Reflections on love and belonging

During my second year in Canada, just before I decided to become a coach, I had a conversation with a coach about life purpose. In the coaching model she was trained in, they were taught to narrow down your life purpose to ONE word that summarises what you are all about or what you are trying to create in your lifetime. A one-word life purpose sounded absurd to me. Could you really narrow it down to just one word? And of course, I was surprised when she shared what she thought my life purpose was. She observed that it sounded like mine was connection. I’ve discovered two things since then… […]

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Redefining Compassion

During a specific phase of my PhD research, I conducted interviews with participants. One of the questions I would ask interviewees was, “What does compassion mean to you?” I would then follow up that question with a second question, “How do you demonstrate compassion in your own life?”

The aim was to get a sense of what compassion really means to people and how they live compassion in their daily lives. The Oxford Dictionary defines compassion as, “sympathetic pity and concern for the sufferings or misfortunes of others.”

For me personally, that definition feels too narrow. It invites us to feel pity or concern for someone. It evokes within us this sense of feeling sorry for someone about what they are going through. And yet, pity falls short of what is needed. It simply levels compassion akin to sympathy, when my sense is that what is really needed is far more than just feeling sorry for someone. […]

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The secret to becoming an adult is to embrace your inner child

Recently, I wrote about how most of us are beating up on ourselves for not knowing how to be adults. I shared that life doesn’t come with an instruction manual, so none of us really know what it means to be an adult. We are all trying to figure it out. In Elizabeth Benton’s incredible book, Chasing Cupcakes, she talks about how to take responsibility and create the life that you want, and she essentially shares two rules for adulting. […]

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On adulting and taking responsibility

I often come across these memes on social media that joke about what it means to be an adult. I’m sure you’ve seen some of them. The key themes tend to include finding it hard to be a responsible adult and make decisions, not knowing what you want to do with your life, or feeling like you have no clue what you are doing, feeling tired all the time, realising you are old, and getting excited about mundane things like clean dishes, dish sponges, or getting to go to bed early.

We joke about having to be an adult, but I’m guessing that many of us also secretly feel like we have no idea what we are doing. In fact, I’m willing to go as far as saying that no-one really knows what they are doing. We are all just trying to figure it out, while we hope to come across as if we do know what we are doing. […]

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You are the seed of your future self

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. […]

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Life Lessons from a Video Game

My husband is a video game fanatic. I have never really taken much of an interest in it, although I can appreciate the value of gamified learning. Years ago, when I completed my honour’s degree in Strategic Management, one of our courses was an online game, and it was quite a memorable experience. Sometimes simulated learning is the best way to build experience in a specific area. It provides the opportunity to learn through “failing” at challenging tasks without any drastic real-life consequences.

That said, what I want to share with you here is not so much about the importance of gamification. Rather, it relates to some interesting insights I got from listening to my husband share a story about the latest game he is currently playing called Dead Cells. […]

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Using disappointment as a catalyst for inspiration

In life, disappointments are inevitable, because of the simple fact that we don’t control everything that happens in life. How you choose to deal with disappointments in your life, can become a defining moment for you.

In his thought-provoking article on Dealing with Disappointment, Manfred Kets de Vries postulates that expectations lie at the root of all heartache and disappointment. Think about it, would you be disappointment about something if you didn’t have any expectations about how it was supposed to be? Your disappointment stems from the fact that what you had imagined or hoped would happen, did not align with what transpired in reality. It’s like Brad Warner says, disappointment is what you feel “when your brain is trying to readjust itself to reality after discovering that things are not the way you thought they were”.

Some disappointments are insignificant in the larger view of your life. They are easily filtered out by asking yourself the question, “will this matter a year from now?” If the answer is no, simply let it go.

However, some disappointments can change the course of your life. They can become character defining moments. You see, it doesn’t matter that you feel disappointment. It only matters how you choose to deal with your disappointment as you take the next step forward. […]

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Self-care is Soul care

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. […]

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Live as if you are on the verge of death

I’ve spent the last few weeks contemplating death. Now I know this might sound like quite a somber activity to be engaged in, and yet, it is not. You see, I’m not contemplating death in a suicidal way. I’m honouring death as a masterful teacher. It is as Michael Singer says in his book, The Untethered Soul, “It is truly a great cosmic paradox that one of the best teachers in all of life, turns out to be death.”

And of course, living through a global pandemic means that all of us have been confronted with death in one form or another over the last two years. Yet, no person or situation could ever teach you as much as death has to teach you. […]

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Become a Cycle Breaker

One of the most important lessons I’ve learnt in my time working with my coach, is to appreciate that things in my life happen FOR me, not TO me. Everything in your life can be used for your growth and learning. EVERYTHING. Even the things that seem insignificant. And most especially the things that cause you the most frustration and heartache.

I feel compelled to share something vulnerable with you here. Healing from abuse, neglect, trauma, and violence is never easy. Sometimes it requires heroic effort to not fall into self-destructive patterns. It requires self-awareness, a deep inner knowing that things can and will be better, and that you are capable of change. It requires committed effort to learning, growing, healing, forgiving, and to never stop trying. […]

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