Coaching

As you may or may not know, I am addicted to Brene Brown, vulnerability and shame researcher extraordinaire.  Why read about shame and vulnerability, you ask?  Impossible to explain – just pick up one of her books and you’ll get what my obsession is with her work…. you can choose from her latest, Daring Greatly, or the classics, I Thought It Was Just Me or The Gifts of Imperfection.

When Brene released her book Daring Greatly, she also offered this beautiful Wholehearted Parenting Manifesto.  The upcoming release of this in poster form looks like it could be a perfect addition to our kitchen!  If you want one too, just click the photo of the Manifesto to download your own PDF copy!  Thanks Brene!

PS – Here’s a BONUS of her Top 10 Most Watched TED Talk on Vulnerability

and here’s her most recent talk on Shame!

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Stats don’t lie. Consider this:

• One in two marriages end in divorce¹
• One third of adults are obese²
• One in five adults smoke³
• Nearly half the US Population has a chronic disease†
• Over fifty percent of adults report that they are unhappy with their lives‡

Many of us can rattle these statistics off the top of our head, but few stop to consider the underlying culprit. I’ll give you a little hint . . . neither Wall Street nor Washington are to blame here. Quite simply, our emotions are. Or more accurately, our inability to access and be with our emotions.

My Reality Check

My emotional wake-up call came on July 9th 2005, the day of my 25th birthday. I arose that morning and did a quarter-life progress check. It went something like this:

1. Interesting job that my friends think is cool? ✔
2. MBA in progress? ✔
3. Design and build a house? ✔
4. Make the most money of my peer group? ✔
5. Find fulfillment and happiness? Nope.

I know it sounds simplistic, but that exercise provided powerful insights for me. How was it possible that I’d achieved everything I dreamed of and the end result was emptiness?? It was time to face the facts: I didn’t like the life I had created, nor did I have any idea how to get out of it.

What followed was two long years of depression, complete with full-on panic attacks and debilitating anxiety. It was only then that I realized how small my emotional range had become; how the “Minnesota Nice” part of me had suppressed any emotion that society deemed unpleasant.

The depression forced me to become intimately familiar with my darker emotions – bringing me face to face with fear, anger, loneliness, pity and despair. As I fought for my life, I learned something truly valuable – that I had the capacity to be with any emotional situation life handed me.

Nothing could have prepared me for the glorious reward that was waiting for me on the other side of the depression. It was complete and unadulterated ALIVENESS, like nothing I’d ever experienced before, made possible ONLY because I had expanded my lower range which in turn opened me up to access high-frequency, expansive emotions like love, hope, passion and genuine happiness. Don’t get me wrong, depression is hell, but I’d do it all over again knowing where I ended up.

I was fortunate that the depression brought me head to head with my emotions. If only we all had a built-in emotional collision at age 25 that required us to explore the full range of our emotions! Unfortunately that’s not the case for most of us and left to our own devices, many can make it through a lifetime without ever TRULY knowing their emotional capacity.

I am going to be blunt. We have reached a critical juncture in time. If we do not alter the course of our lives and reverse these trends then for the first time our children will be less well-off than we were. I know that’s not the legacy I want to leave for my daughter.

So What Can We Do About It?

The answer is simple. We need to begin FEELING our emotions. Not just some but ALL.

We must:

1. Stop bottling up and suppressing emotions that are hard to be with;
2. Stop numbing out and masking our pain with alcohol, cigarettes, drugs and food;
3. Stop substituting false emotions for the genuine one that needs to be released (ie: Choosing to feel self-pity instead of loneliness or despair, Choosing to Blame, Shame or Guilt instead of feeling anger or sadness);
4. Stop sacrificing our aliveness for emotional comfort;
5. Stop judging our emotions as good/bad, right/wrong. Every emotion is a beautiful, healthy part of us and must be expressed.

By doing this we invite in a whole range of possible benefits including:

1. The chance to use darker emotions as catalysts for transformation;
2. The ability to direct our emotional energy toward our higher purpose instead of using it to suppress certain emotions;
3. The chance to experience the true aliveness that comes with full-range emotional living;
4. The freedom of knowing that our emotions don’t run our lives, that we can’t choose our circumstances but always control how we’re going to be with them;
5. Deeper relationships that come as a result of becoming more real and accessible.

In support of my fierce commitment to the importance of emotions in our lives, I do hereby declare that over the course of my lifetime I will empower thousands of people to access and embrace the full range of their emotions. For it is only in knowing ALL our glorious emotions that we can experience genuine aliveness.

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One of the biggest things that has surprised me about Motherhood is how draining simple things like diapering, feeding and rocking can be.  None of them requires much brainpower, but the energy expended in caring for a little life is way more depleting then I ever would have imagined.  I think it’s the weight of knowing that this itty bitty person depends entirely on you for their well-being.

I’ve noticed that if I’m not careful, I can completely forget to take care of myself.  And when that happens I become worn down and my level of care for Nia becomes compromised as well.  It’s that whole Oxygen Mask theory.

I need to sleep.  I need to eat.  And I most definitely need to still pursue the passions that I had before I was a Mom.

That’s why I decided I deserved a Christmas present to myself.  Not just any old Christmas present, but a pee-your-pants-exciting kind of present.

The thing I chose was something that I dismissed as impossible at first but when it showed up a second time I couldn’t help but pause and say, “What if…?”

So what is it, you ask?  It’s none other than a week long Leadership retreat in California led by my Coaching School, The Coaches Training Institute.  I’ve known for years that I’d eventually take this program, which consists of 4 one week retreats over the course of the year.  With our crazy lifestyle though, I knew it’d be a matter of time before we were in the US long enough that I could commit to the entire program.

That is…..until they decided to offer the first of the four retreats as a stand-alone one (with the rest to be taken later at the time of your choosing).  I knew this would provide just the spark I needed to carry me until I could take the remaining 3 retreats.  And as if the program curriculum wasn’t enough in itself, the kicker was that the retreat was being led by Henry and Karen Kimsey-House, the founders of The Coaches Training Institute (just to give you some perspective, Henry and Karen are like coaching royalty, they literally helped invent coaching).

Once I decided I had to be there, it was just a matter of figuring out the logistics (like what to do with Nia).  Thankfully, my family are enamored with her and are crazy enough to take her for an entire week (FYI: I will be handing her off on the layover from DC to San Fran!).  And so off I go in mid-January for a life-changing experience where I get to step into my full potential and get really clear on the impact I’m meant to make in this world!

The cherry on top of all this is that I inadvertently hired my Coach today as well.  I hadn’t even started interviewing anyone for 2012 yet and met up for a coffee date with a MN coach I’d heard a lot about.  It didn’t take me long to realize that this individual was meant to guide me over the next year.  And so, as I’m prone to do lately, I abandoned my rational plan of interviewing several individuals over the course of the next month and hired Grif Sadow on the spot!  I was rewarded with an immediate wave of calm rushing over me – love it when my body affirms my decision in that way!

And so I head into 2012 knowing that not only am I taking care of Nia’s needs, but my own as well.  Have you thought about what you’ll give yourself for Christmas this year?  I’d sure love it if you’d share!

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As I wrote yesterday, I’ve had a fascinating time tuning into my body over the course of this pregnancy.  I’ve realized that my physical body is just another way that I receive messages, just like I can through my mind or my intuition.  The problem is, it’s easy to discredit this source despite the abundance of evidence I’ve gotten from my own body and my clients.  Do any of these sound familiar?  I’ve heard them all.

• Every morning on my way into work I grow nauseous and think I’m going to throw up.  Maybe I need to think about a new job?
• My digestive system is so messed up.  I can’t seem to eat any of my normal foods anymore!
• My heart starts beating really fast when I’m around ________.  I’m not very comfortable in their presence.

What’s the common theme here?  Neglect!  Our rational mind has ignored a problem for so long that our physical body is stepping in to MAKE SURE WE DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT.  Kind of intense, I know, but on the other hand, how cool that our body looks out for us in this way!  So just take a minute and review your body.  Are there any patterns of pain, discomfort, etc that show up frequently?  Could they be related to a problem you’ve been ignoring?

So that’s the negative consequences of not listening to our body.  Fear not, there’s also a sweet upside!  Here’s an example of a positive result I had since beginning to view my body as a credible information source:

I woke up this morning at 7 AM after a solid night of rest.  Nothing was out of the ordinary, nothing had been bothering me before I went to bed the previous night.  Something was definitely off though.  My heart was beating fast, my breathing was a bit more labored than usual and I felt flush.  In fact, it felt exactly like a mild version of the anxiety attacks I’d had a few years back (minus the spinning room).

In the past, I’ve responded to this kind of physical experience by going into a place of fear and focusing on what was happening TO ME (often magnifying the physical response).  This time was different.  I knew that this physical experience was happening FOR ME and WITH ME.  I knew my body was trying to get me a message and that I needed to get really curious and stay on high alert until I figured out what that was.

I decided to go upstairs and eat breakfast, hoping that attending to my physical needs would calm the sensations.  Not 5 minutes later I sat down at my computer and opened my email.  The very first email in my box was titled with a beloved family member’s name.  No explanation of the content, just the name.

I knew without opening it that the person named had died.

That was the message I was supposed to get and perhaps even the way his soul chose to say goodbye to me.  I opened the email and my intuition was confirmed.  With that confirmation came a sudden end to the anxiety-like symptoms.  I felt total peace and an immediate sense of closure.

In closing, I just want to affirm that we all have this capacity to receive messages through our physical body.  I’m not unique in this way, I’ve just started paying attention to my mind/body/spirit connection.  You can too!  Just start with the exercise above and start noticing.  Then get curious.  Look for connections.

And most definitely share if you’ve had a cool physical body experience of your own!  The only way to understand these intangible aspects of our being is to talk about them more.  Can’t wait to hear from you…

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