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26/6/2020 2 Comments

Finding Freedom By Being Truly Seen

Allowing myself to be truly seen is something that I have personally struggled with most of my life, well for as long as I can remember, although most people would most likely say that I am very open. And yet I know that by trying to be what is either expected of me by society or my friends and family makes me feel less expansive and more contracted. I have realised that for me to find freedom I need to allow myself to be truly seen.

In this world where we have so much social media and we're presenting ourselves in a certain way, (a perfect life where everything is beautiful and you're having the most amazing experience and you’re so unique and knowledgeable and so much better than everybody), is almost like an unwritten rule. Allowing yourself to be truly seen seems to be completely counter to what everyone else is trying to do. However allowing yourself to be seen is where true freedom lies, because trying to maintain a perfect looking life to everybody else is incredibly exhausting and it is out of alignment with your truth. Not only is it exhausting but it actually creates a lot of distance between you and other people as not many people can really relate to perfect. If you think about people (and the name Brené Brown comes to mind) who have shared really personal insights into their own lives with the world there is something real about them and relatable. It is as if you get them but not only do you get them but there is a feeling that they might get you too. When someone is willing to be themselves there is authenticity and with authenticity comes trust and when you can trust someone it is so much easier to open up and connect with them.

It is funny because the things we feel ashamed of the parts of us that we try to hide are actually the parts of us that make us human and relatable.

The upsides of allowing yourself to be truly seen are deep connections with other people a freedom to really be who you are and to own every aspect of who you are. When you own everything and you learn to let go of the shame of some things that you think are unacceptable you can start to accept other people as well and there is greater and deeper understanding. You are able to see that all humans are just human we are all flawed we all have things we like and dislike about ourselves but that that does not make you a good or a bad person it just makes you human. Allowing yourself to be truly seen also creates confidence, deep, deep confidence because when you have accepted every part of yourself whether somebody else accepts it or not is completely irrelevant. When you are trying to hide parts of yourself there is always a lingering fear inside you that somebody might see something you don't want them to see there will always be something you feel like you are hiding. This hiding of a part of yourself takes a lot of effort and thought and manipulation and whilst you think that other people don’t see this we all pick up on everything that everyone is being on some level whether we are aware of it or not. I feel that there is a massive reason why learning to allow yourself to be seen is so incredibly important, because it helps you to live a much more full and happy and confident life. So how do you go about it that's the next question how do you overcome the fear of letting people see all the things you think are unacceptable?
For me one of my first steps into this was bizarrely enough sitting in front of a camera and a microphone when I did my training. We had to do these little videos and on one of the days I realised that I could get up and stand in front of people and talk and feel quite comfortable but as soon as I was in front of the camera I became really self conscious and self aware and not in a good way. I didn't feel like who I became as it didn’t feel like me and it bugged me. I knew a process that had helped me in the past uncover something that I wasn’t immediately aware of so decided to do it. I got a piece of paper and I sat down very innocently I started bullet pointing all the things that came up for me when I imagined myself sitting in front of a camera. The very last thing that I put down was the feeling of being alone. As I wrote it down I could feel this deep feeling of aloneness and the fear around that was that people wouldn’t accept me. That I would be rejected if people saw every part of me and the fear was that I would be alone. For some reason being in front of the camera really triggered this for me and the realisation was quite emotional. However once I had allowed myself to fully feel this aloneness that lived inside of me that I hadn’t even really been aware of and allowed myself to retrace my steps in my life to the times when I had felt really alone and allowed myself to cry and release the pain of all of this I felt a peace and a calm so deep and so clear. I asked myself was what I believed really the truth? Was it really true that I would be rejected by every single person I knew if they knew who I was? And was I ever really truly alone? I saw that no one is ever alone there is always Source / Life / God / Allah where ever we are and what ever we are doing. The truth was also that no one had ever rejected me because of who I was it was normally because of who they were. People were normally more open when they knew you more deeply there was more understanding and acceptance.

The way to start stepping into this is

Realise what it is that you are afraid people will see. You will know to start looking when you act out of alignment with who you know yourself to be. Just as I did when I was in front of the camera. You will also be able to tell when someone accuses you of something and you get triggered and defensive. This will highlight a part of you that you might not be accepting.
Become comfortable with these aspects of yourself. There was a lovely lady (who unfortunately has now passed) called Debbie Ford who talks a lot about shadow work. Which is about looking at the aspects of yourself that you do not like and becoming comfortable with them by finding out how they serve you. For instance I was always called bossy and stubborn and I was brought up to believe that these were not good parts of who I was. Only when I did this process did I realise that they serve me really well. I am a people pleaser by nature and being bossy or stubborn helped me to be me and to prevent myself from being walked all over. Another couple that I used to hate were pathetic and over sensitive. When you find yours it is important to own them instead of making them wrong and trying to push them away and hide them from everybody else. Bring them into the light and looking at them and say to yourself okay so this is who I am this is a part of who I am it's not all of who I am and how does that serve me? For me being oversensitive funnily enough is one of my greatest assets in my life because it's how I empathetically connect with people. I can feel what people are going through without having to necessarily have a massive discussion with them. I can just feel it in my body so now I love that part of me and it is also why I am really good at what I do. I found it very hard to own pathetic, it was how I felt when I was feeling weak and feeling helpless or hopeless. I was brought up to think that I had to be strong and do things on my own. And I have learnt that being strong is exhausting and lonely. I have realised that balance is important and that there is a time when being weak or not being strong and asking for help is incredibly important. I no longer see it as pathetic but I've owned it and I now integrate it into being a healthy human being.
Laughing at yourself and learning humility about who you are is one of the most wonderful things that you can do. I believe that the egoic state is anything to do with your identity of who you are, the persona that you have created in this lifetime. The more you are able to laugh at who you are the less hold the ego has over you and the less seriously you take yourself. Being more unattached to this part of yourself creates a lightness, an effervescent aspect to who you are. The ego is constantly trying to protect the idea of itself and make itself real but who you are is so much more than your ego and your identity. If you’re able to laugh at yourself and to see the funny side in your personality you will stay much more centred, more true to yourself and much more real. I know we've only just scraped the surface on allowing yourself to be seen but I hope there's something in this blog that you found that will help you to start to break open a little and step forward a little bit more into being who you truly are.

It is not by coincidence that authenticity is valued so highly in society and yet it is such a rare commodity and this being truly seen is about being authentic. I will dive a little bit deeper into authenticity at some point in the future in noter blog.
If you have enjoyed this blog or feel I have missed something out I would love to hear from you. I also have many other resources such as free courses, lots of videos and a podcast which you can find on my website which is listed in the first comment below.

So much love from me to you.

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19/6/2020 2 Comments

Building Self Belief

I think self belief is one of the most important qualities anyone can have and building self belief is one of the most important things you can do for your self. This is because whatever you believe you make real. If you believe in yourself then life is something that you can engage with because you know that you will find the answer or find a way past challenges as they come up. If you don't believe in yourself then life becomes a much more scary place because you won’t feel like you have the tools or the ability to handle what comes up in life. I spoke about this in the last blog on resilience but it is not just in this area where having a strong belief in yourself is important. It is important in every area of your life. In fact when my kids started school my one desire for them was that when they finished school that they would believe in themselves then they would be able to face anything in life and know deep down that they would be able to thrive and life would be an exciting journey of exploration.

If you have low self belief this is not the end of the world as self belief is something that you can develop and grow and I will give you a technique later in this blog that will help you do just that. Firstly I want to dive a little bit deeper into self belief and into beliefs in general so that you can really understand how what you believe you make real.

When you believe something to be true your subconscious creates thoughts and actions that align with that belief. If for example I believe that I’m not particularly clever then I will have resistance to taking part in things that challenge my mental capacity and because I believe that I'm not good in that area I will avoid doing things that require me to use this faculty. I might even get fearful when I am put into a situation where it requires me to be clever. And this is the catch, when you are scared and you feel fearful your brain responds by putting you into fight, flight and freeze mode. When this happens the focus of your brain moves to survival and to the reptilian brain which takes focus away from your higher thinking. This means if I believe that I am not particularly clever and I am put into a situation that challenges my cleverness my brain in the panic will shut down and prove to me that I really am NOT very clever. The subconscious is so powerful at convincing us of our beliefs that we truly believe that they are the truth.

Another example might be if I believe that I am not loveable and I start a relationship my partner might pass a comment that to other people does not mean anything but because I have pain around this I might over react by getting angry or by withdrawing. Either of these responses will cause distance between me and my partner and over time with many more incidences like this my partner will most likely leave proving to me that indeed I am unlovable.

There are all sorts of beliefs that you have created both positive and negative which generate thoughts and actions that perpetuate the belief.

There are people in the world who have very little other than self belief and they have achieved phenomenal things. People like Hellen Keller who was blind and deaf but has written books and is widely quoted for the wisdom she has shared and Nick Vujicic who was born without limbs and is now an internationally famous inspirational speaker and has also written at least one best selling book. When I look at people who have bounced back from all sorts of incredibly challenging situations only to succeed in the most amazing ways the one thing they all had in common was self belief.

Now that I have hopefully impressed upon you how important it is I am sure you want to know how to develop it.

Set Challenges that streatch you 20% - The first step to developing self belief is to set yourself challenges that stretch you at least 20% out of your comfort zone. The more you create these challenges for yourself and achieve them, and that's the most important thing you need to acheive them. The more you will be successfully reprogram your subconscious mind to believe that you are somebody that can acheive things. 20% is the streatch I suggest because 20% is enough for you to feel like you are doing something that is uncomfortable and stretches you but it’s not so great that the challenge is going to be too daunting. This is important because however much you challenge yourself you have to realise there's going to be pushback from your subconscious beliefs in yourself and from life. 20% is a doable amount and it creates enough examples or enough feedback for your subconscious to start developing self belief. I do not wish to say you should not stretch yourself more and if you want to. You are welcome to, but, just remember that the more you stretch yourself the more pushback and negative feedback you are going to get from your subconscious and from life so make sure you can handle it.

For instance if I decided I was going to go and run 10 miles ( I am really, really unfit at the moment and there is no way I could run 10 miles) I would start dreading it immediately. These thoughts of dread would be my subconscious already manipulating me to start doubting myself. I would be quite fearful because I would know that I wasn't up to the challenge. I would also physically find it impossible to do a 10 mile run and all of these things are the feedback that I'm talking about from the subconscious and life that would make it incredibly hard for me to streatch myself this far from where I am.

This sort of resistance also happens when you start something completely new as your subconscious has no data that you are able to do what you set out to do even if logically you should be able to do it.

For example (I am gonna stick with the exercising because it's in my head) if I haven't exercised for a really, really long time and I decided I'm going to start exercising. Just that initial step into exercising will cause my subconscious to produce lots of resistant thoughts. Thoughts such as I don’t need to do it today I could do it tomorrow, uncertainty, or making something else a priority. All of these thoughts are your subconscious creating doubt because the streatch is too great. This is important for you to know so that should you decide to do something new (even though logically you think it's not a big thing) make sure that you make the steps small so that the resistance from your subconscious is something you can manage without giving up.

Ensure you acheive your challenges 80% of the time - Setting these challenges and being in action of them is all well and good but you also need to make sure that you achieve those challenges. And you need to be achieving them 80% of the time. Anything less than 80 percent will not help you build your self belief sufficiently to notice a significant difference. The reason for this is that you are reprogramming your subconscious mind from one of believing that you can't to one that believing that you can. And the only way to do that is by feeding it data that shows that you can. This is what these challengers are doing. Achieving these little challenges gives your subconscious mind information proving you are someone who can. You might think that the challengers need to be in alignment with whatever it is you are trying to achieve and yes that would be great but they don't necessarily have to all be in this area because your main focus is on building self belief which is such a broad category that the challenges could be in any area.

Keep Your Word - It is really important for you to notice if you are keeping your word or not because your subconscious takes note of this. If you are stetting challenges that streatch you 20% and are ensuring you acheive them 80% of the time but outside of this you are not keeping your word you will be giving your subconscious data that says you are someone who does not do what you say you're going to do and this will go against everything you are trying to acheive. When I talk about keeping your word I mean every time you tell someone you will do something or be somewhere this is giving you word. It is also important that you are precise as well. If you say you will meet someone and you are a minuet late your subconscious knows this and will record that you did not keep your word. And, you cannot argue or make excuses with your subconscious because it simply records the data. So be careful when giving your word and something I learnt the hard way is not to give you word when you are relying on someone else as you cannot account for their ability to keep their word. Instead you can give your word to get something done when so and so completes their task.

Finally I found when I started becoming aware of all of this that I was quite good at keeping my word with other people but I was not as good at keeping it to myself. Watch what you say you are going to do internally as well as externally.

Make time to be accountable to yourself or another - You will stand a better chance of achieving this if you make time in your diary to purposefully set challenges and to reflect on the ones you set before so ensure you are achieving them 80% of the time or if not to adjust what you are doing so that you are. This is why coaching is so incredibly powerful in helping people get where they want to go in life because each session we check in with our clients to see how they did with the actions they committed to from the last session. If this is of interest to you and you are really committed to developing this in your life I would be happy to have a free chemistry call with you. Just pop me an email through my website - https://www.britttanya.com/connect-with-me.html

To summarise - if you want to increase your self belief you need to be setting yourself challenges that stretch you at least 20%. You need to be achieving those challenges and completing them at least 80% or more of the time to be able to increase your self belief. On top of that you also need to be very aware of what you commit to and what you promise because these are also like mini challenges. The more that you are your word and the more that you keep your word the more that your subconscious will believe that you’re somebody who can and does and that’s really all there is to it!

It sounds really simple but I know it's not always as simple as it sounds. Don't be too hard on yourself in the initial stages you might fall down and you might slip up but if you keep trying then you will find this an incredibly powerful tool that can transform your whole entire life. Not only that but there is magic in playing in this space and when you can consistently acheive your challenges 80% of the time or more it is as if life starts playing with you as well. You will notice that there are more synchronicity’s and coincidences than ever before and who doesn’t want some of that in life!

If you want access to more of my resources you can find the on my website which is listed below in the first comments.

So much love from me to you

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12/6/2020 2 Comments

Building Resilience For A Fulfilling Life

I’ve decided to build on what I was talking about last week in regard to resilience and dive a little deeper into building resilience. Although it is interesting to know how resilience and endurance fit together I am sure you would also like to know how you can build resilience in your own life. I have a tool I share with my clients which I will give you later in this blog.

The practice of building resilience is a bit like the difference of dieting and eating healthily. Eating healthily is a life choice and dieting is a momentary solution of a perceived problem. Eating healthily will mean you are healthier throughout your life but fad diets very rarely work in the long term and can actually cause your body harm. The same is true of resilience. If you streatch yourself in one area and have not been consistently working on it you will find that it causes you harm. However if you build resilience in all areas of your life when you are asked to streatch you will be far more able to do so without too much stress to yourself. It is also important that you not only build in resilience but that you also build in ways for recuperation in each area. As athletes know building in rest and recuperation activities is as important as their exercise regime. It is essential to a healthy body that it is allowed to recover from the demands placed on it and so it is in all areas of your life.

In case you have not read last weeks blog let me remind you of the six areas of resilience.

Financial Resilience
Spiritual Resilience; which as I explained last week is not about any belief system but rather it is about your personal growth. Ensuring you have a high level of self belief, You are aligned with you purpose and are fulfilled in your life.
Emotional Resilience
Social Resilience
Physical Resilience
Mental Resilience

The tool that I am going to share with you is something that you can use to build capacity across all of these areas of resilience. I don't profess to know where you in any of these areas, only you know that, but the tool I am going to share with you can be used wherever you are in your own development of resilience. You might find that you have already built some resilience into some of these areas but that others are much weaker. It is natural to favour some areas over others and this will line up with your values in life. Personally I know over the last few years my physical resilience has gone downhill quite a lot. I am aware of this and am currently working on building it back up again. Even thought you might favour certain areas over others it is important now that you know about them to ensure that you maintain resilience in all areas. Life is unpredictable and the challenges we face are not always of our choosing. For instance if you were physically very fit and had your finances in order but had been ignoring your spiritual resilience and your emotional resilience you might have found the lockdown situation very stressful and might have even become quite depressed by it. However if you had been focusing on developing your spiritual resilience and your emotional resilience the lockdown might not have been too much of a challenge in terms of being on your own and isolated but you might have found that you were financially stretched and that you might have become ill due to your lack of physical resilience.

What I am going to share with you, you can use on all the different areas;

Firstly it is important for you to accept where you are in each area. There it no point thinking you should more or better than you are. I know this myself as I made myself very wrong for being so unfit and as a consequence pushed myself harder than I was able to physically go. This led me to injuring myself which meant that I fell even further behind in my fitness. I learnt the hard way that I needed to accept where I was and build from there. I now have a fitness regime that challenges me and continues to increase but does not injure me. And this brings me on to…
You should be looking to streatch yourself by at least 20%. This will ensure that you are growing that area. You only need a 20% streatch to ensure you are growing an area. You are welcome to streatch yourself more than that if you choose to but make sure that you can maintain a greater streatch (remember we are going for long term growth not a quick fix) over time and that you will not harm yourself by asking more of yourself. I am not able to tell you what 20% looks like for you in any of your areas as I do not know where you are starting from and 20% now might look different to what it looked like a year ago or what it will look like a year from now. When I was really fit 20% looked like a lot more than it looks like now. When I was at my most unfit 20% looked like a 5-10 min workout routine. I know this sounds completely ridiculous, but it was a start and starting from there has given me a platform to build from and I now feel quite strong in myself and my 20% looks quite different now. It also means that I was never over faced and that I looked forward to it.
Lastly make this part of your life. Book some time into your diary every month so that you can go over each area and ask yourself what you need to be doing to streatch yourself at least 20% in each area. You will be amazed in a years time how much you have improved in your whole life.

Finally I am going to give you a few ideas for how to grow each area and build in rest and recuperation although this is by no means exhaustive so please add in your own where you feel moved to.

* Financial Resilience - I am sure this is an area we are all aware of and the ways I am going to share with you will be no surprise. You can build resilience by

Increasing your savings
Increasing your investments
Increasing your earnings
Decreasing what you spend your money on
Making sure you live within your means
Decreasing debts
Find ways to create passive income
Have some money that you use to just enjoy yourself
Build space in your finances to treat yourself and to enjoy the money you have

* Spiritual Resilience - This is about understanding what it is to be human and understanding your spiritual evolution. I focus on this in my coaching and training by helping people to shift from being in the ego/automation state into a more self aware and conscious way of living.

Increase your self belief (I will share how to do this next week)
Find out what your values are and how to honour them
Find out what your purpose in life is and how to ensure you give focus to it. This does not mean that you have to change your whole life and pack in your job. Once you know what it is you might decide to give a few hours a week to it depending on what it is and how you feel.
Find out what makes you fulfilled and ensure that you make time in your life for this
Develop a gratitude practice
Be of service
Do random acts of kindness
Personal development
Conscious development

* Emotional Resilience - This is important because our emotions trigger our actions and these create our lives. Our emotions can also effect our wellbeing and becoming more emotionally intelligent will help quite a few areas of your life.

Understand what your emotions are trying to tell you. Emotions essentially are a feedback mechanism of your experience of life.
Learn how to express yourself without projecting your emotions but so that you are really heard
Learn how to acknowledge and let go of your emotions so that you can act consciously rather than react to situations.
Learn how to engage with others who are emotional
Learn to act in spite of how you are feeling when you have committed to something.
Find time to have fun and do things that make you happy.
Laugh
Be child like. I love rollercoasters because I feel alive when I go on them.

* Social Resilience - as I am sure you can guess this is to do with your social life. Before I go into how you can grow it is important for you to know if you are introverted or extraverted and to honour this in your self. You will need to adjust your social life accordingly depending on where you are on the introverted - extroverted spectrum as different amounts and types of socialising will either energise you or drain you and only you will know.

Know how much socialising you need to feel energised and build this into your life
Have a group of friends who energise you when you spend time with them
Have a support group of people you can turn to when life hits a bumpy patch. It is important to make sure that you give to this group as well as receive. You will be more likely to receive support from them if you have been there to support them too. If you find you are always the giver and they are not there for you when you need support you might need to find new connections.
Develop friends to have fun with
You might prefer to have a group of friends or to have lots (or a few) separate friends neither is right or wrong it will depend on who you are as a person.
Develop good communication skills
Take responsibility for the relationships in your life and when they go wrong reflect to see how who you were being created the situation
Learn to be fully yourself
Learn how to handle disagreements
Learn to share from your heart

* Physical Resilience - I would imagine most of us know what might be required of this area but I hope I add a few things that might streatch your expectations. When looking for ways to streatch yourself in this area it is for anything that will enable your body to be more healthy and energised.

More exercise
Less exercise
Eating a healthy diet that suits your body don’t take someone else word for it
Drinking lots of water
Pamper your body
Relaxation

* Mental Resilience - this is anything to do with your mind and will often be finding ways to get out of the thoughts in your head as they are the cause of a lot of stress in peoples lives. My grandfather used to religiously do sudoku puzzles because he believed that this would ensure that he kept his mind agile and he was mentally agile right up till he died at 95.

Learn something new
Do brain exercises
Journal to help you process life events
Create a plan for your work as this will create space in your thoughts for other more enjoyable things
Mediate to reduce stress and learn how to get out of your thoughts
Learn how to be present as this will allow you to get our of your thoughts
Let go of limiting beliefs
Understand your subconscious programming so that you can change it and chart your own path in life
Do puzzles
Make time to enjoy peace ad quite in life be it out in nature or in a temple

I hope that you can see the benefits of building resilience into your whole life and that you have found value in this blog.

I have a lot of resources on my website should you want to explore them I have left my website link in the first comments below, and I also offer a free chemistry call to anyone who thinks they might benefit from coaching with me. You can contact me through my website to set that up.

So much love from me to you.

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Britt MacFarlane is a transformation specialist and has a holistic approach supporting her clients at all levels both in their professional and personal lives. She helps them acheive the seemingly impossible and find what is missing in their lives.

She is credentialed with the International Coach Federation to the level of PCC and has a decade of coaching experience as well as being a Ho’oponopono practitioner.

Her clients range form individuals to entrepreneurs and to senior employees of international organisations such as De Beers and Puma Energy.

She has an infectious passion for what she does and her non judgemental, compassionate love for people as well as her playful attitude makes working through the most challenging of issues easy and pleasurable. This allows her clients to recognise the power within themselves, to change their perspectives so that they can live fulfilling lives which are in alignment with their souls.

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