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Building resilience through awareness “Life doesn’t get easier or more forgiving, we get stronger and more resilient.” – Steve Maraboli, “Life, The Truth, And Being Free” The Oxford Dictionary definition of resilience is, “The capacity to withstand or recover quickly from difficulties.”. I would like to offer an additional definition, “the measurement between victimhood where you lack resilience, and empowerment, where you are resilient”, i.e. how resilient are you? As you slide from victimhood up towards empowerment you become more resilient. This is the gradual process where you develop tools to deal with the world around you and the experiences you have within. There are a lot of reasons why we lack the tools to be resilient. When we find ourselves in a state of victimhood, we are essentially in a state of low-energy vibration. This is where we can’t let go of the narrative that we’ve created to define our identity within our story and our lives. We externalise our entire spectrum of experiences removing our ability to realise our roles in our experiences. Putting a distance between ourselves and our experiences causes us to blame external factors for our circumstances; we can’t realise accountability if we don’t realise we have a hand in our reality. In this process, we externalise control of our circumstances. The tools we develop are all focused on protecting ourselves from the external factors that are a threat to us, i.e. we compound the problem and perpetuate the victimhood while tricking ourselves into believing we are getting stronger. Evidently, we have choices as to what path we take embarking on this journey towards resilience and empowerment. One path, as described above, will be a reflection of our shadow or ego aspect of ourselves where we find strength in our anger, shame, guilt, apathy, etc., but they’re all in the lower spectrum of vibration. The idea of resiliency at these levels is to control your experiences with force expressed outwards. Anybody who gets in our way is a threat and we are separate from them, so they become “collateral damage” in our pursuit of resiliency. This, like the reality construct that we think is our experience, is an illusion and we get stuck in a loop; empowerment is not available at these lower levels, only enforcement, which creates lower vibrations, resulting in more forcefulness. The alternative is to become consciously aware of our experiences and what they are. On this path, we don’t see the reality construct outside of ourselves as the experience but rather just as a reflection of the internal emotions and feelings that are building blocks of the real experience. When we choose to become consciously aware of our own experiences we become aware of our role in our own experiences. We can start building resiliency tools to control that which we can control; our thoughts, our words and our actions. This perspective brings with it accountability, not blame, without shame and guilt. It allows us to become accepting of ourselves and everything around us in our reality construct. We accept the external and connect with it, without attachment or judgement. Choosing this path is to choose growth and evolution. Empowerment is all about shifting perspectives and understanding what our true experience is. To shift perspectives we need to open up to the possibility that there are more than one truth and that we can allow ourselves to look at the reality construct from different angles. Consider, for example, you have a body as opposed to you are a body. We simply move some words around and our idea of self suddenly shifts 180 degrees. We allow ourselves to be taken away from the identification in the physical reality to perceive ourselves from our consciousness. Once we start looking at ourselves and our existence from this perspective, we can then start to understand the multi-dimensionality that we are. From...

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Believing your own thoughts is the source of your suffering “Do you know the power of your words? When you tell yourself stories that aren’t true your unconscious mind believes them. Your beliefs also can make you sick. You curse yourself by repeating lies.” – Trish Taylor, “Yes! You Are Good Enough.” You may experience imposter syndrome in a variety of situations, mainly professional ones, but also in your personal life. This can cause you to feel inadequate, doubt yourself, and fear being exposed as a fraud despite evidence to the contrary. You may believe that you do not deserve your accomplishments and that you are not as capable as others perceive you to be, leading to anxiety, stress, and a lack of confidence in your abilities. Imposter syndrome can stem from internal factors such as low self-esteem, perfectionism, and a fear of failure. You may judge yourself based on external standards and internalize this judgment, leading to a feeling of fraudulence. People who rely heavily on external validation and are prone to comparing themselves to others are more likely to experience imposter syndrome. If you experience imposter syndrome, it can manifest in various ways, including anxiety, depression, and a lack of confidence in your abilities. You may be afraid to take risks or try new things because you feel like you will fail or be exposed as a fraud, leading to missed opportunities and a lack of personal and professional growth. To shift your mindset out of imposter syndrome, you can take various steps. One key strategy is to recognize and challenge negative thoughts and beliefs. For instance, if you believe that you are a fraud, you can challenge this belief by listing evidence that supports your accomplishments and successes. Additionally, you can focus on your strengths and celebrate your achievements, no matter how small. You need to pay close attention to how you think, speak, and act, especially in relation to how you speak to yourself and how you react when given accolades. Another strategy is to cultivate a growth mindset, which involves embracing challenges and viewing failures as opportunities to learn and grow. You can shift your mindset by reframing your thoughts and beliefs about failure and success. Rather than seeing failure as a personal reflection of your abilities, you can view it as a necessary step towards growth and development. When you observe your own judgement, you need to ask yourself, “what other perspectives could I have on this judgment of myself?”. Writing down a list of other perspectives can then give alternative viewpoints that carry equal validity, and the original judgement can be replaced with one that has a “higher” vibration. Recognizing that you may be experiencing imposter syndrome is half the battle. The next step is to start shifting your mindset and belief system by convincing yourself of another reality that is equally viable as the “lower” vibrational one. This process is not about lying to yourself but rather finding alternative judgments that carry equal weight and validate your success or position. Additionally, you may need to overcome loss aversion, which is a cognitive bias that tells you to avoid taking up a challenge because it is in unknown territory and staying in the status quo is the safe option, even though it is worse than the possible outcome of the unknown. What we believe about ourselves stems from our past experiences, programming, and conditioning. Taking the next step when having identified your current trigger is to link them back to the source experience where you created the belief that no longer serves you. Once you’ve realised the source you can now address it and heal it by changing your perception of it using the techniques above. Heal your traumas and your wounds and you will alleviate your imposter syndrome.

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Happiness, do we attain or discover it? “True happiness is not attained through self-gratification, but through fidelity to a worthy purpose” – Helen Keller The quote above, though deep in its perspective, raises a question; is happiness something innate or attained? In fact, does any of the emotions we experience already exist within us before the first time we experience it? I suppose it is similar in question as whether the chicken or the egg came first; we can’t really know. However, clear is that the emotion is experienced within us, but can be triggered by external factors as well as experiences we recall through memories. It can also appear spontaneously without any apparent trigger at all. It is the quality and the sustainability of the happiness that makes the difference between the triggered and spontaneous ones. The triggered happiness lasts as long as the trigger lasts, but the spontaneous happiness can last a lifetime.  Often we seek out triggered happiness as a coping mechanism. These triggers can be through intoxication, materialistic pursuits, relationships, status, power, etc. The commonality here is that, once the happiness runs out, we need to trigger it again with another “trip”. This is where we end up chasing happiness.  The alternative is to, through mindful practice, release the notion that happiness is an experience triggered by something. Happiness like other emotions can emerge simply by being content. However, it does take faith to pursue this path to happiness and if you don’t believe that this path is viable, you will not get there. For most that strike up on this pursuit does so after realising that money, power, or similar does not provided that happiness that one is after; it becomes a last resort of sorts.  Happiness, like other emotions, is something one must experience and come upon for oneself. So there is no judgement as to whatever is anyone’s pursuit of happiness, and there is no point in trying to persuade anyone convinced they know their happiness of another path, they have to experience that for themselves.  In my experience, when we accept our experiences and find contentment and gratitude in anything, we can experience unconditional happiness. We might be in the most dire of situations, but, as Viktor Frenkl described it so beautifully in “Man’s Search for Meaning”, if we stay with our hope we can endure tremendous hardship. Within that hope we can find the acceptance, contentment and gratitude. You mightn’t be as happy as you have previously experienced, but happiness is not a comparative experience, either you are aware of it and experiencing it, or you are not. The more challenging your experience, the more difficult it is to hold that happiness in your awareness, but it is there, always, for you to experience. It is within you, not externally from you. Happy searching. 

Integrity is a balancing act between who you are, who you want to be, could be and who society expects you to be. “I cannot, and will not, cut my conscience to fit this year’s fashion.” – Lillian Hellman Let’s start with the definition of integrity: “The quality of being honest and having strong moral principles; the state of being whole and undivided.” Integrity is in the eye of the beholder, including our own of ourselves. The framework is set, in our reality construct, by society, community, religion, etc. We use our framework as a perspective on our own integrity. From Carl Rogers work we can see that from moment to moment our integrity is reflected in our self image, and the person we strive to become is the ideal self. How one judges oneself for the distance between the ideal integrity and one’s actual integrity then becomes a choice that can bring about heavy doses of shame and guilt, which in turn brings one’s vibrational frequency down causing mental unhealth. We make these choices from experience to experience and might sometimes toe the line with our expectations, and sometimes stray far from our ideals. The process of making the decision to stray from our ideals, unfortunately, usually happens in our head with all the cognitive biases we suffer under.  Our pure authentic selves, or as Carl Rogers calls it; organismic selves, can be described as our true perspective of integrity. Anything beyond that is going to be choices coloured by our own experiences, thus based on programming and traumas. We always have choices when we are faced with upholding our boundaries of integrity, wherever we are in our journey. Those choice will have consequences and it is imperative that we hold ourselves accountable for them, not apportioning blame, but hold accountable.  Choices relating to our integrity is not an intellectual process, if we want to remain as close as possible to our authentic selves. We have to learn to listen to our intuition and inner guidance to stay on the straight and narrow.  The idea of integrity as it is measured in society comes out of the collective consciousness. The shift in our perception of integrity as a society happens as individuals come closer and closer to their authentic integrity, i.e. this, like so many other things, is an individual process of change and growth that will benefit humanity as a whole. 

"Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate." - Nicholas Janni, "Leader As Healer" In our conversation we learn to understand Nicholas' concept of Leader As Healer. He summarises it beautifully, "[Leaders] who has rejected the normalised version of reality, which is dominated by linear thinking. [It is a leader] who understands that we need to bring a unification of embodied experience, emotional connection, intuitive opening and a deeper meditative practice in which thinking becomes our servant not our master.". It is the process of shifting from being stuck in our heads to observing and being aware of our experiences. As a leader, you shift into a perspective where you become more empathetic and compassionate. Nicholas assured us that even hard shelled lawyers were receptive to this process of becoming vulnerable and to shift their perspective from doing to feeling. There is hope after all. On key tool I took away from our conversation and brought it in to my own practice as well as teaching my own clients is to "drop the narrative". As you may have heard me quote many times before, "pain is inevitable, the suffering is optional"; the narrative is essentially the suffering. It is the story we build up to justify why we are feeling what we are feeling, and the more we justify it the more we prolong the presence of the emotion in our body. Let the emotion stay for as long as it needs to, not for as long as you can hold on to it. Nicholas' experience and expertise is a window into a new paradigm that many of us are working towards, and the future is bright. Don't forget to pick up his book, it is a must read. Contact Nicholas Janni: https://www.nicholasjanni.com, www.matrixcoaching.net About Nicholas Over the last 20 years Nicholas has gained an international reputation for his transformational coaching and leadership development seminars. The clients he has served include FedEx, Rolls Royce, Swiss Re, Centrica, Teva Pharmaceutical Industries, Amdocs, Intel, Motorola, Microsoft, eBay and Lafarge, as well as the UK Permanent Secretaries and several cabinet ministers. He bridges the worlds of creative, personal, spiritual and professional development in a uniquely powerful, relevant and accessible way. In his first career Nicholas was a theatre director. He taught acting at The Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, and directed his own theatre company. He has spent 30 years researching the theory and the practice of ‘the zone’ of peak performance, and studying multiple mind/body disciplines. In 1998 he became a Visiting Fellow at the Cranfield School of Management, and in 2001 he left the theatre to co-found the arts-based leadership development consultancy Olivier Mythodrama. In 2013 he founded his own consultancy, CORE PRESENCE. He was an Associate Fellow at the University of Oxford Said Business School 2010–15, and currently teaches regularly at the IMD Business School in Lausanne. He is based partly in Israel, where he has worked with numerous corporate clients, The Interdisciplinary Centre, Tel Aviv Recanati Business School and various Israeli and Palestinian NGO’s.

The only win in a conversation is conquering yourself “Those who make conversations impossible, make escalation inevitable.” – Stefan Molyneaux Courageous conversations are, like other interactions, all about the participants internal process relating to how they perceive their input and output. Our ability to follow through with a courageous conversation without turning it into a combative conflict is determined upon our preparation. Like Dan Sullivan in the podcast, “Exponential Wisdom” pointed out; “Crisis doesn’t bring out the best in us, rather we sink to our lowest level of preparedness”. Hence, if we haven’t resourced ourselves to deal with our own triggers, we are unlikely to be performing well in any conversation that is ladened with trigger mines without ratcheting up the conflict.  The general foundation for the successful conduct of courageous conversations the must be mutually exercised are: A desire to resolve to the mutual benefit of all parties, i.e. not having the view of needing to win. A desire to connect with and understand each other deeply. A certain level of empathy. High levels of self-awareness and ability or reflect on oneself. Holding a higher vibration. Similarly, the following conditions would most certainly stand in the way of the successful engagement in a courageous conversation: Being stuck in one’s head. Deflecting responsibility for one’s own triggers. Desiring to win the conversation. Reacting to triggers. Externalising one’s own experience. Making assumptions of others. Inability to raise one’s vibrational frequency.  As with anytime we are triggered we use the technique of “observation”, we observe our own experiences from the perspective of our awareness to avoid judging and attaching to our experience. This process allows us to manage our triggers and choose our response to them. Rather than reacting from the triggered aspect of our core wounding, we can, through realising that the trigger isn’t anyone else’s fault but belongs to ourselves, express our triggered emotion with compassion and awareness.  Whenever we are communicating, especially in courageous conversations, it is critical to express any expectations we might have on the outcome of the conversation. Rather than expecting the other party to agree with you, which is unreasonable since there is then an element of “winning” which isn’t conducive with the process, set an expectation for you to be able to convey your perspective and that the other person can have empathy for where you are coming from. Most of the time there is no need for the conversation to resolve an issue or for any type of agreement to be made. As long as anyone involved are able to authentically express themselves and their point of view being heard, that can then be progress. If we are open to any outcome of the interaction and prepared to make choices based on that, we can leave the interaction with a high vibration and having avoided toxic confrontation.  Authenticity and knowing our boundaries are key for us to express ourselves clearly without coming across as combative. Authenticity is something that never changes, but since we are only aware of aspects of it anytime, it is, from the perspective of our awareness ever evolving. Being open to these continuous discoveries will help us pursue our optimal selves. A spiritual bypass that is often observed is when we “drop-the-mic”, i.e. we say whatever we want from the perspective of our core wounding and call it “authenticity”. Don’t use authenticity as an excuse for not managing your triggers; it brings toxicity into the conversation and is less than courageous.  We all have blind spots, and our shadow aspect will try to worm its way in any way it can. It is each party’s

“The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them.” - Ernest Hemingway Society's approach to homelessness has traditionally been, crassly put, "you got yourself in to homelessness, now you prove that you want back into society.". This perspective has made it easy for society and us individually to ignore the homeless as humans and part of ourselves. It has also allowed us to ignore the responsibility that society and our communities bears in preventing this downward slope. The issues precipitating someone ending up on the street are far too many and complex to fully explore and treat in this summary, but lack of compassion, empathy and connection to people in our community form part of the foundation. So, in the old approach, a homeless person had to prove they could be trusted, i.e. to have cleaned up their act, in order to be given permanent housing. Now imagine living on the streets where your main objective is survival and in many cases to secure your next fix, as drug dependency is a big problem for the homeless, and not having dealt with the demons that got you onto the street in the first place, what are the chances you have to sort yourself out to get off the street? Enter "Housing First", which is the brainchild of Dr. Sam Tsemberis, where the script is flipped from "prove that we can trust you and we'll help you" to "let us help you so that you can have the best chances of regaining you foot hold and building up trust in those that are trying to help you". Josie Asdown works as a Housing First Specialist with Bench Outreach in the south east of London and joins us in this episode to share her experiences and how flipping the script on the old paradigm, and daring to just do what is right without any expectations has proven to be a formula for success along the way, not quite there yet, but on the way. We also explore the concept as a backdrop against our human experience in parenting, business management, government and so forth. Unless you trust you will not be trusted. About Josie Ashdown and Bench Outreach: Josie Ashdown is the Women’s Specialist worker at Bench Outreach, in Deptford. She supports the Housing First team to be gender-informed, ensuring clients receive tailored and trauma-informed support that takes into account the specific and different needs of women (including transwomen). Having researched Deptford and the impact of multiculturalism and class inequality in the area for her Masters at SOAS, Josie is knowledgeable about the intricacies and challenges of supporting a diverse array of vulnerable clients in a deprived but strong community. She is passionate about supporting victims of domestic abuse and advocating for the most vulnerable homeless people in Lewisham Borough. Bench Outreach is a homelessness charity based in Deptford, in the London Borough of Lewisham. Bench has been around for 20 years this year and we have been providing a Housing First service for 8 years, making us one of the earliest Housing First programmes in the UK. Our CEO wanted to pursue Housing First because it has been an extremely successful model used across the world, beginning in the US. The premise seems very straightforward: that housing should be a human right, and that no homeless person can address their trauma and challenges without a stable, safe home. We follow a set of specific Housing First principles to support clients who have found it difficult to stay out of homelessness. Our clients come from long backgrounds of trauma, disadvantage, and abuse. We work with them to help remove any barriers that may have prevented them from accessing support in the past, and to finally maintain a tenancy. www.benchoutreach.com 

About Kevin: Kevin Blaushild is the Founder of I Love HR, helping HR Teams transform from being administrative and compliance-driven to being a value-add business partner. He believes the organization of the future is purpose-driven and people-centric, and require an HR function that advocates for purpose, people and culture. Before starting I Love HR, Kevin led a 15-person HR Team for a company with 850 employees and 40 locations. Prior to HR, he worked in Sales, Operations and IT. He challenges HR Teams to understand and serve their business, and use technology to streamline administrative tasks. His formal training also includes Positive Psychology, ICF Coaching and Yoga Teacher Training, helping to shape his holistic approach and unique perspective. Kevin can be reached on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevinblaushild/) or his website (https://www.ilovehr.io/).

“Yea, he who is a true king of men, will not say to himself, 'Lo! I am worthy to be crowned with laurels;' but rather will he say to himself, 'What more is there that I may do to make the world the better because of my endeavours?” ― Howard Pyle, The Story of King Arthur and His Knights Leadership is more thank just showing up being the boss. It is about leading the way towards growth and evolvement. A leader is a role model in their community. Charitable leadership is not about being everything to everybody, but showing up as someone to somebody. It is an opportunity to bring teams together to do something beyond their own selves and to show up in their communities as role models themselves. The benefits from authentic social engagements by companies is immeasurable, both for the object of their engagement and for the stakeholders. Leadership is shifting from bringing return to shareholders towards bringing benefits and returns to people and planet as well as shareholders. In this new paradigm, as we incorporate greater values into the purposes of our businesses, charitable leadership will be second nature, so now is as good a time as any to take action and show up as a role model for others to follow. About CEO Sleepout UK: CEO Sleepout UK brings business leaders together to spend a night sleeping outdoors. Together we’re uniting to fight homelessness in cities across the UK. Join a CEO sleepout in a city near you! We hold CEO Sleepout events the length of the UK. You’ll spend a night sleeping outdoors alongside your fellow business leaders, business owners, directors and c-suite execs. All you need is a big heart and a sleeping bag - and be willing raise big money to fund frontline projects that fight homelessness and change lives. CEO Sleepout has raised £3 million to date, which has been put to work by charities working at the front line of homelessness UK-wide. To get involved, join a CEO Sleepout event near you: CEOsleepout.co.uk About Bianca Robinson: Bianca a New Zealander who has spent the last 20 years living on a cliff top overlooking the North Sea. She is the CEO of The CEO Sleepout, which brings business leaders together for one night to raise big money for charities on the frontline of homelessness, but also to unlock a greater understanding of why creating lasting social value is critical among those who have the power to create a fairer society. As a campaigner for social justice, especially when it comes to the power business leaders hold to be a force for change, she aims to move business leaders to bake social value into their policies, procedures and actions in ways that strengthen communities and society. Contact: https://www.linkedin.com/in/birobinson/ Donate to Christopher's fundraiser: https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/christopher-lembke

The value of your experience lies not in the experience itself, but in your perception of it “The Eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend.” – Robertson Davis, “Tempest-Tost” Whatever you decided your reality is, you are right. It is the perception of your experiences that is your reality, not the experience itself. Also, the external experience is an illusion insofar as it has no bearing on our perception, it is merely there to give us a reference point to experience ourselves, giving us an opportunity to perceive that internal experience. Do we judge it good or bad, or do we simply accept it for what it is? This is the extent of free will that we can determine without involving any belief system, you choose how your perceive your experience and that becomes your reality.  Our perception of current and future experiences are viewed through the lens and filter of our passed experiences. Once we come to the realisation that we can change our perception of our passed experiences and that it then changes how we perceive our current and future reality, we gain an understanding of how we might heal our trauma and core wounds. In psychology, we understand that it isn’t only important to realise “how” we perceive our experiences, but also from where and what level of judgement we put on it.  Carl Rogers talked about the internal and external locus of evaluation, i.e. from what perspective to you evaluate yourself? If we place our perspective of ourselves in how we assume others view us, our perception of our own reality is going to be based on those assumptions. I would here add the locus of detachment where we remove ourselves from the internal experience, often because it is far to painful to hold, and hold a perception from outside our body, as a detached observer. In this latter scenario we also have a skewed perception of our own experience because we are not allowing ourselves to immerse ourselves in it. Our internal locus of evaluation offers up two alternatives; being stuck in our heads or observing from the perspective of our awareness. The former is where most of us are condition to find ourselves; in a reactionary defensive perspective of our reality, i.e. in constant defence mode. When we observe our experiences from the perspective of our awareness, we are in the experience, but we are observing ourselves having the experience and being fully present in it. When our perception of our reality is from the perspective of our awareness we empower ourselves to chose how we perceive and react to the experience as we are experiencing it. We realise that we no long need to be the passenger of our own journey, but that we are in control.  Every time we judge an experience good or bad we set ourselves up to judge another experience through the lens of the previous one; the benchmark keeps evolving. One would think that we’d want to experience “good”, but there are some problems with this. If we judge something as good we inevitably have to judge something that is in contrast to it as bad and if we try to judge what is painful as good, we are avoiding the experience altogether. Also, if we judged something as “good” in our past then we might simply try to re-experience that event, which is impossible because that experience doesn’t exist anymore. As has been said, “Pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional.”, which is in essence what perception is about. The pain is going to be there, that is unavoidable, but it is your perception and judgement of that pain that will determine the level of suffering. You can in fact experience suffering by avoiding the pain as well, because it will make you feel out of alignment and not whole. Instead of founding once perception on judgement, it is advisable to practice acceptance, whereas you accept the experience for what it is and seek to experience gratitude and contentment with...

Shift your perspective on what relationships are “The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is a reaction, both are transformed.” – Carl Gustav Jung Most of us would limit the idea of relationships to the interaction between people, but the it is in fact defined as, “the way two or more people or things are connected, or the state of being connected”. Personally, I add to that list, “experiences”. The experience of a relationship is how we view ourselves in relation to the world around us. It is, thus, through our relationships that we experience ourselves. Trough our perception of our experiences we either resist and stagnate or accept, allow and grow.  Some types of relationships we have are: People: – romantic – familial or tribal – professional  – hierarchal (governments, religious, etc.) – peripheral Places Experiences Plants/animals/planet Work/career Things Concepts/philosophies/morality/ethics Self We tend to see the relationship as the space between ourselves and the object of our relationship. However, in fact, it is the energy and vibration we and the object bring to the relationship that makes up the relationship. The space in between is inconsequential to the experience of the relationship.  We can never know or assume exactly what the objects of our relationships bring with them as contribution. We can only know what we bring with us. If we are mindful we can observe “who” shows up in our interactions, and by “who” I mean, what aspect of us. Is it a present evolved version of myself or, perhaps a wounded child version of myself? A tell tale sign of who shows up is the frequency of our energy in the interaction. Dr David Hawkins scale of emotional vibrational frequencies is very useful when we check in with ourselves to determine what vibration our manifestations have. If we are stuck in our heads and showing up with our core wounding, we are going to spew fear all over our relationships that are going to attract our karma over and over again, until we learn the lesson and can raise our vibrations. It is said that, “it takes two to tango”, which is true in its literal meaning, but in relationships the experience is only as constricted as anyone’s perspective of it. In any interaction we are not individually responsible for anyone’s reaction to us, only how we show up in the relationship. Our perception of how the objects of our relationships show up is a reflection of ourselves. When we receive feedback on how we show up it is up to us to use our own discernment as to what resonates with us to take on board.  Beyond observing ourselves and how we show up in relationships, it is beneficial to observe them from a bird’s eye perspective to understand them in the grander scheme of their purpose in your life experience. Reflecting on the bigger picture and ourselves allows us to determine if the experience is pure, i.e. we don’t have any attachments or conditions for our feelings, e.g. we aren’t attaching our happiness on a relationship, in other words the relationship experience is “pure”. The happiness already exists within us and we don’t need any external trigger to experience it. Every relationship has a purpose and a lesson to give us, will it be immediately apparent what that is? Possibly not, but it is our duty to ourselves to be fully open to what any relationship is there to give us and that we receive it with gratitude. The triggers we experience open the doorway to the wounding they represent for us to heal it and receive the lessons.  In any experience, as so with relationships, we have three choices: Change our own perception of the experience Change others’ perception of the experience Leave the

Coping mechanisms are gateways to understanding what needs healing “Denial, perhaps, is a necessary human mechanism to cope with the heart aches of life.” – Richard Paul Evans, “The Christmas Box” Coping mechanisms are any tools and strategies we employ to deal with stress and/or trauma to help us manage our difficult emotions. They are strategies to shift us towards emotional equilibrium and balance. Coping mechanisms can be adaptive or maladaptive.  Examples of adaptive coping mechanisms: Seeking support Relaxation/meditation Problem solving Humour that helps release energy Physical activity Examples of maladaptive coping mechanisms: “Escape” Self-soothing Numbing Compulsions or risk taking Self-harm Apathy The key difference is that adaptive resources seek to reveal and release the pain, while the maladaptive ones only serve to cover up and supress the pain. As Carl Jung put it, what you resist persists. Maladaptive coping mechanisms can in some cases lead to pathological expressions, such as eating disorders, obsessive compulsive disorder, etc., some with long term physical ailments. Clearly some coping mechanisms can also lead to direct physical challenges, e.g. smoking, substance abuse, etc. Most of the time the beholder is quite aware of the impact their coping mechanisms have on their life, but find it exceedingly challenging to break those patterns and habits. Far more challenging is it when these coping mechanisms exist in our blind spots and we are unaware of them. These behaviours could include procrastination through social media or busy work, obsessing about external events, or something similar.  The first step in any healing is awareness; to become aware of our patterns and habits and bring them to our own attention. Unless we have someone help us point them out, we have to take a very close look at ourselves to discover any self destructive coping mechanisms we are employing. We especially have to be mindful of the maladaptive coping mechanisms masquerading as adaptive ones.  In my experience, the best way of releasing maladaptive coping mechanisms is to heal your core wounds. However, most of these have to reveal themselves through our triggers and coping mechanisms; these are your gateways to explore the path that leads to discovering your core wounds. Once I had healed part of my own core wounds, releasing my 30 year smoking habit was a breeze, it just let go because there wasn’t a purpose for it anymore. So, once we discover a pattern or habit, the process is to determine if is it serving or sabotaging you then to understand what core wounding you are using it to cope with. While you are healing these pains and shifting the suffering into acceptance and gratitude, you can shift any maladaptive coping mechanisms in to adaptive ones. To simplify; look out for what you are doing for pleasure (maladaptive) vs. what you pursue to experience happiness (adaptive). Now go foraging.

"Power in organisations is seen as a scarce commodity worth fighting for." - Frederic Laloux, "Reinventing Organizations" "Shop floor operators craft the products; the CEO and staff at best serve to support them, at worst are costly distractions" Extract from the list of "assumptions" from FAVI S.A. as part of their self-management structure, taken from "Reinventing Organizations" by Frederic Laloux As humanity is exponentially waking up to the multidimensionally of us individually as well as collectively, we seek authenticity in our internal as well as external experiences. Our workplaces are no different and as cliques of collective consciousness, change is inevitable, as it has been for eternity. Businesses that do not acknowledge this change will whither and disappear as others with authentic purposes take their place. In this process of shifting from an old and outdated paradigm to a new evolved one there will be challenges, the main one is for businesses to wake up the reality of the new disruption that will leave none unaffected. In our discussion we address what we can do as business coaches and consultants to address and help businesses ready to take the leap. How can we best help? With us in this discussion we have Lucy Spencer to share her journey and experiences in this field. About Lucy Spencer Lucy is a conscious business consultant guiding small businesses to operate in a more authentic manner. A combination of conscious business practices and energetic tools are integrated into business systems and culture to raise the energy of the business and so enable them to achieve their purpose more effectively. She has been working with small businesses and start-ups for the last 5 years, implementing conscious business practices in every part of the business. In 2020, Lucy founded Conscious Business Solutions to offer a more in-depth conscious approach to small businesses and have been developing the solution ever since. Contact: https://consciousbusinesssolutions.co.uk/

What discovering disappointment has taught me “It is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend.” – William Blake In this article I am sharing my first person perspective on the healing process as I work through it from discovery, through observation, to healing. Disappointment comes out of attachment. If we aren’t attached to the outcomes of our experiences we would not end up disappointed. We can come up being disappointed with: life people animals planet experiences ourselves Much of what I write in this article I’ve discovered over the past month since the topic was revealed to me in meditation. I have for a long time struggled with the feeling of gratitude and found that disappointment is, for me, the contrasting feeling. Hence, this feeling of disappointment that has been a looming large in my life since early childhood has prevented me from from fully experiencing gratitude. I thought I was just numb, but I simply hadn’t allowed myself to experience the feeling behind it. It has also been part of me being incongruent between my self-image and ideal self. I wanted to believe the best in people and experiences, but “knew” deep down that I was always going to be disappointed.  Let me digress a bit to share with you my felt sense experience (a technique to allow your body to communicate with you, here’s a guided meditation to help you with felt sense). I am deep in meditation, observing my experiences from my awareness and suddenly I observe this colossal block of rock floating gently up through my inside. As I am observing this weight just lifting and releasing I get slammed with … “DISAPPOINTMENT”! Ok, clearly I was ready for this to come up this powerfully, but it unsettled me quite a bit, but I trust that what comes up I am ready for. In quick succession over the next couple of days, I have other key aspects surface: It blocked me from feeling gratitude and made me feel numb and flat Resistance against accepting what I can and can’t control and my path Resistance to learning the lessons I need to learn Blocking future visioning/manifestation visualisation I continuously judged from the perspective of people, places and experiences not measuring up The source of this deep core wound was that when I was very young (2/2.5 years old) those who I was supposed to be able to rely on to protect me disappointed me in those tasks. I always thought that my resilience and independence came from that, which they do, but my expression of those have been from my core wound because I hadn’t resolved this “disappointment”. Hence, these expressions became defence mechanisms, but I called them resilience and independence. The incongruency described previously became a battle between hope and disappointment. It caused both patterns of anxiety and depression as there has always been so much I want to accomplish, but didn’t feel I could do because of disappointment. It caused me to run from, as opposed to towards, people, places and experiences. In my manifestation practice I would end up, instead of feeling the feeling I wanted to manifest, feeling disappointed that I wasn’t already experiencing that which I intended to experience.  This process and the healing that follows is very much like quantum physics. Once I become aware of the block by it revealing itself to me, it then has to change. By virtue of having been observed it cannot remain the same. It hid in my blind spot for all these years, but now that it is in my awareness, I can allow it to shift and reveal its other qualities. I use this opportunity to continuously cycle through “compassion, acceptance, forgiveness and...

Beware of your expectations and conditions “Kindness is nota business. true kindness expects nothing in return and should never act with conditions.” – Roy T. Bennett, “The Light In The Heart” We place our expectations on ourselves and the world around us, many times without expressing or understanding these expectations; they become our conditions for our experiences. Are we even capable of unconditionality in our experiences? Unconditionality is a mindset that we develop based on our own choices and is initiated by intention.  Expectations are when when have a stated or unstated desired result of an experience; e.g. we have an agreement to trade a car against £2,000, one party expects to receive £2,000 and the other expects to receive a car. In this example, however, there might be some unspoken expectations bases one either party’s experiences in life; e.g. the buyer might feel that £2,000 is a lot of money for a car and that it should be in mint condition without any scratches, on the flip side, the seller feels that £2,000 for their car is a bargain and that the buyer needs to accept all the scratches and dents. In either case, one or both of the parties in this case are going to be left without their expectations met, which then can trigger the person’s core wounding and start reacting from that level of their wounding, and a contentious dispute ensues.  What expectations do we place on ourselves? We have two conditions of expectations on our selves; what we experience on the inside and what we experience on the outside. The conditions we place on our inner experiences relate to our emotions, thoughts and feelings. On the outside we have expectations on our status, safety, comforts, etc. These conditions and expectations are based on our parental and societal conditioning and our own perception of our past experiences. Of course, this means they are all based on perceptual constructs. For unconditionality to exist we would have to fully transcend our physical human experience, and is that feasible in this reality construct? Apart from setting conditions we also attach ourselves to the outcomes of our experiences, which is making the conditions absolutes and closing ourselves off from opportunities of alternative experiences that would lead to the same results. Unconditionality make these attachments obsolete because we drop our expectations and attachments, thus accepting whatever is in front of us. Unconditionality can also help unlock the intrinsic feelings of love, freedom, compassion, etc., because we are no longer placing any conditions on how we feel on external events; we stop making statements such as, “when I get that new job I will feel fulfilled!”, or “If I move to the city I will be happy!”.  Where we come unstuck as well, is when we place conditions and expectations on our external world. First of all, it is unrealistic because we cannot control anything external to ourselves, secondly we don’t know if our expectations are met with unconditionality or if we, in turn, have conditions and expectations placed on us that we have meet in return. As pointed out earlier in our external world we pin our inner experiences on the outcomes matching our expectations. Conditions also validate our internal experiences, which in turn sends us off on a quest for more of those experiences and thus setting more expectations along those same lines. Please don’t mistaken these statements for suggesting that we don’t follow our hearts or what feels right, it is only when we do that with attachments to the outcomes and having placed conditions on the experience that we have to watch out. Unconditionality is in part the state that allows us to experience the feeling without any extrinsic influence, you can simply feel happy without any reason.  You might mistaken my exploration thus far for being against any sorts of expectations or

Don't deceive yourself with positive illusions “Positive Illusions are unrealistically favourable attitudes someone has towards themselves, their experiences, or other people.” We find the concept of Positive Illusions first in Taylor and Brown’s paper from 1988 entitled, “Illusion of Wellbeing: A Social Psychological Perspective On Mental Health”. It is truly a fine line to balance between positive illusion and perception. In some aspects of the New Age movement there is the thought that all you do is to ignore the “bad” and just thing good thoughts and the “bad” will disappear. This approach is very different to the practices of positive affirmations, visualisations, gratitude, etc. Lest we forget that is it not the same as Positive Psychology. Positive Illusion is a level of self-deception that is disconnected from and intentionally ignores the reality one is in.  Positive illusions often appear as a defence/coping mechanism due to the inability to face ones experiences from a perspective of self reflection; we want to avoid the pain. If we create this alternative reality where nothing “bad” exists, i.e. pain, then we don’t have to experience it. The source of positive illusion is avoidance. Of course there is no judgement of anyone who is practicing positive illusions, but, unfortunately, the strategy is a false one and will not allow for healing to take place. It will only perpetuate the pain until it becomes unbearable and one has no choice to face it without the illusion.  In order to distinguish between positive illusions and positive mindset, we need to be able to critically reflect on how we perceive our experiences and how we deal with pain. If we find ourselves dismissing thoughts, emotions and feelings in favour of something “positive”, we are not allowing ourselves to experience life and thus we are practicing positive illusions. We replace our reality with a construct that is an illusion. Some will argue that it is all an illusion anyway, and, sure, from an individual’s perspective I would agree. However, the emotions that we experience are real and it is when we use positive illusions to mask that pain that we get into trouble. A caveat here; if you are energy sensitive and take on the emotions of others, you do not need to experience the full brunt of the emotion, only the aspect that belongs to you, release the rest. As far as thoughts are concerned, of course we can programme our subconscious to serve up thoughts that are more mindful. However, we need to deal with the underlying aspects that cause our thought patterns and trigger our emotions before we can install healthier and more mindful patterns and habits.  The keys to creating the future you want and to not end up in positive illusions are to recognise and accept your experiences but to perceive your future in a way you want and to evoke the feeling of how you want to feel in the future in the present moment without supressing how you actually feel. It’s achieving that balance. We look into our past with accountability, compassion, acceptance, forgiveness and gratitude. We acknowledge our present moment and pursue our experiences with curiosity, while we visualise our future with open hearts, set audacious goals and take action. It’s not what you think...