5 Setbacks that Stop You BIG Time

Have you ever felt that you want to succeed but whatever you do there seems to be all kinds of things that are stopping you? While it is true that life happens, it’s how we respond to it that makes a difference. What usually happens is that we get accustomed to how we perceive the reality and unnoticed we react to it, again in a habitual way. Here are the 5 most common automatic reactions I see around me and how they influence your life.

1. Poverty mindset – If you consistently prime yourself with “I don’t have money”, “there is never enough”, then you set yourself up for a self-fulfilling prophecy. This doesn’t mean thatlying to yourself that you have money if you don’t will work. What it means is that as soon as you focus on “I don’t have ” and “I can’t afford”, you miss the opportunity to mobilize yourself to look for a solution instead of dwelling on the problem.

2. Powerless Attitude – You know you feel powerless when you just don’t seem to go anywhere from where you are. You will notice that you see no direction you can take and no solution by the way you look at things. Every time when you find excuses and  complain you delude yourself that you do something about the situation you are in while in fact you don’t really take any action that will bring a positive change.

3. Doubt dwelling – If you don’t believe in yourself, in what you do, that things will go in a better direction (with your active help) then  nobody else will and even if they will, your disbelief will soon discourage them. Going down a negative spiral is trapping you into inaction more than anything else. And the worst part about it is that it had the ability to signal others to stay away from clouds of gloom and doom.

4. Resistance to change – Life would be a Heaven on Earth if only everything was perfect and unchanging but that movie is not played in the cinema of real life. So,  you either go with the change, meet with your fear, go out of your comfort zone, or you resist it and stay the same and sooner or later start regreting that you do not live the life you wish you could.

5. Avoiding the NOW –  Most often, when you don’t make amends with your past (appreciate it for happening whether bringing you good or bad experience) you drive the car of your life into a forward direction looking back. Do you think you really are going far without looking at the road and the direction? Others, live in the perfect future trying to imagine it into being. And, that’s all good as long as you don’t expect to have your Olimpic medal to arrive by the mail while you do nothing to get tit in the mean time. Living in a dream for the future is like trying to catch the air around you. The past moment is already gone. The future moment is not there yet. What you have is the present moment and this is where you can determine what the future would be like for you and how you perceive the past.

Setbacks are like blind spots – different coping strategies which once upon a time we started using in order to deal with what comes our way. Maybe at that time these strategies were helping us and maybe they are still helping us in a way. There is a pay-off, something we protect ourselves from.  But, does this  align with who we are or want to be now. Once we become aware what we do and what is the protective reason to do it, we c an decide differently. We can decide to take the leading role in our life and not allow old habits to rule our life!

Tsvetanka Petrova, CPC

The Start-up Set up  Coach

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5 Quick Ways to Get Things Your Way

The quickest way to of being the best owner of your business is to be the best owner of your own life. How do you do that? By effectively claiming what’s yours. How?

1. Be clear on what you want – If you don’t know what exactly you want and you fail to communicate it to others in a way that even a first grader gets it, how will others know? Same thing with the things , situations, people you can’t want o spend your time and energy on. Supposing that the others can read your mind is a great strategy but I just haven’t seen it work that much.

2.  Keep an eye on your feelings – People tend to feel same thing in similar situations. Have you noticed that in yourself? What situations anger you; make you happy, excited, at peace?What interactions trigger guilt, blame, remorse, self-pity? Checking up with what your feelings tell you is always a good way to find out for yourself whether you are playing a home game or you are just an actor in a play directed by somebody else.

3. Choose which signs to follow – Keep yourself informed about the other person’s feelings too. they will keep you on track for what is expected from you. Just keep in mind that feeling for somebody else’s needs and wants and wanting to assert your own requirements is just not possible without a compromise from both parties. If the other person cannot or is not willing to have a share in the compromise option – your choice is between following your own best interest and involving yourself in  somebody else’s drama.

4. Be prepared to leave – Letting go and moving on can be a self-preserving act when your needs and wants are not met and there is no sign of willingness to work on that. but it can also be a fleeting strategy which signals you that you do not want to face the situation adn that you prefer to pretend that it does not exist. How can you be sure which way you choose? Ask yourself:  Did you really honestly give your best to work on those wants and needs? If you leave it aal ,is there really a loss?

5.  Be the trusting one – some wants and needs take time. If your business partner is disorganized for example, be patient. It takes time for the seed of change to grow. How will things be different if you trust that things are just the way they need to be each and every day?

Tsvetanka Petrova, Start-up Set up  Coach

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5 Pleasant Ways to Chill Out

Having a business, faced every day with the unknown and with having to constantly make choices for which you know what the consequences, although unforeseen now are going to come back to you is just not easy. So, what do you do to enjoy the moment and still be in the midst of a hectic results driven busy day? Few things come to mind:

1. Laughter Yoga – As a wellbeing workout, the laughter yoga is a combination of laughing for no reason and yogic breathing. Even if the laughter is not real but faked the positive results for the body are the same. And which is great – it does not need much time or practice to crate a sense of well being and better health. For more information, go to

2. Sound Healing with Tibetan singing bowls – like a real blonde I was really hoping to see some real singing bowls but I didn’t get this chance. However, I was pleasantly surprised how using the vibrational sound of bowls can really reduce the stress quickly, bring in sense of peace, and is used even in pain management. It does look strange but it sounds heavenly.

3. Holosync Meditation –

Subliminals are audio or visual messages that exposed to your brain so fast that you don’t hear or see the messages but your brain does register them. Since the meditation is one of the most powerful ways to release stress and bring in a peaceful state of mind, what could be a better way to have the sound, the music, the affirmations, all in one place and all you have to do is sit back and enjoy.

4. Practice of Sahaj Samadhi Meditation – Sahaj means natural, effortless and Samadhi is meditative state of mind. Sahaj Samadhi is a natural, effortless meditation that centres the mind into itself and helps you have a rested feeling in less than 30 min a day. While the mind is focused on breathing all worries from the past or for the future are dispersed into the present moment.

5. Tai chi chuan – Tai Chi is strangely enough a Chinese martial art. It’s not famous for that though. What it’s known for is slow motion dancelike practice easily spotted in the parks around the world in the morning. It is like a mediation in motion and is beneficial to the human health and well-being by clearing the blockages in the energy system of the body.

Tsvetanka Petrova, Start-up Set up  Coach

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5 Little Secrets to Do Better even before you Know Better

Managing your business involves a lot of thinking hats – there’s the owner’s hat, the manager’s hat, the marketing hat, the HR hat, the coworker’s hat etc. It is sometimes difficult to decide if they work in synchrony or they conflict one another. So, what can you do to have all hats at peace with one another, i.e. think, talk and act in synchrony with all the conflicting desires inside you? There are 5 things that you can be mindful about and they are:

1. Loosen up that tight grip on control – When one of the thinking hats argue, have a blame blast or get angry it points out to you one thing – it wants to run the parade. What you are really experiencing here is that certain aspect of yourself needs to be in control over you and your behavior. What aspect of you is fighting for control over you and how does this aspect show you that?

2. Detach yourself from what’s already gone – The easiest way to find out if you are repeating old conversations and behaviors over again is to ask yourself have you been down this road before? And if you have, is the end of the road what you want to get to or would you rather do something else? To recognize that you are successfully detaching yourself from repeating the past is to acknowledge where you are heading towards and to realize that this is the old plan, the old strategy or behavior.

3. Detach yourself from what’s not there yet – thinking about the future, worrying about the future, getting trapped into the “what if’s”, envisioning the future as if it already is are all good strategies that the different hats use. The thing is, how do you control something that hasn’t happened yet? That’s right. You can’t. The only thing you can control is what you do in the here-and-now.

4. Go back to the source and learn from it – everything that the aspects of our life do is learned some day somewhere from somebody or from an experience. So, when a thinking hat starts to ask for the control over you, just ask yourself – where did you learn that? And, as soon as you find out – see if this is something you still want in your life and if you don’t just do something about it.

5. Keep it real – the most difficult part when inviting synchronicity in your life is to give up the illusion that if we’re in control we are ok and if we are not – that’s not good. The truth of the matter is that there will be ups and downs, times of happiness and times of woe, peaks and valleys all that is ok. Recognizing the beauty in let’s say not being happy and still being ok is keeping it real. And reality is something we can choose to adapt. Illusion is something we need to keep feeding in order to make it look like real.

“Can a man change his destiny? A man does what he can, until his destiny is revealed.” ~ The Last Samurai

Tsvetanka Petrova, Personal and Professional Life Coach

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5 Easy Ways to Know if you are IN BUSINESS or you RUN A HOBBY

Many people turn what they like to do into a business for the simple idea that if you do what you like to do for a living your life will be more fulfilling. In reality, though, once the business is launched more often than not the new business doesn’t bring in enough revenue for the owner to support themselves with that even after the first or second year. What gets in the way is the hobby mindset that prevents the entrepreneur mind to get trained into working the business.

And instead of operating a business some start-ups turn into hobbies which bring in some money from time to time. So, how do you know if you have a Hobby or a Business? Look at yourself and the qualities you nourish:

1.Commitment – The business owners are determined to keep on going even when the going gets tough. And, let’s be realistic, times like these are expected to come once in a while when operating a business. It’s what you do when you are faced with a situation what counts not what the situation is. The hobbyists instead get distracted by the situation, some valid excuses, other business ideas, life in general etc.

2. Optimism – The business owner will most likely look for the silver lining in the clouds; will seek the hidden opportunities in otherwise challenging situations and most importantly, they will not give up on the idea that good things will happen out of their business … and they work on that.

3. Decision-making mindset– If you want to operate a successful business, you are an executive and executives are decision-makers. They are active in allocating resources like – time, money, energy, people. They are flexible in making those decisions. They assess in every moment how this decision supports them on their quest to excellence and if they don’t – they easily underside them and choose something else.

4. Moneymaker mentality– If you know that you will not be able to support the kind of lifestyle you want, will you make the decision to take the plunge and quit the daytime job or will you wait until your business is strong enough? Will you wake up with the idea that you will do all activities that bring in money to the business first and then everything else?

5. Have a flare for sales – As much as most people who go into business love what they do, money comes with sales. The business owner sells their ideas, products, and services to everyone – the employees, the clients, the society at large and they feel good about it. They talk about it, they blog about it, they market it, they network it. They are serious about stepping up their game and going from the idea to the realization stage that brings in the revenue.

Tsvetanka Petrova, Personal and Professional Life Coach

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The benefit of knowing your archetype

The knowledge of archetypal influences in one’s life can be used to help you to become aware of the way they construct the world around you. It reflects you perspectives and leaves room for introducing different perspectives which in turn can lead to the ability to make better choices.

Archetypes can be used as a driving force in revealing and healing automatic responses that come from painful memories, negative self-talk and judgmental beliefs. They can be used as a tool in assisting the client in redirecting their life and in finding a way to express their untapped creative potential.

They provide a systematization for and explanation of your life’s journey so far and aid the search for direction and meaning in the interpretation of one’s life. Categorizing the patterns of behavior and explaining them in terms of tasks, lessons and gifts allows you to transcend their present life story and to look at a bigger picture regarding their existence. This picture consists of concepts like potential and opportunities to develop this potential. It allows you to embrace the expression of Self and Shadow Self fully.

Archetypes are a tool for transforming one’s world view from powerless to empowered and call for realization of creativity and effectiveness. Knowing your own current tasks and lessons allows you to consciously choose your reality, your story. The possibility to tap into entirely different life story is no longer an impossible dream but a path that can be mapped out, designed, planned and walked through.

Reinventing yourself as a consequence becomes easy and funny game and re-modeling your life is no longer a daunting task.

Tsvetanka Petrova, Personal and Professional Life Coach

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Roles, Scripts and Archetypes

The story of each individual’s life consists of many roles and scripts. Over a lifetime one person can play many roles and can have many scripts. Negative feelings arise when someone resists playing a certain role, or is not ready to adapt to the changes in the story of their life.

While those changes in the script of one’s life are inevitable as the essence of life is constant change the roles sometimes stay unchanged. In the different life stages a call for development of different archetypes is made. However, if the individual insists to play the old role in the new script of their life, the archetypes which have been called in to assist in the life’s journey turn into shadow archetypes and instead of facilitating the development of the individual they assist in inhibiting it and sabotaging it until they write an new script and enact a new role.

Helping the individual to recognize the call for change and react accordingly is there the coach’s role comes in. For the most part the roles people prefer to play determine their life script and are influenced by the archetypal narrative they are living. Hence, knowledge of the archetypal forces which operate behind the scenes gives an opportunity for the individual to step outside of the role and decide for themselves whether this is a good role for them and whether they are playing the role well.

Tsvetanka Petrova, Personal and Professional Life Coach

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The key differences between a coach and a mentor

Expertise – The coach does not offer answers. They are using different tools and techniques to encourage the client to find their own solutions and answers. The mentors are usually in a certain field and have experience and expertise in it

Age of client – The mentors are usually older than the client. The coaching client on the other side can be even older than the coach but there is no rule.

Focus – Coaching is non-judgmental and non-opinionated. Mentoring is biased and the mentor has a personal interest in the end result. The client hires a mentor to work on something about himself as an individual, and hires a coach if is interested in obtaining a certain outcome, i.e. seeks certain performance

Role – The mentor establishes a two-way mutually beneficial relationship which does not have to have a clear agenda. On the contrary, the coaching relationship has the client’s agenda that is being followed all the way.

Relationship – The client chooses the mentor all the time. However, not all the time the client chooses the coach – in companies the coach can be hired.

Source of influence – “Coach” can even be a job title but mentor needs to be earned with experience and expertise.

Return – The benefit of having mentor’s assistance is learning. The benefit of coach’s assistance is achievement of a desired outcome.

“Interested in knowing more how you can make better choices? Visit http://www.aheartsdesires.com, sign up for the weekly newsletter to be the first to know what’s new, or call me at (866)328-2326. If you know somebody who will benefit from my coaching, please don’t hesitate to send them my way. I will make sure that when they sign up you will get free coaching or a commission.

What does a coach listen for in a session?

i. Incongruent parts in the story – there is a saying that actions speak louder than words. The clients have lots of stories and usually they are very emotional and looking forward to telling them over and over again. In order for the coach to be prepared for an effective feedback, the coach is listening for:
– Discrepancies between words and actions – for example, if the client says that they want something done, but they do absolutely nothing to move ahead, or when they say they are X kind of person, but their actions send out completely different messages.
– Differences between tone of voice and expressed emotions – for example, when the tone of voice is even but the emotions expressed are deep one reason for this could be that the client does not allow for those emotions to be expressed
– Gaps between attitudes and desires – the coach is listening for potential unhelpful attitudes that the client is not aware of that could be hindering the client’s movement forward into the direction he/ she wants

ii. What lies beneath the client’s story – this is something that the coach is really interested in hearing. This is most often something that the client is not aware of and the job of the coach is to pick up on those things and to hold the space for the client to have insights and become aware
– Underlined Automatic Commitments – as long as the client is in the grip of those belief systems, emotional patterns and automatic responses the forward movement is most likely going to be constantly sabotaged
– Judgements – those can be judgments about oneself or about others and they can hold true or could be not valid at all or any longer
– Archetypes – those are the client’s perspectives, life scripts, and roles in life. The coach’s role is to help the client become aware how well those archetypes are supporting him/her
– Desires – the coach is looking forward to finding whether the desires are prioritized or not, if there are conflicting desires, how realistic and achievable are those longings / goals and if they are in alignment with the core values or not

iii. The client’s demeanour – the real language that the client is using is through their behaviour – the words they use, the silence, the aha moments, the breathing. They are vital clues to the coach so that the coach knows where the client is at and can easily have a feedback. Also, the coach uses those clues to be able to speak the language of the client
– Modality – with regards to the words that the client uses the coach can have an idea of the modality of the client and adjust his/her modality to the one of the client
– The level of spiritual intelligence – whether the client is paying more attention to the intellectual, emotional or spiritual part of themselves. If there is a part of the client that is left out the coach can pay attention to that part by asking questions in alignment with the missing part. For example, if the client is telling that he/she is frustrated but all the time uses words like: think, consider etc, an appropriate question would be: How does this frustration feel like?

Interested in knowing more how you can make better choices? Visit http://www.aheartsdesires.com, sign up for the weekly newsletter to be the first to know what’s new, or call me at (866)328-2326. If you know somebody who will benefit from my coaching, please don’t hesitate to send them my way. I will make sure that when they sign up you will get free coaching or a commission.

How to not give up halfway to reaching your goal

When you don’t know what you want but you know you are unhappy with something in your life the way it is right now, you have a choice. You can leave the way things are and most people do – because this is the easy way out. But, this is a temporaty choice. After some time, the inertia has consequences which once set in motion are inescapable. The other route is a frightening one and takes courage to take it.  It is the choice to make a change. Once this choice is made the seemingly impossible task to re-define your world inside and out slowly gets sorted out … with lots of work.

And sooner or later you arrive at a place where you are no longer at the confused, trapping place you were before but you are also not at the blissful and fulfilling dream place you’ve envisioned. So, what do you do to keep on moving forward?

1.  Learn from the forces that pull you back to your old ways – The more you walk away from something you don’t want any more in your life the more likely it will get pulled back from time to time. And this is perfect. Because now, as opposite to before,m you know where you are coming from, you can decide differently, take a different route and learn from the mistakes.

2. Learn from new situations in which you are presented with the opportunity to decide differently – These events that you strangely attract in your life are such a trill if you can have your small victories and don’t fall back to whare you don’t want to go.  Once you start recognizing those opportunities and grab them – you become the creator of your new reality, new you. And this is great.

3. Learn from your past experiences and appreciate them – after some time the new paths you once wished to take become your reality and you start to quickly and automatically respond in the new way. Once you get to this stage, congratulate yourself. You deserve it! You past experiences are still there but now as just lessons or even step stones you had to go though in order to get to your destination. And that’s so perfect. Understanding and compassion help you understand your life’s meaning on a deaper level.

Interested in knowing more how you can make better choices? Visit http://www.aheartsdesires.com, sign up for the weekly newsletter to be the first to know what’s new, or call me at (866)328-2326. If you know somebody who will benefit from my coaching, please don’t hesitate to send them my way. I will make sure that when they sign up you will get free coaching or a commission.