WHAT NOW? LIFE COACHING.
  • What Now? Life Coaching
  • Services/Contact Me
  • Get Instant Relief
  • Mushroom to Sunflower Blog
  • What Does A Life Coach Do?
  • Finding Your What Now; Creating the Next Years of Your Life
  • Depression; Your Personal Message Workbook
  • Vision Board
  • Sister Circle

So Tired?

27/4/2017

1 Comment

 
Picture
Where’s Your Energy?

There are many reasons our most common complaint is we are ‘just so tired!’


We Are Moving into a Connected, Energetic Reality

Whether you believe in cosmic energy affecting us physically or not, we are in a time of leaving a very physical, three-dimensional, individualistic reality and moving into a connected, energetic reality.

I’ve heard it said that we are becoming solar and SOULAR. We are gaining a better understanding of how, not only our bodies, minds and souls work together, but also how we, as a collective work together for our individual and group benefit. (or don’t, to our detriment). This transition is affecting us physically. We are experiencing more and more ‘energetic’ type dis-eases. Conditions such as chronic pain, attention deficit and autism were cited less than 75 years ago—attention deficit was identified in 1980.  And now, today, with our global pandemic, our inter-connected energy is absolutely affecting us.

Our physical bodies are struggling to catch up to energy shifts that have occurred and are occurring all around us.
Picture
Your Energetic Power

We, however, have a say in where our energy goes. Unfortunately, many of us are unaware of our energetic power and how we spend it or how we allow it to drain. I’ll give you an experiment to try on your own;

Find a quiet place where you can be undisturbed. Lay on the floor, or sit comfortably in a chair in a way that you are supported and can close your eyes. Take 3 deep breaths, releasing each fully. Relax into your resting pose on each exhale. On your next inhale, visualize bringing yourself, a piece of yourself or a strand of your energy back from all the people you encountered today – each one, bring a piece of yourself back into where you are seated/laying. Then, bring yourself back from each item/activity you accomplished on your to-do list. Next, bring yourself back from everything you are worried about. After that, locate each area of the body where you are experiencing pain, inflammation or discomfort; bring your energy back from each of those areas. Can you feel it? Are you feeling more whole? Less scattered and drained?

Now, imagine how much of your energy you have stored up in any ‘dramas’ that are currently happening in your life. How much energy is being drained by the news! How much energy, that is you, exists in all your past hurts, unresolved conflict and or childhood trauma? Think about multi-tasking. How often are you distracted by your phone when a real person is present with you?


You Get To Choose

We, as a collective, used to be able to push through, chin up, carry on in an age when our environment was much more physical. We don’t seem to be able to do that anymore, without consequences to our physical bodies, our emotional bodies and our states of mind. Everything is energy and we are energy. Our thoughts are an energetic resource as are our feelings. These energetic forces create our reality.

What if you started seeing your energy as a resource, like money, that you can spend or save? You choose where you direct and invest it. You also, as a responsible resource owner, need to measure if that energy has been invested wisely. Is a situation costing you? Every unresolved conflict and/or past trauma is an energy drain. If you want to make a change in your life or desire to create something new and your energy bank is depleted, you have an energy deficit. If you keep drawing on that energy at a deficit you WILL create an energy crisis.
​
Do you have a practice of calling your energy back? You are better able to make decisions, changes and create when all of you is present in real time.

​You ultimately decide where your energy goes, no one can take it from you.

​​
​"After This" Visualization ​

Picture

We all want to know what to expect, how to prepare and when we can resume making plans.
but with this, we just can’t.
We are forced to stay present and, at most, plan a day or two ahead.


If you'd like to think into the future of when this is all over,

I’ve created an audio visualization that takes you to your ‘future-self-after-this-episode’
​

HERE
​​

coachjenniferwashington@gmail.com

Picture
​Jennifer Washington 
​
Certified Martha Beck Life Coach 


What Now Life Coaching 
​

www.whatnowlifecoaching.com 

Facebook 
Twitter 
​Pinterest
 INSTAGRAM
1 Comment

Your Mindset is Ruining Your Future (and possibly mine)

20/4/2017

0 Comments

 
Picture
Your Mindset is Ruining your Future (and possibly mine)

Jody feels stuck. She is a creative, artistic person and has more than fulfilled her duties as a wife and mom. She now has free time and is feeling the urge to spread her wings a bit. We toss around ideas about what she could do. One suggestion is to rent a space of her own, away from her family home, to use as a creative art space; to indulge her creativity uninterrupted and more importantly, privately. Jody gets a faraway, dream-like look on her face and there is an energized pause while I watch her visualize that space. Then suddenly the shutter comes down over her eyes and she declares she can’t do that, her husband would never allow it. I feel sad as the energy dips. I toss out a few more ideas, which she quickly shoots down. Finally, I suggest she entertain the idea of making a room in her house a creative work space and she could spend a small amount of time in there whenever possible and try a few things. She agrees this is doable and thinks she might explore painting.


The Greatest Tool to Realizing Dreams and Visualizations is the Mind

It is also the greatest barrier to dreams and visualizations coming to reality. On one hand, the imagination is brilliant at conjuring possibilities. Our greatest inventors and innovators were excellent at imagining possibilities. On the other hand, part of our brain is wired to keep us safe and alive. Anything new and unfamiliar is greeted with reaction ranging from suspicion to out and out panic. When it comes to entertaining possibilities for our future we far too often dismiss them because of this part of our brain—the future picture just does not fit with our current view (mindset) of familiarity—therefore, precluding some wonderful experiences.

As I outlined in the last post, You Cannot Get There From Here, we simply can’t know what will happen when we set do decide to venture out. Our creations may not be what we think they will be. Chemist Dr. Spencer Silver intended to invent a super powerful adhesive, but instead made a weak one. Turned out that there was a use for a low-tack adhesive that could be repositioned many times without losing it’s sticking ability. That use became Sticky Notes. Often we don’t know the purpose of what we create until a good while later, if ever. We need to create while letting go of having to know why.


We All Have a Mindset and are Unaware of Our Filters

It is my job to toss around possibilities with my clients. It is also my job to spot a mindset that is keeping one stuck. I watch, always in amazement, how we automatically shoot projections into the future and arrive at conclusions without taking one single step. Our thinking mind gathers and searches for all past data to convince us of a reasonable future outcome. But, we leave out infinite possibilities by not at least entertaining creative imagination. Our logical, survival brain jumps in with why things not possible and especially points out that your actions will disrupt the lives of others. This is keeping us safe, but it is also keeping us stuck.

Jody might have encountered some wonderful experiences in her creative work space away from home. She might have even created a beautiful masterpiece, but for now, she is continuing to experience what she’s always experienced.

Maya Angelou went to a rented hotel room every morning and smoked cigarettes and drank whiskey and wrote. Those writings became, books of poetry, autobiographies, essays, plays movies and television shows that touched and changed peoples’ lives. Do think she set out to “change peoples’ lives?” What if she had believed her many doubts and not rented that space?

 
0 Comments

Western Women Awakening Part Two; You Cannot Get There From Here

13/4/2017

2 Comments

 
Picture

You Cannot Get There from Here

If you are on the awakening journey that I wrote about last “Western Women Awakening” one of your main concerns will be wanting to get somewhere. You may have no idea where you want to go, but know strongly that you no longer want to remain ‘here.’

I am here to save you some grief. You cannot get there from here. The part about awakening that we love to jump right over is the ‘journey’ part. Because of our masculine driven ethos – set a goal, work really hard, achieve goal, move on—a long, meandering journey of self discovery and awakening seems foreign and certainly unproductive, which is the ultimate horror in our goal-centric culture. Any attempt to ‘conquer’ an awakening journey in a masculine way simply will not work. I admit that this has been and still is the most difficult part of my experience. It is frustrating to say the least. But, I keep feeling pulled forward and am learning to embrace uncertainty and even enjoy it.

Even if you think you know the clear path, like getting a degree or the promotion (masculine procedure), if it is part of your awakening journey you will be surprised, challenged and ultimately shaped by experiences you can’t know yet. You can make a declaration, invoke the Universe, angels, guides, the Ascended Masters, etc. and be positive you know where you’re going. You can even have a clear vision of what ‘it’ looks like. But, the path you embark on will be nothing like you can imagine. In fact, It will crazily look like it goes off in the exact opposite direction you would logically choose. This is ‘normal’ for expansion and awakening.

It is Uncomfortable for a Reason

You are feeling discomfort on some or all levels of your being for a reason. It’s sole purpose is to make you discontent with the here and now. If you did not feel discomfort, there would be no need to change anything or search out anything new. We describe this often when talking about human development. There’s birth – the first journey – toddlerhood moves to childhood which moves to adolescence which moves to adulthood which moves into middle age then old age then death. A complete cycle of a whole bunch of stages of development. We move from stage to stage whether we want to or not. They are built in. So it is with your spiritual, emotional or soul journey. You are on a path and you can enjoy the experience or not, but you will have the experience. You have choices along the way, but you do not have the choice about going through it.

As with all stages, there are people who can tell you of their experiences, there are scientific, psychological, medical, etc. descriptions/explanations of the processes, but your journey through will be unique and only you can do it.

The Only Way Out is Through.

The only way you get there from here is one, small next step at a time. The process is the journey and the journey is what you need to have experienced in order to be ‘there’ when you get there. Meaning, all the struggles, delights, wonderments and discoveries that happen to you along the path of leaving what is comfortable and following what FEELS like ‘yes’ is exactly how you will get ‘there.’ You will not be prepared fully to experience and enjoy the ‘there’ already waiting for you unless and until you do all the next steps along the way.

The small, next step always, always, always feels like ‘yes,’ or curiosity or peace. The next step will always be doable. ‘not to say that step won’t at times be a scary one, but it will be doable and you know you will live and on some level you want to do it.

The next steps won’t always come when you think you’re ready or when it’s convenient. You will be required to take many rest breaks, to integrate what you have already done. This is not as delightful as it sounds. We are not taught how to rest and there is much stigma around it. Every part of your journey will require you to trust. Many times you will not know the next step until it appears before you. Step, rest, integrate, step. That is the journey. You’re on it.

 

2 Comments

Western Women Awakening

6/4/2017

1 Comment

 
Picture
“The World Will Be Saved by the Western Woman,” said the Dalai Lama in 2009 at the Peace Conference in Canada.

In my tiny (compared to the Dalai Lama’s) world, here in Western Canada in 2017 so many of my contemporary friends are having very personal “awakenings.” Let me list their names here;
Ha, ha! Just kidding! Joking aside; this awakening, aka; mid-life crisis is exciting and frightening, but mostly confusing.


My Personal Awakening

2009 was my personal awakening. I crashed hard. I walked away from my marriage. I renounced my religion, I left my church and I purged my community and inner circle. I went in search of anyone and anything that could give me language for what I was experiencing. I was literally plunged into the depths of despair seeking medical help for serious anxiety and moderate depression. I was completely disoriented. Everything I thought I knew no longer made sense. Everything I believed would make me happy didn’t. I am still on this awakening journey.


Signs You May Be Awakening


  1. Mild to extreme dissatisfaction with the life that was previously contented
  2. Physical, emotional and/or spiritual discomfort
  3. Revisiting the past, especially adolescence/early adulthood, in the form of memories, friends, old boyfriends, visiting hometowns, etc.
  4. Desire to do something but unclear about what that something is
  5. Fear and a sense of immobility around disrupting the lives of loved ones
  6. Excessive use of the word passion

My past came back to visit me in so many forms. People, memories and situations that seemed to have time travelled to my present reality appeared. I found myself constantly saying things like “I wish I had known how talented, awesome, capable I was.” “I wish I had known that there were so many more possibilities/opportunities for me.” “I wish someone had been able to explain to me how the world really works.” This, I believe is exactly what we will be saying to ourselves 20 to 30 years from now if we do not consciously create the next phase of our lives.
Just like in adolescence, we again find ourselves facing the next phase of our lives not really having a clue what to do with what we have learned and who we’ve become. We just know that it is time to leave the life that has, up until this point, provided for us. Many of us have lives that look a great deal like the lives our parents built and we are stunned to discover we unconsciously created it – we honestly believed we’d be different.


Self Actualization, Integration and Service

We “western women” are experiencing awakening whether we like it or not so that we will rise up and save the world. The way we do that is by saving ourselves. If you are worried that you will become a self-centered egomaniac, know that SERVICE IS THE NATURAL CONSEQUENCE of self-actualization. Service to others is what happens when there’s integration of all the selves!
Self Actualization

We save ourselves by self actualizing. This happens when;
We get clear on how powerful, capable and talented we really are.
By stepping up and no longer waiting for a sign, permission, accreditation or blessing that gives us “authority” to do what we have strong desire to do.
We forgive ourselves.
We stop hating ourselves.
We become our own safe place/cheerleader/supporter/”Hell Yesser!”
We let go of every outside and inside voice that tells us no and to stay safe and small.
We surround ourselves with only those that see us, that hear us, that encourage our greatness.
We redefine life as experience and not right/wrong, good/bad and even happy/sad.
We let go of our resistance—resistance to change, resistance to experience, resistance to desire. The very things we are resisting are the bread crumbs that are leading us to the change the world needs.


Integration

The best way forward is to first go within. Our instinct, intuition, guidance, whatever you want to call it, speaks to us in metaphor. This transition time in our lives—moving from one state of being to another (read about transformation stages here) – looks and feels very similar to past transitions. In the cases I’m surrounded by, this looks suspiciously like our adolescence.
If this is resonating with you at all; if you feel that your past has come back to you and you are remembering ‘the feisty girl’ you used to be, then this is exactly an opportunity to do this next phase of your life consciously.

Integration Questions;
How is this time in your life like that time in your life?
What do you wish someone had told you?
What do you wish you had known before?
What do you wish you had done had you known?
What do you wish you hadn’t done?

Be honest. Dig deep. Put your feet to the fire. Gather with your friends and discuss. DO NOT JUDGE yourself. The purpose of this is not to make you wrong or bad. Your life and the life you created is not a mistake. This exercise is to get conscious before you move any further. It is so that you become all the parts you may have left behind or forgotten about.


Service

Once you have some deep insight into your past 20 – 30 years, imagine you are 20 – 30 years older than now. Look back on this life that you have yet to create. Now ask yourself;
Did I live without regrets?
Did I express my whole self even if others disapproved?
Did I live with passion? How happy was I every day? What did I create?
Did I contribute to saving the world? How do I feel about that?

I do not regret the ‘blow up’ in my life. Was it easy? Not at all. Is everything perfect now? Absolutely it isn’t. In fact, I’m very much still in transition. It is messy at times and exhilarating at others. I am expanding. I am becoming my true self. I now have tools to navigate change that I did not have before. I have a language to describe and understand what I am experiencing which is now the service I provide to others.

You expanding, integrating all the parts of yourself that are still you, dropping all that you are not and becoming your true self is what we all want. You, being fully you, saves the world.
 
Find me Here: Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram

Read Part Two: You Cannont Get There From Here

Service is the natural… https://t.co/Y3Q58SdjRf pic.twitter.com/EDkE9MnORq

— Jennifer Washington (@whatnowcoach) April 7, 2017
1 Comment

    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.

    RSS Feed

    Picture
    Picture
    Are You Emotionally Suppressed?
    Picture
    Where's Your Wild Child? Awakening a Sleeping Dream Part Two
    Picture
    Understanding Human Emotions Part One
    Picture
    Free Worksheet!
    Picture






    ​Archives

    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    November 2012
    September 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012
    April 2012
    March 2012
    February 2012
    January 2012
    December 2011
    November 2011
    October 2011
    September 2011
    August 2011
    July 2011
    June 2011
    May 2011
    April 2011
    March 2011
    February 2011
    December 2010

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.
Photos used under Creative Commons from quinn.anya, Lemsipmatt, Feist, Michael - FunnyFence - catchthefuture, Jannie-Jan, alex.shultz, DJ-Dwayne [Away till 31st November], volantwish, Viajar24h.com, JUSU, nafmo, Cloned Milkmen, litratcher, frankieleon, amishsteve, shootthedoll, William Arthur Fine Stationery, kodomut, Carodean Road Designs, torbakhopper, jessicahtam, limevelyn, Kurdishstruggle, peterworsley, tara marie, Daniel Hathaway, Calgary Reviews, KLGreenNYC, Cecily Michelle, RaubDaub, cogdogblog, Jade♥, Maria Grazia Montagnari, CinCool, x1klima, bambe1964, David Sifry, @lattefarsan, miamism, Daniel E Lee, Jellaluna, emjahn, dracychan, Denis Dervisevic, Street matt, Paxson Woelber, Glyn Lowe Photoworks., _Fidelio_, Ann Frye, Prayitno / Thank you for (10 millions +) views, markyharky, Avenue G, glasseyes view, Infomastern, craigCloutier, frank-hl, andertoons, eioua, torbakhopper, Silly Eagle Books, andreboeni, dronepicr, mikie t, Sustainable sanitation, Eduardo Mueses, Chrysaora, D.o.M.e.N.i.C.o (memmo77), elidr, blondinrikard, Ben+Sam, striatic, __MaRiNa__, edenpictures, fruity monkey, Thomas Rousing, R'lyeh Imaging, FaceMePLS, casey.marshall, quinn.anya, Jim Trottier, Holger Zscheyge, Athena I. Saldaña