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Relationships.  They're All About You

29/4/2014

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If you are like most people, you are in a relationship.  Maybe you do or do not have a significant other, but you most certainly have friends, bosses, children, parents, coworkers, neighbours.  Relationships can be both awesome and the hardest work you’ll ever do.  I don’t want to alarm you but relationships are really all about you.  Even the really difficult ones.  Especially the really difficult ones.

Relationships Reflect What We Believe About ourselves
Our brains constantly filter information to find repeating patterns in order to make sense and handle the mass of information that is available to us at all times from all kinds of sources and stimulus.  When it comes to relationships, the brain will do this pattern searching too and it tends to want to find only a few, easily recognizable patterns.  If you are accustomed to being treated badly, unfairly or as a victim, your brain will search for that kind of behaviour.  If you are familiar with being respected and admired, again, your brain will help you identify that kind of information. 

Identify The Patterns
List all of your primary relationships.  Beside each name write a one or two word description of how they treat you, or how you feel about yourself when you are around them.  Is there an overall theme?  Is there a ‘good’ group and a ‘bad’ group?  From this step, you can get a sense of what it is you fundamentally believe about yourself.   Somewhere along the line you agreed that you would be treated a certain way by certain people.

Clearly Define How You Want to Be Treated
If you can’t describe in detail what you want and feel how it feels, your definition is not clear enough.  People can’t give you what you want if they don’t know what it is.  You can’t ask for what you want if you don’t know what you want.  Write it out.  I want to be treated with respect, kindness and sincerity. 

It Begins and Ends With You.
It helps to note that it is no one's responsibility to make us happy or to treat us well.  Our happiness and what we expect is our responsibility.  Always.  Eleanor Roosevelt put it this way:  "No one can make you feel inferior without your consent." Begin to find ways to treat yourself the way you want others to treat you.
How can I show myself admiration, respect, kindness and sincerity?  I look for ways to accept myself, give myself credit, allow my own feelings and wants and opinions.

Be Willing To Risk Growth and Change.  When the treatment from others does not match your newly defined, preferred filter patterns, know that this is your work to do.  You can continue on or you can make the necessary changes.  In order to make changes, you will risk possible rejection.  This may involve speaking out and standing up for yourself in ways you haven’t before. This may involve the ending of some relationships.  It may even improve relationships! It will be scary at first, but  it will feel great once you begin to see the transformation happen in and around you.  You, in fact, do change the world around you.  Every time you grow and develop into more of who you want to be, you positively influence the people around you.  Let that be your motivation.
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The Yada, Yada, Yada Part

15/4/2014

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I am fascinated by “Success” stories.  The rags-to-riches, small town girl makes big, phoenix rising from the ashes kinds of stories.  They all talk about being in a bad, sad place and then yada, yada, yada now I am rich, famous and beautiful.  Everyone loves to dwell on that ‘look-at-you-now’ part.

I want to know about the yada, yada, yada part.  This bit is where it really happened.  The process of becoming is the ‘action’ part of the story.  It is also the sad, scary and sometimes ugly part of the story.  We don’t like to dwell in that part.

Oprah endured abuse, Bruno Mars slept on friends’ couches.  The gold medal athlete endures physical and mental pain beyond normal limits.

Transformation involves transition.  The process of leaving what you once were and becoming what you will be.  Transition is hard and messy.  It would be great if we could be like the butterfly and build a cocoon to escape to where we meltdown in private and emerge a fully developed butterfly.  In reality, we endure our transformations out in the open. 

How to tell if you are going through a transformation:

Step 1 There’s A Catalyst

A catalyst is some event, either internal or external, that changes your state of being.  You got a diagnosis; you lost the job, your kids left home.  Those are external catalysts.  You can’t shake the desire to climb a mountain, move across the country, open a new business even though you have no idea what you’ll sell. These are internal.  You are no longer who you were yesterday or you have a strong urge to shed who you are today.

Step 2  Desire to Re-create what was lost.

You immediately look for another job.  You deny you may be sick, you leave the kids’ room exactly the same for when they come to visit.  You tell yourself that what you have now is perfectly good enough, what is wrong with you for wanting to create such upheaval?

Step 3 Fear Confusion and Failure and Seemingly Lucky Breaks

Inevitably, even for those of us who are still trying desperately to stay the same or go back, there will rise up a desire to move toward something unknown.  You have not been where you are going before.  This is the real transformation processing stage.  This is the part they/we like to gloss over.  Enduring the treatments, researching alternatives, going back to school, getting that business loan, hiring a trainer is the elbow grease needed to change your current reality. Oprah suffered but she knew when she spoke out people were moved.  Bruno Mars knew he had to write songs.  These people didn’t know exactly who they were going to be, they just endured their circumstances and kept moving forward. They tried and failed over and over. The desire to give up is constant.  This is also where seemingly lucky breaks start to happen.  You meet the right people at the right time.  Some sort of bridge is built over an impossible looking hurdle.  When you keep showing up, things begin to show up for you.

Step 4 Stepping Into

The process of steps 1 – 3 are the necessary components that make step 4 possible.  In order to step onto the stage and change society’s view, Oprah had to do her years of steps 1-3 processing.  Before Bruno Mars could bring a football stadium of people to its feet he had to do his years of steps 1-3 processing. The caterpillar had to melt down.  If they had not done the steps, they could not step into what was created for, by and around them. 

Trying to obtain the happily-ever-after part without doing the transformation part is like changing your hair, buying a new wardrobe, getting a mani-pedi.  You will be a shinier you, but it’s just a make over, not a transformation.  You will look good out on stage but you won’t be able to hold that spot.

If you’re anything like me, you need to be reminded that the process is the point.  We are all transforming in many ways throughout our lifetimes.  Once we understand this, identify where we are in our own transformation journey, we (and I mean I) can maybe learn to enjoy the process of getting there.


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Springtime Feelings

8/4/2014

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I’m not doing enough.  I must be missing something.  I’m so selfish.  I’m fat and disgusting.  My neck hurts and my lower back is locked.  No one cares what I have to say.  I might as well just quit.

Believe it or not, these thoughts occur to me daily.  You’d think as a Life Coach I would be above these kinds of thoughts.  I beat myself up with that thought too.  Truth time.  I still try to out-think my feelings.  I strive to be above being human and feeling human emotions.  I have deeply grooved thought patterns in my brain and they don’t seem to be in a hurry to change.

I have suffered depression off and on over the years and it is precisely because of ceaseless thoughts like these and a belief that I need to be perfect.   I am extremely grateful for Life Coaching tools and I attest that they work, for realz.  I have come a long way in my ability to observe, catch and change my thoughts, which has tremendously helped my ability to function and feel good. A very basic yet most essential tool is feeling feelings all the way to the end.  In coach training I was taught to ask ‘how does this thought make me feel?’ I often gloss over that step.  I have not yet mastered how to feel my feelings.  I fail to provide for myself what I think is the key thing I provide for my clients and that is a safe space to process and de-code feelings. 

Emotional navigation was not something that was taught in my childhood home.  Our family motto was ‘take that outside, no one wants to hear it.’  I started early to process everything through my thoughts.  In any given situation I am thinking about an appropriate feeling.  It doesn’t happen naturally.  I am so good at resisting feeling that I ‘transcended’ the labour part of the birth of my daughters.  I literally blocked their deliveries and needed artificial intervention.

In a tele-class that I’m currently co-hosting with my daughter, we are practicing a daily mind/body connection meditation.  Is it any surprise that behind all my aches and pains are blocked emotions?   My first instinct is to shut those down!  But, slowly and patiently I am coaching myself through their expression and a pretty cool thing is starting to happen.  On the other side of the painful emotion/feeling is relief and intermittent bursts of joy and happiness.  Who knew!  I am finding that it takes more than once to process the emotion – bummer.  But, like I said, I am offering myself what I offer my clients, patience, acceptance, and loving kindness.  Rushing through to get ‘over it’ has proven to be a recipe for depression.  Say it with me now; you can’t suppress the ‘bad’ emotions without also suppressing the ‘good.’

Feelings and emotions are valuable human experiences.  They are gifts that offer information. I am the Queen of Denial when it comes to feeling ‘negative’ emotions.   Any kind of pain triggers my survival instinct and I immediately numb it with food or run from it to nap.  The ‘darkness’ is where all transformation happens.  If I short-circuit the feeling process, I block the outcome.   Labouring, even suffering, is part of the delivery process.  It is WORK, that’s why it’s called Labour!  It doesn’t have to take long-90 seconds, maximum, for most feelings.  During the process, I remind myself that what’s on the other side is worth it. 

My painful thoughts are not my enemy.  They too contain valuable information.  When I pay attention to them, I find it is my inner, real-self needing attention, reassurance.  She wants to feel safe.  She wants to feel loved. 

Spring is all about cleaning out the old and preparing for fresh and new.  This spring I am making space for my suppressed emotions to come forth and blossom into the path for the brighter and lighter me.

What will you make space for this spring?

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    On my journey back to wholeness I have explored many modalities and can honestly say the What Now Life Coaching session was one of the most illuminating (yet non-invasive) interactions I've had.

    Jennifer used an interesting variety of tools to further guide me towards my "North Star" (soul's calling) and I walked away feeling grounded, comforted, validated and inspired.
    ​
    -Angela, Shaman.

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