I am loving right now providing a mixture of Counselling and Coaching to my clients (and also to myself). I feel it’s the synthesis I always wanted when I got into Counselling originally. I recently heard a very high level Coach say how when he first got into Coaching through having his own he realised it was a path to having all he wanted and giving other people what they wanted. I had that exact same experience.

I studied Counselling as I felt it gave self mastery while helping others the same in an amazing cycle. I’ve come to realise through some very jolting experiences how this isn’t quite the case. I’ve become interested in how whereas the skills of Counselling are wonderful and I will always be one that it does not actually create a space where people really blast through to their highest level in their highest empowerment (which is what life is ultimately about ! 🙂 )

It’s interesting how the work of original therapists like Jung , Maslow, and Rogers talk about the actualising person or the individuating person which is all correct while I now strongly hold that the frameworks atleast Rogers gave and I ‘think’ atleast Maslow gave do not get there. I feel Jung is often more hidden so could infact be the exception.

After years of being a Counsellor I build up so much on an information level. I did feel like an expert Counsellor in ways but my own life felt like it was always in fits and starts and wasn’t really getting traction.

Since getting into Coaching I got intrigued with the idea of the ‘state break’ where the diempowered state is broken and replaced with an empowered one.

It’s here I feel we need to be careful but is where all the energy lies. Counselling brings awareness to a weed and it’s totally fine to feel in that space with empathy. To be with someone in that space and then give support so they can climb out. There is a beautiful elegance about this. With this too we can get information and awareness about what happened and how we got in there.

I feel this is the point of contact though with Counselling and Coaching. It’s one thing to do that but what about the real blast off to something new. A counselling modality here continuing can just go round and round while staying in a state of greater awareness but still not in the highest possible empowerment.

It’s here that a real system of mentor-ship, role modelling, priming new emotions, getting a vision of the future are really key to not just heal this but make all this just a distant memory, a past life, as we get on with creating the new canvas which can be totally different to the last one.

I’m mixing together a few teachings I’ve got recently here to pass on. I’ve found more and more how people are motivated by/bound by fear. It’s a master controller. It’s used by establishments to keep us trapped hence the importance of always looking after our emotional state so we are always growing/becoming increasingly empowered and stepping into courage to live our best possible life.

Courage is a vital emotion to work to get better at and if I’m honest it’s one that without realising I was not great at. I’m dedicated to improving it though and it’s a daily routine to keep leaning into it and priming it more and more so it gets stronger and stronger. Courage is vital for our heroes journey and the prime motivator for our gut level identity which then rushes through the rest of our body.

Mixed in with working to get better at courage is the management of greed. It was in fact the mastery of fear and greed which Robert Kiyosaki spoke about his Rich Dad saying was the thing to master to move into Entrepreneurship and ultimately master the game of money.

Here emotional intelligence….. emotional fitness all comes to play here. I notice all this myself. The heart pitter patter when I’m offered well paid work which isn’t really connected with my life purpose.

The pull to do it and immediately thinking what I can buy and also it immediately taking away fear by putting a plaster over it and becoming a temporary fix.

Learning to become emotionally fit is a process. It’s important to learn discipline and to remember that an ounce of discipline is one thing which is a pain compared to a tonne of regret if you don’t really live your life to its fullest when you look back.

Notice where you are being afraid and know that it’s okay to feel scared as this is our growth edge but to not be controlled by it. What beliefs do you need to change ? What habits do you need to change to head to greater empowerment ? Choose to live a daring courageous fun life filled with meaning where you become nature rather than nature pushing you around.

I’m not going to lie this was a teaching from a book about eating a fully plant based diet. I remain ‘almost vegetarian’ these days but lived fully Vegan for 7 years. No meat, fish, dairy, eggs or honey. What the hell do you eat ? A lot of people think.

I’ll always remember reading a book and it bringing to light the idea that often when we change (in this case our diet) we think about what is not there. As if Veganism is a plate of salad or steak and chips without the steak. Although I didn’t stick with the diet long term due to some other practicalities I can honestly say I never ran short of what to eat.

The idea here was to … crowd out what you ate before. I got books of Vegan recipes and moved from recipe to recipe and ate so much stuff to the point that any non vegan food just became totally irrelevant.

At the start for several months I remember when I’d pass different food places I’d deliberately not look at the menu as I had this inbuilt assumption I’d be craving different meat products. Over time though when I finally did look I didn’t even feel remotely tempted. I had literally just crowded out eating meat.

If you have made a decision to change something it is often a thing where we focus on the loss and there’s always something to be said for having empathy to deal with the grief but if you have ignited the part that actually wants to change and there is a feeling of empowerment associated with this it can be effective to anchor this new state to start to swamp out what was before with new stuff.

Again here you can feel the grief of what was lost but ultimately take it away by being the person you are now becoming. This more compelling, aligned, and integral you.

I found it quite revolutionary when I came across this diagram from reading Robert Kiyosaki and I find this philosophy in itself to look at your life as a learning space and examine how you may have learned in the past, how helpful it may have been, then to look at how you will continue to learn or not.

The cone of learning shows how the most effective way to learn is to learn by doing. A baby learning to walk is the ideal example to show this. A baby will always keep trying and learn by doing until what is natural comes out… which is to walk… they don’t give in because it’s there and just needs to be ‘brought out’.

I’ve become absolutely intrigued by the whole idea of education and it’s Latin routes which is ‘Educe’ which is ‘to bring out’. I’m not in any way against traditional education but its so curious that in the cone of learning that the way schools teach is actually at the bottom of the cone of learning eg lectures or books. To make matters worse schools punish mistakes.

Obviously some people do well in this environment but it makes sense in following this why books get written such as ‘Why A students work for C students’ which goes into the idea that it is the people conditioned to not make mistakes (A students) who may work for those who actually aren’t afraid to make them and are more likely to keep going in the domain of entrepreneurship rather than seeing a failure as a dead end, as school conditions.

I think it’s really important to reflect on your education and see how you were ‘brought out’ or not and to dissolve any shame that may be there. Is there more inside you that with a different space to work with more could come out of you.

I can see how school can damage minds and our way of being due to being a space which actually goes against the way we naturally learn. It’s amazing to think what is actually possible and what may be dormant in our potential if we actually reflect on what may have been missed then strive to let it all come out while giving ourselves the space to ‘fail forward’.