Manifesting Our Family Vision

By Tracy Liebmann


How do we go about manifesting our family’s dreams? The process will look different for every family since we are all autonomous beings, so the ideas I talk about in this article are not directives, I just enjoy sharing what goes on inside my head. I have found that it can be challenging to use words to describe a spiritual concept, a concept that evolves through spirit, yet I continue to try.

My vision for my family started out inside of me, my spirit was my guiding light. My spirit told me that I wanted a loving, harmonious, consensual home; I wanted everyone to hold their own power.

As a child I felt very powerless and am still working on owning my power. I didn’t want to do that to my family. It has been a journey and along the way I have learned a few things I would like to share.

The most important thing I learned was not to focus on what I don’t want, but to focus on what I did want.

For me, I started out knowing what I didn’t want and for a while did make the mistake of focusing on that and it didn’t feel very good. I recognized that this wasn’t working, I looked for a new way and the universe delivered the knowledge I needed to move forward. I read and was told to tap into how it would feel to have this family I envisioned. I am a feeling being, so that really helped me. I remember lying in my bath tub closing my eyes and actually feeling how wonderful it would be. From that point forward it came fairly natural to focus on that good intention, instead of my old tapes. Sounds easy enough…and for some it really is easy, for others including myself there was still more to do.

The Zen philosophy really resonates with me, it is based in practicality, the idea that the spiritual is in the mundane. So in my everyday life I had to practice seeing the spiritual goodness in everything. That is not to say bad thing don’t happen or that some days people don’t just feel sad, angry or whatever. For me acceptance is the key to all my feelings and working through them. We often hear the statement “choose joy” and that can be a bit challenging when something awful is going on; an illness, tragedy, disagreement with someone or even something (dreaded by a lot of people) as simple as the dentist. How do we choose joy then you might ask? Again, acceptance of what going on is the starting point for me. Reminding myself that all of life is available to us for a reason, we might not understand the reason, but I try to accept everything as just being “OK”. When I can accept what’s going on I am choosing joy, even if it doesn’t fell great. It’s accepting the ying and the yang of life.

It is embracing what is…reality.

Just this morning I received a daily email from the Abraham-Hicks website that suggested looking at life as a buffet. I will paraphrase; to choose your thoughts, just like you choose your food at the buffet. You put what you like onto your plate and you can choose what you want in your life. Yet, what about the challenging stuff life brings us, like I mentioned above…that can be a sticking point for many of us. If I manifested the good things, then do I manifest the bad stuff too? This kind of thinking can bring on new age guilt, which in my opinion is undesirable. I bring this up to clarify my point about acceptance. When we accept life, focus on what we want, be true to ourselves, follow our hearts and believe we can have everything we desire for ourselves and our families we will manifest our vision! May the force be with you

Tracy Liebmann is an experienced educator, Certified Family Life Coach, and Author. She believes deeply that great communication is the key to better connection with your loved ones. She mothers her two teenaged children from the heart, knowing that is where the truth lies when it comes to parenting. Her coaching clients describe her using words like; compassionate, caring, understanding, patient, insightful and intuitive. She lives in Charleston, SC with her husband of 19 years, her 2 children and many interesting pets. She enjoys being with her family, cooking, anything outdoors and being with her horses! You can learn more about her and her coaching practice at www.transformingfamily.com or you can get parenting advice with heart at www.asktracy.wordpress.com Tracy is a regular contributor to this blog, so stay tuned for more great parenting articles from her!

Family Harmony – For A Healthy Body, Mind And Spirit

By Tracy Liebmann

I believe the simple principles of family harmony are three fold, when you look at your family you must look at three key elements, body, mind, and spirit. A healthy family is like a healthy body, the system works together, almost effortlessly. The brain is functioning, the heart pumps, the lungs breathe and the body moves. In our families if every person’s needs are being meet the family will be functioning well and in harmony with one another. It is important to check in with the three key elements to help the family work well together.

What are the needs for the body, mind and spirit of each family member?

Every human being is made up differently and everyone has different needs for food, sleep, quiet time, exercise, social interaction, spirituality and many other components that you will need to look at specifically for your family. I think one sure way of disrupting family harmony is when the adults in the family are deciding what everyone’s needs are around what they need.

I believe this is a common problem in today’s culture, not taking children’s needs as seriously as our own.

The official definition for harmony in the Webster’s dictionary has to do with musical sounds which do not clash or has an agreeable effect. My interpretation of this in regards to our families is very similar; it is a just rightness in our families, it is a sense of inner peace that is flowing through all of us. We do not clash and we have an agreeable effect, of course this is true most of the time not all of the time, this is real life not the Hollywood version! Feeling a sense of disharmony often comes up in my coaching practice and the places families tend to get out of balance tend to be around getting out of the house, food and bed time. Why do you think that is? Well, in my experience it is often due to expectations, like being on time or kids should be in bed by 9 PM, or unreasonable demands like eat all your vegetables or a 4 year old take a bath, brush his teeth and get into PJ’s without assistance.

If you are feeling like you want more harmony in your home choose one thing to work on at a time. Just be the “watcher” of what is going on that causes the disharmony. Try not to judge or fix the situation just watch, listen and learn from what is going on. Go back to the simple formula of looking for what each person needs to be feeling content and happy in his/her body, mind, and spirit. If getting out the door to go somewhere always ends in some type of drama; whose needs are not being met? Did little Johnny have all the time he needed to transition from what he was doing before you announced “lets go, we are late” or was Sara able to finish her level on her video game and save before you rushed her out the door? These things are very important to our kids, getting there on time is important to us! So we need to look for ways to get things ready and in the car in plenty of time and give the children as much time as they need to be prepared to leave.

That will look different for every family, and once you figure out what everyone needs to accomplish the goal things will run smoother and everyone will be more agreeable.

This is just one example of the daily situations that families are sometimes challenged by, I hope this brief description of family harmony has been helpful to you. Please feel free to sign up for a FREE sample session at my website www.transformingfamily.com if you would like to talk more about a specific situation in your family that you would like to bring more harmony to…I look forward to hearing from you!

Tracy Liebmann is an experienced educator, Certified Family Life Coach, and Author. She believes deeply that great communication is the key to better connection with your loved ones. She mothers her two teenaged children from the heart, knowing that is where the truth lies when it comes to parenting. Her coaching clients describe her using words like; compassionate, caring, understanding, patient, insightful and intuitive. She lives in Charleston, SC with her husband of 19 years, her 2 children and many interesting pets. She enjoys being with her family, cooking, anything outdoors and being with her horses! You can learn more about her and her coaching practice at www.transformingfamily.com or you can get parenting advice with heart at www.asktracy.wordpress.com Tracy is a regular contributor to this blog, so stay tuned for more great parenting articles from her!