With the change in season there’s no better time to clean out the wardrobe and dispose of any pieces that are too last season or no longer our style.  It’s so refreshing to de-clutter and make way for the new season’s hottest looks.  For me, it’s also such a great feeling to open the cupboard door and feel happy with what I see, rather than bored and uninspired.  I love to have a wardrobe full of pieces that are a beautiful reflection of who I am today, rather than a reflection of who I was yesterday.   By holding on to pieces that we no longer wear, our wardrobe becomes cluttered and there’s limited space for fresh, new styles.

The same can be said for our inner “closets”.  Just as it’s cleansing and invigorating to overhaul our fashion wardrobe from season to season, so too is it essential to clean out our inner closet.  We’ve all heard about the proverbial skeleton in the closet.  Funnily enough, many of us prefer to go through life with the skeleton hanging on the rack right next to our little black dress, above our Jimmy Choo shoes!  Well girls, not a good idea!

It’s time to get those skeletons out of the closet and it doesn’t have to be as tough a process as you may think.  By clearing our limiting beliefs, cleansing ourselves of past emotional scars and removing patterns that are no longer serving us, we’re much more empowered to connect with, nurture and celebrate our inherent inner beauty and shine our light brightly.

Just as our fashion wardrobe has some trusted staple pieces that stay with us season after season, so too does our inner wardrobe.  It houses the foundation of who we truly are; our true essence.  As we overhaul our inner wardrobe by removing all of those items that have been cluttering our true essence, we create the space for our inner beauty to shine as brightly as it possibly can.

As we start to overhaul our inner wardrobe it can be helpful to look at different aspects of our lives and ask ourselves a few simple questions.  This can help us determine the areas that may need the biggest clean out.

1) Relationships

What beliefs do I have about relationships that may not be serving me?  Are these thoughts really true or do I just believe them to be?

Some examples of limiting beliefs relating to relationships are: “I’m not worthy of love”, “I don’t deserve to be happy”, “I am unlovable”, “Relationships cause will cause me pain”, “I don’t deserve to be treated with love and respect”, “There are no good single guys”, “I will never meet someone”….  Whether these beliefs are conscious or unconscious they can directly influence our experiences in life.  What we believe we receive.

Am I letting my ego (fear, insecurity, self-doubt, anger, resentment, greed, jealousy, laziness) get in the way of fulfilling relationships?  How can I move out of ego and trust that I deserve fulfilling relationships in my life?

Are there any people in my life that are not a positive influence on me? How can I put more distance between them and myself?

2) Finances

What beliefs do I have about finances that may not be serving me? Are these thoughts really true or do I just believe them to be?

Some examples of limiting beliefs relating to finances are: “Money doesn’t grow on trees”, “Money is hard to come by”, “I need to work hard for my money”, “I am poor”, “I don’t deserve to be financially abundant”, “Money is the root of all evil”, “Money is not important”…  Once again, whether these beliefs are conscious or unconscious they can directly influence our experiences in life.  What we believe we receive.

Am I letting my ego (fear, insecurity, self-doubt, anger, resentment, greed, jealousy, laziness) get in the way of financial abundance?  How can I move out of ego and trust that I deserve financial abundance in my life?

3) Health and Wellbeing

What beliefs do I have about my health and wellbeing that may not be serving me? Are these thoughts really true or do I just believe them to be?

Some examples of limiting beliefs relating to health are: “I am not in control of my health”, “I don’t deserve to be happy and healthy”, “Poor health is means for getting attention”, “I am not good enough as I am”, “I need to punish myself”, “Being skinny is more important than being healthy”, “My health is in the hands of the doctors, there is nothing I can do to improve it”, “Stress is a part of life in this day and age”, “My thoughts, emotions and behaviour do not impact my health”…

Am I letting my ego (fear, insecurity, self-doubt, anger, resentment, greed, jealousy, laziness) get in the way of optimal health?  How can I move out of ego and trust that I deserve to live in optimal health?

4) Career

What beliefs do I have about my career that may not be serving me? Are these thoughts really true or do I just believe them to be?

Some examples of limiting beliefs relating to career are: “I am not good enough to get this job/promotion”, “There’s no such thing as a job I love”, “Work is not fun”, “I need to work long hours to do a good job”, “I don’t have what it takes”…

Am I letting my ego (fear, insecurity, self-doubt, anger, resentment, greed, jealousy, laziness) get in the way of a fulfilling career?  How can I move out of ego and trust that I deserve to have a rewarding job?

Sometimes we can answer these questions ourselves and simply creating an awareness of our belief patterns is enough to dissolve the belief.  Other times we may need some assistance to identify and eliminate beliefs that are not serving us well.  Just as we may appoint a stylist to help overhaul our fashion wardrobe, so too is it at times helpful to appoint an inner beauty stylist to help overhaul our inner wardrobe.  After all, we all deserve both inner beauty and outer style! My belief is that you can’t have one without the other.  Our inner is a reflection of our outer and our outer is a reflection of our inner.

We all owe it to ourselves to revamp our inner wardrobe from time-to-time.  As we do this we create the space for new and exciting opportunities to flow into our lives and allow our inner beauty to shine as brightly as possible.

What is the state of your fashion wardrobe?  Is this a reflection of the state of your inner wardrobe?  Are there any areas of your inner wardrobe that could do with some styling?

This blog post was written by Gabrielle Aitken, Inner Beauty Stylist and inspirer of Appreciation, Respect and Love (a.k.a. Aprelo).

Do you have any friends, family or colleagues that might like reading the Aprelo Blog?  If so, please forward this link to them and encourage them to subscribe.

Why is it that since the day we were born we have been made to feel that it’s uncool to love yourself?  How many times in the schoolyard did you hear, or even use, lines like “She’s so up herself, she totally loves herself”, as if it’s the worst atrocity in the world?

Well I’m a passionate believer that it’s not only cool to love ourselves, but totally necessary if we want to kick-ass, achieve our dreams and live a fabulous life filled with wellbeing and happiness.  Now who doesn’t want to do that?!!

…so it’s time to get up yourself and fabulous!  Of course, I use the term “up yourself” somewhat tongue in cheek.  What I mean by “up yourself” is the cultivation of a deep, inner sense of self-appreciation, respect and love.  I certainly don’t suggest it’s cool to be an ego-driven maniac who walks around thinking they’re better than everyone else and wanting to dominate the world.  The former comes from a place of love and light and is totally desirable.  The latter comes from a place of fear and greed and is totally uncool.

Introducing Aprelo – The Key to Being Up Yourself and Fabulous

I believe that the greatest gift we can give ourselves and the world is appreciation, respect and love inwardly and outwardly (also known as “Aprelo” – derived from the first two letters of each word).  Yet this seems to go against everything we grew up to believe.

By appreciating, respecting and loving inwardly and outwardly, ie living with Aprelo, we are more likely to feel fulfilled and are more empowered to implement positive changes across all aspects of our lives, from career, to relationships, finances, health and wellbeing.  In actual fact, if we do only one thing to improve our personal wellbeing, I would suggest that learning to appreciate, respect and love ourselves has the potential to make the single biggest difference to our health and happiness.  Without Aprelo as a foundation, other steps to improve our wellbeing, such as changes to diet or keeping fit can only help so much.

With self-appreciation, respect and love we are much more empowered to give our best to others and attract appreciation, respect and love back. Many people think that focussing on themselves is selfish and something to feel guilty about.  This couldn’t be further from the truth.  Living with Aprelo = fabulous.  Self-sacrifice and self-criticism = unfabulous.  It is my belief and experience that until we learn to truly appreciate, respect and love ourselves we’re not only selling ourselves way short, but we’re also doing a big disservice to others in our lives.   Living with Aprelo is one of the least selfish things we can do.

Our negative thoughts and self-talk can be extremely destructive to our overall wellbeing, especially if we are repeating them over and over to ourselves many times a day as we go about our daily life.  If you’re anything like I was, you may be continually giving yourself a hard time for feeling like you are letting others down, making mistakes at work, eating the wrong foods, not going to the gym, feeling fat or ugly, feeling stupid, spending too much money, not having enough money or any number of other things in day to day life.  We can be so hard on ourselves and are often our own worst critics.  Especially as women, it’s almost second nature to us.

It is a universal law that what we focus our attention on we attract more of.  By focusing on the negatives about ourselves and the things we’re doing wrong, all we’re doing is attracting more of them into our lives.  Similarly, if we replace these negative, self-destructive thoughts with positive, self-appreciating ones, we are likely to find we start to attract more positive events and experiences into our lives.

Through the thoughts we think and the feelings we feel we have the power to directly influence our life experiences.  This is an extremely empowering realisation and it puts us back in control of our lives.  If we think of ourselves as a fabulous person who is worthy of living a fabulous life filled with health, wealth, love and happiness we will most likely find that events start to happen that enhance our lives in these areas and that we are compelled to act in ways that enhance our health, finances, relationships and happiness.

Just by changing the messages we give to ourselves and the feelings we have about our self-worth and what we deserve in life, we can have a significant and lasting positive impact on our:

• Health
• Finances
• Relationships
• Career
• Overall happiness and outlook on life.

I’m not suggesting Aprelo is the panacea for personal wellbeing and success.  It does however, lay a very solid foundation on which to build a fabulous life filled with wellbeing, happiness and dreams come true.  With Aprelo everything else flows into our lives much more freely.  I really believe it is an essential pre-requisite for true and long-lasting health, wealth, love, happiness and fulfilment and there is a lot of other literature that supports this.

You may wonder what authority I have to give you advice and guidance on how to live a fabulous life filled with wellbeing and happiness.  That is a very good and valid question!!  I have spent more than ten years researching and applying personal development principles in my own life.  I am also a certified Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) Practitioner, meaning that I am formally trained to coach people using tools, techniques and methodologies that work on both a conscious and unconscious level, to help them succeed in life.  Most importantly though, it is my personal journey of learning to appreciate, respect and love myself that is most valuable.  When I consciously set about living with Aprelo, my life began to transform in amazing and positive ways, bringing more wellbeing and happiness.

I certainly don’t proclaim to be perfect or super-human.  I am far from it!  I am a real person on a real life journey. I have my faults, that’s for certain – just ask those who are close to me! I have ups and downs, everybody does.  This is the natural flow of life.  I do however have a lot more ups than downs and feel much more content and fulfilled, and much better equipped to handle the inevitable tough situations that arise in life.

My journey is ongoing; there is always more to learn about life, love, wellbeing and happiness.  My absolute passion is to share my personal life learnings, knowledge and experience in the hope that it may inspire others to embrace Aprelo on their own journeys, and empower more people to live fabulous lives filled with wellbeing and happiness.

Take the journey and see for yourself.  Take notice of the messages you give yourself about yourself.  Make a personal pledge to think only thoughts of Aprelo about yourself, think and imagine them often and your life is likely to transform in magical ways.  It’s time to celebrate being up yourself and fabulous!

This blog post was written by Gabrielle Aitken, inspirer of Appreciation, Respect and Love (a.k.a. Aprelo).

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Money and wealth are often associated with materialism and greed rather than love.  Many of us aspire to having enough money to provide us with freedom and enable us to fulfill our dreams, yet at the same time many of us may feel guilty, undeserving or unspiritual.  Perhaps you came from a family that believe that “money doesn’t grow on trees”, or maybe you were taught to believe that “money is a dirty word”.  Perhaps you were taught that it is more honourable to give than receive and therefore feel that you need to give away your riches in order to be a good citizen of humanity.  Maybe you’re from a working class family and you feel trapped, like that’s what you’re destined for yourself as you haven’t had the same privileges as others who are more fortunate.  Money is such a loaded word that has many different connotations for different people.

I read an inspiring book recently, How To Make One Hell Of A Profit and Still Get In To Heaven by Dr. John Demartini, which provides a different perspective on wealth and is certainly food for thought.  As its title suggests, Dr. Demartini subscribes to the belief that we can in fact, love money and still live a spiritually fulfilling existence. The two are not mutually exclusive.

Dr. Demartini introduces the “principle of fair exchange” which suggests that contrary to what many of us believe, it’s not more honourable to give than receive.  …but nor is it honourable to receive without giving.  He believes that all of us are worthy of receiving a “fair price for a fair service in a timely manner” just as we must be willing to pay a “fair price for a fair service in a timely manner”. When this relationship between giving and receiving is in equilibrium and both participating parties feel like they have received value Dr. Demartini suggests that “you come into alignment with the conserving power of the universe, and magical things begin to happen.”

Dr. Demartini also talks about the importance of appreciation, respect and love in wealth creation.  Firstly we must appreciate all that we have in our lives and place value on money.  When we increase our appreciation and respect for money, even when we may feel that we don’t currently have enough, we plant a seed of wealth.  Having studied many multi-billionaires Dr. Demartini observed that, “one of the qualities of the truly wealthy is that they appreciate their wealth”.  Secondly, Dr. Demartini suggests that self-love is fundamental for a wealthy life.  “The more respect and love you have for yourself, the greater and more financially rewarded your life will be.”

Following our passion and purpose is also important for a rich life.  According to Dr. Demartini we were all “born with a magnificent purpose to fulfill in this world.”  For some of us it may be being the best parent, for others it may be using their musical or artistic abilities to create beautiful works of art, for others it may be dedicating one’s life to helping those less fortunate, or for others it may be something completely different.  Ask yourself the question of what you would love to do with your life if there were absolutely no barriers and no risk of failing.  Your heart will tell you the answer.  If we follow the whisper of our hearts to uncover our unique purpose and be true to that, we will be more fulfilled and wealth will naturally flow to us, even if we may not immediately be able to see how we could make a good living.  Poh Ling Yeow, the runner up in the last series of Australia’s MasterChef is living proof of this.  On her show Poh’s Kitchen she talked about her two passions being cooking and art – two interests which many would believe are very difficult to make a decent living from.  However Poh is following her heart and is reaping the benefits in terms of fulfillment and finances.

When it comes to giving, Dr. Demartini’s philosophy is that “charity has a beautiful place in this world”, however he is a believer that to increase wealth for yourself an others one should “invest in inspiration over desperation”.  In other words, donate to causes that truly inspire you rather than those you just feel the need to rescue.  He also suggests that “it’s foolish to give all your money to a cause and nothing to yourself”.  Instead be sure to divide equally between the two to maintain the equilibrium of fair exchange.

Of course, there are other aspects that are important for wealth creation, such as having a committed savings plan and investing our money wisely. Dr. Demartini talks about both in his book.  In particular he talks about the concept of “paying yourself first”, rather than paying everyone else and not having anything left for yourself.  He also talks about the importance of long-term gratification versus short-term gratification; of not blowing our savings on short-term rewards but keeping them in an “immortality” account where our money continues to build over time.

I believe that Dr. Demartini is a very wise man indeed and he himself is living proof that his theories of wealth creation hold true.  To summarise my key take-aways from his book, if we follow our passion and purpose, believe we’re worthy of attracting financial rewards commensurate with the value we provide, appreciate what we have today, focus on appreciating, respecting and loving ourselves, give to causes we’re truly inspired by and create ourselves a savings plan where we pay ourselves first we are likely to live a fulfilled and spiritually enriched existence and build true and lasting monetary wealth in the process.

This blog post was written by Gabrielle Aitken, inspirer of Appreciation, Respect and Love (a.k.a. Aprelo).

Do you have any friends, family or colleagues that might like reading the Aprelo Blog?  If so, please forward this link to them and encourage them to subscribe.

When we think about wealth creation, we generally think of it in the context of accumulating assets – cash, property, shares, bonds and the like.  Financial wealth can certainly have its benefits, especially for those who are in a position of significant lack, such as the billions in the developing world living on less than a dollar a day.  These people are extremely grateful for the financial assistance of those more fortunate, who help provide them with food, shelter and healthcare. Financial wealth can certainly be enjoyable for those in the developed world too.  Foremost, it is the key to freedom; a ticket out of the 9 to 5 ( or 8 to 8 ) daily grind.  Financial freedom empowers us to do with our time as we please, rather than being a slave to an employer or our own business.

However, the financial aspects are only one small dimension of wealth creation.  To quote Mohammed, “a person’s true wealth is the good he or she does in the world”. Or as social entrepreneur Roger Hamilton says, “wealth is what you’re left with when you lose all your money”.  Such definitions extend the concept of wealth well beyond financial accumulation.  They are about creating an enriched life, through our relationships; in our pursuits, hobbies, and interests; and the way in which we make a difference in the world.

There is a widely held belief in our society that to “do good” means to be self-sacrificing – to go without so that you can do good for others.  I am here to challenge that thinking.  I believe that to be in a position to truly help others and do the greatest amount of good we must foremost, appreciate, respect and love ourselves.  While we are focused on doing good for others without first being true to and nurturing ourselves we cap the amount of good we can do in our lifetime.

I am not saying that we should not give back to our community and those in need.  I think this is very important.  What I am saying is that we each have our own unique way of making the world a better place and by appreciating, respecting and loving ourselves and our unique talents and passions we are more empowered to do a greater amount of good.

I believe that as we learn to appreciate, respect and love ourselves we are likely to feel more fulfilled within ourselves and less focused on the things that were once lacking in our lives.  This puts us in a position of strength, and enables us to give much more of ourselves than we otherwise would be willing and able to.  The oxygen masks on an aircraft provide a good analogy.  Hopefully like me, you’re fortunate enough to never of had to use an oxygen mask on a plane, but I am sure you can recall that on every flight, during the safety demonstration, the attendants highlight the importance of people fitting their own mask before helping others, including their children.  This is because parents need oxygen for their own survival, to give them the strength to protect and nurture their children who are dependent on them for survival.

By appreciating, respecting and loving ourselves we activate and nurture our own unique passions, talents and purpose in life.  In other words, when we embrace and listen to our own heart it is likely to become more apparent to us what we’re really on this earth to do.  Rather than just donating some money to feel like we are doing good, we can nurture and channel our passions and talents into making a lasting difference and leaving a legacy, whether that be as an aid worker, musician, artist, parent, teacher, fashion designer or anything else that benefits the people in our lives or the planet on which we live.

It will be different for everyone.  Don’t feel you should do something just because it’s the “right” thing to do.  If you don’t feel it’s your true passion and purpose then it’s not right for you.  For example, working in Africa might be someone else’s calling but it may not be yours.  Listen to your heart, do what’s right for you.  This is how you can make the biggest difference and live a truly wealthy life.  My passion is inspiring Aprelo (appreciation, respect and love) and empowering people to live with more health, wealth, love and happiness. This is what really excites me and what I feel I am here to do.  I know I can have much more of a positive impact on the world directing my time and energy towards this.  For me, this is what true wealth is about.

How wealthy are you? Are you following your true passion and purpose?  How can you be true to yourself so that you can do the greatest amount of good in the world, live an enriched life and leave a lasting legacy – your own unique legacy?