Nova Wightman 7/2/19 Nova Wightman 7/2/19

What To Do When Life Feels Big and Intense

I want to share the important stuff I would have you know about the energies right now, in case you, like many others, are finding yourself saying things like "wtf is going on right now?" :) The stuff that will help you move through it from the bigger-picture perspective and use it all for the purpose in which it's intended.

Every now and then I write a post like this...

And it usually coincides with some big cosmic occurrences in the skies, such as eclipses and planets going retrograde, which, incidentally, is a thing right now. But I won't go into those details here - I see astrology as an influence, a catalyst for the inevitable ebb and flow and expansion of the Universe and the whole "spiritual being having a human experience" thing.

Instead of going too deeply into those details, I want to share the important stuff I would have you know about the energies right now, in case you, like many others, are finding yourself saying things like "wtf is going on right now?" :) The stuff that will help you move through it from the bigger-picture perspective and use it all for the purpose in which it's intended.

The nuts and bolts of it are:

We're stepping into Eclipse season (new moon eclipse on July 2nd, full moon eclipse on July 16th), which is known to amplify certain things in your life to create doors opening and closing. Eclipses shine the light on things that were previously not too visible to us, for the purposes of ushering certain parts of our lives (wondering which part for you? Ask yourself what is the loudest right now.) forward; consider this a turning point in that area, and it can be an aspect that's visible for all to see or more of an internal shift that maybe only you notices.
Mercury goes retrograde on July 7th and we're in the "shadow period" of it right now, which means you may already be noticing things around technology, communication, scheduling, etc. going a bit awry. Don't worry, this isn't just a middle finger from the Universe that has no rhyme or reason - there's a purpose. (read on)
Lots of other planets doing lots of other things that I don't quite understand or ever remember the terminology enough to articulate, but they are all influencing the shifts that are happening in your life in some way. Oh, and we just had the solstice, and we're coming up on the official halfway point of the calendar year, so there's some significance there as well.

In general, this is a time of big shift for everyone, both individually and collectively.

What you can do with all of this awareness that can help you move through your big shift more gracefully and easily is:

Slow down before the Universe forces you to in some way that you probably won't prefer. Create some space in your calendar, try not to overbook.
Prioritize self-care. No really, don't just talk about it and nod your head in agreement - do it. Naps, being out in nature, focusing on your daily spiritual practice, eating well, getting enough sleep, connecting with people who uplift you, massages, bubble baths, Netflix binging - whatever floats your boat! But do it with consistency throughout the month, not just once or twice. And if you're especially tired lately or in the days to come, don't make yourself wrong for it - sleep. There's a ton of energy moving in, through and around us lately, and if you're sensitive to energy you are probably feeling it. It's all good. The extra sleep helps with integration and release.
Say no to anything that feels like an obligation or doesn't bring you joy, and pay attention to when you no longer feel like doing things that were previously a yes for you. The energy during these times can shift quickly and with it, your moods. Let it all be okay.
Recognize that you're not the only one being impacted by these energies, so practice kindness, empathy and compassion while you also stick to your boundaries and tend to your own energy. In other words, don't take on other people's stuff, allow them to have their own experience. We're all divinely supported in this.
Hit the pause button - a lot, as many times as you need to, and especially when you notice yourself getting triggered by someone or something. Create space to be with what comes up in a healthy way, such as journaling, venting (but only once, don't continue to beat that drum or you won't get out of that energy you don't want to be in in the first place), crying, napping, meditating on it or engaging in physical movement to let that energy move through you. Do your best to consciously respond, rather than react.
Play, relax, laugh, focus on joy and gratitude, and engage in things that bring you pleasure as much as humanly possible! Prioritize fun! This doesn't have to be a serious, heavy time; in fact, intentionally prioritizing play, pleasure and fun can make this season of shift feel like a breeze!

I hope shining the light on and naming what's going on collectively is useful to you, and I encourage you to implement some of the suggestions above. If you need any direct help with it during this time, please reach out to me, even if it's just to ask a question about all of this. And feel free to share in your experience by hitting the reply button, I'd love to hear!

Nova Wightman 6/6/19 Nova Wightman 6/6/19

Alignment: A Place Where My Higher Self Lives

Throughout my 26 years, I have been looking for answers to the big questions. The usual existential ones of course like the meaning of life and death, but one question has remained constant for me. How can I create a better life for myself? A life where I am happy, peaceful, loving, financially stable…all of the good stuff. For years I’ve felt this better life calling to me, but I wasn’t sure how to answer.

A Guest Post By: Lindsey Brave

Awake and Aligned by Nova Wightman was brought into my world by a very important person: my dad. He heard Nova on a local radio show and knew instantly that her book was something both of us needed in our lives. Awake and Aligned has since been passed around and shared with other family members and friends. Needless to say, it is a very special book to me and my family. Allow me to tell you why.

On this quest for growth, I delved into many self-help and mind/body/soul healing books. I learned about many of the popular tools for achieving a “successful” life like the law of attraction, visualization, manifestation, gratitude, meditation, etc. While these strategies all sounded great, I found some difficulty implementing them fully into my life.

For me, Awake and Aligned combined all of those tools in an approachable, realistic, and positive manner, that made changing my life seem achievable. I dove into this book headfirst and resurfaced with a fresh and awakened perspective. With Nova’s book, I was able to learn and practice ways to bring more goodness into my life, and have that goodness brought back to me.

After reading and earnestly completing all of the book’s practical applications, the biggest “aha moment” for me was understanding the importance of alignment.

I’d heard that word thrown around a lot before. To me, “alignment” sounded like a word reserved for the yogi’s sitting front row in an advanced yoga class. Thankfully, Nova introduced a whole new meaning to the word I once dismissed as, “not being for me.” Now, alignment serves as a guiding light for how I live my life.

As a person who has experienced chronic anxiety throughout their entire life, my brain has seemed almost wired to fear, worry, and stress about the unknowns. My mind loooooves mulling over all the details of what could or could not happen in life. So when faced with an unknown or new challenge, my mind tends to go into overdrive wanting to figure everything out. It wants the security of knowing what the future holds.

Of course, that’s impossible. Thankfully, Nova offered me an alternative.

Instead of spending mental energy focusing on the negative, I can redirect that energy to bring me back to a good place. Yup, to alignment. A place where my higher self lives. Where I can be Who I Really Am. Nova has helped guide me to understand how being in a state of alignment (whenever possible), allows life to fall into place without the mind needing to interfere.

So here I am today, discovering and adding in more activities that bring me into alignment with my highest self, and simultaneously pulling away from things that take me out of alignment. Some of the activities that align with Who I Really Am include exercising, playing with my dog, reading, bike riding, writing, and spending time with my close friends and family. Being able to clearly identify those was a powerful change. Of course I’ve fallen in and out of alignment since. Sometimes things go wrong, but now I know I have a grounding center to go back to and get myself back on track.

Maintaining a state of alignment has already manifested as positive outcomes in my life.

The most concrete manifestation was buying my first car. Being on a really tight budget and harsh deadline, my options were limited. I had worries about finding a reliable car that wouldn’t blow up my bank account (cue mental stress). For weeks I had scoured craigslist, hoping that the right one would fall into my lap. Eventually, it did, at just the right time too. It was perfect. Right in my budget. A used, reliable, and affordable car that allows me to visit family and embark on adventures.

I’ve also noticed improvements in the relationship with my family and partner. Tough conversations are eased, and the light ones feel freer. My eyes have been opened to see miracles in the everyday moments. The flowers blooming. A bird’s song. A loved one’s smile. Sometimes it feels as though a guiding force turns my attention, and points these mini-miracles out to me. It’s almost like someone gently saying, “Don’t miss this.” Above all else, I feel more connected with myself, my true self, and knowing who that is.

Now I keep a list of the key points from Awake and Aligned in my kitchen. I refer back to it when I need a reminder (which is pretty often).

Awake and Aligned gave me hope that I could build a better life for myself, and empowered me to believe I could.

Endlessly grateful,

Lindsay Brave

Nova Wightman 4/30/19 Nova Wightman 4/30/19

How to Practice Seeing the Light in Others

"See the light in others, and treat them as if that's all you see." ~ Wayne Dyer

Easier said than done, right? I have been working on this one consciously for a long time, and it's probably one of the most challenging concepts to integrate into my daily experience with any significant consistency (I'm guessing many of you can relate). The context of human relationships, be them intimate, personal, professional or with strangers, tends to be amongst the trickiest to navigate sometimes, wouldn't you agree?

I remember seeing Neale Donald Walsch, the author of the Conversations with God books, speak at an event in my twenties, before I was a coach and before I joined the CwG Team, when I was so hungry for those practical ways to integrate and apply big concepts such as the one above, and he offered a simple practice to help one see and experience the divinity in others, as well as within ourselves.

He invited us, the audience, to simply practice making eye contact with others, even in passing, rather than looking down or looking away. He then took it a step further and asked us to smile at the person we were making eye contact with. THEN he challenged us to do the unthinkable - say hello to them. The audience laughed, of course, because in theory, these shouldn't be difficult things to do regularly, yet we all knew damn well we didn't do them, at least not nearly enough.

I began practicing this immediately, thinking, "wow, what a great and easy way to do this! I am on it!" ....and quickly became discouraged and disheartened, because out of every person I made eye contact with, smiled and said hello to, about 5% returned the gesture. It seemed I was experiencing the opposite of my intention, I felt even more disconnected and even resentful of these rude humans. ;)

But I persisted, because I had come to trust this Neale fellow over the years and figured he had to be on to something, and it wasn't long before I realized an aspect of this exercise I had been completely ignoring or not even getting:

Making eye contact, smiling and saying hello wasn't about getting a certain response from the other person that would then cause me to see and experience the divinity in others. It was about my own self expression, my own declaration of divinity, that produced the state of being I desired to experience ~ in this case Oneness, Connection and Divinity. In other words, it didn't matter what the other person did in response; when I put the focus back on who I was being while I was doing what I was doing, I was better able to create and access the experience I desired!

These days my "return rate" on eye contact, smiling and saying hello is much higher, but more importantly, my joy in doing it is closer to 100% than ever before.

And now it's my turn to challenge YOU to see the light in others, and to see it in yourself, by trying this very same exercise, but unlike me several years ago, do it as an expression of your own divinity, give that love and connection and acknowledgment away to others and you will experience the same for yourself instantly. And if you accept this challenge, please hit the reply button and share your experience with me! Or, if you have another way that you actively practice seeing the light in others, I'd love to hear that, too!

P.S. I've got some awesome opportunities coming up for you to get more alignment, to experience more ease, joy, and flow in all aspects of your life. I'm working on a really good one at the moment that I'll unveil soon, but in the meantime check out my Events page to see what's on the agenda!

Nova Wightman 4/12/19 Nova Wightman 4/12/19

How do you stay positive all the time? Well, you don't.

People who know me always describe me as being a positive person, and in my line of work it kind of goes with the territory. I’ve often been asked what my secret is, how do I stay so positive and optimistic? Well, there are many ways to be positive, but here’s the big one: Rather than attempting to be positive ALL the freakin' time, I put the focus more so on recovering to a higher, more positive and aligned state when I’ve had a human moment. And, perhaps more importantly, I allow myself to BE human.

In other words, when the wind blew my open car door causing it to hit me in the side of my head this morning while getting my daughter, Hazel, out of the car (because Mother Nature decided to drop a ridiculous snow storm on us Here in MN despite it looking and feeling like actual spring for the last several weeks) I cursed like a sailor (yes, in front of my kid 🤷🏻‍♀️).

As the icy wind continued to whip me in the face and Hazel dropped her stuff in the snow drifts no less than 117 times between the car and the front door to daycare, you could say I was abundantly annoyed, especially when I stepped in a bunch of melted snow on the floor and got my socks all wet (isn’t that the worst?!).

But that’s a normal, human experience, and who wouldn’t be annoyed, right?

So I don’t fight myself on stuff like that. Instead, as soon as I have the opportunity to I shift my focus to feeling better, by focusing on better things. I work my way back up to that more Aligned, centered, calm and optimistic state of being. This morning that looked like listing positive aspects and gratitudes out loud in the car on the way home. And it worked, I felt so much better by the time I started working.

Bottom line is, rather than trying to force positivity from yourself all the time, especially when it doesn’t feel authentic to, try putting the focus on recovering to your higher self more quickly and more consistently. This is one way you can avoid the whole “woke up on the wrong side of the bed” syndrome where you let one or two bad experiences ruin your whole day. And this is how you embrace your humanity while knowing full-well you are first and foremost a spiritual, vibrational being, just having a human experience. By the way, I wrote a whole chapter on this topic in my book, "Awake and Aligned: How to Navigate the Human Experience as a Spiritual Being." You might want to check it out. :)

Nova Wightman 10/6/18 Nova Wightman 10/6/18

The Gift of Spiritual Alignment

When Nova asked me to write up something about alignment and spirituality my mind went a little bizerk.. How do I find one thing to talk about when there is so much? After some time of processing and thinking, perhaps a little over-thinking, I decided to talk about the gift that alignment and spirituality has brought to my life.

I truly believe there is no greater gift that we can give ourselves, our family, and the world other than the gift of alignment. I see it as the most important work a person can engage in, a game changer of epic proportions. I want to take this opportunity to discuss what alignment means to me, how I’ve personalized something so powerful and how you can do the same.

Put simply, acting in alignment means coming from a place of love. That is the simplest and most profound way I can explain it to my clients. When we practice the art of alignment we are truly practicing coming from love in all areas of our life. This also happens to be what spirituality means to me. Spirituality is an awareness that guides us closer to loving ourselves and others in deeper, more profound ways. That’s it. It’s requires a trusting in something, call it whatever you wish, that when you choose to love, no matter how difficult the circumstances may be, you will be rewarded by your chosen. This happens because when you are acting in alignment with love you are showing up with Higher Self leading the way and that is what our human experience is all about. It is about learning how to blend your human self with your spiritual self, or higher self, that self that is rooted in love. Tell me something better than the feeling of love…. I’ll wait.

I feel the need to clarify that a life in alignment is not a life free of challenge. Quite the opposite, actually. A life of alignment is more like a life grounded in the ability to see the purpose, the opportunity, the gift in all the contrast and challenges that inevitably come with this human experience. It’s a life path that allows us to feel the feels and then to recover back to our authentic state of being, an energy of love, more quickly and with more ease. Strengthening your faith in the belief that life is always working in your favor can sometimes draw more contrast to you—as if you’re being “tested.” You’re not. You’re being given opportunities to walk your talk, to validate the statement, the proof is in the puddin’ (your own life being the pudding). I say this not to evoke fear but rather to somewhat kindly address that this work requires effort, dedication, and consistency. It’s not all rainbows and butterflies, and from my experience can feel like straight hell at times. However, once you begin to recognize the patterns, the flows of life, you begin to relax and trust the natural balance of life that exists with you and for you.

And so, alignment is the most precious ability because it transforms us, empowers us, and gifts us with good feeling feelings more often than not. We all crave to feel love more than we do and yet we stumble not because there is something wrong with us but rather because when we are out of alignment we lack the clarity to see from this higher place. Usually, all we need is someone who sees us through the lens of our Higher Self when we’ve lost sight. The depth of gratitude I feel for being a guide, a way-shower if you will, is difficult to articulate in words. This work resonates with my soul and calls forth the most authentic being I can possibly be. Please know I take this work seriously and with a sense of light-heartedness. I honor your path and encourage you to align with love through the most challenging of times. I am always holding your hand and honoring your own unique journey. I look forward to raising the vibration within you and of this planet. I look forward to seeing you remember to allow love to take the lead, once again.

Written by guest contributor Annie Kuensting.

Annie is the owner and operator of Beacon Empowerment Strategies, A Master Educator, NLP Practitioner, Mindfulness Coach, workshop facilitator, and Pranic healer. She has also been trained by Nova in the Spiritual Alignment Method, due to her intense passion and talent for creating rapid, lasting positive change in her client's lives by aligning them with Who They Really Are.

To contact Annie for a complimentary consultation, visit www.beaconempowerment.net.

P.S. Want even more guidance, tips and inspiration on all things Alignment and Energy? Click HERE to request approval to join my Facebook Spiritual Alignment Community Group! It's a very intimate, active community and a great way to connect with like-minded people!