One of the biggest roadblocks in creating a soul-matched relationship is that we tend to bring our pain and baggage from past relationships into our present ones, and even into our search for the right one. If you have been hurt in the past, it is understandable that you may have developed issues with trust and confidence in your subsequent partners. The fact is that no partner is the same. Even though you may be holding onto past traumas or disappointments, this does not mean that every partner to follow will behave in this same way.

There is a tendency to project, or put onto other people, the fear, grief or resentment of our past. When in reality, this person does not represent those things at all. However, because you may believe this to be true because of your history, your fear and behavior around this issue may bring the worst out of someone you love.

The result is what we call a self-fulfilling prophecy, in that we end up bringing upon ourselves what we fear most. For instance, if you have fear of abandonment and you hang onto someone too tightly because you are afraid they will leave, they may end up leaving because they feel smothered by you. Another example would be that because you are afraid your love will leave you, you may subconsciously choose people that have commitment issues, just to prove to yourself that, yes, they will abandon you. Sounds crazy, right? Well it happens all the time.

When we start a relationship with clean slate, it will have a much higher chance of flourishing with much less grief and discord.

Here are a few exercises to help you let go and move forward from a clear, strong and healthy place.

Blast Off Practice #1 Write Off The Past

Please write out the emotions and traumas that you have experienced in past relationships that you do not want to bring into your new or current relationship.

By looking at these issues in writing, it helps to separate them from your current situations and relationships. In this way it is easier to become an observer rather than wearing the traumas on your sleeves in your new relationships.

When we can see our partner with 20/20 vision rather than looking through clouded lenses from the past, we will feel much freer to be the best partner possible. The result, we also draw in and receive the same positive, loving energy in return.

Blast Off Practice #2 Open Your Heart To Love

This Open Heart Meditation exercise is in my new best selling book, Blast Off! The Surefire Success Plan To Launch Your Dreams Into Reality.  In this exercise, you will focus, visualize and feel your heart open to receive love, and at the same time let go of the past hurts and disappointments.

1. Get into a quiet space. Sit down and then take some deep breaths until you are feeling calm and relaxed. If soft music and candles help you get into the mood, add these to your environment.
2. Now when you inhale, visualize a golden light coming into your body from the crown of your head and see it flowing all the way down to your toes. Feel it as the warmth and the sparkling light nurtures all the organs and systems of your body.
3. After a few minutes, focus on your heart area. Now put your right hand over your heart and continue to inhale and exhale this golden light. Then as you inhale, only focus on your heart area and visualize a soft, pink, loving energy coming into your heart. Feel your heart opening fully and allowing this pink energy to fill it completely and fully with love.
4. If you have had pain in your heart due to loss or heartbreak, visualize the tears of your heart pouring out as the pain begins to release and subside. Fill any emotional wounds with this pink loving energy. See your wound healing as your heart is surrounded with love. Continue to inhale and exhale deeply.
5. After another minute or two, visualize the pink energy turning into red, passionate, vibrant energy that is continuing to fill up your ever- expanding, open heart. Now feel that love and passion spread from your heart to the rest of your body, up to your head and down through your torso and legs, and through to the bottom of your toes. Feel how wonderful, light, free and uplifting this love energy feels. Continue to experience the opening of your heart.
6. Now I want you to expand this loving energy inside your heart and the rest of your body out to the world and to the Universe. See it expanding for miles and miles. Oh, how lucky the world is to experience your love! Now feel the love coming right back into your heart and hold it there. Your heart is now open and ready to receive love.
7. Repeat this exercise at least twice a week to continue healing and opening your heart so that you may receive all the love you deserve.

It is not that you won’t remember any of these old hurts, you are just choosing not to give them continual power over you and your present and future opportunities for great love.

Now that you have been releasing the past and anything that can get in the way of creating a new and deeper relationship, it is time to get really clear on what you actually do want in your relationships.

Allison Maslan, HHP, CCH is the founder and president of Blast Off! Life and Business Coaching™; an all-encompassing enterprise which empowers her clients to achieve personal and professional goals. In addition to Blast Off, Maslan is an international motivational speaker, a No. 1 bestselling author of Blast Off! The Surfire Success Plan To Launch Your Dreams Into Reality, the inventor  of Blastation™ – an interactive, web-based life coaching software program – and the president of the Homeopathic Wellness Center™.  She has been an avid entrepreneur for the past twenty five years and started nine of her own businesses. Via her numerous enterprises, and successful strategies, Maslan has facilitated thousands of her clients in attaining and maintaining their personal and professional apex . And yes, Allison manifested her soulmate and husband, Mike, with the same formula she teaches in her book and coaching.

Some Tips to Help You Break Free:

When you are going after your dreams, a few hurdles must be  surpassed. This is not a bad thing because anytime you want to achieve  something great in your life, it is truly worth the effort it takes to succeed. One of  the struggles that clients often share with me are the negative responses from family, friends and co-workers when they reveal their new goals and dreams.

Why does this phenomenon occur and what can you do about it?

When you begin to make changes in your life, it will surely bring up fear in those around you. Although these people may have the best intentions in offering their advice, it is often clouded with their own fears of failure, insecurity, the unknown and many more limiting beliefs. These beliefs are illusions, yet when you give into them, they can overpower your life and hold you back from your own greatness. These fears are a figment of one’s imagination made real. When loved ones share their negative opinion with you regarding your dream, they are also projecting their own fears onto you. And if you have any self-doubt whatsoever, this pessimism has the power to throw you off your path and you may give up altogether.

If you look back in history, there are so many examples of people having to ward off great negativity and roadblocks as they forged toward their lofty ideas and inventions. The Wright Brothers were laughed at many times for their invention of the crazy flying machine that changed our lives forever. Henry Ford came from a family of farmers. When he told his father that he wanted to be a mechanic instead of working on the family farm, it created a huge schism between he and his father.  Ford went on to mass produce the automobile. There was also a man named, Akio Morita, that came from a long line of Saki makers in Japan. When he told his father he was going to make a career in electronics rather than join the family business, his father would not speak to him for a long time. Akio went on to establish a company that you may have heard of called Sony.

When Sam Zien told his friends he was going to leave the biotech industry to become a television entertainer and The Cooking Guy, many laughed and said he would never make it. We all know how that story turned out.

And in my own life, when I left a successful advertising agency to become a homeopathic physician, my own mom thought I had joined a religious cult and told me to get a job. Why? Because she was afraid. She meant well, but she could not see the possibilities that I could see. She could not feel the passion that I felt. (Now she is so happy that I did not listen!)

So when you reveal your dreams, be careful to only share them with those that are supportive of you. Otherwise, I suggest you keep them to yourself. Position your head toward your goal. Do not let anyone tell you it cannot be done and walk toward it every single day. Then when your dream is finally realized from your powerful intention and action, go ahead and share your excitement with the world. I assure you that old criticism will shift to applause.

Allison Maslan, HHP, CCH

Allison Maslan International/CEO

www.myblastoff.com

www.homeopathicwellness.com

I have so many tips that I am excited share with you in My Secrets to Success Series. The toughest decision is what to share next! I just returned from a three-day long weekend getaway with my husband and my creative juices are over flowing. Which leads me this very important newsflash:

Tip # 2:  If  You Want To Be Successful In Business (and relationships and parenthood for that matter) TAKE LOTS OF VACATIONS!

Yes, taking time away from work and daily responsibilities is one of the best things you can do for your business, your health, your sanity and your creativity. Coming from a self-proclaimed life-a-holic that loves her work, her marriage, her family and her fun (not necessarily in that order), I have found that the more time I take away from the office, the more inventive, inspired and jazzed about my work I become.

I know the feeling. Work is piling up on my desk, there are phone calls to return, e-mails to respond to, Facebook posts to make. I love it all and feel very blessed to live my calling and work with the most fabulous clients on the planet. However, there comes a time every few months (or even weeks) where my brain hits overload status. And I mean overload. Thoughts, queries and requests are flying in the direction of my brain looking for an intelligible and high-alert, problem-solving response. Then, all the sudden, I realize I have absolutely no brain cells left to fire back to the inquirer. I used to wait until I hit this proverbial wall to realize I was beyond my deadline for a vacation. Not anymore.

Now I plan ahead and I use my time away as a life and business booster.  Why? Because I have found that my most brilliant business ideas have been born while I was on vacation. Here are some examples:

• My light bulb moment for my life planning and goal setting software, Blastation, came to me while vacationing in Laguna Beach, CA.

• Solutions to my most complicated homeopathic cases often come to me thousands of feet up in the air as I am flying to some far away (usually tropical) destination.

• My inspiration to the conclusion to my book, Blast Off!, came to me while walking on the beach with my husband.

• I just had another brilliant business idea (can’t tell you yet!) come to me while getting a massage at a spa in Charlotte, NC.

What is the reasoning for these vacation ‘aha moments ? When you are at work, you are busy doing, responding, tasking, detailing, analyzing and communicating. If you are very focused in your activities, all of your senses are at play and being utilized to the max. When you are away from your daily business at hand, your body and mind will begin to relax and unwind. And once you have had a chance to de-compress, your thoughts are now free to let go, explore and create.

Have any of you had a brilliant idea or solved one of your most pressing conflicts while taking a shower? This is because you are feeling relaxed from the hot water, and in many cases, you are experiencing a rare several minutes of undisturbed quiet time.

They say necessity is the mother of invention and I say, “creativity is the goddess of re- invention.” Doing things the same way every day, year after year, is not going to yield you much positive change. If you are spinning your wheels, and in dire need of a recharge or inspiration burst in your life or business, you have my blessing to take a vacation, even if it is just for a few days.

Pushing yourself to birth new ideas is about is fruitful as trying hard to have a baby. It is through letting go and allowing that the fertility and ingenuity have room to be born.

So go to that cooking seminar you have been dreaming of, dance in the moonlight or head to where the flowers are blooming. Follow your passion and go have some fun! You deserve it. It may just be the most prosperous thing you do for yourself all year long.

________________________

I would love to hear your thoughts on my posts. Please feel free to comment. ~ Allison

Allison Maslan, HHP, CCH has built 9 of her own successful companies. She is president of Blast Off! Life and Business Coaching, and Homeopathic Wellness Center. She is also an international speaker, trapeze artist, and author of the #1 bestselling book, Blast Off! The Surefire Success Plan to Launch Your Dreams Into Reality. Allison was recently nominated for the San Diego Business Journal’s Women Who Mean Business Award.

I am often asked, “how do you do it, Allison? How do you create success in your life?”

To offer further support, I have decided (5 minutes ago) to write a series of articles and posts on The Secrets of My Success, Ali’s Tips on Entrepreneurship, Relationships, Motherhood and Living Adventurously! Oh, yes. It has been an adventure, and I would not have it any other way.

Ali’s Success Tip #1: Say Yes. Then, always, always ask for support.

We often learn through example. I was blessed in that my father was (and still is at 80 years of age) a great businessman. He owned the largest privately run women’s clothing chain in the Midwest. And as a young woman who loved fashion, this was a very cool thing. He opened businesses like you and I open jars of peanut butter. (The smooth kind, not nutty at all).

One of the best pieces of advice he ever gave me in business was this. Say “yes” first, then figure out how to make it happen. So I did. In my early 20’s, I opened my 2^nd business, a full service advertising and public relations firm. One thing I should mention, I had no experience in advertising or public relations. I’m talking, “zero.”

My first real client was MCI. I met a young woman at a party in Atlanta. She mentioned she was assigned to order some thank you cards for her department at MCI and I impulsively said, “ I can do that for you.” (I honestly had no clue.) I took the $5000 order, walked into some small printing shop and said, “ I just got this job to produce thank you cards for MCI. I have no idea how to make them. Would you help me?” The southern gentleman behind the counter’s jaw dropped as he said, “How did you get this job, Ma’am? I spent the next 3 weeks hanging out at the printer. They walked me through all the steps of typography, paper, inks, proofs, (this is pre-internet) and I even learned some printing lingo. The skills I learned there have served me and my clients a thousand times over. All because I asked for support.

When my client, the president of Charlotte Russe clothing chain asked me if I knew how to buy radio and eventually television, what do you think I said? After saying ABSOLUTELY, I walked out of his office feeling out of my mind excited. And then when reality hit, and I realized I had no idea what to do next, I spent the next several weeks spending time at the radio and television stations, receiving media buying 101. All because I asked for guidance. Was I nervous? Sure I was. Yet once I learned, my fear dissolved.

Asking for support has been a huge secret of my success. I continued this practice over my 25 years in business. (Yes, I started at age 12.) When I began practicing homeopathy, even after I completed my education, I hired mentors. These were people that paved the trail before me. I did not want to practice good homeopathy. I wanted to practice great homeopathy. You see, mentors and coaches save you headaches, heartaches, lots of money and time. When I decided to sell the homeopathic college I had built to have more time for my clients,  I hired a mentor to support me through the process. When I began to write my book, I hired a writing coach. When I began doing motivational speeches, I hired a speaking coach. When I wanted to invent my Blastation software, I hired a software expert. When I wanted to launch my book, I asked a best selling author to teach me her successful strategy.

Do you see a pattern here? I am not afraid to admit that I don’t know something, and I see the million dollar value in asking for support from someone who does. The knowledge I have gained from these amazing people launched me on a much more direct and fruitful path toward the attainment of my goals. And I always made my investment back hundreds of times over. Had I tried to figure it out on my own, I may have eventually reached my goals, but there would have been much more struggle and frustration. And I would not be living the wonderful life I am today.  In my coaching practice, people often confide in me that they feel it is a weakness to ask for help. They have it all wrong. The truth is, it takes courage.

I would love to hear from you. Your comments, questions and experiences are encouraged.