Author: Ana Lioi

Love is universal, it brings us to life and keeps us alive. Love is the main source of life. I want to go deeper and talk about unconditional love.

Unconditional love starts at home, with oneself. You know your flaws and shortcomings better than anyone else, and better than you can ever know anyone else’s. Being able to love yourself despite this unsurpassable awareness of your own faults puts you in the position to be able to offer the same to others.

You must be able to recognize, accept, and forgive your own imperfections in order to do the same for someone else. If you cannot deem yourself worthy of being loved unconditionally, you’ll never truly be able to deem yourself worthy of offering it.

If you close your eyes right now and ask yourself, when was the last time I looked myself in the eye and said: I love you. And when was the last time you did that with someone else? Usually we don’t express our unconditional love to our own selves, it might feel uncomfortable, selfish to do that on a regular basis and the truth is, as much as you do it as much love you will receive from others.

The vibration you get from the pure expression of love to yourself without condition is a higher vibration and it will connect your body with your soul and make you happy and free, taking your relationships to the next level.

Genuine unconditional love is a little strange to receive in our world of expectations and reactions, and yet if you allow yourself to be the receiver, I can tell you it’s pretty terrific. Life is hard more often than we’d like it to be. Life is definitely conditional; if we don’t eat, sleep or drink water we will surely die. We hear enough about “unconditional, perfect and everlasting love” and I think it’s real, but not a given. I believe we all have good and dark behaviors and weaknesses, and to deny this human condition is to be ignorant to the foundation of our human nature. I do think, however, having being someone who has experienced unconditional love and someone who has consciously chosen to give it, this expression of our kindest Self is a part of growth and generosity we can all benefit from every moment of every day

I am a very passionate soul, I love creating memories for myself and others, I enjoy the feeling of sustainability and accomplishment and it doesn’t take a lot to amaze me when it comes from the heart and the passion we all carry within us.

A decade ago, I attended a course, where I discovered my vision and mission in life, why I am here, and what I am here for to fulfill my heart and contribute to the life of others. I then drew the world map on a piece of paper and I circled every Country in the world. My statement is: I will touch at least one person in every Country and this person will touch others through my mentoring and wisdom.

My mission became an obsession and from that I discovered my PASSION. From this day on always at bed time, I count how many Countries I have reached and how many lives have I touched.

Passion is what drives me to continue my journey. Sometimes I catch myself listening to the voices in my mind, telling me that my passion is impossible, that some countries I would never be able to reach. Honestly, sometimes I believe the chatter , some days I laugh at myself, however, every night before I follow asleep I celebrate all the Countries I already have and the 171 countries I still haven’t reached. My passion keeps my dream alive, my passion makes me believe, and it will take me there. I believe, do you?

I would love to help you reach and find your passion. Are you open to listen to your heart and handle the questions that may arise?

Think about what brings a smile to your face. Is there a particular event, a particular topic that makes your whole face just lighten up? That makes you smile, and makes you happy whenever you encounter it? That is a sign of something you are passionate about. I truly believe that happiness and passion walk hand in hand. Both require each other.

How about what do you find easy? Usually, what we find easy for us to do, will be related to what we are passionate about. It’s very hard to dislike something that is very easy for us! Fun leads to happiness which in turn goes together with passion.

What would you do for free? I know this is a hard one. In this society, we are ruled by the dollar. That’s the way the system works, and that’s the game we choose to play. The problem is, this leads many people to seek making money first, instead of pursuing what makes them happy. Doing what you have a passion for, brings out your best, and this leads to greatness. Greatness leads to success.

And the last and maybe my favorite one is: What would you regret not having tried?

We all have dreams, and somehow, life pushes us away, and the next thing we know, we are far from those dreams we used to have. If today was the last day of your life, what would you regret not having done? What would you love to do, that you didn’t fight for? What is it that you may regret not having done?

This is a good chance to discover your true passion. There is nothing worse than arriving at the end of the journey having regrets. This is why finding your passion, and living it is so important.

Have I touched your life today? Think and be brave to search for your passion and please let me know where you are from… and you are definitely making me smile right now!!!

This is my world, this is my way, this is what keeps me alive and sustains the sparks of happiness that life gives me every day.

What is Joy?

When was the last time you felt numb, complete, appreciative? Joy is an emotion that occurs within us when we feel an appreciation for the constants of life, such as nature, freedom, relationships with people, our day to day accomplishments and unconditional love.

Joy is an emotion that can actually rule our daily lives. We must develop and teach ourselves joy, much like the process of getting physically fit, healthy.

Embracing this emotion can definitely change the way you feel life, and I say feel because joy is a feeling, a sensation of stillness that puts you in front of your inner self and gives you a sense of satisfaction.

I used to think that happiness was the key of living but I didn’t realize that happiness is an emotion that is aroused in us when we achieve something, when we get a gift, when we buy our first home; it’s dependent on our circumstances occurring in accordance with our wishes and desires.

I was so committed to be happy that became an obsession. I use to celebrate all my accomplishments daily (I still do!!), to give and expect surprises, to find the positive and good in all things and to smile even when I wasn’t happy. Happiness is a natural reaction to circumstances and episodes that can happen daily however it sparks and goes. it is not sustainable 24/7.

Let me share something powerful with you today. It was a freezing morning in December, I woke up early, put my running gear on and left the house for my Saturday run. When I look at the car panel it was -15 degrees outside and for a second I thought: are you crazy? As always, committed to my run I kept going. I reached my favourite trail… suddenly the sun came up and when I looked around all I could see was icicles, frozen ponds and ice all over. It was slippery however I decided to keep going. When I reached the river surrounded by rocks and mountains the sun was reflecting on the ice and everything became colourful, shiny, stunning to my eyes. I felt like I was on “wonderland”. At that moment, my heart started pounding fast, I felt warm from inside, the appreciation and gratitude for Mother nature was overwhelming. I felt pure, true joy and I couldn’t stop, my energy was so high, my 5 senses became so clear and for the first time I felt deeply connected with myself and nature. THAT IS JOY!

This moment will stay with me forever and from that I learned that living with joy, appreciation for life and the simple things matter.

Don’t take for granted of the simple moments in life, of a kiss, compassionate words you hear from people. Open your heart to live with joy and discover one of the most powerful ways of living. Embrace joy, your life will be fulfilled with peace, health and beautiful surprises.

One day I woke up with this message in my inbox: “Good morning, this is the Universe. I will be handling all of your problems today. I will not need your help, so have a miraculous day.”

I decided to take the opportunity and have a day with no control, a day with surrender and everything just flows, life is light, the sun radiates more and even the water tastes better. In the middle of the day, I asked myself: Who do I want to be? How do I want to live? What’s my ideal? Do you want to be happy? Enlightened?

As I had said yes to let go, I embraced my thoughts and the answers just started flowing in my brain, I knew who I wanted to be and I started playing a game, live as is… act as if everything you desire is already here, show gratitude for your accomplishments and keep letting go. The word intention came to mind a thousand times that day, it felt like I was having shots of Serotonin every hour and the sense of calmness and happiness kept coming. I didn’t want that day to end but as we can only hold 24 hours it did. Before I went to bed I made a commitment with myself to start setting intentions to my days and create a purpose to my life.

I said “yes” to life and intentionally created intentions for my days, for my work, for my relationships and took action to change what was not working, what could be holding me back to achieve and be the best of me.

I started to experience creativity, kindness, love and expansion and from that experience my life started to change.

“Intention is much more powerful when it comes from a place of contentment than if it arises from a sense of lack or need.” I was only able to discover the beauty of intention the day I was willing to let it go and have the Universe take control for me.

Don’t listen to the voice that says that you have to be in charge, that obsessive vigilance is the only way to get anything done. Take a few moments daily from now to answer this questions and immerse yourself in a pure life of intentional and majestic days.

• How can I be more creative, kind and loving today?
• How can I appreciate beauty today?
• How can I be open to the expansion of our universe and grow today?
• How can I flow with the unlimited abundance of the world today?

Relax. Embrace the Power of Intention. And have a miraculous holiday.

As I sit in my living room, holding my laptop on my legs, surrounded by trees, I have a gorgeous view from the City and my beautiful dog is at my feet. It is fall and the air is crisp. As I gather my thoughts, I notice my emotional state: content, calm and peaceful.

As I start writing about gratitude, I just realize, it is exactly how I feel today. I have so many blessings in my life and countless reasons to say thanks. Experiencing gratitude can positively impact both your mental and emotional state and your ability to achieve the life you want.

Gratitude can be described as personality strength—the ability to be keenly aware of the good things that happen to you and never take them for granted.

A few years ago, I used to wake up, dress up with beautiful clothes, spray a delicious perfume, get a cup of coffee and run… not paying attention to the blue sky, to the warm feeling of the sun on my shoulders and the sound of the wind. Until one day, an older lady was trying to cross the street with her walker and no one would stop for her to cross. I stopped the car, got out, looked at her and said: Let’s go, I am here with you. She smiled; I helped her cross the street and tried to go back to my car. She said; wait, I looked at her she grabbed my hands and said: I am grateful for you in my life today, you made my day happy as I felt loved by a stranger. At that moment, the world was only a smile full of gratitude.

I came back to my car, and as I was driving I felt different, something shifted on me. The word gratitude was with me the whole day so as the peaceful happy face of the lady.

From that day I was willing to change, to start my day in a different way and to pay attention to my surroundings, to really feel and show gratitude from all things in my life, including nature, health, relationships, everything.

My life changed, I noticed, over time, a real change in the whole trajectory of my life. I found that my efforts to create the career I desire and to have a satisfying life was increasingly successful. I begin to have a practical experience of the positive impact of approaching my life with a focus on gratitude. Which gave me even more to be grateful for.

I love to share with you some ways to start practicing gratitude to improve your well-being:

1. Keep a gratitude journal. At the end of each day, write down 5 things from the day you feel grateful for.
2. Take the time to share your feelings. the heartfelt emotions. Tell your loved ones how their support and sense of humor helps you get through tough times, and how much it means to you. Let them know how much you love them and why.
3. Look for what is right about a situation, not what’s wrong. Even with frustration by the challenges of your day; thankfully you have an amazing life. Service at the restaurant is poor, but you are lucky to afford an evening out surrounded by good friends.
4. Go for a walk in nature, look around you, feel the air, and breathe gratitude for mother nature.
5. Say thank you for a good meal.
6. Tell your Mother (even if she is not with you) how much you are grateful for the life she gave you.

One of the marvelous things about gratitude – it has no upper limit, as far as I can tell. You can be as grateful as you want to be. And what better time to start than this week?

Writing fills my heart with gratitude and joy! What are you grateful for today?

Forgiveness is a decision to let go of resentment and thoughts of revenge. The act that hurt or offended you might always remain a part of your life, but forgiveness can lessen its grip on you and help you focus on other, more positive parts of your life. Forgiveness can even lead to feelings of understanding, empathy and compassion for the one who hurt you and yourself. When you decide to forgive it brings you peace that really helps you go on with life.

Forgiveness is a commitment to a process of change. I want you to look at your life right now and reflect. Is there something you are holding on for situations that happened in the past that you are not able to let go? Do you hold any anger or resentment to anyone in your life? Are you living as a victim and holding a grudge of a situation from your past?

Peace is not possible without forgiveness. Martin Luther King once said, “Forgiveness is not an occasional act; it is a permanent attitude.”

In my experience, forgiveness gives you emotional freedom, and making the powerful decision to let go any heaviness in your heart will help you achieve that.

Close your eyes for a few seconds, breath in and out. Inhale the feeling of freedom, lightness and love. Exhale all the toxic thoughts, hurt, feeling of despair and revenge. Repeat a couple of times, clear your mind.

Address your feelings, think about a person or a situation you are angry with. Ask yourself; “What emotional shortcomings caused the pain and anger I am feeling now?”

Then, imagine the feeling dissolving. Breath deeply again and when you exhale let that feeling go. Practice a couple of times and it will get easier and lighter every time.

Forgiveness is a shifting solution for transforming anger. It liberates you from the trap of endless revenge so that you can experience more joy and connection.

I’ve learned something with one of my most powerful mentors: Your focus determines your reality and what your focus expands. At first, sounded a little confusing as life goes on and our focus can change by the second. Then I learned a second thing, we create our focus and therefore we can change or modify anything we want.

Give it some thought. When you wake up in the morning and think about the tasks you have to do that are not very pleasant, you’ll have a miserable day. When you wake up and focus on how wonderful your life is, you’ll have a great day. When we let our attention jump from one thing to the other, the natural tendency is to have a busy, fractured and unproductive day. When we focus on one job, we do immerse ourselves in that job, and it will not only be the most productive day, it’ll be very rewarding. The sense of accomplishment you get is priceless.

In my experience, the focus is extremely important and it will determine whether you’ll achieve a goal, change your mindset or create a new habit.

Pay attention to your focus and what you are creating for yourself during your days. What are the results you are having? If not the ones you want, you have to change your focus.

Once, I decided to to a very harsh workout program and I was full-on. Suddenly on the third or fourth day, I was supposed to do 15 military push up’s. I could only do 4 and my focus became: I am not capable, I am not fit enough and so on…. Hours later I went to pick my daughter up at school and that day I wasn’t happy as always. She asked me what was wrong and I told her that I was only able to do 4 of the push up’s. She said: Mom, please don’t tell anybody and think about something, the majority of people we know will probably not be able to do even 1, so you should be proud of yourself instead. I was quiet for a second and then I thought, what is my focus? My focus is on what I cannot do instead of celebrating what I have accomplished. I changed my focus completely and in a month I was doing 15 military push up’s!

Let’s look at some of the ways you can use focus to change different aspects of your life.

Focus on the now rather than the past or the future. If you stay in the past you bring depression into your life (the past is dead) and when you go to the future, it will make you anxious and unproductive.

Focus on one task or goal at a time and let it flow to the end. You need to get rid of all distractions and focus completely on the task you set for yourself. It takes a lot of practice but you will definitely get results.

Focus on the positive, and positive things will come right back to you. Be aware of negative thoughts, and replace them with positive thoughts. There will be many times that will be difficult but with practice and consistency, it will become easier and your most powerful new habit.

Albeit seeming simplistic and unnatural at first, the power of focus is a force that can and will change your life.

The results will be happiness, accomplishments and achievements!

Think for a moment, what is your inner voice telling you about yourself?

“I will never be able to lose weight….” “It is so hard to make money…. “I procrastinate…“my friends are better than me…” I will never buy the house of my dreams… “and you can go on and on and more and more non-supportive thoughts will come to you every minute, every day.

This is your toxic mindset. Bad news is; if you are not aware, it will totally hold you back from your aims and goals. It’s pretty clear that those fixed mindsets will cause you where might feel like a failure. As a result, you don’t learn as much and it’s hard to get better.

What can you do about this? How can you yourself, eliminate your fixed and actually achieve your goals?

You can take action to change your beliefs. In my experience, the only I know how to the type of person that you believe that you are, is to build new and better habits for yourself and to do with small, repeated actions.

When your beliefs are stronger than your hold-­‐backs and your fears, achieve anything you want. I am and was always a trooper on that. Since I was a kid, when I wanted something, nothing was going to hold me back from getting it. My desires were so deep and willingness to do the work to achieve my goals kept me from listening to the non-supportive voices. Not an easy job, sometimes you have to fight a battle and speak louder so you listen to the voice that supports you. You go through ups and downs and the only thing that really helps is consistency and to take one small step at a time so your habit is created to win.

3 years ago, I started running, something I always thought that wasn’t for me. “My cardio is not good… I don’t like on hard surfaces… the weather in Vancouver is so rainy…” you see? My mind putting me down and trying to take me away from my goal.

However, I the challenge and decided to go one day at a time, having in mind that running was the goal and to let go of the results. I simply focused on the process, showing up, sticking to the schedule and “not quitting.” The results showed up after a few months. My actions shifted the way that I saw myself. I was focusing on the process of building a better habit rather than the result.

Your daily actions will change what you believe about yourself and the person you become. When you change the way you talk to yourself, don’t get attached to the immediate results and commit to the process of changing your old way of thinking; you are building a strong relationship with your brain and instead of taking you away from your desires it will lead you to enjoy the results.

Not long ago, maybe a decade, I believed that living in abundance was only possible if my bank account was filled with millions of dollars, if I lived in the house of my dreams, if I could travel the world and so on.

My life was full of if’s and honestly my level of satisfaction was getting lower and lower every day, the message I was allowing my brain to capture was always; It’s never good enough, I have to do more to get more and things were just going downhill pretty fast in my life. I just reached a point where sadness was invading my days, and I was really close to lose purpose until I decided to talk to my husband about it.

He usually doesn’t say much to me but this day he pointed my blind spot right on; and I was shocked with myself. He said: What you are looking for is outside yourself, and you can only be abundant and create success from within, from who you are and from all the spectacular things you do to others.

At that moment, I had tears in my eyes and the message landed. I didn’t feel like speaking, walking. I just felt like breathing and staying present to that moment, let the words sink in an be me.

When I opened my eyes (literally), I felt the world different, I felt connection with my soul and I decided to get back on my horse and live life without if’s.

The number one thing for me was to take time to think, and think deeply. I decided to change and my decision was to live my life from within.

I then created a plan and a strategy to start a war with the non supportive voice, the solution was to fight, with gratitude. I decided that judgment and negativity would never be part of me anymore, the solution was to bless the ones that bothered me at that time. The next step was to make it simple (that was difficult…), however all the demons that used to tell me that I had to work hard to get what I wanted were eliminated by allowing myself to listen to my true desires and from that I was able to unfold them. In other words, when you have a limited belief you have to practice otherwise.

The only way to change, to unfold your life, to come from within is training yourself and your brain to be the way you want, to act in spite of your doubts.

I created new routines, new habits and I changed my perspective on life. I will share a few with you.

1. Show gratitude at least twice a day, when you are in the vibration of gratitude you REALLY attract amazing things and outstanding opportunities.
2. Love deeply and get in touch with nature daily.
3. Never blame anybody or situation for the way your life is or isn’t.
4. Take responsibility for your goals, dreams and aims.
5. Act as is. Be who you want to be now.

Now, I am proud to say that after practicing my daily routines for days and months my life shifted fast and I am attracting money, opportunities, my business grew in months what I wasn’t able to do in years.

However, the most amazing discovery for me was that abundance is not having things, earning money. Abundance is, to be, to connect and to be willing to be present.

You are abundance, live life from within and discover the amazing things you can create for yourself.