Karel Chan LPC, Self Love Coaching and Heart Healing

This is my 4th presidential election as a therapist. Over time, I’ve developed what I believe is the best approach to be with clients through anxiety and despair. As well, I’ve personally felt less distressed, more grounded, and more peaceful acceptance, no matter the outcome.
 
So I know the approach works.
 
I debated saying anything today, as I know that when emotions run high, so does defensiveness, projection, and reactivity. But ultimately I’m trusting you to trust me as someone you’ve known and to respect me as a whole person, not just an idea you might not like.
 
The anxiety you feel is understandable, but not necessary. You DO NOT have to feel this way. Having anxiety and its destructive habits validated by the internet, your friends, your therapist (they should not do that btw) is only creating more despair, anger, hatred, rage — more suffering.
 
So understand the anxiety. “What am I afraid of?”
 
Examine it. “How will it impact me directly?” Key word: DIRECTLY.
 
⬩ If you can identify a direct impact, make a plan. “How can I prepare and protect myself and my family?”
 
Notice if you start rejecting plans. That rejection will keep you in anxiety, helplessness, and despair.
 
Make the plan and know that you are prepared and protected.
 
Now fear is no longer in control. YOU are.
 
⬩lf you can’t answer, then it likely won’t impact you directly.
 
Perhaps it impacts you emotionally.
 
And you can ABSOLUTELY do something about that, without requiring anything to be different.
 
“This doesn’t directly impact me. I am okay.”
 
Notice the objections! “But this! But that! But how can this happen?” Those objections will keep you in anxiety, helplessness, and despair.
 
“This doesn’t directly impact me. I am okay. I will be okay.”
 
Look around you. Touch the things around you. Take in your surroundings. Know that you’re safe and okay, right here and now.
 
Use the energy and conviction you give to anxiety and practice this instead. I promise – peace and calm will come, regardless of what’s happening out there.

Visiting family and doing a fun lil photo shoot for an upcoming course offering 🤗👭🏻

Yes, that’s my mom! Isn’t she cute? 🥰

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As I often say, I live my work. I’m right in there with you, navigating the human experience with all its joys and struggles. Being on social media, both as a producer and consumer, has the same effects on my psyche as it does on yours.

And I’m overloaded. Sourcing messages that resonate with me, to share with you, sensing what concepts will land with you and how to deliver them, comparing my image to what others are putting out there, feeling pressure to be better, more clever, smarter, approachable yet expert, trustworthy, likable…

When my basic intention is just to share what I know, based on what I’m learning and doing, to help you. So I’m going back to basics.

ME 👋🏽
Being overloaded and overstimulated by all of the mental distractions available to me is a sign to strengthen and protect my mind with more intentional mindfulness practice.

I want to make social media work for me, rather than weigh me down. It should be a tool. And right now it feels more like a burden.

It quite literally detracts from mental practices and pursuits that improve my quality of life because of its repetitive, addictive nature.

I don’t actually *need* it. And neither do you!

YOU 🙌🏽
Take a moment to reflect on a few key concepts that you’ve learned on here. See, they already exist in you.

Now commit to applying one of these concepts to your daily life, in earnest, and just focus on that. Don’t keep taking in more and more information that will just overload you and keep you in passive gathering mode rather than active transformation mode.

ME 👋🏽
I’m taking some time away from social media, among other mental distractions, to train my mind in detachment and dispassion. My intention is to dedicate more focused energy to building things behind the scenes without the constant pull to grasp for praise and attention here.

YOU 🙌🏽
What will you commit to actively work on instead of seeking and scrolling on social media?

See you on the other side! 💁🏻‍♀️

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3 ways you self-sabotage your goals

Two weeks into 2024 and maybe you’ve set some goals for yourself this year. How are you doing?

Still going strong? Great!
Starting to wane? Understandable.

Not waning yet but worried or convinced that you’re going to?
STOP THAT. That’s self-sabotage.

Here are 3 more sneaky ways you’re sabotaging your own goals...

1. Aiming too far, too fast, even when you think you aren’t.

Goal achievement is very incremental. Even the increments have increments.

We tend to get very aspirational in goals, either due to lofty ideals or intense pressure.

Either way, expecting huge, permanent leaps of progress is a guarantee of discouragement and demotivation.

Trying a new thing once is not going to have earth-shattering results. Stop expecting that from yourself.

2. Stopping when things get hard (or boring).

There will come a point when working on your goal feels hard.

Take this as a sign that you’ve grown and gotten somewhere good, and you can rise to the challenge. Adjust the intensity if you have to, but DO NOT STOP.

When things get boring, it actually means you could stand to work a little harder.

Congrats, you’re getting better and stronger! Don’t stop now. Crank it up!

3. Beating yourself up (and allowing yourself to get beat up!)

Okay honestly, beating oneself up is probably my biggest pet peeve with humanity.
F #%ing stop it.

You know it doesn’t help, it doesn’t feel good, you would never do that to someone else, doing it is the absolute worst thing you could do for yourself, I’m not even going to ask you why you’re doing it.

I’m just going to tell you to knock it off. Stand up for yourself, dammit!

Which of these resonated with you the most? Any that I missed? Share them in the comments.

Please save and share this post if you found it helpful! 🙏🏽

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Beating ourselves up or being hard on ourselves is actually a misguided attempt to push ourselves, which is why we keep doing it.
 
Because you wouldn’t *actually* keep doing something that was only meant to hurt you, would you?
 
Didn’t think so.
 
But it’s not enough to just know that. There are a couple key elements that you need learn to open to and cultivate in order to start pushing yourself effectively instead of beating yourself up.
 
1. PATIENCE.
Growth and development takes time and practice. There’s really no way around it.
 
Lack of patience means a short fuse to frustration and anger when things don’t go according to your desires and expectations.
 
If you lack patience with yourself, it’s likely that someone who was supposed to teach and guide you when you were little lacked patience.
 
They couldn’t tolerate the time it took for you to learn something, so they lashed out in order to scare or shame you into doing it faster or better.
 
Give yourself the grace and patience that you needed and didn’t receive, so that you can truly learn and execute things in your own time.
 
2. COMPASSION.
Essentially this boils down to “it’s okay to struggle.”
 
It’s acknowledging that you, like all humans, struggle in the process of learning and growth. It’s a universal experience.
 
And struggle only comes with effort. So when you allow for the struggle, you’re also acknowledging your effort.
 
And having compassion for the struggle encourages the effort and PUSHES yourself along through the struggle.
 
It’s an energy of “You can do this, I’m right here alongside you” rather than “You have to do this, you piece of s&$t.”
 
🙏🏽🙏🏽
 
By now you should really see the common theme in any sort of healing and transformation work. Loving energy, patience, grace, and compassion. There’s NO reason to deprive yourself of these. Developing these for yourself can only lift you up and lead you good places.
 
And continuing to miss these only keeps you suffering and beaten down.
 
So what will you choose?

You know what makes guilt feel SO bad?

When we feel guilty for feeling guilty and try to make it go away.

See the thing is, guilt has a function. It exists for a reason: to tell us that something we did had an undesired outcome.

“I shouldn’t have done that.”
“I did something wrong.”
“That was a bad decision.”

That’s all guilt, and it all comes AFTER we already did something. It’s a feeling of hindsight.

Guilt carries some wisdom, and it serves us better to open to that wisdom than to judge it, shut it out, and run away from it.

When we miss that wisdom, we don’t learn and we keep doing the same thing over and over, which means the guilt will continue to show up each time because it’s TRYING to speak to us.

So rather than avoiding guilt, make it work for you!

1. Allow yourself to feel it. This is uncomfortable, and it’s supposed to be. You can get through it if you keep reminding yourself that this is totally okay to feel.

2. Identify what you did to cause the undesired outcome. This is what you did “wrong.” Again, this is uncomfortable. But you know what? It’s okay that you did something wrong. You’re still worthy. Promise.

3. Vow to not do that again. Because you don’t want that same outcome! Right?

4. LET THE GUILT GO. Seriously. Its work is done, you opened to it and gained its wisdom. You can let it go and move on. Just don’t forget the vow and you will be good.

Guilt doesn’t have to be so heavy or so scary if you see its helpful nature and learn to work with it.

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3 ways you’re actually NOT motivating yourself
 
1. Saying, “I’ll feel so much better when I’m done.”
 
Theoretically this may be true, but how often does this work?
 
And how often do you end up absolutely hating the experience and feeling grumpy and deflated when you’re done, instead of “better”?
 
(And how often do you not do the thing anyway?)
 
It’s actually much kinder and more motivating to ACKNOWLEDGE that you don’t want to do it, then gently egg yourself on to do it anyway. You don’t have to like it.
 
Trying to convince yourself that you like it is kinda like gaslighting yourself with toxic positivity.
 
(… Yeah, I said it.)
 
2. Blaming yourself for being unmotivated.
 
This sounds like “The only thing getting in the way is ME” or “I just need to do it.”
 
Right... this is also true. But you already know that you need to do it and you’re not doing it, and emphasizing that does nothing to address the lack of motivation.
 
It only blames and shames you, which is totally DE-motivating.
 
Instead... GET CURIOUS. Why aren’t you doing the thing?
 
If the answer is “I don’t know,” then instead of judging yourself, put on your investigative hat.
 
What feelings are associated with the thing, that you might subconsciously be avoiding?
 
Then challenge those with words of encouragement and faith in yourself.
 
3. Telling yourself it should be easy.
 
I get it. You’re trying to reassure yourself and make it approachable.
 
But what you’re forgetting here is that the subconscious is POWERFUL.
 
And your subconscious finds this very hard. Saying “This is so easy, I should be able to do it” is dismissing your own experience of struggle.
 
What your subconscious needs from you is to recognize the enormity of the task and break it down into very bite-size steps that actually feel more approachable.
 
This way, you’re working WITH the lack of motivation, rather than steamrolling it.
 
Which of these sound like you? Can you start to shift your approach to motivation?
 
Please save and share this post if you found it helpful! 🙏🏽

A day late with this, because there are just so many words to choose from.

I have many constants that can be encapsulated in a word: Curiosity. Growth. Experiment. Courage. Calm. Deliberate.

When I considered what I want this year to be that is both invigorating and challenging, the word FLOW came to me.

I judged it a bit, thinking it wasn’t original enough.

And then I caught myself and claimed it. Nothing is original, especially not intuitive wisdom.

FLOW signals momentum, direction, trust, surrender, and instinct. When I look at my goals and resolutions for 2024, they all invite me to fall headlong into these qualities and actions.

Personal:
◇ Physical and mental strengthening
◇ Body recomposition

Spiritual:
◇ Emotional independence and non-attachment
◇ Manifesting what is truly meant for me

Professional:
◇ Incorporating more community-oriented offerings
◇ Launching online courses on topics very dear to my heart

Fittingly, in the past few months I’ve begun a yoga practice and have been quite drawn to vinyasa, or FLOW. It challenges me in ways I resisted for many years (I can’t tell you how many one-off yoga classes I’ve taken, or how many mats I bought and then donated because they sat collecting dust), yet this time around I was finally ready.

My mind and body finally accepted this call to power and FLOW, and I’ve begun to literally and figuratively see myself in ways I’d never allowed before.

Seems like the perfect word for the coming year, in every way. 😌

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What’s your word? How does it fit into your intentions and resolutions for the year? I’d love to hear what’s in store for you. Please share with us in the comments!

🙏🏽 Karel

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It’s become popular to reject the notion of New Year’s resolutions because we’ve been conditioned to associate them with shame, pressure, and hustle culture.

So we try to soften the language by calling them intentions, visions, or even goals.

I think this is doing us a huge disservice as a culture. It encourages us to be soft, passive, and non-committal. It disempowers us.

The arc of a human life is growth, and resolutions are an effective way to structure and lead that growth.

Where we’ve gone wrong with New Year’s resolutions is not having them to begin with, it’s how terribly we manage them and treat ourselves when we struggle or falter.

And it’s such an overcorrection to do away with them instead of examining to see how we can approach them better.

FORMING A RESOLUTION:
◇ What do I want to improve or achieve this year?
◇ What’s a realistic goal that is also adequately challenging?
◇ What’s prevented me from achieving this in the past?

WHEN YOU (INEVITABLY) STRUGGLE:
◇ On a scale of 1-10, how hard is this right now?
◇ If 1-5, can I be okay with the struggle and trust that I’ll get stronger as I move through it?
◇ If 6-10, can I modify what I’m doing to drop it below a 5?

HOW YOU TALK TO YOURSELF:
◇ “This is hard, and I can do hard things.”
◇ “Failure is a part of life, and it’s not permanent.”
◇ “I’m proud of how far I’ve come, and I’ll feel proud of myself when I achieve this, too.”

Following these guidelines will help you follow through with your resolutions and help you see that they are 100% possible.

2024 will be the year that you prove to yourself that you can grow beyond what society and conditioning has come to expect from you.

I’m rooting for you the whole way! 🙌🏽

🤍 Karel

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I started building this business in January 2023, on the heels of having a therapy practice for nearly 8 years that was basically running itself.

I had a million ideas, a lot of energy, and more willingness to learn, fail, and adapt than I could have anticipated.

The most important part of positioning yourself as a helper, a guide, a coach, a mentor is making sure that you are always several steps ahead of what you’re teaching others. Especially if they’re investing in you.

As I’ve said for years, I live the work. There’s absolutely nothing that I say here or with clients that I haven’t worked through and integrated and now keep daily in my heart in practice.

So you can trust that I’ll never put anything out here that I don’t wholeheartedly believe in because I’ve lived it and know it to be true.

As the year turns over, I’m shedding the business name Anchored Awakening and simply going by my name, Karel Chan, and a credential that you can trust, LPC (Licensed Professional Counselor).

While the content that I put out here and in coaching isn’t therapy, it’s backed by over a decade of experience as a therapist, all of which is deeply woven into my own personal transformation journey and path toward peace and awakening.

I live the work. I’ve lived the heartache, self-doubt, emotional anguish and suffering, and I’ve committed my life to healing, growing, and always moving toward the light of excellence and well-being, so that I can hold infinite space and compassion to guide you toward your own healing and wholeness.

I’m building therapy-based self love and healing offerings for 2024 that I’m excited to share with you. Thank you for trusting me to be a part of your path, wherever you are in it. I hope I can continue to help and inspire you! ❤️❤️

🙏🏽 Karel

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