A never ending journey.
There have been three greatest impacts on me during my coaching training and experience so far:-
1. Neuro Linguistic Programming Coaching,
2. The Grief Recovery Method training and
3. Well that one was a surprise. Money Freedom Mindset.
It was a surprise because it was about building a ‘Money Freedom Mindset’. The course I attended was created by a coaching colleague Sebastian Koellner.
The main attraction for me after our pre course conversation was looking at my Saboteurs clearly and how they affect every element of my life.
How many times do you say to yourself, “Ill be happy when” and name some ‘thing, place or person’ that once that is in your life, you will declare yourself “happy”?
How many times have you got that ‘thing, place or person’ perhaps been happy for a day, then that elation/excitement fizzles out?!
Have you taken time to think about how that influences your life?
Your decision making? (very much including money)
Saboteurs
I knew about saboteurs, as many of us get to know these parts of ourselves over our lifetime. I did not realise which ones were the most active in my life or why that mattered!
The strongest one for us all is the judge. Yes, you do judge! I have been saying for years that “I do not judge” as in reference to another person, yet we do, it is ingrained within us since we were children. In the Grief Recovery Method, we call it ‘comparing.’ “How did your spelling test go today?” Followed by “and how did Sue do?”
As you have been reading this article, you have been judging if you would get what you need from the contents. So sometimes the judge is good, but not when it is taking over, judging everything! Have you heard the expression “they are so judgmental?”
Sebastian introduced the idea of our saboteurs being ‘board members’ in our mind. I liked that analogy, and adopted that going forward.
We have the judge, avoider, controller, hyper-achiever, hyper-rational, hyper-vigilant, pleaser, restless, stickler and victim.
Sebastian asked me to complete an online quiz to see which ones were more active than others. The biggest surprise for me was that my Hyper-Achiever was the stronger! But the one that resonated with me to work on was my third one which was, Restless.
To acknowledge and identify this part of me ‘took me back’ a little. I did not consider myself to be restless.
This is the description –
Constant need for busy-ness. Rarely at peace with current activity.
Strengths of this saboteur is “Flexibility and Risk Tolerance”,
The lie or tactic of this saboteur is “this is the way to accomplish and experience the most.”
Wow. This resonated with me so much, I recognized that I had been doing this, more so since losing my husband. When Andrew died I had been under the influence that ‘time is precious, and we should spend it wisely’ which was interpreted by me to make every moment count, not leaving time for me to sit and read a book – smell the roses….every moment needed to be accounted for.
I was now on my own, responsible for me. I had to make my business work, to achieve the income I desired in order that I could support myself and be there for my two sons, whenever they might need my support. I had been under that pressure from the time he died in July 2016 to March 2022! That is quite a while for me to be pushing and beating up on myself. I had a leaky bucket and I had not realized it!
The leaky bucket is an analogy I use for clients when I bring into their awareness that they have been constantly giving and not taking their needs into consideration. Their energy draining through those holes. When they work through the issues in their buckets, plug the holes, fill themselves replenishing their energy, they can start to flow from the top. Then feel better and when you are in that space the ‘overflow’ to others is from a place of love, rather than perhaps, resentment (drainage!).
Man, how that made an impact on me. I realized that I needed to put myself first.
I have spent years reframing this to allow clients to give themselves permission to put themselves first, ‘gosh, even I thought that that was exactly what I was doing,’ especially when my youngest son told me that I was “being selfish and putting myself first”.
For those of you who have read my earlier blogs will be aware that I have had a journey in my relationship with my son and estrangement. (I have always thought and said that my children were my greatest teachers, they still are amongst them! More on this in my next blog).
Now I found myself reflecting on that power word of ‘me’, the restlessness saboteur and what I had been doing throughout my life, more so since losing Andrew; and how all this was showing up in the situation that I was dealing with, my youngest son.
I have mentioned in earlier blogs that I engaged a mediator to try and sort some of the issues out that we had between us. Lovingly supportive and knowing that he was on his own life journey I hadn’t realized the impact of the restless saboteur in my actions. I had tried to stand my ground on a few things to try and get him to ‘step up’ to ‘take action’ to ‘take responsibility’ from his side, but nothing was forthcoming. In fact he did something that shook me to the core, something that I thought he would never have done in a million years….but he did. What, is not important, the why is. (How I internalize that).
You see, I was still trying to make things easy for him. Line everything up for a smooth transition (triathlon training!) and while praying for a happy outcome, what I was doing was ‘actually pushing’ him further away.
The programme that Sabastian introduced me to showed how the restlessness was showing up in this situation!
My working on making things smoother, was my restlessness saboteur! Still at it! Time is precious and this is a waste of time! Let us get on with things, time is not a healer, action is! But sometimes we do need time to stop, breath and smell the roses! Sometimes there is great learning in the pain.
The penny dropped. I was pushing to make things as smooth for him as I could, he tested my unconditional love, which is unconditional, and I ‘woke up’ to what I had been doing. I made the decision to stop. I was going to stop trying to make things happen, and just let it be (as in the Beatles song, there will be an answer, let it be). I realized this had been strong in me since Andrew’s death, but I had been doing this more so since he was 3 years of age, when his dad was diagnosed. In trying to create a happy (no matter what) childhood for him and his brother, the restlessness had been in overdrive!
The weight of this stress lifted from my shoulders, as I reflected at how the Restlessness Saboteur had been ‘showing up’.
The next thing that Sebastian had us do was to look at a baby picture. I picked one from before my sisters were born. A nice happy smiling little girl around the age of 3.
There was a whole process around this, but for now, what came up for me (even if this was not what happened, it is my perspective), shortly after my twin sisters arrived, I had played mother from that moment on. Putting everyone else first, making sure that everyone else was happy (being a good girl and not selfish) and if they were happy, then so was I. Wow another lightbulb moment!
I knew instantly that in deciding to stop ‘pushing’ with my son, with my power word for the year being ‘me’ and this new insight, that I was blown away by this new learning. I could let go of the stress that came with the issue.
I have been doing a lot of deep diving in this course, received coaching and tremendous support from my HPC family, Pod and especially Sebastian. I have now realized that working on ‘me’, is not just okay, but essential to my wellbeing. It is not selfish, and I started to plug my leaky bucket. I now flow from a different place, and it feels great!
New creations, inspirations, and energy has arrived in ways for me to work with clients going forward.
I am now more mindful, allowing these new learnings to become part of me. My ‘board of directors’ keep throwing the odd thing up for me to think about, but now I know what I need to do to send that part back into the board room, with a firm “sit down and shut up”. I know what I need to do to get back into what was called ‘sage’, (you might know this as trusting your gut) to be fully present for you.
If you would like to find out more about Sebastian’s Money Freedom Mindset Course, you can contact him through LinkedIn or visit his face book profile Sebastian Koellner. I have a podcast interviewing Sebastian on my YouTube Channel, Busting Life’s Challenges with Di Parker.
What you can do for yourself right now.
I also listened to the videos of Abraham Hicks talking about the ‘river of life’ on YouTube, our journey downstream; we all think the things we desire are up stream; we fight the current thinking the destination is up stream (with phrases like “get to the top of your career”) When the destiny is the boat! Life is a journey, where you are is exactly where you should be at this given time, if you don’t like it, stop paddling! Be happy, have fun, enjoy life – now you’re in the flow, whether enjoying white water rapids, fast stream, or floating down. You are supposed to be in that boat, it is your destiny, enjoy the ride!
While reading through this article, and you got this far so thank you…how many losses did you notice?
The Grief work (I do and did on myself) gave me the tools that I needed to help heal the ‘deep diving moments’ of this experience.
Loss of elements of my childhood, loss of down time moments to really relax and read a book, smell the roses, loss of creativity trying to push things into creation instead of being! The ability to do the work on my relationship with my son, now allowing him to flourish without ‘energetic interference’ to just be……Me and know my Worthiness in this process.
What losses are stopping you from creating the life that you desire to live right now?
Like to talk that through? Go to calendly and let’s have a conversation.
Until next time,
Go and float in your boat!
Love Diane x