learnt, then I believe we will be ready to respond to whatever this year may bring.

I’m not into resolutions, because they never seem to stick around past February, but powerful intentions are always powerful.

Some of my intentions for 2010:

1. Do all things with love and from my heart

2. Embrace the perfection in all that life presents, especially when it seems most imperfect

3. Bring joy to each moment

4. Share of myself with others in the truest way

5. Create a new life based on my new understandings

I really believe that for all of us, as we clear out the old ways of thinking, we will find that there is room for us to create a new life, a better life, a more fulfilling life. And it doesn’t matter our age, for our souls are timeless. Each moment is a new moment and we can choose to live it with love, and joy, and peace.

May each one of us have a year filled with timeless blessings!

Misha works with a select group of clients and leads seminars and workshops in the Los Angeles area. She can be reached via email at misha@mishahenckel.com .

0 Comments — Leave your comment

October 20, 2009 | 1:19 am

What Really Matters

Posted by Misha Henckel

Misha Henckel is a Los Angeles-based personal and executive life coach. Her executive clients are generally leaders of entertainment and media companies who are focused on re-inventing themselves and re-envisioning their organizations. She is founder of Life Mastery Circles, a workshop series for women, and is co-founding a new organization for empowering and developing women leaders. She can be reached at www.mishahenckel.com or .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).

This past year, I’ve attended my fair share of funerals – two, this past week alone. Quite unusual for me. I remember losing my paternal grandparents within six months of each other, back when I was nine, but until recently, this has been a new kind of experience for me.

I am a big cry baby – I cry at the drop of a hat – in the movie theatre, listening to a song in my car, or even watching the news. My kids are sick of me. But I can’t help it. What “gets” me, is deep human feeling. Pain, love, sadness, joy, just hook me in the heart.

You might think then, at funerals I would be one wet, sappy, mess. But truth is, I only, occasionally, cry at funerals, and it’s never for the great things someone has accomplished (I know I’m not alone here) – how many buildings they built, how tireless an activist they were, or how many lives they saved. It’s always when their true loved one is speaking about them. Isn’t it?  A son about his father, a wife about her husband, a friend about a dear friend, it’s about – love and true connection, patience and understanding, unconditional acceptance, true friendship and loyalty.

While it is undoubtedly important that we accomplish the big things in life (our souls, after all, may simply be driven in a particular way) I feel there is something of deep significance here.

Listening to a eulogy, it can become clear. There is the idea of our life – what we believe we are doing, what we intend to be doing, what we would like to be doing; and then there is the reality – what we really are doing, and what we are in fact creating. And it seems to me that we spend so much time absorbed with the “idea”, we are often blinded to the “fact.”

When we live, we create an energetic imprint (of whatever degree) on the world and on those whose lives we touch. The deepest imprint, naturally, is made on those truly close to us. The people closest to us (in physical proximity and in spirit) experience us as we really are. They feel the energy we carry, from moment to moment; they are intimately acquainted with our choices of emotion, the habit-patterns we inhabit, and the sides of ourselves that we hesitate to share with our wider circles.

Sitting in the chapel at Hillside Memorial this Sunday, I was pondering: What imprint am I really making on those I care about? How can I actually be a force for good in the lives of those closest to me? What does true love (versus the usual conditional sort) look like from day to day? How does one unconditionally accept another? And what about loyalty, what is true loyalty?

How do I ensure that my life does mean good things to those that I love? Being all things to all people is neither possible nor desirable. Then what is the answer? It’s not about pleasing others to make them happy, that can have most destructive consequences to both parties. It’s not about spending one’s time looking for ways to “help” the people you love. You’d likely drive them crazy or drive them away. 

I concluded, that I must first be true to myself, loyal to myself, loving to myself (when I say self I mean higher self). Only then, would I be able to bring those qualities to others. Why? Because love, acceptance, and loyalty are, first, and fundamentally, energy. For the quality to be real for others it has to come from within me. For the quality to be within me, it has to be the way that I am already (to some meaningful degree) treating myself. When we really love ourselves (who we really are in our essence) we can and will love others. If we do not love ourselves, we are not equipped with the love we need to “love” another. If we are not accepting of ourselves (faults, weaknesses and all) we cannot really be accepting of another. Similarly, if we are not loyal to ourselves, we cannot be loyal to another.

The way I want to treat others, I must first treat myself. Duh! Like fundamental law of the Universe. And it so goes against the grain of how we’ve been trained.

Remarkable, the things you can learn at a funeral…

Email me with your questions .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)and I’ll be happy to respond. Answers will be anonymously posted to the blog.

0 Comments — Leave your comment

September 1, 2009 | 3:47 pm

It’s Been a While…

Posted by Misha Henckel

Misha Henckel is a Los Angeles-based personal and executive life coach. Her executive clients are generally leaders of entertainment and media companies who are focused on re-inventing themselves and re-envisioning their organizations. She is founder of Life Mastery Circles, a workshop series for women, and is co-founding a new organization for empowering and developing women leaders. She can be reached at www.mishahenckel.com or .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).

Reinventing oneself is certainly what I have been recommending to everyone these days, and no one is exempt. If you haven’t heard from me in a while, that’s what I’ve been up to. I’ve been in some degree of seclusion, most of the summer - reconfiguring myself, my Work, and my brand for these changing times – and working on a book.

It’s challenging work, “updating” oneself: you have to examine your beliefs – your beliefs about yourself, others, and life; you have to go deep within, past all the noise of the mind and the tides of feelings; and you must connect with your soul. You have to spend time examining what is true for your soul, and then re-envisioning your life from that place of inner-centeredness. And then – you must be willing to ACT on what you discover to be really true for you. This may be quite different to what you’ve been doing. And ACTING on what is true for you, may mean letting go of beliefs, habits, lifestyles, or your modus operandi. It may mean giving up relationships that no longer work or creating healthier versions of those relationships, if that is possible. It may mean changing your Work, “how” you work, or with whom you work.

Central to a successful reinvention of self is the understanding that no matter who you are, YOU are, and will always be the most important person in your life – and you must treat yourself as such. (If you have any qualms about this, remember that the greatest gift you can give your loved ones is the best version of yourself. And the greatest support you can offer a loved one is to allow them the freedom to be the best version of themselves.)

The “changing times” continue and the sooner we get to the deep personal updating that we all need to do, the sooner we will find our true footing and be able to shape our lives the way we want them.

Email me with your questions .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)and I’ll be happy to respond. Answers will be anonymously posted to the blog.

3 Comments — Leave your comment

August 28, 2009 | 12:12 pm

A New Life

Posted by Misha Henckel

Misha Henckel is a Los Angeles-based personal and executive life coach. Her executive clients are generally leaders of entertainment and media companies who are focused on re-inventing themselves and re-envisioning their organizations. She is founder of Life Mastery Circles, a workshop series for women, and is co-founding a new organization for empowering and developing women leaders. She can be reached at www.mishahenckel.com or .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).

A few days ago, in a parking lot, I ran into friend that I hadn’t seen in quite a few months. She stopped her car, got out and raced over to give me a big hug. Her eyes were shining, her smile was radiant, and she exuded joy and self-confidence.

“I did it! ” she exclaimed.

“What are you talking about?” My eyes were wide with surprise and wonder. She seemed like an entirely new woman.

“I finally ended it,” she said, referring to a most unfulfilling marriage that she had been struggling with for several years. “I’m getting a divorce.”

My eyes opened wider. I could not believe it. “Wow! What made you finally do it?”

“I don’t know exactly. I just got up one morning, and that was it. I knew inside of me, that I couldn’t settle for that any longer. It was wrong for me, and I just couldn’t keep doing that to myself. Nothing in particular triggered the divorce, things just added up to the point where I couldn’t do it anymore. I only wish I hadn’t waited this long…”

“That’s okay. What matters is that you did it. You finally honored yourself. That was the lesson. You were learning to value yourself, to honor yourself, you were learning that your needs were as significant as anyone else’s.”

“Yes,” she said. “I did! And now I have a new life.” She was smiling from ear to ear, her absolute joy, unquestionable.

Meanwhile, on the other side of town, another friend I have been having regular conversations with, describes her life as having come to an end. She’s not yet 50, in perfect health, is still living in the same lovely home, married to the same man. And she’s as much the genius as she ever was. In speaking with her, it was clear that her perfect “Ivy League, Wall Street, let’s travel the world and do it all” life, had indeed come to an end. The ideas, beliefs, the identity that had driven her for almost fifty years had been abruptly swept away, along with the crashing global financial system. 

“I need a new life,” she says. “I need a life where I am at one with the Universe.”

Amazing woman! She’s absolutely right. Instead of wallowing in self pity, or holding on to the past, she’s busy clearing away any vestiges of her old self, internally and externally. As she clears away the old, she is making way for her new life, this time, one that is based on her true self - a new life, where she is living at one with the Universe.

Yet another friend, a partner at a major law firm, contacted me recently. Everything was great in her life: wonderful family, super-successful practice, great health. No crisis here, but she said, “I’m always doing and never being. My entire life is about getting to the next thing… I want to be able to stop and smell the roses. I want to live in the moment. I want a new life.”

I envy those remarkable people that can sense change coming and get on the right side before the crisis hits. She is certainly one of those. And now, she’s learning how to not just be a great doer, now she’s learning how to be. This increased capacity to be, will allow her to create that new life, one where she can enjoy the roses, and use her many talents to help shape a new world.

I could tell scores of stories of people, who, in facing the immense changes that our world is presenting us, are seeking a new life. We are all sensing that the answers, at this time of unprecedented change, lie not in the past, not in the old, nor in what’s been done.  There is no history book that we can refer to, no economic text, no psychological treatise. This unprecedented change requires an unprecedented response. It requires us to become new people, open to creating new lives for ourselves and a new world for us all.

What on earth am I talking about?

It is time for us to give up a heck of a whole lot of the ways we have been living. We need to change many of the goals we have been working towards, and bring in a new set of ideals to shape our lives. So much of our existence has been based on fear and limitation. It’s time for us to choose to come from a higher place within ourselves. We must tap into our True Selves and begin to live from there. And I’ll tell you why we must: because nothing else is going to work. There’s no way out of this but upward!

It’s human nature that we do not change until we absolutely must. Now we have the perfect opportunity. Let’s open our hearts and embrace our new life!

Email me with your questions and I will be happy to respond. Answers will be anonymously posted to the blog.

0 Comments — Leave your comment

July 13, 2009 | 3:07 pm

What’s Holding You Back?

Posted by Misha Henckel

Misha Henckel is a Los Angeles-based personal and executive life coach. Her executive clients are generally leaders of entertainment and media companies who are focused on re-inventing themselves and re-envisioning their organizations. She is founder of Life Mastery Circles, a workshop series for women, and is co-founding a new organization for empowering and developing women leaders. She can be reached at www.mishahenckel.com or .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).

We are inclined to believe that our dreams far exceed what we can actually achieve. In fact, we’ve been trained to expect and plan for the worst. As children, our eyes sparkled with wonderment at the great possibilities that lay before us, until that was slowly whittled away by the forces that be.

What I’ve found is that we shoot for far less than what we are capable of. We are afraid of ourselves, of who we really are. And so we spend our lives avoiding, deleting, or misinterpreting the promptings of our hearts. To do that is very human. We are afraid of greatness, of stepping beyond the confines of “normal” and of shining brilliantly. It is rather scary to be great… great at anything.

The exciting thing about these turbulent days is that with everything quite upside-down, it’s become the safest of times to step out of our boxes and follow those long-denied promptings of our heart of hearts. So why not give it go?

Email me with your questions .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)and I’ll be happy to respond. Answers will be anonymously posted to the blog.

1 Comments — Leave your comment

July 9, 2009 | 12:44 am

Tragedy(?) and the Way Through

Posted by Misha Henckel

Misha Henckel is a Los Angeles-based personal and executive life coach. Her executive clients are generally leaders of entertainment and media companies who are focused on re-inventing themselves and re-envisioning their organizations. She is founder of Life Mastery Circles, a workshop series for women, and is co-founding a new organization for empowering and developing women leaders. She can be reached at www.mishahenckel.com or .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).

It’s certainly been a remarkable past several days; the news has been filled with death, infidelity, political uprising or tragedy of one form or the other. When you think of it, things have been “falling apart” for a while now – it’s just intensified in the last few weeks. In my work, I’m encountering more and more people who’re finding that their “old” lives have come to an end. They’ve lost their job, their significant relationship has come to an end, or they are dealing with some major health or financial concern. Unquestionably, these are challenging and confusing times, with many of us living out what, in the past, would have shown up only in the realm of our nightmares.

So what do you do when it seems that your fears have become your reality?

You breathe. You breathe some more. And then you breathe deeper. You claim the inner strength and courage to stay true to what is highest within you. You must open your heart for help, and seek out those who can be of truest guidance.

We must never forget, no matter what we face personally or collectively, that there is always a way through. We may need to open our minds considerably, give up some (or many) of the beliefs that we have rigidly held onto, and change our habit-patterns. But if we are willing, the way will show up. It always does… Truth is, as we eventually come to know, our fears have a way of coloring things and making them much worse than they really are. Focusing on the many blessings and gifts that life is offering us, can often quickly get us out of the seeming tragedy and into the joy.

Email me with your questions and I will be happy to respond. Answers will be anonymously posted to the blog.

0 Comments — Leave your comment

June 29, 2009 | 9:02 pm

Crime and Punishment (a different take on the Madoff scandal)

Posted by Misha Henckel

Misha Henckel is a Los Angeles-based personal and executive life coach. Her executive clients are generally leaders of entertainment and media companies who are focused on re-inventing themselves and re-envisioning their organizations. She is founder of Life Mastery Circles, a workshop series for women, and is co-founding a new organization for empowering and developing women leaders. She can be reached at www.mishahenckel.com or .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).

It’s the topic du jour: Bernie Madoff sentenced to 150 years in prison. Whoop dee doo! Sure he will suffer and the prosecutors would have made their strong statement, but in my view, little else has been accomplished. Unquestionably, Madoff did a most terrible thing. But was he the only culpable party? The SEC continues to be perfect in their own eyes, and none of the “victims” want to take any meaningful responsibility for their part in being ripped-off. Yes, as a society, it is most convenient for us to blame it all on Bernie. But if we do not address the real source of the problem, it will happen again.

Many, many people participated in building the myth of Bernie Madoff. For years, he was practically a god in the financial world. No one, it seemed, questioned him. With people willingly handing over their personal power, i.e., their capacity to evaluate the validity of something, their ability to gauge the integrity of someone, their judgment - Madoff was able to do whatever he wanted to do with their money. And that, right there, is the core of the problem. The “victims” made themselves into victims. Seems so harsh to say, but we gotta deal with the truth here, otherwise, nothing will change.

Of course when everyone is doing it, it’s easier to lose one’s head and go along with the herd. The Madoff scheme is a glaring example of how we can completely lose sight of reality and just buy into whatever seems to be the thing to do. Not unlike Bush, Congress and the WMDs. Isn’t it time for us as a society to wake up and really see what’s in front of us? Isn’t it time for us to step out of the mythology that we seem so enmeshed in, and deal with reality?

Our personal power is meant to be kept and utilized, by us, as a force in our day to day lives. It’s not for giving away to anyone else. Whether they run Wall Street, the White House, or our synagogue, it matters naught. - We must blindly follow no one. Our capacity to reason, our intuition, our judgment is meant to be used by each of us to shape lives that really work for us.

In today’s rapidly morphing world, we dearly need our capacity to discern truth from untruth, right from wrong, and light from darkness. Handing that power over to anyone else is nothing short of suicidal.

No one can do for you or me what we must do for ourselves. We need to remove the veils of fear that conspire to keep us trapped in a herd mentality. And we must open our minds, our hearts, and our eyes, so that we can choose the best course of action in every area of our lives.

Email me with your questions and I will be happy to respond. Answers will be anonymously posted to the blog.

2 Comments — Leave your comment

June 26, 2009 | 8:49 am

Death and Life

Posted by Misha Henckel

Misha Henckel is a Los Angeles-based personal and executive life coach. Her executive clients are generally leaders of entertainment and media companies who are focused on re-inventing themselves and re-envisioning their organizations. She is founder of Life Mastery Circles, a workshop series for women, and is co-founding a new organization for empowering and developing women leaders. She can be reached at www.mishahenckel.com or .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).

Yesterday certainly brought shock to our collective consciousness. Fifty is far too young an age for anyone to die. And as maligned as Michael was in this last decade, with his passing we are certainly seeing just how much he impacted the lives of others. More than anything, though, we are shocked that he would leave so abruptly. While I myself still cannot believe it, I know there is a message here for all of us.

We live so much of the time, stuck in our heads, stymied by frustration, and paralyzed with fear. Useless emotions, they serve no purpose but cause our lives to shrivel into bitter nothingness. We can spend hour after hour, day after day, month after month in the vice-grip of these dark places within ourselves. OR, we can choose to open our arms wide, rip off the protective coverings on our hearts, and embrace life and all that it brings. We can choose to suffer through life, or to delight in each moment. Life is meant to be lived with our whole heart and our whole soul. Anything short of that is not worth it.

Today - Live. Feel. Surrender to the fullness of each breath.

Email me with your questions and I will be happy to respond. Answers will be anonymously posted to the blog.

0 Comments — Leave your comment

June 22, 2009 | 12:39 pm

Now… What Does A Life Coach Actually Do?

Posted by Misha Henckel

Misha Henckel is a Los Angeles-based personal and executive life coach. Her executive clients are generally leaders of entertainment and media companies who are focused on re-inventing themselves and re-envisioning their organizations. She is founder of Life Mastery Circles, a workshop series for women, and is co-founding a new organization for empowering and developing women leaders. She can be reached at www.mishahenckel.com or .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).

“So, what does a life coach actually do?”

It’s a question I get all the time.

“I work with people to become more whole, to bring the conflicting parts of themselves into alignment, so that they can fulfill their potential.” (Well, that’s one way of putting it.)

“Okay, but what does that mean?”

“How does it actually work?”

“Is that like a therapist?”

So much of what I do is “new stuff,” not yet in the mainstream and still to be backed up by science, that it is always a huge gift when someone from that world steps up and brings their perspective. Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor, a neuroanatomist is one of those. Her remarkable story describes life as we experience it, from the two very different parts of our brain – left and right hemispheres.

We have been trained to function almost exclusively from our left brain – to be logical, analytical, and “separate,” living in the past and in the future. Much of my work is to help people retrain themselves to include the right brain experience – to be inclusive, joyful, peaceful, loving and present. More and more, we are recognizing that success and fulfillment in today’s world requires a heck of a lot more right brain than left. Go to http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/jill_bolte_taylor_s_powerful_stroke_of_insight.html for Dr. Bolte Taylor’s Stroke of Insight and find out what’s possible.

Are you ready for a new kind of success? Email me with your questions .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) and I will be happy to respond. Answers will be anonymously posted to the blog.

1 Comments — Leave your comment

June 11, 2009 | 11:31 am

Reinventing Yourself? It’s Time to Come Out of the Closet.

Posted by Misha Henckel

Misha Henckel is a Los Angeles-based personal and executive life coach. Her executive clients are generally leaders of entertainment and media companies who are focused on re-inventing themselves and re-envisioning their organizations. She is founder of Life Mastery Circles, a workshop series for women, and is co-founding a new organization for empowering and developing women leaders. She can be reached at www.mishahenckel.com or .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).

Reinvention – it’s one of the words of the hour, along with Change, Obama, Stimulus Package, Economic Crisis, and Bankruptcy. Yep! Whether it is personally or professionally, most of us are finding that we’re being required to reinvent ourselves in some significant way. (If that is not the case for you, be prepared. Chances are it’s coming.) Seems logical though. With so much change happening, we have to adapt. And that’s to be expected. Life is not one seamless, unchanging flow. The hiccups, the bumps in the road, the obstacles – it’s all part of the deal. We can accept that. Right? We can adjust, and adapt, and make our necessary changes. Sure!

Problem is, what we’re facing seems to be more change than would normally be anticipated. It’s seems broader and deeper – more fundamental and more far-reaching.  Many of us are familiar now, with the talk of a Great Shift, the End of Times, 2012, and so on. In the past couple of years, that conversation has moved from the domain of the lunatic fringe, right into the mainstream. Whether we are willing to believe in that or not, it’s hard to refute the notion that something “big” is afoot. Even the densest of us would have to agree that life is changing rapidly, and that the economic crisis is only a small part of the whole picture. So with change happening by the day, how are we to respond? How can we possibly reinvent ourselves when, in many cases, we have almost no clue as to what tomorrow will bring?

There is this Hasidic story, I love, that I think is very helpful:

Zusya was this great and pious rabbi who was highly esteemed by his many followers. One day they found him very upset and fearful. “What is the matter, Rabbi?”

“In my dream,” he answered, “they did not ask, ‘Why were you not Moses? Nor, why were you not Joshua?” Zusya trembled. “They asked me, ‘Why were you not Zusya?”

The clearly learned and highly revered rabbi had finally awoken to the realization that no amount of great accomplishment would supersede the primary obligation of his life – to be true to himself. Could it be that this amazing teacher had not been living the life that he was meant to live? Sure sounds that way. It seems even the great rabbis found themselves keeping up with the Moseses and the Joshuas, and losing touch with their own souls.

Today, we are under enormous pressure to reinvent ourselves. But who should we become? It is very likely that we’ve already tried being the perfect daughter, perfect spouse, perfect father. That didn’t work very well. Did it? And perhaps we’ve learned that living up to the expectations of others is not the way to chart the course of our lives. I would posit that we need to become our true selves. The change keeps changing, but what is lasting is the potential that we are. Like Zusya, fulfilling our inner potential is the mandate of our lives. And in times like these, when the s—- keeps hitting the fan, over and over again, we need to look within to what is unchanging.

So how should you reinvent yourself? Reinvent around your soul.

“Impossible! Never going to happen! I wouldn’t know where to begin.”

I’ll tell you how.

Inside of you is an energy that is waiting to emerge. It is the energy of your soul. It is the source of your creativity, your insights, your talents, your unique gifts. And it is waiting for you to allow it some place in your life. For this energy of your soul to work for you, it needs to be placed at the very center of your life, not shoved somewhere in the background. Once given its proper place, your soul will bring you a life that is truly fulfilling – the one that you were meant to live.

Of course, the challenge we face in letting our souls out, is that we have so many beliefs that tell us to do the very opposite. Our true self - what we really feel, what we really want, who we really are – is often the one part of us that we have buried deep inside ourselves, for fear that we would rock the boat, disappoint others, or break the “rules.” So this is going to be a coming out of the closet of sorts. Depending on how much we’ve been hiding, it will probably take a good deal of courage and inner strength to reveal our true selves.

Too scary, you say?

Then, start by simply coming out to yourself. Be honest with yourself about what you really feel, about what you really want from life, and about what is really working and what is not working. You don’t have to come out to the whole world, just to yourself is a great start. Once you’re being true to yourself you can start to take small steps in the right direction. The more true you are to yourself, the more you get to know your own soul, the stronger you will become. You will find that the “false” beliefs you were carrying around, that were limiting your life, start dropping away. You will begin to find the courage to share your true self with others. And you would be well on your way to being the person you need to be to withstand the current chaos and even thrive in these turbulent times.

Are you struggling with reinventing yourself? Are you stuck in your career or your relationship? Email me with your questions at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)and I will be happy to respond. Answers will be anonymously posted to the blog.

8 Comments — Leave your comment

June 1, 2009 | 3:55 pm

Relationships, the true bane of our existence…?

Posted by Misha Henckel

Misha Henckel is a Los Angeles-based personal and executive life coach. Her executive clients are generally leaders of entertainment and media companies who are focused on re-inventing themselves and re-envisioning their organizations. She is founder of Life Mastery Circles, a workshop series for women, and is co-founding a new organization for empowering and developing women leaders. She can be reached at www.mishahenckel.com or .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).

In the last 12 months, the world has turned upside down. (Some would say, right –side up, but we’re not going to debate that at this juncture.) With the economy and all that it affects, falling apart, I could be justified in expecting that our perspectives on relationships would also be changing. After all, at times like these, the value and meaning we give our relationships should be so much greater.—Instead, I’m finding it’s just more of the same old stuff. Women complain, as usual, about what their guy did or didn’t do, and how hurt they are; and the men, well, they suppress their feelings and act as if everything is just fine, especially when it isn’t.

It leaves me to wonder: as fundamental as relationships are to our lives, how is it that we haven’t come close to really figuring it out? Why can’t we get them to work the way we want them to work? It seems we haven’t made any real progress at all. We are still hooking up with and marrying the wrong people. Or when we do have the “right” person, it doesn’t quite work the way we want it to.

This amazing woman that I know – she’s highly regarded in her field, a kind and caring friend, great mom, good inside and out – recently, told me about the challenges she was facing with her (equally remarkable) boyfriend. “He doesn’t give me the attention I deserve. It’s always all about him. He just doesn’t know how to treat a woman.” – Sound familiar? She keeps threatening to end things. I’ve seen them together, and it’s clear to me - their souls match beautifully. I pray she does not give up on him and instead gives the relationship a chance to work out for them. 

Another friend, married nearly twenty years to a man she does not love or truly respect, routinely laments the lack of fulfillment in her marriage.  While she admits that he is a perfectly good and loyal man, he’s not been a “true” husband – not in spirit, nor in everyday matters. They haven’t slept together in many, many months, and even when they have, it is merely mechanics. She’s miserable (and surely so is he), but she said to me, she’s just not willing to make any changes. “It’s going to cost me too much. And it’ll be the same income for two households? And then what will people say, I’d be a total failure?” I pray she finds the courage to be true to her higher self, and take the leap to a better life.

And of course, there are the couples we all know. The ones who don’t really talk any more – there isn’t anything to talk about. The ones who married because they were doing the right (fits the rule book) thing, but who never stopped to think or didn’t know that they would be better off doing the true (fits their souls) thing. They thought they looked good together – their parents and friends may have said so. They may have even thought they were soulmates – though how could they possibly have known, then, what a soulmate felt like. The marriage is not really working, but it’s not bad enough for them to leave, or good enough for them to fix. Tragic! I think. What a waste of life. And what on earth are they modeling for their kids? Oy!

What is it with relationships, we so often get them wrong! And how is it that we have a propensity to give up on the good ones and stick with the crappy ones? I think it’s about control… It’s easier to stay in an unfulfilling, unchallenging, empty relationship if it means we feel in control, and safe, than it is to get out and find something true. And the really good relationships – the ones where the souls match up - those often challenge us to grow. And that doesn’t feel safe, now, does it? No, self growth is hard.

My relationships have been challenging to say the least. And while I sometimes wonder, “Why couldn’t I simply have that perfect guy who would be loving and supportive?” – I know that, at least, my relationships have always ensured that I grow. I think the key for me has been to recognize that relationships are part of my growth mechanism. And they have pushed me into being a stronger, more authentic version of myself.

I am convinced that our relationships with the main players in our lives are almost invariably a mirror of our relationship with ourselves.

Very recently, I was faced with a painful encounter with a dear friend. I was hurt and saddened by what seemed to be a significant insensitivity in response to my very open-hearted position. I couldn’t understand it. How could anyone be so cruel? Why was this happening to me? I didn’t deserve to be hurt like this. As I pondered the situation, it became clear that my pain was directly the result of my un-met expectations. And they were entirely entitled to their position – harsh as it was. So how did I need to change (grow) in order to heal the pain? As I looked deeper into myself, it became clear: the way my friend responded to me was a direct mirror of how I was treating myself. I was hurt because my friend was not being true and honest with me, and when I looked deeper I could see that I was the first culprit. I needed to be truer to myself. I wanted to be acknowledged by my friend, but I needed first to be acknowledging myself. Immediately, as I gave my whole being over to taking proper care of my inner self, sending myself thoughts of love and care, the pain receded. Within hours, something that could have hurt for a very long time was gone.

It’s time for us to come up with new ways to view relationships – ways that really work.

Here are some thoughts:

• Relationships are not only for love, support and enjoyment. Relationships are for growth. They can challenge and beckon us forward to become the person we’re meant to be;
• If we are willing to grow, we can take our relationships to new levels of meaning and love;
• To heal relationships, we must first heal ourselves;
• Empty, un-connected, unfulfilling relationships are for growth too – the growth is to find the courage to get out, and to claim from life a relationship that is true and meaningful.

Everyone’s situation is different, of course, and you may be thinking that I couldn’t possibly understand what you face. But some truths are fairly universal: If you are staying in a relationship out of fear (fear that you may lose face, lose financial security, lose anything) then you should probably get out. If you feel deeply connected to the person but are avoiding or wanting to run away from a relationship because of fear (fear of the unknown) you should probably get in and get fully committed to it.

Yes, the world is falling apart, the financial security blanket has been ripped out of our hands, the rug has been pulled up from under us, and a great opportunity presents itself. This is the perfect time to take a look into the dark corners of our hearts and begin to heal ourselves. It is time, finally, to value yourself, care for yourself, honor yourself, and be true to yourself. Our significant relationships can help us to do this. Pain in these relationships points us back to ourselves and the inner healing we need to do. If we begin to look at our relationships in this new way, instead of being a constant source of discomfort or even trauma, they can be a wonderful support for us on our journey to wholeness.

At the very least, I hope I have provoked you into thinking deeply about your relationships, and perhaps into opening up for some new possibilities in your life. If you would like your questions answered, email me at misha@mishahenckel.com. Answers will be anonymously posted to the blog.

14 Comments — Leave your comment