Hi Everyone! Today we are so honored to have a beautiful women’s messenger with us. Mal Duane shares her expertise about life recovery and finding joy in all circumstances to women all over the world. Give her a warm welcome as she talks to us about FAITH!
♥Kellie
“Faith is a process as well as a desired outcome. It is the foundation for personal transformation.”
— Mal Duane, Alpha Chick: Five Steps for Moving from Pain to Power
The Power of Faith
By Mal Duane
Unhappy in my own skin for many years, I would wake up every day virtually paralyzed by my own fears. I would be tormented by the possibility that people would discover I was a fake; that I wasn’t whom I pretended to be. The persona I projected was this happy, fun-loving, care free, extremely funny girl who acted as though she had the world at her feet. But behind the happy mask that I wore for so many years was a deeply depressed and dependent soul, searching to be loved. I would drink to feel good about myself and suppress the pain, but after a while the numbing effects didn’t work. I became depressed and fearful all the time. My mask was gone.
On December 30, 1989 – my last day of drinking – I thought I couldn’t continue. I did not see many options available to me. Death was starting to look like a pretty good one when, in one of my daily meditations, I heard a voice I had never heard before giving me instructions. I was told that if I learned some very specific lessons, my life would be amazing — so I gave into faith and I listened.
That was the first day of the rest of my life. On that day I started on a journey of personal transformation and empowerment and I have never looked back. This journey, which led to the creation of the Alpha Chick Process, was driven by faith.
I have chronicled this journey in my award winning book Alpha Chick: Five Steps for Moving from Pain to Power. Here I write about the ethos of the process and how you, too, can apply the Five Steps of Faith to affect positive change in your life:
The Five Steps of Faith readily divides into distinct stages, or steps, each of which includes its own unique actions. I’d like to share with you how they came about:
One particular morning during my daily meditation, the message was powerful and clear that faith in a power greater than myself, but which was also inherently within me, and part of my nature, was the foundation of personal transformation. I realized that it was faith that had allowed me to go within and listen to the voice of the divine presence that freed me from self-imposed limitations. This helped me to better understand what had happened during my personal epiphany on my last day of drinking. On that day, I knew death was close and sought God’s help to save me. In that moment, I made a profound connection to the divine presence within myself and experienced a “soul knowing” of its existence, which I refer to as “faith.” Suddenly I was no longer riddled by emotional pain, and I experienced an inexplicable knowledge that I had nothing to fear. When I surrendered in faith, God gave me the insight and the courage to see what I had to do to heal my life. When I let go of my ego and recognized the divine presence within, my new journey toward empowered wholeness began. The light of faith made my path visible to me.
So it is not surprising that the message I received that day in meditation went on to indicate that there are five steps to healing and that their names spell out the word faith:
Focus
Acceptance and Attitude
Identification and Intention
Thoughts
Healing and Helping
These 5 steps will help you clarify who and what you want. They will help you to release limiting behaviors that continue to cause you pain. They will help you set intentions for new action steps to create the life you want.
Focus:
Whether it’s through meditation, prayer, or writing; find a way to connect with your inner voice – your higher power. It is inside of you, and you’ll know it when you find it, because it’ll just “feel right.”
Take the time to ask yourself poignant and revealing questions and your subconscious will make room for the answers. Your transformation begins when you have the courage to honestly examine your beliefs and addictive behaviors – and this is what Focus is all about.
Acceptance and Attitude:
In life, we can cling to denial so vehemently, that it may become all we know. It blocks out positive energy and binds us to the past. The main idea behind the Acceptance & Attitude step is to finally identify and accept what has happened in your past and stop resisting it, so you can approach life with a new attitude. Once you accept what has happened to you, you’ll notice that your attitude will change almost immediately.
Identification & Intention:
In this step, I will encourage you to identify 3 things negative behaviors that block your potential, then set intentions for positive actions so you can change them. The main idea behind the Identification & Intention step is to map out ways to actively change your life within the Mental/Emotional, Spiritual, Financial/Career and Physical realms. By setting intentions and actively seeking to change your life, you will learn to work positively and consistently to get the things you want out of life, whether it is a new love, a bigger house, a better relationship with your boss, or a closer bond with your family.
Thoughts:
You’ll notice, especially as you work through the 5 Steps of Faith, that you tend to repeat patterns in your life. One of those patterns is reverting back to past negative feelings when you are in a place of insecurity. In this step, I ask you to shift your thoughts to the present when you find yourself reverting to past pessimistic thoughts and damaging feelings. We’ll identify these self-defeating thoughts, and discover ways to deal with them, including creating affirmations to help you shift from the past back to the present
Healing and Helping:
When you reach this step in the Alpha Chick Process, I encourage you to share this knowledge and help other women learn to tap into their power. To continue to heal, you must reach out and help others with their journey.
I embarked upon step 5 when I decided to write my personal story and share it with the world. How you decide to teach other women is up to you. It could be one person at a time, or it could be more. Start by identifying one activity of service that you would like to perform, then identify an individual that you think would benefit from the 5 Steps of Faith in the Alpha Chick Process. As you discover new ways to reach people and share your knowledge, you will become more and more focused, enlightened and powerful.
As I described in my book, Alpha Chick:
Consistently following these faith-filled steps has changed my life dramatically and infused my existence with a joy and well-being that previously I would never have thought possible. I have been able to change the way I see my world and the way I live my life. Most importantly, my identity and my life are no longer defined by the experiences of my past. I refused to let my negative emotions control my life, and I gave up self-sabotaging habits such as alcohol and destructive relationships. These changes brought about a huge mental and emotional shift that gave me the freedom to live a life I had only dared to dream about instead of the life I thought I had no control over because of my negative choices and past experiences.”
Faith is the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end, of where all the Alpha Chick steps lead. As always, from the beginning of the world, faith is a mystery. Like electricity, you can’t explain it or see it but you can definitely feel its effects. You know when it is working.
Faith is both the process and the outcome. It directs and enables you to go within to find the power with which you were born. It shows you how to align yourself with God. With faith, you are able to see beyond the appearances of this world and connect with the underlying force for good in your life. In so doing, you become empowered to be the woman you were meant to be, an Alpha Chick living life at your full potential, surrounded by love, joy, and abundance.”
To learn more about the 5 Steps of Faith in Alpha Chick, you can go to http://www.MalDuaneCoach.com or follow Mal on https://www.Facebook.com/malduanecoach or Twitter @malduane.
Mal Duane is a bestselling Author, Life Recovery Coach and highly successful Real Estate Business owner. Mal has overcome devastating circumstances in her own life dealing with addiction, depression and loss. She used her painful experiences to transform her life and become an awakened, authentic and abundant woman.
Mal’s book Alpha Chick- Five Steps for Moving from Pain to Power is an Amazon bestseller and the recipient of the Reader’s Gold Favorite Award, The Pinnacle Achievement Award and the World Book Award for 2012. She has been featured on Fox News, CBS Radio, over one hundred and fifty internet radio shows as well as MariaShriver.com, Healthy Living Magazine and Aspire Magazine. Her mission is to live in a world where women discover that they are infinitely more powerful than they believe.
She is an expert on women’s life recovery and spiritual transformation. Through her coaching programs, she teaches a simple but powerful process to empower women to discover their authentic voice and reclaim their divine birthright of happiness and love. She believes in supporting women in need through Holly’s Gift, an educational assistance fund.
Thanks for sharing this beautiful story and your wisdom with the community. We are so honored to have your beautiful presence here! I love the use of acronyms to teach and explain important live lessons. This one is fabulous!