Thriving
Thoughts on personal growth, courage, and stepping into your bigger life.
Last week, I wrote about fear, and I asked the provocative question: If you are not excited and scared, are you even living? I’ve been thinking a lot about fear since then. In August 2023, I wrote On the Other Side of Fear, and it feels important to share that story again. Over the coming weeks, I will share more thoughts on fear, and for now, I want to talk about what might be waiting on the other side of your fear…
Two weeks ago, I had my introductory call to the Summer of Love Retreat I will be attending with Kendra Cover this Summer. I also launched THRIVE that same week. What stood out in both groups was that there was both fear and excitement. All the women who will be attending the Summer of Love Retreat (including myself) and the women in THRIVE expressed that they felt excited and scared at the same time. On the Summer of Love Retreat call, Kendra said something that got me thinking. She said, “If you are not excited and scared some of the time, are you even living?”
In his book, Meditations for Mortals, Oliver Burkeman reasons that our hustle culture is created by the misunderstanding that our existence is insufficient reason to be happy and fulfilled. Some of us run on an often-unconscious belief that we “must prove that we are worthy to exist”. Burkeman describes it as starting each day in deficit of some productivity debt we believe we need to pay off, before we can relax. The trouble is that we never seem to be able to settle this productivity debt, because every time we achieve the impossible, reach the deadline, or finally manage to get slightly ahead, we realize that we now must keep maintaining this new standard of performance and achievement. Consequently, there is no end in sight, and we keep at it day after day, in the hopes that one day we will arrive at this elusive future where we finally feel “good enough” or like we have done enough. Unfortunately, that day is never coming, because we have set it up in a way that we can never get there…
Do you believe you need certainty before you can take action? Today, I want to distinguish between certainty and clarity. The one is impossible to obtain, and the other is essential if you are truly going to thrive and stay committed to your most important goals.
In a recent article I posed the question: What do you believe you deserve? Today I want to explore this question: What if there is a reason why you don’t question whether other people deserve to thrive? You see, our innate being is one of wellbeing and of thriving. We are meant to grow, learn, expand, flourish, thrive… It’s built into our DNA. If you consider how much a baby grows and learns in their first year of life, and how much can change in the first five years of life, you have witnessed the wonder of our innate ability to grow and thrive. What’s even more amazing, is how adaptable we are, and how our nervous systems will adapt to the environment we find ourselves in. We will cultivate behaviours that will help us survive in any environment, and over time, those behaviours become our habits and our patterns. Anything that is learnt, can be unlearnt...
“It is easier to try to be better than you are, than to be who you are.” – This quote by Marian Woodman struck me. So often we treat ourselves like self-improvement projects, thinking that if we could only be better than we are, then everything would be the way we want it to be. If we could achieve that elusive level of perfection, then we would finally be happy, and have all the love, joy, and abundance we are craving… At least, I know this was true for me. I started working with my coach, with the hope that it would help me figure out what was wrong with me, and that I could then fix myself. My coach was unwilling to participate in that experiment, and she kept treating me as if there was nothing wrong with me. I was baffled. And now, seven years later, I get it. None of us are broken. We are simply disconnected from our true nature. We have allowed for so much conditioning to settle into our minds, hearts, and even bodies, that we have completely forgotten who we are...
In 2024 I led a private coaching group called Living As If You Matter. At the completion of this group, I gave each of the participants a small silver journal. I invited them to treat the journal as a Dreams and Desires Journal and to write down 100 dreams, desires, longings, or wants in it. I also promised each of the participants a complimentary conversation if they wrote down their dreams and desires, and then reached out to me to let me know that they had completed their list. The other day I invited a client to guess how many women reached out to me after receiving their dreams and desire journals. My client said, “Well I would hope all of them reached out.” I asked her why, and she said that she would have a hard time coming up with a list of 100, and that she hoped someone else had the courage to come up with a list of 100… My client captured the essence of what I have heard over and over again during the past seven months in conversations with women about thriving. People are struggling to let themselves thrive. Why? It’s very simple really, they don’t believe that they deserve to...
In my most recent article I talked about the drive to do more, and I questioned the desire for abundance. This may have left the impression with you that I’m saying that wanting more is bad. And that is not what I’m saying at all. Over the past three years, I have discovered that there are two kinds of desire for more…
In a conversation with a client who is in the exploration of her own thriving, she mentioned how, in her incessant drive for more, she often mistakes momentum for meaning. And this is a symptom of living in a manic world driven by a scarcity mindset… Robert Holden calls this our destination addiction. When we believe that there is not enough, that we are not enough, or that we will not have enough, we also inevitably believe that more is better, and we start to think that the whole point of life is to keep chasing more until we arrive at the ever-elusive destination where we finally “have it all”. Lynne Twist reasons this is how we keep the scarcity mindset alive. We have been conditioned to focus on what we lack, not on what we already have. When we pay attention to what we lack, we inevitably believe that more is always better, and we act as if there is simply no other way to be in the world. This is just how it is. What we don’t see, is how we then trap ourselves on a hamster wheel that we can never escape…
I’m not someone who tends to write about the steps you need to take to overcome something, or fix something, and today I want to talk about something Alison Armstrong shared that landed and resonated deeply. And it’s directly connected to our willingness to let ourselves grow, stretch, and ultimately thrive… So, I hope you will indulge me in sharing with you what you could do if you are currently feeling overwhelmed.
This past weekend I spent time in a workshop with Michael Neill. It was a conversation about health, and it got me thinking about the relationship we have with our bodies. And so today, I want to invite you to consider: what is your current relationship with your body?
At the start of the new school year in September, my daughter’s music teacher handed her a recorder. One of the skills she is mastering this year in Grade 4, is learning to play the recorder. She loves music and loves learning. Since September she has practiced every single day. And every time she masters a new song, she receives a new colour belt. The goal, I’m told, is to first get her first black belt, then reach three gold belts, which will unlock the ultimate prize – a rainbow-coloured belt. She is obsessed with rainbows, so of course a rainbow-coloured belt is the ultimate coveted item right now. I’ll be honest, there have been days where I have had to remind myself that the noise is part of the journey, and that she can’t improve her skill without practice. Then one day it occurred to me that I hadn’t heard her play in a while. A curious question as to why I haven’t heard her play, resulted in tears. “All my friends have moved on to black belts, and I’m still stuck at purple. I’m so far behind…” And there it was. The cry I’ve heard so many times from friends, loved ones, and especially from clients – they fear that they are behind in some way. This is not a new phenomenon, and my daughter certainly isn’t the only one experiencing the feeling of being behind in life. In fact, it saddens me that she is already feeling behind at such a young age...
When I was completing my master’s degree, our professor would always talk about living your dash – which was perhaps a not so elegant way to talk about how we choose to spend the time between our date of birth and our date of death. Today marks the one-year anniversary of my father’s passing, and it has me thinking about how he lived his dash, and how all of us live our dashes.
I discovered the practice of Bhava Yoga in October last year. I was looking for something that would support me in being in my body to release all the intense grief I have been carrying this past year. Many years ago, one of my Yoga teachers said that we come back to Yoga when we are in pain – whether that is physical, mental, emotional, or spiritual pain. I have found this to be true. This time, I was coming to Yoga to work through my mental, emotional, and spiritual pain after losing my father, and walking through one of the most difficult years of my life in my marriage. Over the past 12 months, there have been days where it has felt impossible to get out of bed, and yet, I got up. I have to, because I have small humans who depend on me. However, I also understood that I could not show up for them if I wasn’t resourced. So, Bhava Yoga has become non-negotiable. It has become a way that I return to the sacred...
Over the last two years I have sat with this question: What does it mean to thrive? I used to believe that if I could achieve enough outside success, then I would thrive. When I started my coaching business, I read The Prosperous Coach, in the hopes that I could figure out how to prosper – which is another word for thrive. I was longing to find the secret to thriving / prospering / flourishing / expanding. And I will be honest, initially I thought that I would feel like I was thriving if I were making more money and if I was really successful in my business...
Today large parts of the world are celebrating Valentine’s Day. I find it so strange that we live in a world where we have commercialised everything to the point that even the most important things in our lives can lose their meaning and significance. I have always found the idea of Valentine’s Day a little absurd since love cannot be bought or sold. Love is not a commodity. And creating a day where we remind people of their own loneliness, disconnection, and insecurities seems like the opposite of loving to me. It seems almost cruel. I’m not saying don’t appreciate your significant other, but I am questioning why you need a reminder to do that, or why they only get to be seen and celebrated on ONE day of the year. Love isn’t a feeling either. The feeling you feel when you say that you are in love, is infatuation, desire, or lust. Love, real love, is an ACTION. Love is a way of being in the world. It’s the opposite of judgement.
The other day at my son’s Hip Hop class some of the other moms were discussing camps they were booking for their children for Summer. Summer?! It’s January. We are still in Winter. I laughed a little at their urgency around needing to get their Summer camps booked now. This event left me with two thoughts…
I know most New Year’s articles often start with a note of excitement and anticipation about the new possibilities ahead. I would like to start my first article of 2026 on a more sobering note. You might find it depressing, and yet, I want to invite you to consider that perhaps it’s not. Perhaps it’s the key to your liberation this year. On the first day back to school from the holiday break, I was talking to the father of one of the kids in my son’s Kindergarten class while we were waiting for them to be dismissed for the day. I asked him how the holidays were for him, and as per usual, I got the response I seem to get a lot from people: “Busy”. How often do you find yourself responding to a question on how you are with the that one word, “busy”? What was even more interesting, was when I asked this father what he was most excited about in the coming year, he said he didn’t know yet, because he hadn’t had a chance to catch up on emails. He shared that once he has caught up with everything he is behind on, he will have a better sense of what he wants to do this year. And this is how most of us run our lives. When… Then… We play this endless When… Then… game with ourselves, without recognizing the three most important truths that will set you free from this endless hamster wheel...
December always feels like paradox. Most of the world seems to be winding down, and somehow things are speeding up at the same time. In the Northern hemisphere, there can be a longing for cozy evenings in front of the fireplace, comfort food, and warm blankets. In the Southern hemisphere, there is the longing for lazy days on the beach, or around the pool, barbeques, and Xmas parties. Yet, I also hear from people that their inboxes are running over, they are drowning under urgent deadlines, and organisations are hurriedly trying to complete planning for the new year. There is an increased urgency to get things done, and completed, and a tension between desperately wanting rest, and feeling like you can’t rest yet. With children in the mix too, the holiday season can feel anything but relaxing and restful. Often there is no childcare available, and you are scurrying to figure out how you will keep your children entertained or occupied. And somehow you have unknowingly also taken responsibility for ensuring that there is “holiday magic”? When did that get added to the list? And why is it even a requirement? The core leadership challenge that no-one talks about, is not strategy, planning, or systems, but rather how to navigate the internal negotiation between your energy or capacity, and outside expectations. And that is why today I want to talk about capacity...
I want to start this article a little differently to how I would usually start a post. I want to start by sharing this funny video that captures my evolution with KPop Demon Hunters in 15 seconds. And if you don’t know what KPop Demon Hunters are, welcome to the movement. May it inspire you as much as it has inspired me. If you are not a fan, that is totally fine too. I feel a little sad for you. And, you don’t need to a be fan, or even have watched the movie, to get value from this article. It’s just my starting point, and it doesn't need to be yours. So, just hang in here with me for a little bit as I provide some background to why this movie, why this article, and why now?
During the Summer I took a trip to Whistler with my family. Whistler is a town north of Vancouver, British Columbia, that's home to Whistler Blackcomb, one of the largest ski resorts in North America. People go there to ski in the Winter, and they go there for adventure biking in the Summer. There is a cable-car (gondola) that takes you up Whistler Mountain. Additionally, there is another gondola that takes you between the two peaks of Whistler Mountain and Blackcomb Mountain. This is called the Peak-to-Peak gondola and is an epic ride up the mountain. Once you are half-way up Whistler Mountain, there is an option to take an open chairlift to the peak of Whistler Mountain. The Peak Express chairlift is your access to the Top of the World Summit, Cloudraker Skybridge and Raven's Eye Lookout. This chairlift ride is an exhilarating experience that takes you over top of an ancient glacier while cresting over a 100-foot vertical cliff at the top. I have a morbid fear of falling – not heights, I’m pretty ok with being high up. I’m terrified of falling though, so I don’t like feeling like I might fall. So, going up the mountain in an open chairlift was not an option I was even considering. It was clear in my mind that that was something I could not do...
Today, the day that everyone remembers as 9/11, is also my father’s birthday. And I find it fitting that his birthday is on a day that has had such historical significance for those of us who were alive on 11 September 2001. That day started like any other day and so many people did not get to see the end of that day… And I remember exactly where I was on that day... This year, on what would have been my father’s 69th birthday, there are three things I’m doing differently that stem directly from deep life lessons learnt in watching my father suffer in his final days and losing him.
In April of this year, I did a thing. With the gentle nudging of my coach, I participated in a professional rebranding photo shoot. The photo shoot took place in the midst of tremendous grief and sorrow. I was still reeling from the shock of my father’s passing. If I’m being honest, I’m still reeling from it now. There are days where the grief of it is so intense that my heart physically aches, and the tears have a valve of their own that cannot be turned off… And yet, the photos are more real, more authentic, more true than any photos I have ever taken. They reflect someone who is more grounded, more present, more connected to herself, Life, and others. They reflect who I am without any filters or pretense. They are raw and real. They are vulnerable. They are beautiful. This photo shoot in April was not some spur of the moment, spontaneous event. It was part of a much larger agreement with my coach to start to see myself more clearly, to claim the value of the work that I do, and to realign my brand to clearly reflect that. It was part of a project called “Seeing Myself”. Why am I sharing this with you, and what does seeing myself have to do with the title of this article? Everything really. When we slow it down...
My father died believing he was a failure. From his perspective, he had failed, because he had been unable to secure full-time employment after losing his job during the pandemic. He lost his house and had almost no money when he died. He based a lot of his self worth on external measures of success, and he believed that he did not measure up. However, that's now what I saw or believed...
Usually in January we hear a lot of talk about goals, dreams, aspirations, ways that we are going to be better and do better. This time of year tends to be a time when there is a heavy focus on self-improvement. Although, I will say that this year, I feel like the energy is different. I don’t know if it’s only on my side of the world, or whether you have experienced something similar? And I’m attributing it to all that is occurring in the world at the moment – wars, elections, wildfires. One colleague said what I was thinking. He said, “It feels like it’s the pandemic all over again...” I will share that that is certainly where my fear-based mind went immediately, because I remember that there were these out-of-control wildfires in Australia at the beginning of 2020 just before the pandemic really hit. And if you are feeling less inspired and excited this January, I want to invite you to be gentle and compassionate with yourself. My sense is that in many ways, we are still recovering from the trauma of the pandemic, and that our nervous systems are constantly bombarded with more things to process. And it’s a lot. It really is. And this is why I want to discuss the difference between self-improvement and self-growth...
These past few weeks I’ve been riddled with guilt, so much so that my guilt would wake me up in the middle of the night, and I would feel my heart beating in my chest, and my mind racing with worry. So often, my clients share how they carry their own guilt for choices they’ve made, especially when others do not approve of those choices. Recently, I had a deep conversation with my coach about guilt, and I had a profound insight that has changed the way I see my guilt. And I want to share with you here what I’ve learnt about guilt...
My coach recently gifted me a book by Michael Neill called Things I’m Avoiding Doing: A four-week program to overcome procrastination and get shit done. The title of the book is misleading, because it makes it sounds like the focus of the book is to learn how to get over procrastination and get more done. In a world, where we are already overloaded with too much to do, it’s probably not surprising that we are not getting everything done. And yet, when you read the book, you’ll discover that it’s not really about getting more shit done, and that Michael Neill doesn’t believe that procrastination is actually real...
Just before the completion of the Coaching Leadership Mastermind I did with my coach, she invited the group to consider where, in which dimensions of our lives, we added value either to ourselves or to others in the past 24 hours. We worked through The Wheel of Life and considered which dimensions of our lives were enriched in the past 24 hours? Then my coach invited us to reflect on the past week, and consider where in the past week we add value to either ourselves or others? Lastly, she invited us to review the whole month and consider in a deeper way where did we add value to ourselves or others over the past month?
Something that we all share as human beings, is the desire for learning and growth. It’s built into our DNA to want to learn and grow. If you don’t believe me, simply spend some time with babies and you will see it. We learn more in the first year of life than in any other time in our lives. We are simply geared towards learning, because learning things helps us survive, and even once we have figured out how to survive, learning helps us go from merely surviving to thriving. If you consider the technological advancement of humanity, it becomes quite evident that we want to grow, learn, and expand. We almost can’t help ourselves. What I’m most baffled by though is how our natural instinct for learning and growth then starts morphing into a need for self-improvement and/or self-betterment, and then sometimes even morphing into an obsession with perfectionism. The idea of self-improvement has been with us for centuries. Even the great philosophers advocated for continuous self-improvement. And yet, I feel like there is a tipping point where self-improvement becomes toxic...
The energy in September tends to be similar to that of the start of the year. Once back from Summer break, people now need to recommit to work, and schedules, and often with the start of the new school year, and after having a break, we vow that we will start doing things differently...It’s interesting how I found myself in the first week of September, already wondering how I will get through the rest of September… Perhaps this feels familiar to you too? And yet, often, even when I feel less resourced, I find myself still pushing through. One of the stories running in the background was, “You can’t be tired now. You just came back from a vacation.”...
Recently I shared how shame can get in the way of us living more wholeheartedly. Today I want to talk about numbing. All of us numb from time to time. Some of us numb more than others, and yet all of us numb. What does it mean to numb? Numbing is what we do to avoid feeling uncomfortable feelings. It’s what we do when we are resisting feeling our true feelings about something. And usually, we resist our true feelings about something, because we have convinced ourselves that it would be too painful to feel our feelings, or that we might get overwhelmed by our feelings if we let ourselves feel them...
I’m currently listening to Life Loves You by Louise Hay and Robert Holden and in Chapter 3 of the book Robert Holden shares about a talk he once attended on the mind where the presenter posed the question: “Can a flat tire really give you a headache?” The reasoning was that you might complain about getting a flat tire, and you might even feel like you have a serious headache after having to deal with replacing a flat tire, but is it really the flat tire that is giving you the headache? The only way the flat tire can be responsible for your headache, is if the tire came off, bounced, ricocheted, and hit you in the head. What is really giving you the headache when you need to replace a flat tire, is your thinking about the flat tire...
A while ago I wrote an article about what your perfectionism is really trying to tell you. Perfectionism is a misunderstanding that we need to earn our self-worth or prove that we are enough or worthy. The truth is that you came into this world worthy and then got disconnected from that truth over time. So, embracing your imperfections is a way that you can choose to reclaim your inherent worthiness...
A question I love to ask my clients, is: What’s your context to life? This question reveals so much about how someone is relating to their experience of life. A context to life, is the story we tell ourselves about life, about ourselves, and about others. It’s the things we believe to be true about Life, about ourselves, and about other people. For example, someone might believe that Life’s a bitch, and then you die. Or they might believe that life is hard, and only the strong survive. Or they might believe that life is the relentless pursuit of more. Or that life is unfair. Or that life is a gift. Or that life is a journey. What we tell ourselves about life, determines how we might respond to different situations IN our life.
Often this time of year, there are lots of posts on social media about big goals and kicking the year off with a strong start. Many of those messages contain a subtle (or not so subtle) tone of “if you're not all in and ready to go, there's something wrong with you". And yet, you might find yourself in a place where you are not sure you are all ready to go. These messages are not accurate. Not everyone is excited at the start of a new year. And nor do you need to be, because let’s be honest, New Year’s Day, is just another day in the year, like any other, and nothing significantly changes between one minute before midnight on December 31st and one minute after midnight on January 1st...
There are two times of year that I find quite intriguing. The one is just before the Summer holidays and the other is just before the Winter break for Xmas and New Year’s. People tend to get into a frenzy to “wrap everything up” or “get everything done” before they “take a break”. And some people treat their “break” as a “to do” item on their to-do list. My sense is that this is a symptom of the society we live in – a world that is always on and always on the go. I firmly believe that we are not built for speed. Human beings are not meant to be moving at the pace that we are moving in this world right now. Here is why...
Last year, at the start of the holiday season, I asked whether you would be inviting the Twin P’s over for dinner this holiday? It seems that many of us – especially women and caregivers – turn in to control freaks during the holiday season. We become frantic and tend to experience a tremendous sense of overwhelm, because we believe it’s our job to create “the perfect holiday celebration” for our family. What that usually looks like, is we want everything to be perfect – whatever that means? – we refuse to ask for or accept help from others, and we become control freaks, so we become impossible to be around. But what if it doesn't have to be this way?
It was my birthday last week, and I had the most incredible birthday. I used to hate birthdays. I used to want to avoid my birthday at all costs. And for the past three years, I have had really amazing and joyful birthdays. So, I want to share briefly what has changed for me, and why it’s important.
Recently, I posed the question, can you handle the effort shock? And there was quite a reaction to that article. So, today, I want to speak to those of us (myself included) who tend to overdo it and who tend to not know where the line is between effort and burnout.
Recently I wrote about what it means to be a hero. Something I did not touch on is just how hard it is to create a life that is different and resonant; just how much effort goes into creating a meaningful and fulfilling life. My sense is that my last article could have perhaps left you confused. I shared that heroes are not special in some way. They are not extraordinary. They don’t have special powers. They are simply ordinary people doing extraordinary things. If this is true, then why do so few of us take up the challenge? Why are we not all the heroes of our own story? The answer is Effort Shock. Let me explain…
We have always lived in a world that is characterised by change and uncertainty. We have never lived in a world that wasn’t changing... No-one has it all figured out, because what would be the fun in being alive if there is nothing to learn? Until the day you release your last breath, you will continue to evolve. You will continue to change. When we remember our past selves, they seem quite different to who we are now. In some instances, your past self might seem like a completely different person to you, and it may even be hard to relate to who you used to be. We know how much our personalities and tastes have changed over the years. However, for some reason, when we look ahead to the future, somehow, we expect that we will stay the same as we are NOW. We assume that we will not change as much in the future as we have changed to get to this present moment...
Whenever I’m in conversation with a new person, I invite them to dream. I invite them to consider what they want. For some peole, it’s easy to know what they want. They find it easy to dream. And for others, knowing what they want, knowing the longing of their own heart, feels unreachable or impossible. The experiences of their past are so painful, or they have fallen into pleasing others and morphing themselves into whatever they think others want them to be, so much so, that they lose their sense of who they are and what they want. I remember a time in my life when I was so busy adapting who I was being to try and be more loveable or acceptable to others, that I had no sense of who I was. During those times, I found it hard to dream. I found it hard to even begin to know what I wanted outside of asking others’ opinions about what they thought I should want. Recently, my coach Amber Krzys, shared an email with the title What’s your relationship to wanting? And that got me thinking...
Today, I want to say a little more about setting goals. As I’ve shared before, I’m not a big fan of traditional New Year’s resolutions. I believe that when we are setting goals, these goals should come from our highest most authentic self, our Inner Wisdom or Inner Leader. When our goals come from this place, they are aligned with who we want to be in the world and what we feel called to create and bring into the world. When our goals come from our Ego, or from our sense of how we see ourselves falling short when we compare ourselves with others, then our goals are essentially SHOULDS and not WANTS.
As the holiday season approaches, life has brought me some interesting experiences that has me contemplating the value of celebration. The dictionary defines a celebration as “the action of marking one's pleasure at an important event or occasion by engaging in enjoyable, typically social, activity.” And this time of year, tends to open people up to celebration for various reasons. Whether you are celebrating Christmas, Hanukkah, New Year’s, or anything in between, this time of year is mostly an invitation to celebrate. And that got me thinking about my relationship to celebration...
We live in a world where the word change comes up often. Things are always changing. And it is even said that if you can’t keep up with change, you will become stagnant, irrelevant, redundant. There is so much change that most of us feel like we simply can’t keep up. The pace of change is so staggering that it leaves our heads spinning. And yet, have you ever stopped to consider what the word "change" actually means and how it is not all that helpful to our personal growth and development?
I recently read an interesting article by Sarah K. Peck, a fellow coach and mompreneur, where she questioned the value of morning routines. She highlighted how morning routines have become very popular. These days many famous and successful people attribute their success to a solid morning routine. However, does your morning routine really support you in who you want to become?
I want to speak to you about a commencement speech Shonda Rhimes gave at her alma mater Dartmouth College in 2014, where she said this simple yet striking line: “Dreams are for losers”. Yes, you heard that right, she said dreams are for losers. She goes on to explain why. At almost every commencement speech someone will tell the graduates to go follow their dreams, or to never stop dreaming. And what Shonda says is that isn’t helpful advice. It won’t actually help you succeed, because dreamers aren’t successful...
If asked, many of us might argue that the opposite of scarcity is abundance, but that's not accurate. Abundance is not the opposite of scarcity. In his book, Right Now, Steve Chandler challenges the whole notion of striving for abundance and he has changed the way I think about abundance. So today, I want share with you what I've learnt.
The other day I was helping a client work through a lot of fear and anxiety she was feeling. The way she was relating to fear was that it was a bad thing and that she shouldn’t feel so scared. And so often we do that, right? We resist the fear, telling ourselves that we shouldn’t be fearful. Yet, what we resist persists. So, the more we try and ignore our fear, the bigger it seems to get. Eventually it’s like this dark looming cloud. Susan David says, “real courage is not fearlessness, it’s fear walking”. And she has a point. However, have you ever considered WHY you experience fear in the first place?
I’ve always been a highly driven and motivated person. I seldom have difficulty getting into action on something once I’ve decided that I want to do it. I can’t relate much to procrastinating on things, because I don’t do it often. And people have often described me as someone who knows what she wants and goes after it. Two weeks ago, I attended a coaching development workshop. In many ways it was a life-changing experience. And then almost at the very end of the workshop, I received a new insight on motivation that not only changed my perspective on the whole concept, but also made me realise why some people get into action quickly and others don’t. And I want to share what I’ve learnt with you, because it will change the way you think about motivation. The most important thing I’ve learnt from this experience and from reflecting back on my own life experiences, is that you don’t need motivation to get started. You need something else.
In conversation with my coach the other day, she said two things that stuck with me. She said, “You are your future self. Whoever you will become, you are already her. She lives inside of you.” And she also reflected that flowers don’t just burst open and start blooming, they blossom slowly. I had to think long and hard about this. What she said hit hard.
We’ve all been there. You ask out that person that you can’t get out of your mind, and they say no. You apply for that dream job, and it’s a no. You apply for a loan, or make an offer on a new house, or negotiate on a car, and it’s a no. You send in a proposal, apply to the university you would love to get into, send in an article to a big publication, and they say no. Rejection. It’s stings. Sometimes, it deflates you so much that you simply want to give up. None of us get through life without being rejected along the way. For some, the rejection may have started early in life. You may have felt rejected by your parents, or your family, or your friends. For others, they are so used to getting a yes to everything they ask for, that the first rejection floors them completely. When I started working with my coach, she introduced me to Steve Chandler’s work. Something he says often is, “yes lives in the land of no”...
I’m an advocate for living a life of gratitude. I truly believe gratitude creates the foundation of a joyful life. When we can truly appreciate that which is beautiful and good in our lives, it will multiply. And starting from a place of gratitude offers a strong springboard for creating more of what we want and appreciate in our lives. No-one can create from a space of negativity, pessimism, or complacency. But a space of gratitude offers deep joy, deep awareness of what’s here, and the inspiration to think creatively about what’s possible. It doesn’t mean we ignore the pain and frustration; it simply helps us to put the pain into perspective. Recently I read an article by Jessica Stillman, on three unexpected habits of exceptionally grateful people where she shares that there is a difference between merely giving thanks for the obvious things in your life, or occasionally reflecting on what you are grateful for, versus practicing deep gratitude regularly. When you live from a place of deep gratitude, you literally rewire your brain to start thinking in a different way. This can be deeply transformational, because you show up differently in your life as a result of it.
At our deepest soul level, we all yearn to be seen and heard. We all yearn to love and to be loved; to understand and to be understood by others. These core needs cannot be fulfilled by accumulating consumer goods or gorging on different forms of frivolous entertainment, or even through comfort or leisure. In fact, some of our deepest soul needs are fed by being in the discomfort of our lives, by stretching ourselves further than we thought possible, by challenging ourselves, and by inviting those around us to also show up better. And this is also where a lot of confusion seeps in when we start talking about self-care, because people sometimes confuse self-care for leisure, or self-indulgence, or pampering yourself. And real deep self-care is NOT that.
I’ve spent a lot of time lately thinking about what is required to not merely survive but to truly thrive in life. I remember reading a thought-provoking article by Zat Rana about a year ago, where he reasoned that there are two states of being in this world: surviving and thriving. To survive is to live in a way that “limits downsides, to eliminate the risk of ruin. It means fulfilling our basic need for food and shelter and companionship”. Thriving, on the other hand, is different. It’s an attempt to transcend this basic state of existence not out of fear, but out of desire and yearning for growth and learning... When we live in a state of survival, our actions are motivated by fear. We want to avoid pain... The fortunate situation we find ourselves in today, also poses a different challenge; the challenge to self-actualise and move beyond mere survival to find ways to truly thrive beyond the physical realm. We are presented with opportunities to grow mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. We have an innate need to satisfy the requirements of survival, yes, but we also have a deeper desire to make something of ourselves beyond that, so we can thrive in the world.
