Jenna: Hello and welcome to the Elevate Yourself Podcast where we can talk about beauty and self care without judgment.

Here with us today is the woman who has helped me so much not just with Elevate but also with my personal life. She is the Beautiful Living coach, also a certified Dream Coach ® Feng Shui consultant and Law of Attraction teacher. Let's welcome Laurel Colins.

You’re the perfect person to invite onto this podcast to help everyone. So what tips would you give people to have clarity and start taking steps to create their vision for the new year?

Laurel: Well, thanks Jenna. Thanks for having me on your podcast today. I have found people usually know what they don't want more than they do want. So I tell people to try just going on Pinterest at first just start collecting images of things that you would like to bring into your life and are beyond your wildest dreams. Start collecting pictures of places that you want to go or maybe it's appliances that you want to have in your kitchen. That's what I want right now. I'm looking for fridges. The thing is you just have to start sort of activating your brain for looking for the things that you want. Eventually the clarity will come, but you have to just start getting those ideas flowing and Pinterest is just an awesome way to do it. 

Jenna: Do you suggest like dividing them into different areas like life or like work life or personal life or just altogether one board?

Laurel: Well, I love that you asked that question. So initially I like to do one big dream board. Just dream big. Just anything goes, go for colors, shapes, textures, whatever. Just put it all in. And then because I incorporate Feng Shui in my life, I like to break things down into the nine environments of life. So yeah, you could break it down into the nine boards that would relate to each area of your life. 

Jenna: Great way to visualize things. Once you've made your boards, what are the next steps?

Laurel: So then now I want to get really detailed, cause when you want to bring something into your life you have to have really focused attention on it. So when you go in and you look at these images and you think about the vision that you have in your mind, it's a great idea to think about why you want these things and only go for visions and images of things that excite you. You have to have a really strong why and sometimes we go seven times the why. So like “Why do I want that?” and “Why do I want that?”. You have to have a burning desire to achieve something. 

Jenna:  So what is the end goal of like the whys, like what if you only get to like four or five of why you want it. Does that matter?

Laurel: Well, chances are if you tried going to seven you can find it and it would probably come down to it. If it makes you feel excited or good or loved - whatever it is, healthy fit. But the bottom line is if you are not motivated. If you don't have a big enough why you're not going to stay committed to the path. It’s actually activating part of your brain when you have that much excitement to get you motivated that gets you in action. 

Jenna: That's super interesting. 

Laurel: If somebody can't get past the first couple of reasons why they want to do something it's probably not a good goal for them because they're not going to stay motivated. But that's what I what I try to help people understand when they're creating a goal not only does it have to be something that they're excited about, but it also has to be something that they believe that they can bring into their lives. Because there's another thing called Cognitive Dissonance where you want something but part of your mind doesn’t believe you can have it and you create this conflict in your brain and so that's where people get stuck a lot of the time. So not only to be up to really, really want it, you have to believe that you can bring this in. 

Jenna: That's like a great way to keep motivated. Would you recommend people writing it down in their journal?

Laurel: Journals are good but not everybody likes journaling. One thing that’s really great for beginning to believe that you deserve these things is to start noticing how it's already happening for you. So the journal is good for tracking evidence. As soon as you start noticing how you're already starting to create these things, the more you see.  Quantum Science says that when we look at particle energy when we focus on and they do things differently, so that's how you know, this is in a nutshell how our thoughts really do change, chemistry, our energy, our actions and our results. 

Jenna: From a personal perspective, I was really really really nervous about my decision making during COVID. I feel like that's still kind of going on for people and I'm wondering do you have any tips for people who are finding themselves still dealing with that two years later? How to pull yourself out of that situation - where you might not be having the energy that you might be matching with? 

Laurel: Actually yeah, it actually takes focus, time where you have to catch yourself talking or thinking about what you don't want. quickly switching thoughts, images in your mind. And that's where having a visioning tool helps you organize your thoughts so you know what you switch your mind to.

Jenna: And pulling it back to positive. 

Laurel: Raising your vibration. Focusing on what you want instead of what you don’t want. We’re manifesting and attracting all the time so we might as well be conscious and intentional about what we're thinking about focusing on and bringing into our life

Jenna: So hard to do, though sometimes when you're faced with things that are not optimal. 

Laurel: Well, I have a little trick. Do you want to hear it? 

Jenna: Of course yes, I do.

Laurel: Okay, well, this is the one that I think you've heard it before. And this is the one that really changed my life. So and I learned this from a law of attraction book, and it was every time I catch myself, saying or thinking in my mind don't, not, no. Then I had to say, “Oh, so what do I want?” And then I have to think of what I did want instead, and it was hard at first and I didn't even realize how much I was doing that in my head. But it turns out I was being very negative all the time. But slowly over time, it took a little while. To catch myself in switching my thoughts but it's a great little tip. I would recommend to anybody.

Jenna: How does human design help with any or all of this? 

Laurel: I'm so happy you asked me about human design because this is my latest passion and I incorporated into all of my work now. It actually gives you based on a body graph that's unique to you, based on your birthday time and your place. And it actually gives you exact strategies to use for your design and an inner authority helps you to make decisions so when you're working in your design you'll you're going to be more authentic, you're going to come out of frustration or bitterness and you're going to come into alignment with what's right for you and living on purpose based on your design. 

Jenna: So how do you create the design?

Laurel: It’s a combination of the Star charts and the Kabbalah and it's like an aura type. 

Jenna: How could someone go about using Human Design to help with their goals in the New Year?

Laurel: Knowing how you should be making decisions is huge. For example, 30 something percent of the population are called generators. Generators are here to make decisions either through their sacral response or emotional response, but generators want to spend all their time thinking,  they're up in their heads. And so then they can tend to be in frustration a lot of the time then you're creating that frequency that's not attractive. I have been doing a lot of readings for people living in frustration and bitterness because they're, they're not using their human design to make decisions that work for them.

Jenna: If  someone wanted to learn more about design, how can they do that?

Laurel: There's a lot more information about it out there. I've got some of it on my website. It’s at laureltcolins.ca.  I’m really happy to offer your listeners discount code. Use the code Elevate2022.

Jenna: We’ll also link that to the notes on the website.  You’re running a course coming up based on Human Design?

Laurel: I'm periodically running the Beautiful Life blueprint where we incorporate a beautiful lifestyle magazine that you create with me plus we talk about neuroscience, the universal laws and we also talk about Feng Shui which is earth energy. That's something that I  run every few months.

Jenna:  If you're interested in learning more, I would really highly suggest reaching out to Laurel because she can really be a great coach and help you develop your  insights into your strategies to achieving the things that you are really wanting to vision for your life. It’s really helpful I think to have someone to help you organize yourself, especially if you're feeling a little bit, you're not moving in the right direction that you want to be moving in?

If you have any questions for Laurel, I know that she’s really gonna be excited to talk to people about this topic and help out. You'll find all the links below on our podcast information.

Once we've gone through and done the work of pulling together all the things that we want and organizing our thoughts that way. Is there anything else that we can be doing to get that started for us?

Laurel: Yes, absolutely. When you want to bring into your life, it's kind of nice to get into a clean slate. You know, just like when you clean up your house and it feels good. Sweeping shifts the energy. I like to offer people a pre-work cleanse and so it's a little process, a little workbook that I take people through. It just helps you to release some of the things that might be holding you back. There's checklists of what appointments do you need to make, what have you left undone, what unfinished business have you got, what kinds of relationships do you need to heal, what kind of money story do you have that you'd like to shift and so I have all these awesome little questions and do I need to get my eyelashes refilled? Or you know, like these are all things if you're not really feeling good about yourself right now you need to make sure that you're taking care of all those little annoyances so that you can again, raise your vibration, know that you’re working towards your goals, taking action. Give yourself a pat on the back like baby steps and accomplishment. So every time you check off something off the list, you  feel better and better about yourself.

Jenna: Would you like describe this as like self care spring cleaning checklist? 

Laurel: Yeah, totally! And this is where the energy comes in. Because we talk about this a lot with Feng Shui and our environment when we have things. Everything around us is actually attached to us. It's energetic and it's speaking to your unconscious mind and you're not even aware. So that pile in the corner of unopened bills, even if it's something that you can't see but you know in the back of your mind that you haven't made that doctor's appointment yet or like all of this unfinished business is just speaking to your unconscious. This is an opportunity for you to bring this stuff to the surface. Deal with it. Let it go, move on and raise your energy. 

Jenna: Would you consider this self care? 

Laurel: Absolutely. It's definitely self care. When you're taking care, sometimes little,  sometimes big. niggly things that are eating away your mind and keeping you up at night or even not even conscious but they're actually holding you back from your greatness. 

Jenna: So Laurel got this amazing tool that she's been so generous to give and share with us that you can download below. And why did you think it's important to create this for your audience? Laurel? 

Laurel: Well, because I had to do this work and I'm still doing this work. It's continuous but I think because my background really is in Feng Shui and environments and understanding the chaos of the stuff that's undone, just holds you back. So I just knew that this is great foundation for your future. 

Jenna: I encourage everyone to download this pre-work cleanse. I'm sure it's gonna be life changing and I'm actually probably going to do it afterwards myself. I love these things, just to organize your thoughts and really get yourself started in the right direction. Always great to have a little bit of a roadmap. 

Thanks so much Laurel for joining us today and is there anything else you'd like to share with the audience? 

Laurel: Well, I think yeah, just summing it up with creating your clean slate for yourself to build a new vision for your life that you wanna love. 

Jenna: I love that.

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