A snippet of a clients ‘aha’

This post might look a little different from most.  I am sharing with you a snippet of a conversation that took place (with permission of course).

I was talking to a client about their goals.  LOADS of frustration on their part because they feel they are scattered all over the place and nothing connects for them.  Add in they have so many goals that they don’t know where to even start.  *Please note I did make some edits in order to protect privacy.

Time to back up this train.

ME:  Where do you want these goals to take you?

CLIENT: What do you mean?

ME:  If I can be kind of ‘devil’s advocate’ for a moment?

CLIENT: Sure

ME: What’s the point of doing all this stuff in the first place?

CLIENT: well…(long pause) I guess so I can improve my life. 

ME: Where is your life lacking that you need to improve it?

CLIENT: Me..I’m lacking (this was more blurted out than said).  Haha..no I mean, well, couldn’t we all improve our lives?

ME:  Can we?

CLIENT: I know I can…I just can’t put my finger on where. I-I-hmmm.   I guess I just want to get to a place where I feel happy.

ME: Where is this place?

CLIENT: What? Well..  I guess it’s somewhere in the future when I improve my life.

ME: Okay. So tell me what does this place look like?

CLIENT: Look like?  I hadn’t thought much about that.  I guess it’s where I am happy because I like what I do, who I am and I have good friends and security.  (*to be honest the details were a bit more specific but in fairness to privacy I generalized it)

ME: Do you have any of that right now?

CLIENT: Kind of. (*went on to describe 3 situations)

ME: Wait…so you have 3 places right in the here and now that you find really happy?  So..tell me what makes you feel you must you wait for the future to be happy?

CLIENT: Well, because it’s only part of my life.

ME:  How much of your life must be in place for you to be happy?

CLIENT: uh you mean like a percentage?  I don’t know..hmm.  Oh I see where you going.  Life isn’t ever perfect is it?

ME: Is it?

CLIENT: No.  It isn’t but some people just seem like life is good and I want that.

ME: So, we know no one’s life is perfect and yet some people act like it anyway. 

CLIENT: Huh.  How do they do that?  I guess they just focus on the good stuff?  But you can’t ignore the bad things that happen.

ME: True.  Consider your energy and focus a limited amount of funds every day.  Can you do that?

CLIENT: Yup.

ME: When you focus on something; good or bad – you spend some of this ‘energy’ fund. Okay?

CLIENT: Okay

ME:  Where are you going to put the most of your funds if you want to be happy? 

CLIENT:  Oh! (eyes have lit up and there is a big smile).  I see where this is going.

Okay ladies and gentlemen.  That is all I”m going to share because it gets very personal at that point.  I hope you can see where this was going too.  Just like life – you spend you money on what is important to you.  For most of us that’s housing, clothes, food and then some fun stuff.  But we still have to pay bills, go to the dentist and fix the darn car.   Once the car repairs are paid for though are you going to obsess on them?  No?  You move on. 

This is also how you should treat your negative stuff in life.  Deal with it, and move on.  Learn to let go so it doesn’t consume your thoughts and make it so you can’t take pleasure in the beautiful things and people that do surround you.

 

Read Full Post »

I Let My Heart Break

Can I share with you something that has caused a huge shift in my world lately?  And it’s been a long time coming.

I finally let my heart break.  It’s been showing signs of cracking and on the verge for a long, long time.  I just refused to let it happen.   I’d just patch it up with some story I’d tell myself, or excuse or simply ignore things.  For a while…ignoring it did feel like bliss – kind of.  But band aids are not meant to last forever.

Let me explain.

To start with, I don’t exactly have the most supportive family.  Do I worry about saying that on my blog…not really.  They don’t read it.

Do they love me?  Oh I’m certain of it.  Overall they are good people.  But supportive - not so much.  It’s not that they come around telling me my dreams are fools gold or outright mock me or anything.  They simply gloss over and carry on with the status quo.  No interest, no questions and no cheering.

My own amazing coach has suggested looking at it from a different perspective – theirs.  Ouch – she got me there.  So I explored that.

I think perhaps my reaching for big dreams and lofty goals is uncomfortable for them.  They shun what they don’t understand.  Change is scary and even painful at times. I’ve learned the hard way to embrace that because I know at the other end is growth and joy.  Until you know that, it’s hard to look at changing what is comfortable without a reason to.  I have rarely followed the way that others do things.  I suppose that certainly could lead to a disconnect.

Still, I think you can support and lift up someone without understanding what they have on their vision board…or the fact they have a vision board.

Okay..big breath…big share.  I used to wonder – and often – what was wrong with me?  Something had to be wrong with ME for the people in my life to not want to know me or cheer me on.  Many time I thought that to have someone yell at me, call me foolish or mock me would almost have been preferable to this feeling of being invisible and unimportant.  Self blame seemed the logical choice.  I struggled with that for a very long time.  With my family of origin I still see it rear its ugly head at times.  Old habits die hard right?  I am working on it and get better every day.

So, here’s the thing.  An ‘event’ happened very recently that shook me hard.  I had to face it.  It wasn’t me, not alone anyway.  I participated in a dynamic that was dysfunctional.  Because it was from my family of origin, admitting that set me back and was really, really hard.   It was difficult and painful just to admit that this.  I really resisted saying it to myself and definitely to anyone else.  I felt disloyal and selfish; I also felt used and hurt.   Quite a mix of emotions to have to deal with.

It took some time (and some very good counsel) to realize that facts are what they are.  What has happened, happened.  It wasn’t about fault or blame or anger to realize that the relationship was unhealthy.

But boy, it still hurts like crazy.   I was up late one evening, sipping some tea and just listening to the fire and the rain on the window when I realized I had to let go.   I had to allow my heart to break from this in order to start figuring out how to put it back together. I also realized I had to give myself permission.

It’s hard to do that because I know that there is a huge lake of painful tears to go through first.  Standing on the edge of that keeps me from feeling the full brunt of it.   I also had a lot of anger about those hurts that I’d been ignoring as it simmered. Keeping a lid on it won’t heal it though.  Courage is what I needed to give myself permission to let it happen.

I’d love to say I’m all better and I’ve dealt with it and that I’m good.  Nope, this is a long history of pinpricks that have created a deeper wound then I even knew.  It won’t heal over night.

However, I can say I survived the initial cracking open and looking at the hurt.  I felt it, I allowed it and now I’ve put it away again until I am strong enough to do some more work with it.

Life is a process of learning lessons and some are wonderful and beautiful.  Some are painful and harsh, but will ultimately lead us to wonderful and beautiful if we can allow it.

It may be hard to believe but I am grateful that I had the courage to allow my heart to break.  I have learned not only am I stronger than I realized, but I am in charge of my own happiness.  I can keep the thunderclouds at bay but until I learn to dance in the rain the sun will not be able to shine.

For now, I’m just going to keep on dancing.

Read Full Post »

Sinking into Nothingness

Do you ever get that feeling like your sinking…and sinking and sinking?

Not the one that comes when your stomach sinks and you realize “oh crap, this one thing is not going as expected.” That’s different from what I’m talking about.

I’m talking about the feeling that you are sinking into a deeper and deeper pit of nothingness.  Like some sort of weird emotional quicksand.  I’ve been there and when I think back I’m always reminded of the Neverending Story. Do you remember that?  The story world was being swallowed up but nothingness because of a lack of belief.  Sounds rather familiar no?

The nothingness is a dark place, a lonely place and I want to talk about it.

There I said it.  People have cautioned me about talking about this because they say if you spend a lot of time thinking and writing and thinking some more you are going to invite that into your life.  Bunch o’crap if you ask me.  My intention is not to do that. It is to talk about so those who feel that way know that they are by no stretch of the imagination, alone.  I want to stop the nothingness too!

You are not alone.  The nothingness pit if FULL of people.  Trust me. You just can’t see them yet because that is the trickiest part of feeling this way.  It causes you to isolate yourself without you even realizing it.   It’s hard to see past your own self.

Shame, fatigue, lethargy, confusion, embarassment…you name it.  The emotions that prevent us from stepping out and asking for help runs a rather large list.  

There is so much of this going on right now with all the cutbacks, homes being lost, fear etc that I really feel the need to talk about it. To bring it OUT of the darkness.

There is no shame in falling down.  It happens.  Sometimes, through literally NO fault of our own, sometimes we’ve made a bad choice and sometimes…yes sometimes, we royally screwed up and ended up face first on the floor.

It happens.

As with every event, it’s what you do afterwards that really matters.

What I’ve learned from feeling like life screwed me over, is that I  have a choice at that point.  I can play the victim card and start the sinking.  Or I live in gratitude for what is still in my life and what is still to come. 

I have been in a position where I had to sell some of my things in order to eat.  My goodness that was hard.  I cried and cried about how I didn’t deserve this; how I’d always worked hard and done the ‘right’ things in life.  Yet, here I was. You know what?  At the end of the day it wasn’t that bad.  Stuff is just stuff. 

Here’s the other interesting thing I learned.  The darkness cannot easily exist when the light of love, hope and a thankful heart are present.  It just can’t seem to co-exist.  Don’t get me wrong.  I had some days that were darker than others…but I was no longer sinking into it.  I know where the exit is located.

Can I share an example that still makes me so grateful that I have a bit of tears show up?  I was cutting waaaaaaay back on everything.  I cut out the TV cable and was pretty sad about that because I used it to distract myself from life of painful recovery.  I looked for another way to use my time and I began to use it to read books that taught me so much more about living well.  I count that time as a time of peace and internal healing.  I snuggled up with my dog and cat under a blanket and a cup of tea and read.  I wrote in my journal and had time to reflect and think. 

It was like I had been living in a room with a dim light and suddenly someone added a whole bunch of bright lamps. 

If I had simply despaired, or tried to fight it, I never would have had that time.  I looked for what opportunities presented to me and I stepped up and took them as small as they might seem.

The thing is if you are experiencing that feeling of life being out of your control, please know that it is not.  You have the power to change it. You really do!  It may not happen overnight and there is no magic pill but you can step out of what is dragging you down and pulling you under.  This is what I help with – setting goals and breaking them down to ‘those little steps’ that make a huge difference.  I’ve seen the difference it makes.

Ask for help if you need it.  Sometimes this turns into a depression that needs medical help to overcome.  That’s okay as long as you get the help you need.  Sometimes you just need to force yourself into a next little step.  Let’s face it.  You are reading this and made it to the bottom which tells me you don’t want to live stuck in the dark.  You don’t have to. 

You can do this.  Your light, your energy, is needed in this world as much as anyone’s.  It’s time to talk about feeling like we’ve sunk and are sinking.  It’s time to throw a few life preservers out there for others.  Let’s shed some light on this and lift each other up.

Blessings

Read Full Post »

Avoidance is a Coping Skill

Avoidance.

I mentioned this as a coping skill in my last post “Fooled or Foolish” and I’ve since had the question about what I meant by that.

When I started getting a little better and could be awake for more than an hour at a time, I had to start to deal with all the stuff I ‘missed’.  You see, I was pretty much on my own for this *ahem* adventure in car accidents. 

I didn’t do very well. Or maybe I did.  Either way I did the best I could and that I suppose, is all anyone could ask of themselves.

And when I got a lot better, where I could actually remember what I did the day before, I started to also realize a lot of things had changed.  Myself included and I struggled with that.  I wanted ME back, I wanted my happier life back; I didn’t want to deal all the stuff that had piled up and I fought those changes and problems with avoidance.

I simply refused to deal with it until I what ever issue it was got so big I was forced to do something. 

Looking back I realize that at the time this was a coping skill.  I wasn’t able to deal with literally everything in my life turning upside down and on its head, as well as the emotional upheaval and the pain and rehab…ugh!  It’s not all over with yet either.  I just deal with it much better (most days).

Avoidance is a coping skill.  However, I found out that all that stuff just grows bigger while you’re pretending it’s not there. Now, I really did need to learn to put things aside so I could heal and I have to deal with that. 

However, it’s not a great way to cope over the long haul.  Avoiding life is fine for an afternoon where you have  a migraine that makes you want to hide in bed and just try to survive it.  It’s not a great way to live your life.  And  many do everyday and not because of an accident; they are simply stuck in a terrible cycle.  It causes a great deal of stress and upset, and it doesn’t have to be this way.

Perhaps this is a good thing to have gone through because as a Mindset Coach I can recognize it quite clearly.  I also can relate and understand how much emotion is behind using avoidance.  I also know first hand what it takes to fix it and get through it.

What I want you to know is this.  It doesn’t go away. You can avoid it only so long and you will have to deal with it.  It is much easier to deal with things one at a time as they happen then it is to have everything build up and come crashing down on you all at once. 

Facing up to life, getting things under control takes time, effort and courage.  I ended up having someone totally unexpected come around to help keep me from falling off the edge.  We need support and sometimes even ideas on what to do next when we are overwhelmed.  Boy do I get that.

So, what can I help you with?

Read Full Post »

Advice to my Younger Self

I think sometimes my brain has a thought process all of it own.  I was pouring myself some coffee (shocking I know) and somehow found myself thinking about what advice I would give my younger self had I the opportunity.  I think it may all stem from the focus I’ve been putting on the Coffee with Soul series, new blog and such.  It’s all about figuring out life and sharing the lessons with each other. There may be a connection there. 

Well let’s see..some of the thoughts that came about were kind of funny (don’t buy that outfit because someone will take a picture of you wearing it and you’ll be the butt of jokes til the end of time lol).

Some were a bit more serious like that guy isn’t any good for you; he’ll just break your heart or don’t trust that person they will steal your stuff.  Then again, after thinking it over I recanted that.  Those experiences while unpleasant, gave me wisdom and built up my resilience.  I also wouldn’t have met one of my good friends otherwise…so yeah..the heart ache stays.

The more I got to thinking about it I realized how many blessings in the form of upset, pain and loss were given to me.  Some were unanswered prayers that you can later look back on and to realize how what you wanted so badly wasn’t what was good for you.  Some led me to better understanding, patience and the ability to fulfill the calling and the journey I am on right now.

And to be perfectly honest…I know me. I probably would not have learned those lessons all that well without the impact that the actual experience had, so what would I share with my younger self?

So I kept thinking about it..and kept thinking about it.  Seriously I was driving myself nutty (I know..short trip right? lol)

If I had opportunity to give some advice to my younger self what would I say?  I of course, made it even tougher because I limited this to one thing. 

Suddenly, I realized what was the biggest lesson, the most important and hardest won lesson I had to impart.  The one that shifted my entire belief system (and still on occasion tries to speak up from my subconcious..sigh..it’s a long process in some cases). 

And it was this.

Don’t bother looking to others around where you should be in life.

We each have our own journey and must start where we are and with what we have right now, today with a grateful heart. 

So, at the risk of making you down two cups of coffee, and taking a long walk in order  to figure it out, I ask you for your best and only bit of truth you’d impart to your younger self.

Read Full Post »