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 Written by: Betsy Karp Take one day at a time. Being present is enough. Don’t look back and grieve about your past for it is gone. The future has not yet arrived, so let your worries go. Live for today and enjoy your day. Today is all you’ve got!!! Make it a day to be cherished and remembered… Open your heart Chakra by using the color Green in 2013. Happy New Year! *Please comment below and share with your friends.* Hugs, Betsy Karp, Founder of i adore me Add Comment  Written by: Sutton Schuler I am social, but very much so on my terms. My independent nature can turn day in and day out, relationships into work. Although I love hosting a cocktail party, attending an intimate dinner, or just making small talk with the older couple sitting at the bar, I noticed I was declining invitations left and right. And lets face it; there are those very chilly late December nights that are not conducive to going out, especially after a long week of work. The last thing a lady wants to do is rush home to change, powder her nose, and re-heat a curl in her hair. And this was just the case last December when I found myself on the phone with my mother, complaining about having a dinner invitation and lacking the energy. She simply said, “Oh Sutton, just say yes and have fun!” And with that, I bit the inside of my cheek, mixed a stiff drink, and committed to the required stages of primping. I figured a fun hairdo, along with the gin, would be a sure fire way to get me excited. Well it failed, and I was late to dinner. But within five minutes of walking in the door, I was into another drink and in deep conversation with new and old friends. In between stories I sat back in my chair to observe the room. And at that moment I had to smile at myself for being so happy when just an hour earlier, I was dead set on a date with my pajamas and a movie. It was one of those moments when I realized that at this point in my life, I will practically never say “yes” to something I would regret (except for that extra martini). Whether it is dinner with friends, a long run in the park, or a trip to Brooklyn, I decided to just say “yes” to everything. Once I made the conscious decision to do so, I realized just how often I was saying “no”. My inner loner personality never wanted to commit to anything, because heaven forbid I would rather be doing something else, even if it was nothing at all. But at the end of the day, it is  Written by: Sutton Schuler  Written by: Jacqueline Stahl Dear Madonna, Merry Christmas! Truly! May this be the most spectacular Christmas you have ever had. I hope when you reach down inside your monogrammed, burgundy, velvet stocking, you find even more love just waiting for you to pull into your life. You gave me the gift of your voice in 1986, and this year you gave me the most profound of all gifts. You showed me, and all Women all over the Globe, that we can keep dancing, singing and creating as long as we damn well please. I will twirl, grind, sashay and sing in the subway, in elevators, taxis and at Weddings I'm not invited to. No-one is stopping me- EVER! I'm dancing, right now, in front of the guys making me my Smoothie!! They're smiling! Madonna, keep on reminding the world that our light never has to dim. It can shine brighter at 71 than it did at 17. It might be softer, but it lights the way every day. It is clear that you are a confident and a deeply committed artist, and you're focus is exceptional. You adore yourself, and in turn, you show others they can do the same. As we watch our daughters grow, we can give them this gift everyday. Let's show them that our Light and Love can grow deeper every year. Thank you for sharing your Love, your Music and your Infectious Energy with the world!! Take a bow. Love, Jacqueline Stahl *Please Comment Below*   Written by: Betsy Karp It’s Christmas Eve and I hope you are all enjoying some wonderful eggnog, family, friends and holiday cheer. Tis the season to be jolly. Sing some carols and stay present…and enjoy the presents (pun intended). If you get stressed out, wondering if you are giving the right gift, if you are drinking and eating too much or just being around “too much” family, take a minute for yourself and breathe. Let go and enjoy. Whatever will be will be. Dress in something fun and festive. Wear red, green or hot pink. Red promotes passion, energy and confidence. It helps you to feel powerful within yourself. Green will help open your heart, letting you feel love and abundance. Hot Pink is playful and fun. It makes you feel like a child all over again. Enjoy yourself. It’s Christmas. Focus on all the love that surrounds you instead of the problems that arise. I hope this holiday brings you lots of peace in your heart. Wishing you all lots of love and a great BIG holiday hug. XOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXO XOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXO XOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXO You can never have enough hugs and kisses! *Please comment below and share with your friends.* Hugs, Betsy Karp, Founder of i adore me  1. Keep Giving love 2. Make time for yourself 3. Get out of your own way 4. Stay present 5. Use color to uplift you 6. Eat healthily 7. Get out in nature 8. Help others 9. Take a chance on yourself 10. Give up criticism and complaining 11. Be generous 12. Make a contribution 13. Open up 14. Communicate 15. Surround yourself with friends and loved ones 16. Take yourself on a date once a week 17. Meditate 18. Eat something you loved eating as a child 19. Laugh 20. Give hugs 21. Get a good night’s sleep 22. Exercise 23. Focus on gratitude 24. Believe in yourself 25. Live for the journey instead of the result *Please comment below and share with your friends.* Hugs, Betsy Karp, Founder of i adore me  Written by: Betsy Karp I can’t stop thinking about the tragedy and massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School on Fri, Dec. 14th. My heart and my condolences go out to all of those who lost anyone in this unthinkable, unfathomable occurrence. I am sending wishes and love to all those that are mourning and in deep, terrible pain. I keep having this vivid visualization of 20 little, white angels in a beautiful circle, all holding hands with white snow coming down all around them. They are warm and toasty in their beautiful, white, down jackets and matching fleece berets, and they’re singing “Jingle Bells.” Everything is so pure and white, clear and clean, and the sky is lit up with so many beautiful stars. But there are perfectly, 20, brilliant stars shining down on each one of them. They are joyful and their spirits are so filled with love. I keep picturing this over and over so that I can let go of some of the dark, angry, black and horrible feelings I have of this terrible tragedy. 20 little angels are singing, are loving and their spirits and souls are forever in our hearts. They are so pure and so loved, even for those who did not know them. Take a minute now, close your eyes and envision what I have been visualizing. See if you can try to imagine these beautiful, 20, white, little angels. It is said that our spirits and our souls leave our bodies when we pass on, so let’s all remember and embrace them. If we all put our energy and love together for these families, just think how much lighter they will start to feel. Life is so precious. It could be gone in an instant. So take some time today and remember how special the people in your life are. Don’t take anything for granted, because we don’t know when our time on this planet will be up. Look up in the sky tonight and let those 20 little angels shine on you. Please comment below and share with your friends.* Hugs, Betsy Karp, Founder of i adore me Enjoy this video. I hope it inspires you as much as it inspires me. There is a saying that it is better to give than receive. Whether you can give a little or a lot, giving is giving. Are you still searching for that perfect holiday present? How about sharing your appreciation and love? What could be better than giving someone the chance to experience self-love, catapulting them towards their dreams? Give them the gift of a happier, healthier life. Who doesn't deserve that? ***The person lucky enough to get this gift certificate from you will be able to use it towards any program of their choice listed on the work with me page. When redeeming this gift certificate, they will also get 20% off the total cost of the program(s) they choose.   Written by: Steven M. Goldsmith All of life is about accepting change and letting go. We lose loved ones, people move away, the elderly pass on, flowers perish and trees fall. We have pets that touch our hearts and leave us with grieving sadness. We have Grandparents who make us feel special, then move onto a higher plane leaving us feeling empty. But we don’t have to feel sad or empty. Now I’m not saying it doesn’t hurt and it isn’t sad. Of course it is. But it is also the natural progression of life and it benefits us more to accept it, breathe and move on. As Francois de la Rochefoucauld so eloquently put it, “The only thing constant in life is change.” Now, I have been struggling with what I want out of life lately. I’ve come to a fork in the road and I’m not quite sure which way to go. It’s scary and I often don’t want to make a choice…I want things to be as I have always expected them to be and have been used to. But the universe has a different plan…Change! I am an actor by trade but have been on the fence of whether or not I want to do it anymore. I’ve had some challenging auditions lately and have been putting a lot of pressure on myself. The pressure naturally only makes it worse, but I haven’t figured out how to “let go” of that pressure yet. This was really magnified the other day when I had a pretty bad audition; over the days that followed, I kept beating myself up for it. I held on with such ferocity, as if I might die without the self-inflicted abuse. I had no idea how to take my mind off of…well…my mind, so I took myself on a date to see “The Life of Pi.” At first I was cynical and wasn’t enjoying it, but once I relaxed and put my focus on the movie instead of my most recent “failure,” I was drawn in. But nothing hit me quite like the quote at the end of the movie: “All of life is an act of letting go, but what hurts the most is not taking a moment to say goodbye” (now what he meant by “not taking a moment to say goodbye” might have been one thing, but I interpreted it to stand for many different situations. It can also stand for forgiveness). This knocked me over the head, smacked me in the face and jolted me out of my negativity. “All of life is an act of letting go…” I was holding onto this terrible audition and feeling like a failure, telling myself over and over again that I would never be great and that I destroyed chances I may never again get. Holding onto this thought, at the time, was akin to not being able to let one off of life support…I couldn’t say goodbye to it. Now I realize I was being overly dramatic, but in that moment, that was how I was feeling: hopeless, sad, grieving and lost. I couldn’t let go of my “story.” But if I just “let go” and allowed myself to “say goodbye,” it would be done. It wasn’t still happening to me. The audition wasn’t an endless torture in a chamber of horrifying tools. The horrifying tools were my thoughts and the chamber was my mind. It wasn’t still happening, yet I kept playing it over and over and over and over again in my mind like someone was holding a gun to my head saying, “YOU MUST FEEL SHAME AND SADNESS FOR WHAT YOU HAVE DONE.” And what for? I’ve been so unsure of my current path as a performer, being faced with this fork in the road of possibly leaving the business and starting over, that I put an exorbitant amount of pressure on this one audition to prove to me that I was “supposed” to stay in the business. It proved to be the opposite. And maybe it was a nudge to say, “keep fighting, stay the course and don’t give up”; who knows. That’s not the point. The point is to learn to let go, say goodbye (albeit, grieve a little to feel the loss so it can be fully released) and go with the flow. Accept the natural progression of life (mistakes and all), accept change and move forward, not backward. Yes, many horrific and tragic things happen in this world--things far worse than a botched audition--but once it has happened, there’s nothing we can do to change it. We can’t go back in time to “fix” or “stop” it from happening. Once it’s done it’s done, and the only thing that seemingly keeps it going is the mind. A fork in the road, a bad audition, a loved one passing on, etc… These are things that we’re not meant to hold onto, but we tend to anyway. We do so because it’s hard to be faced with failure and loss. It leads to change, which leads to a different direction and eventually toward a new beginning. Change is a gift that gives us a chance to release old hurts, learn something new, discover something great and start with something fresh. Who would we be if we stayed in the present and accepted the constant change in the world and in our lives? What wouldn’t we miss? What would we give ourselves permission to do? Byron Katie, the author of “The Work,” says that when we examine depression and sadness, the only thing that ever makes us unhappy is our RESISTANCE to WHAT IS. I truly believe that if everyone learned to “let go” and “say goodbye,” we would live a much more rewarding existence and co-existence. Letting go and saying goodbye…bitter though it may feel, sweet it actually is. ***Please comment below***   Written by: Betsy Karp I have twenty-two 11 and 12-year-old students in my i adore me class, preparing for their “WOW” Project at Citizen Schools. Out of the 22 students, 20 of them are doing outstanding, inspirational, exciting work. The other two are a problem, and I’ll explain why… One of these two students said to me, “I can’t do this. I don’t know how, I don’t want to and I’m not doing it.” My response to him was, “Let’s talk about it and see what we can work out.” He was very unruly, angry and belligerent, to the point that the principal had to come to the room. This child refused to have anything to do with the “WOW” Project, so the principal let him work on the computer in the back of the room. This student is an artist and I have seen some of his previous work…he is quite talented. It was bothering me that he was so stubborn and didn’t want to at least try. He was feeding on the other student, who only speaks Spanish, who said that he couldn’t do it, because he doesn’t speak English. As all of this was going on, one of the girls in the class came up to me and said, “Ms. Betsy, can you help me please? I don’t know how to draw people and robots for my ‘WOW’ Project.” As I was helping her, a light bulb went off in my head. I said to her, “I will help you with the people, but let’s see if we can ask your classmate on the computer in the back of the room if he would be so kind to help you (since he is such a talented artist) to draw the robots.” I picked up a piece of yellow construction paper, we walked to the back of the room and the two of us kindly asked him for help. He looked up at me and said, “I can’t do it.” She said, “Yes you can. I’ve seen how great you draw and I really need help with the robots.” He looked up again and said, “Ok, I can help you but I can only draw on white paper.” I responded to him with, “Yellow is the color that inspires us to be positive. It’s also associated with our will. So I want you to please take this piece of yellow paper and help her to create some wonderful robots.” By the end of the class, he handed me a work of art! He had titled this project “Halo.” He had drawn an ARMY of robots and wrote on the bottom of the yellow paper, “I Can.” I had tears in my eyes. Not only did he help his classmate, he learned to give back to his community (his fellow student), which is what the “WOW” Project is all about. I complimented him and said, “You flipped your script. You went from ‘I can’t’ to ‘I can!’ How does that feel?” He said, “It feels really good! Thank you miss Betsy for believing in me, because now I’ve done the “WOW” Project too.” After seeing all of this, the other student who only speaks Spanish decided he wanted to do something as well. I asked two other students who also speak Spanish to interpret for me. They asked him to write me something in Spanish that he loved about himself. He wrote, “I am going to try to do this project.” It was a win-win for everyone. Where in your life can you flip your script and start showing up for yourself? How can you start turning your “I CAN’Ts” into “I CANs”? Maybe you can find someone or something that can unblock you as well and get you out of your “comfort” zone. What’s your payoff in staying blocked? Color Your World with yellow and let these kids be a symbol of inspiration to help you get unblocked. Isn’t it time you got out of your own way? *Please comment below and share with your friends.* Hugs, Betsy Karp, Founder of i adore me | FREE eBook
 AuthorBetsy Karp, The Colour Coach Daily InsightsMay 2013 CategoriesAll |
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