I really love my work helping others to grow and heal and at the same time doing the same for myself.  I think back often on the time I had a lot of therapy in early 2000s.  I still speak to the same lady now for sessions to help me grow personally and professionally.  I remember this incredible feeling of profoundness in me being my best self and helping others achieve the same.  It did actually work for sure but I saw over time how different mentorship and support is also important.  My work in becoming a coach helped me to see how sometimes the information and healing of Therapy and Counselling can potentially lead to loops without breaking the original state.
I became fascinated by the idea of state breaks and working in this space of altering this then helping a new mindset and way of being to develop.  This is where we really role model and power towards our goals and the life we really want.
I had some stressful news last week but took great charge of my state each day which I feel totally great about.  As I worked with clients throughout the week and I work to dip into Coaching and more Therapy style way of working I noticed a lot of more beneficial dipping into the therapy mode which was helpful.  It’s this space I feel which allows us to be really fully human and just break and heal.
It’s funny doing the Tony Robbins workshop.  I kind of wonder if there is any under current with him but he describes this being wired towards gratitude etc and optimal beautiful state which I feel there is a wonderful truth is and I feel he does genuinely do it.
For me personally I feel I would likely never be a pure Coach to that level as I feel there is always the space of breaking which is generally part of being human and I always want to allow a going to that space in others and in myself.
On Saturday I just allowed a breaking to occur.  A missing of the gym class in the morning and a rest in funnily enough allowed resonant dreams to surface for me.  After seeing my nephew I just gave myself permission to eat junk food and just relax around and watch netflix.  It’s here when I genuinely feel a just listening to how we are and allowing a breaking to occur can all really help.  To actually not always rewire but to actually love the part of you (or in this case me) that just wants to slob around and actually feel a bit crappy and break a bit.
Gym today changed into just a mellow walk out and a coffee and I feel better for just allowing myself to just be human.  I will be back to my schedule next week and absolutely love being in charge of my business which is growing.  My 530am gym classes are also incredible.
When we allow ourselves just to be I feel this does open up the more intuitive self care human flowing part of us where things can reconfigure.
I love all the coachy space and my work there but I feel there is always the importance of the other side.  I can also see the argument of a colleague of mine who said he felt there could almost be a danger in people seeing all the hyped up coachy side and feeling there was something wrong with them if they couldn’t get there.
I shared recently about the wonderfully human Jane McGonigal interview who made the game and book superbetter ironically about post traumatic growth when she beautifully acknowledged the pain of her injury and wishing it hadn’t happened.
Contacting Amanda (my original mentor) this week to book in and noticing my space and some of my clients’ space this week made me reconnect with my personal therapy space and the beauty of holding that space for another.
There is a wonderful book I often remember the philosophy of and often recommend to clients called ‘Going to pieces without falling apart’ which speaks about the need to allow yourself to feel and to break so issues do not get squashed into the shadow and ultimately errupting.  There is always an important lesson there for everyone.

Wishing you a lovely peaceful day.

I notice in myself and with clients a lot thesedays how obviously in the course of life as we grow there are inevitably new structures emerge.  It is like the whole caterpillar to a butterfly kind of experience where a new structure emerges and literally destroys the old one to move forward.

I maybe never realised how it’s exactly the same in personal growth.  It’s an amazing experience to see and to support the emergence of someone breaking free from a past role they were playing eg the family scapegoat.  It’s important to see all what was occurring and how the person was victimised on some level to go into a role which then became the primed conditioned experience liked rats being conditioned to follow a certain path in a maze but without it ever feeling so great.
First of all recognising it doesn’t feel right (not integral/whole) to the individual is one way to just start progress then from there the experience just starts to occur with a wanting to change and new emotional experiences then taking place with a more empowered centre which is taking control.  This then getting rewards and shedding the old experiences.
Language becomes a powerful thing here too.  I often hear I’m doing this but I’m not that kind of person.  I then ask where they first decided they were that kind of person.  Who was it who decided they were that kind of person ?  What kind of person is it they actually want to be?

The curious experience takes place of accepting all parts of ourselves and seeing for example that we’re not actually bad for getting angry (what we were told) but actually we are a quiet person but a person who has limits and asserts boundaries where needed.
Our past never defines our future and we are ultimately who we decide ourselves to be.
On the journey it’s vital to have fun, to be able to feel progress and then senses of flow until momentum kicks in and the new default then becomes just that …. the default.

When we want to change there can often be many obstacles, strange stories keeping us trapped.  It’s important to stay inspired and stay determined to find the answers we need to get to our full expression.

In my own journey of the last few days I have had huge learning experiences and breakthroughs which keep carrying on in regards to identifying as an Entrepreneur (wow it’s hard to even write, I’m obviously so small right now).  I found after any years of studying and being a Counsellor (which I loved) I pushed away anything around business as I never had the right role modelling and saw money in a strange and not so functional way.  Makes total sense why business never really moved to fast.  I saw business as being somehow ignorant and people involved in it getting too stressed, being greedy and not educated (this is so bad for me because I do love learning stuff).

I’ve found this to be a major identity structure pushing through as I create new neural connections and identify with cool business people as real game changers plus people who have fun and love learning.  I love identifying with Steve Jobs, Tony Robbins, Robert Kiyosaki and Richard Branson.  I swamp myself in learning more than ever before and have mini masterminds and coaching to keep me on track.

I feel though these structures don’t just occur but are a natural progression and just pop up when they’re meant to maybe.  I feel key with all this is just having a desire ‘to grow’ which is one of our main spiritual needs and when we have this then we tend to ultimately find our way and the deeper structures emerge at the right time.

I love the idea of gamification and use it regularly with clients although like most people the issue of self love is a constant source of reflection so I forget to do it for me.  

Superbetter by Jane McGonigal (a book and yes a game you can download) goes into all this.  The mission, the allies, and of course the power ups.

We all need power ups to keep us going.  I like the idea of taking charge of our state so maybe you need to just go into power posture to increase that energy (standing tall with shoulders back for 2 minutes).  

There’s other actual tangible powerups which fill our cups though and keep us fueled like a video game character getting a boost of the energy bar.

Right now I’m eating and apple which is tasting quite beautiful hehe (Grany Smith are my favourite), a 30 minute time out to cover my face and sit in meditation or actually drift off into a power nap are a great fuel for me.  I also just love to read and feel so charged up when I read about Entrepreneurship, Psychology, personality development or anything with a tone of being ones best, and improvement.  I basically love learning, it is a fuel.

It’s really important to recognise what your power ups are so you can keep drawing on them.

There’s a lot of documentation about post traumatic stress.  Events in the present striking back instances of the past.  This combined with a general experience of anxiety, sometimes nightmares, and a general reliving of what was experienced.  It’s a very valid space and one where given conditions of empathy in a Counselling space can soothe out the pain of what has taken place to allow healing to occur.

On the other side of the coin there is also post traumatic growth which is less spoken about but seems to be gaining more attention and popularity thesedays.  This is whereas the trauma becomes like an obstacle which is overcome.  I do love all this as there is the sense of the hero/heroine emerging with the battle scars while ultimately stronger.  Tony Robbins is quite a master at igniting this in people and I totally stand for this notion.  There are also really powerful stories by the likes of Michael J Fox (talking about Parkinsons), Mohammed Ali (also talking about Parkinsons disease) and a beautiful book I’m reading now called Grace and Grit by Ken Wilber about his relationship with his terminally ill wife.

I think it’s totally fine to work with whatever space you are in in relation to all this.  It was during the last few months when I was attending some work shops by a coaching colleague who spoke in a way which resonated with me about the potential danger of enhancing the idea of post traumatic growth in the sense it could lead someone to think they were failing if they weren’t getting to this almost super human state.  I resonated with where it was coming from.

After this I then heard a brilliant interview between Joe Rogan and Jane McGonigal.  It is Jane McGonigal who created the game and book called ‘Superbetter’ which is all about overcoming these obstacles.  Her original idea for the game came from her suffering her own brain injury which she then decided to make into a game.  She was asked about the idea of the post traumatic growth and I loved her so human response where she described how it was obviously great to find meaning and therefore grow from a situation.  At the same time though she said how she often got frustrated at constant migraines she had which she never had before.  She was very in touch still with a part of her which still wanted her life before while at the same time finding meaning in the growth which was now occuring.

The term my colleague has is ‘Its okay to be human’.  I think its really important in counselling and coaching to be able to see all three of these dimensions.  There were points where I was maybe just thinking of the first two but there’s a nice reality to be able to take in this middle ground and to be able to feel angst and frustration at some things lost and the regrets while at the same time importantly healing and growing towards a new future with meaning.