Archive for Art of Listening

Want A Meaningful Life?

By jinnialow · Comments (20)
Saturday, November 10th, 2012

Have you ever wondered if there is more to life than what you’ve experienced so far?

Perhaps there are desires and dreams buried inside of your heart that you haven’t seen for a while.

There are a lot of misconceptions about dreams, and many people are not encouraged to dream.  Maybe you’re one of them.  For most of my life including the early parts, I was not encouraged to dream.  I scarcely recall a teacher or adult in my early years who has made a difference in my life in ways that I can remember – until I learned to dream again with role models I found as an adult.

I love this definition of a dream by Dr. John C. Maxwell:  “A dream is an inspiring picture of the future that energizes your mind, will, and emotions, empowering you to do everything you can to achieve it.  A dream worth pursuing is a picture and blueprint of a person’s purpose and potential.”

It’s never too late to start dreaming.  And there’s hope to dream again – this time, with excellent tools to help you succeed.  As someone who has battled through disappointment, inner heartache and deep emotional hurts, I believe you can re-start as many times as you need to pursue your potential and purpose.

Uncover your buried desires, re-ignite your dreams, and design a meaningful life you love!

For practical tips, transparent stories, affirmations, prayers and soul-searching exercises, I invite you to check out my new book (co-authored with a dear friend and colleague) and music CD here:

http://www.RisingDelight.com

It’s time to let the light within you shine!

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Categories : Art of Listening, Health And Wellness, Mindset
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Connecting Over The Holidays

By jinnialow · Comments (0)
Friday, December 21st, 2012

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At first glance it may appear that most people are quite busy over the holiday season.  There are decorations, festivities and meals to cook.  There are people, Christmas cards and schedules to coordinate.

What about you?  What are your plans over this season?

When I was a little girl, I loved looking at the bright, beautiful Christmas lights.

I imagined a cozy, happy family enjoying being together.

I still imagine it.

And while I’m imagining, I’d like to say: Merry Christmas to you and yours!!

What I treasure immensely is real, purposeful CONNECTION.  It is a theme in my life and a gift that I delight to give.  When there are opportunities to connect with old friends, college buddies and close family, I will be intentional about cherishing those opportunities and letting others know they are appreciated.

After all, we never know how long we will have on earth to let them know that we love them.

This season, I look forward to giving positive time, listening, gifts and words.

What do you look forward to about connecting over the holidays?

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Categories : Appreciation, Art of Listening, Building Community, Relationship Building
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Slowing Down To Listen Up

By jinnialow · Comments (10)
Thursday, November 15th, 2012

Hello!  This morning I sat down and intentionally journaled.

It felt so very good, like drinking nectar for my soul.

Due to incredible busy-ness (which of us here are not ever busy??), I had allowed my habit of free writing each morning to slip and I felt the effects of being disconnected with myself.

It’s been almost 2 weeks since I’ve listened to the inner workings of my soul. I enjoy those times. I enjoy when I really get to hear from God. I enjoy writing down thoughts and feelings. I have been busy with getting the marketing for my book and CD, sales pages, squeeze pages and those kinds of things done. Those things are good too. But I notice a distinct difference in my attitude. I’m less happy generally. It’s as if my inner rhythm had been thrown off, now asking for balance to be re-established. I’m more than happy to re-establish it. I know it’s the best thing, the right thing, the thing that most pleases God.

So I set my timer to 15 minutes and free wrote whatever came to mind.  I’d like to share a piece of that writing here from my heart to yours:

I prefer to go a slower pace, if that means establishing a sustainable rhythm for me and my family that honors everybody’s needs.  That is the highest priority for me.

One cannot so much say, “Slow down,” unless one has a means of pouring something in as a substitute.  For instance, slowing down in our westernized society carries with it a sense of loss or less productivity, accomplishment, or success.  However, without “slowing down” as our minds understand it, we cannot truly tune in and listen to the real sounds that move us.  The motions we make are emptied of meaning, value and substance.

Motion, to be effective, must be preceded and bathed in emotion, of the pure and right kind, as given by God.  We can only have this kind of passion when we are in deep communion times with God.  We can only do this when we are still and listening, not when we are running around trying to get a million things crossed off our to-do lists.

I believe in setting goals.  When we have clear goals to boundarize our days (not sure if boundarize is a word), then we can slow down without guilt when we need more time to reflect and process.

A goal is basically a clarified desire set to a date.  When you know what you want and project it out to the future of when you want it by, you’re setting a goal.  I can say that our family wants to go to Disneyland for Winterbreak, but until we put an actual date on the calendar, that remains a desire yet to be born.

I have honestly struggled with setting goals, because setting them requires being attuned to our desires.  During the times that my desires were buried underneath the surface of my everyday life and responsibilities as a stay a home mom, I wasn’t all too aware of what I wanted.  So, setting goals was not something I habitually did, until recently as I’m growing out of my comfort zone.

I now prefer to think of myself not so much as “slowing down” as I am “listening up.”  And in order to “listen up,” I require an environment of stillness that I intentionally carve out of my busy days.

I am thrilled to be learning ways to use music and sound.  I’m also excited to be hosting a class at the end of November to share my findings on how to process and master your emotions using different techniques.  You’re invited to the online gathering!  You can register here:  http://DesignWithJinnia.com/Master-Your-Emotions

Listening is such an art in itself and a beautiful one at that.  Do you know there’s a difference between hearing and listening?  What do you suppose the difference is?  I’d love to read your answers!

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Categories : Art of Listening, Health And Wellness, Success, Work Family Balance
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Keep The Post Conference “High” Going

By jinnialow · Comments (0)
Tuesday, September 18th, 2012

I’ve been to many live conferences – all EXCELLENT!  I’ve met and networked with amazing, talented, go-getters as well as uncertain, timid and scared entrepreneurs.  Despite the ups and highs I gained at these conferences, I was missing some key ingredients and stayed one of the latter for a long time…

Until recently!

I’ve learned an all-important lesson about attending conferences and I hope this benefits you somehow:

Be strategic when it comes to attending live conferences.  Know what you want out of it and set your intentions high.  You may or may not get ALL the answers that you wanted, but by writing them down or marking them somewhere, you know for yourself what your intentions are. 

Why is this important?

For me personally, it set me up to battle against post-conference lows.  Oh it will happen…not to be negative, but realistic.  And the reason it happened with me was that I learned and absorbed a lot (I love to learn), but I had little personal connection and immediate actionable steps I could take to implement right away.  When you have THAT MUCH EXCITEMENT AND POSSIBILITY being poured into you, and your perspective is expanded SO MUCH IN SO LITTLE TIME, all that ENERGY needs a place to be stored and used through direct application!!!

Why?  Well, once you return home and see your kids (if you have kids) happy to see you but they start complaining…or you see your expenses and no real clear way to translate your passion and message…or your spouse questions you and you feel spent…or you feel like you’re on the verge of a cold or cough…blah blah blah

Now what?  What happens to the HIGH?

Let me share with you how I intend to battle this baby – to keep the high going in everyday real life!  And it will not necessarily resemble the high that you experience at the actual conference, but it’s a converted energy and strength that you can take with you wherever you go.

First of all, I set my intentions/expectations for the trip:

  • To know and become more connected with the company culture and leadership.
  • To meet my team in person and get a more tangible feel for how we can work together.
  • To know *clearly* and ask God to show me:

1.  My skill sets that are immediately marketable with the matched focused product in my chosen field.

2.  My niche – the specific needs I can meet with focused sustainable effort, that allows me to keep my priorities in order and taps into what I’m passionate about.

3.  My target audience.

I believe I have been shown clearly #1 and #2.  #3 is still a work in progress but it will not stop me this time.  Although I struggled with perfectionistic tendencies all my life, today it dies in my seat!  (That’s also an intention.  Now, I may still struggle with it and that’s perfectly fine.)

So how is this translating into a marketable business plan for me?

1.  The skill sets that were clearly affirming me during the convention were: listening, extracting information, helping someone feel valued, asking quality questions…many of these are music & language & sound related skills.  Those are immediately translatable to coaching!

2.  For a long time I struggled with what content I could keep blogging about, doing videos on, etc. while maintaining live contact with clients and customers, while keeping my priorities in line with my family??  Here’s my answer…find the specific needs you can meet with focused sustainable effort, that allows you to be balanced and taps into what you’re passionate about.  For me, the specific needs I am passionate about meeting right away, right now, are helping people be in touch with their feelings and feel renewed from being stressed, tired, overwhelmed, depressed, etc.  Who has these feelings?

3.  My target audience.  I’m working this out through this blog post as we speak!  My audience includes a wide range right now, because I desire to serve all these people.  I’ve been taught in marketing to narrow it down and I understand the value of it and I’m continuing to figure out how to do it.  So right now, my target audience are leaders that are moms, entrepreneurs and authors – because I know a lot of them and understand clearly that their jobs require a lot of energy output which can leave them feeling drained and tired.

Now the big question!  How to put this all together?  Good question!  I’ll let you know as I go, but for now I am implementing ONE change in each area of my life:  Family, Business, Personal Growth.

1. Family:  Invest 10-15 minutes every day with each of my children to find out how they’re doing and if necessary, coach them in some area of their life.

2. Business:  Develop emotional wholeness coaching resources, for live and teleconference style venues.

3. Personal Growth:  Read the emotional wellness books I purchased at the convention and connect them with my personal experience, so that I can effectively communicate in my chosen field of work which is now being intertwined with my passion.

Working in your sweet spot excellently and imperfectly is, in my opinion, THE way to experience the best of designing your life and work to fit you.  In other words, extract what connects with you, stands out to you, speaks to you, or touches you…and crawl with it, walk with it, or run with it!  Whatever fits in with your schedule, do it and do one thing towards it every day, or regularly enough to let it become a habit for life!  That is how I intend to keep the post conference “high” going!

Much love,

Jinnia

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Categories : Art of Listening, Success, Work At Home Wednesday
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Taking Things Too Personally? How to Release and Let Go…

By jinnialow · Comments (4)
Thursday, July 12th, 2012

Below is an excerpt from my book “The Queens Journal” which is available on Amazon through http://www.RisingDelight.com

When someone asks you to make a change, how do you respond?

It could be anywhere- on the job, at home, at school, at church.

Today our daughter and son were playing together when he asked her, “Can you not pull on my sleeve so hard?”

Her eyes immediately welled up and turned red.  She started explaining why she was doing it and the fact that he did something similar to her before.  We thought she was taking it personally because the way our son asked her was calm, matter-of-fact and non-accusatory.  We thought, “What’s going on?”

We attempted to explain to her that she was simply being asked to make an adjustment; it wasn’t a judgment on her character.  That was a difficult concept for her to grasp.  That’s ok.  She’s not a grown-up.  Sometimes that’s a hard concept for a grown-up to embrace too.

The thing about parenting that can be tricky is this…the fact is, she was taking this a little personally.  But in order to get through to her, we couldn’t just tell her, “You’re taking this too personally.” We needed a different approach.

We needed to help her see a new perspective.

So we did our best to coach her on that.  Gave her a quiet “time-out” and while she was there talked and dug into her thoughts.  We discovered she felt like she was a “bad person” when our son asked her to make a change.  So we gently told her, “You’re not a bad person.  You’re a good person with a good heart.”  And we instructed her, “Next time someone asks you to make a change or tells you what they didn’t like, stop.  Take a deep breath and don’t say what first comes to your mind.  Instead, we want you to think to yourself, “I’m still a good person” and then tell them, “I will think about what you said.”

Dear God, I hope and pray this helps her when someone asks, or even tells her, to make a change.  Help her to recognize the lies that she may be hearing about her value and worth, so that she can not hold those lies in her sweet little heart, but instead let them go and release them for you to take.  Then please give her Your truth in her heart to replace the lies.

In this video, I explain more on the practice of releasing that will be fully revealed in our upcoming book, The Queen’s Journal, where we go in depth to cover how to make your inner home a palace.

If you ever have a hard time letting go (don’t we all sometimes?), I hope you’ll experience some refreshing uplift through this song called “Surrender”.


What have you found to work for you or your kids when it comes to helping them let go and not take things too personally?

 

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Categories : Art of Listening, Health And Wellness, Marriage And Family, Relationship Building, Work Family Balance
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Inspiration Comes, Captured And Released For Good

By jinnialow · Comments (4)
Saturday, June 23rd, 2012

Sometimes inspiration comes to me while I’m out and about.

Or washing the dishes.

That’s when I grab for a scrap of paper to scribble down the words…

Since I started writing music again, bits of sounds and lyrics would come to me and it’s been so fun engaging this side of me.

I feel so much more connected with who I am, that I’m more apt see the good in myself (rather than being hard on myself).  In so doing, I feel free to see the good in others and bring it out.  Such a fun way to live!

I want to share my latest song with you.  And it’s been a blast working with a dear friend of mine to co-author a book as well!

The hard copy of our book is on its way for Fall 2012, as well as a whole album inspired by this project!  Right now you can sign up to receive a copy of the Queens Journal interactive guide and the song “Beautiful Queen” at:  http://bit.ly/M8oVa1

Closing thought for the day:

Seeing the good in others becomes so much easier when you see the good in yourself.

 

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Categories : Appreciation, Art of Listening

Out of Hiding and Into Processing

By jinnialow · Comments (2)
Sunday, May 27th, 2012

Have you ever been “in hiding”?

Not the hide-and-seek that children play, or the hiding from people with whom we feel uncomfortable…

I’m talking about hiding from ourselves.

Hiding from what’s deep inside our heart.

Do you ever find yourself thinking, “Is this all there is to life?”

Or “I’m generally happy but sometimes I feel like there’s something more to life than what I’m living.”

When those thoughts come, there’s probably a reason (or 2 or 3) for them.

You have wonderful gifts and talents waiting to rise to the surface, to be used in their full capacity.

What do you love to do?  Do you allow yourself to do it?

For a long time, I did not allow myself to do what I love.  I had been “in hiding” with what I love.  I did not allow myself to process what I needed to process.

I kept myself busy.  Crazy busy.

But I wasn’t doing what made me come alive.  What makes you come alive?

I used to think it was selfish to want or have desires in my life.  Do you know how much more connected and alive we feel when we allow ourselves to want?

When we know what we want, we can ask specifically.  And when ask specifically, we can receive.

Receiving is a beautiful gift we can give to ourselves.  When we allow ourselves the freedom to process.  When we create space in our hearts for what we want that is our God-given desires.

“Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.  For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.”  ~Matthew 7:7-8

How many times per week do you give yourself to process what’s going on in your life?

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Categories : Art of Listening, Mindset

When Silence Speaks…

By jinnialow · Comments (5)
Friday, May 4th, 2012

When silence speaks, listen. You may hear something special just for you.

A lot of changes have been happening with me and my family lately.

With any change, there’s a need to make adjustments.

Adjustments in schedule, priorities, communication.

So many wonderful new people have come into my life to speak life, love and joy…I am overwhelmed with gratitude and feel so blessed.

I’m also being stretched keeping up with the sheer amount of contacts, paperwork and digital accounts.  It’s a good “problem” to have really…

This week I committed to a longer period of silence in the morning.  It has been heavenly.  I feel so much more connected and whole…

Loved and treasured…

And I want to share that with you.

When we live and breathe true LOVE, love finds its way to us. Be loved today my friends :)

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Categories : Appreciation, Art of Listening

Merging Artistry with Practicality

By jinnialow · Comments (0)
Tuesday, April 10th, 2012

I am so excited about life!  This past weekend I heard something that resonated deeply with me from an Easter church message.

God is a masterful Creator, merging artistry with practicality.

I love this.

Merging Artistry with Practicality

It speaks of supreme intelligence, limitless wisdom and amazing conviction spelled out in four simple letters.

L-O-V-E

When we grasp love as it truly is and meant to be, our hearts leap for joy!  Never before have you tasted any love so good, so real, so full.  My description is not enough to describe it- it’s akin to indescribable artwork found in nature merged with the practical bridge provided for us humans to walk along in order to admire that beauty.  Something like that anyway.

This past weekend we celebrated a birthday and I got to love on my in-laws.  It is such a wonderful feeling to give something tangible you always wanted to give, that speaks to them, that for a long time had been locked away somewhere (know what I mean?)

Last week during our kids’ Spring Break, our family took a mini-vacation to Yosemite and it was breathtakingly beautiful.

For the next week or so I will be posting pictures with corresponding videos daily to illustrate themes of what I saw in those scenes.  Here’s the first video that goes with the above picture!

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Categories : Appreciation, Art of Listening

Blogging and Listening…

By jinnialow · Comments (0)
Wednesday, August 17th, 2011

Many many years ago, I wanted to start a blog for personal reasons.  I was going to name it, “Where The Rubber Meets The Road” as a diary of everyday life as a stay at home mom.

Over the years I dabbled in many things including business.  I’d learned it’s great to have a blog and so I dove in and started this blog.  I’d heard you should separate business and personal life on a blog.

My desire and goal was to combine the two.  I saw it as ultimately being one and the same.  Call me crazy.

Of course, along the journey sometimes I forget who I am.  This happens when I’m so busy running around.  Does this ever happen with you?

At the risk of sounding like I’ve lost it, I’ll say this:  If I sit really still and listen, I can hear things.  Then the process of hashing out what I hear into a blog post is not so hard.

And I appreciate what Seth Godin and Tom Peters say about blogging here…

Yesterday I posted on my Facebook page that I really need to just be myself.  How can I encourage others to embrace who they are if I’m not free to be me?

This is me.

I like to listen and hear things.  I NEED to listen and hear things.

What kind of things?

Well, things like tone of voice.  Body language.  Actual needs behind what is being said.

Little nuances.

It’s like the time when I learned the bare minimum basics of piano tuning.

Piano tuning is harder than it looks.  One day I got to tune a few piano strings with my brother- you really have to listen closely to the sound.  You’re listening for little vibrations to disappear as much as possible.  So you’re really listening for stillness.

Listening for stillness is not for everybody.  Some people thrive on doing this as a practice and others thrive on being around the sounds of life too.

What do you like to listen for?

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Categories : Art of Listening, Work At Home Wednesday
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