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Busyness Is Laziness – Let’s Turn That Around!

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I popped up a reel on Instagram on Friday with this statement – Busyness is laziness – and asked people to comment on what it might mean.

 

People got it!

 

I can’t take any credit for the phrase. This comes from the entrepreneur Tim Ferris from his podcast, The Tim Ferris Show, which I am an avid listener of. Here’s the link to the podcast, and you can read the transcript too (which I also find helpful for remembering specific things, as the content is very rich).

 

As you know I’ve been working in the background for the last six months with a business strategist, which I’ve really enjoyed. It is, unfortunately, coming to an end soon. One of the biggest blocks I’ve had in this process has been TIME.

 

Time, as a concept, is an interesting one, and I will leave that for another blog… How we perceive it is fundamentally something to be spent, or saved (like money). Either way, it’s there to be “used” and HOW we do this can make a huge difference to two things:

 

  1. Our PRODUCTIVITY
  2. Our ENERGY

 

It’s my personal belief and a huge part of what I teach people, that we don’t really want to be spending one at the expense of another. Sometimes, of course, we do: short-term deadlines where we are going to use our adrenaline to push through and crash afterwards, and then spend time resting and filling our cup to get our energy back.

 

However, if we are constantly prioritising productivity, we will burn out, as our energy isn’t protected keeps taking a hit until we are unable to keep producing it. This is basically what burn out is. 

 

Ultimately, we are looking for BALANCE – spending time in a way that creates and/or protects both, or at least using one to counterbalance the other. It’s a wellbeing equation, which you should be putting yourself IN (rather than leaving yourself out of, which many people do).

 

ANYWAY – the two things from Tim which have stood out to me and made a HUGE difference to the way I am using time now, are these:

 

  1. Make before manage
  2. Busynes is laziness

 

1 – so something creative, make something, whether it’s a blog, a post, or a rug –  BEFORE you spend your time putting out fires, attending to the millions of house-administration jobs etc. Simple. I have LOVED this, it’s made a huge difference. WHAT you make is going to depend on your energy, your values, your goals.

 

2 – stop making yourself “legitimately” busy with all the THINGS which actually stop you from getting the most important thing done. Often the most important thing is the thing that feels the most exposing, vulnerable, the most like an imposter. These are the reasons we procrastinate, not because of a lack of skill or knowledge. Everyone does it, even the most seasoned and famous. Being aware of this and how it actually makes you lazy due to avoidance, has helped me big time. If you’re going to be busy, be busy on the things that actually matter to you and make a difference.

You CAN be productive, and you don’t need to burn out to do so.

Please pass this on to a friend who needs to hear this! And, I’d love to hear from you and see how you go with implementing these understandings and strategies, drop me a line, anytime. Email or Instagram.

 

With love, Charlotte.

If you thought you were just about to die and not come back, what would really matter to you?

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As my clients will know, I had surgery on my inner-ear five weeks ago, for a condition called otosclerosis and subsequent hearing loss. 

 

The experience of having surgery in the public system and the successful outcome has been a very empowering and positive experience for me, and I am so glad I pushed for it and went ahead with it!

 

It wasn’t easy, though, and I had to do rather a lot to make it a viable option for me and the family. Here, I will share what I did, and what I learned. 

 

Alongside this, last week, my 5 year old and I attended the funeral of a good friend’s parent – it was my youngest’s first funeral experience. The combination of addressing my own vulnerability going through surgery, and supporting my friend as they went through this process of an unwell and then dying parent, brought a few stark realisations to the foreground for me, as only human-life fragility and the awareness of ultimate death can. We are all going to die one day. It’s uncontrollable and certain. The question is, what do you want to do with your life, and what really matters?

 

My story:

 

The thing that caused me the most anxiety about the surgery was the general anaesthetic.  I’d only ever had this once, 25 years before, when I didn’t really think about it too much. 

 

It was the loss of control, and the complete handing over of control to other people that I didn’t trust, that was troubling me. In short, the thought that went through my mind was that there was a chance I might not wake up. As a parent, your health and your life hold such a huge responsibility because you are so responsible for these other two young lives. Plus, I like to have a lot of influence on my kids and want to continue to do so – for as long as possible!

 

When I said goodbye at the school gate that morning, I watched them marching in together, holding hands, with their backpacks on and I couldn’t stop myself from crying. 

 

And you know what the most important things to me were at that moment? It was like a camera shot in a movie, zooming in on one thing which suddenly becomes clearly in focus:

 

  1. Do my children know that they are loved by me, no matter what?

 

The answer was: yes, they knew. 

 

And: 

 

2. Are my relationships with people meaningful, worthwhile and valuable?

 

The answer was, yes: it was clear I had a harem of people thinking about me that morning and sending me so many messages of love and courage and luck. I had two best friends there when I woke up. And I thought, no matter what, I’ve achieved something very rare and special: I am loved, and I love: I knew this beyond any doubt, and it felt like if that was all I would have achieved in this life, it would have been enough.

 

I had also achieved somewhat of a personal breakthrough that morning: dealing with my own  reluctance to hand over control. By using therapy tools on myself (for those that are familiar, Self Havening), I had an emotional breakthrough where I deeply realised that it was possible for me to hand over control, and trust the medical team (including TRUST was highly important!). I achieved a kind of surrender that morning, that was very necessary.

 

Then, I was calm. The experience in the hospital, with the surgeon and the two anaesthetists, and the caring nurses was all very positive. It was basically a laugh a minute until I was put to sleep! It all went so well I was allowed home that evening, instead of the planned overnight stay. I’ve never felt happier to see my husband and children in that hospital foyer! It’s a special memory for me now. (My husband asked me if I’d been rolling my head around to see what I could do with it; I said no, I have not done that!)

 

Another thing I’d  worked on with myself was mitigating a few key physical side-effects beforehand: dizziness and also how my body processed the anaesthesia. I have to say these were like miracle outcomes! I knew I’d done the work, but I was honestly still very pleasantly surprised.

 

The recovery has also held some very interesting insights: I had to take things very easy, no exercise, no bending over, lots of rest. I learned some important things here about self-care and radical re-prioritisation, which I will share in a later blog.

 

If you imagine going into a situation that holds a chance of not returning from, what would be the two things that would matter to you beyond anything else? Close your eyes and actually imagine it. It might hold some very meaningful insights for you.

My recent experience has changed me and for that I’m incredibly grateful. More to come.

Who Are You?

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Let’s talk about who you are, like really, in your core.

 

Might seem like a simple answer, I am a mother; a father; a friend; a partner; a teacher; a lawyer; a coach etc.etc. And yes, you are all of those things and probably a lot more too.

 

What else though? What’s underneath all of this, at the very core of you? When you strip back all the labels and social expectations and the roles, who is the you that’s really there?

 

And why does that matter? 

 

Your beliefs about yourself feed into this sense of your core identity – who you REALLY are – and dictate your behaviours, emotions, how wide or narrow your window of tolerance is. Basically what you feel able to do and not do on any given day, which dictates how you grow (or not) and evolve through your life.

As an example, If I believe at my core that I’m not a very resilient person because I’ve never been in the past, then when adversity comes my way, I “know” I won’t cope, and so I don’t… I lose sleep and have a meltdown, and then this confirms my own belief that I’m not very resilient. So the next time something comes up, I expect the same to happen again, and so it does, that then confirms my belief and so on and so on…

 

If I believe I’m a hard mother, then…..

If I believe I’m under qualified for my job, then….

If I believe I’ve never been good at XYZ, then…

 

It just goes on and on and on…It’s a vicious and downward cycle.

 

What we really want, then, is a few virtuous upward spirals!

 

Personally for me, my core identity around motherhood has been an interesting development. I’ve not hidden the fact that it was not an easy transition. I can’t detail in a blogpost exactly how much focus and work I’ve put into this over the last 9 years, needless to say it’s the most important thing for me and I’ve been prepared to really develop my identity as a mum. It’s been the difference between enjoying it, embracing it, and hating it! I can’t think of a more worthwhile piece of self-development!

 

When we are really in touch and in tune with our core-identity, who we TRULY are, and it’s positive, useful and conscious, here’s what’s possible:

 

  • Know yourself well, your own values and able to live them (in tune with your life)
  • Make decisions easily based on above
  • Like, love and approve of yourself
  • Healthy self care behaviours and boundaries – putting SELF in the equation
  • Better sleep and energy
  • Healthy striving and goal setting (rather than proving self; perfectionism; burnout)
  • The courage to be yourself and to say no!
  • The courage to get out of your comfort zone and stretch your tolerance window and therefore your core identity
  • Allow yourself to experience pleasant emotions
  • Less f*cks given
  • Spiritual identity solid 

 

It’s NOT EASY to change your core beliefs develop a useful and functional core-identity. It takes focus and work, and a lot of healing and practice. And, you can make a start on the journey at least!

 

What if you could change ONE aspect of who you believe yourself to be? Which area would you choose? What could  happen next?

 

In the Use Your Body To Solve A Problem Workshop, we begin to touch into the body-brains and not just the head-brain, including the GUT – enteric – brain. Did you know that one of the competencies of your gut-brain is core-identity and mobilsation (taking action)? When you’re too disconnected from this part of you, this stays STUCK, and being stuck is not a good feeling for us humans.

Want to go deeper? Fill out an application for therapeutic life coaching here.

What’s Your Emotional Life Actually Like?

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Here’s a question for you –  what’s your emotional landscape like?

 

Do your emotions come, have their say, and go away again, naturally, like the natural life-cycle of a flower? Blossoming and then receding? 

 

Do listen to each emotion and let them teach you exactly which action you need to take? For example, knowing that anger is there to right an injustice? And anxiety tells you something is not quite right and you might need to look into it? 

 

Do you experience the whole rich tapestry of all 80+ emotions, and can name them all when they arise? 

 

Do you experience both the joy AND the sadness?

 

Do you cultivate and enjoy pleasant emotions regularly? And teach this to your kids, too?

 

Are you feeling enough? Could you be a little on the numb side?! What are you missing out on?

 

Are you at the whim of your own reactions, getting triggered by others and outside things and then those feelings dictate the rest of your day/week?

 

Are you out of control with your anxiety or stress, or anger? Like literally feel like you have no control?

 

Do you dumb down your emotional experiences because you’re scared that feelings might overwhelm you? And then you’d never recover?

 

Are you frequently engaged in numbing behaviours to avoid your emotions? Scrolling for hours, drinking too much, over-eating, over-socialising, online shopping, etc. etc. etc.?

 

Without judging yourself, where are you actually at on the old emotional metre? What’s this part of your life like? What could be different?

 

When I had been a parent for about 2 years, I’d been working one-day a week in town with 1:1 clients. I got the opportunity to train in mBraining – or mBit (see previous blog for definition). I was having an issue. Due to my rough start with post-natal anxiety and depression, I was having difficulty FEELING those loving feelings towards my first child. Although I’d recovered and for all intents and purposes I was well, every time I held my child I’d experience a “loving feeling” coming up which I immediately pushed down again (not consciously). I was getting concerned! Needless to say my own personal development while doing this intense training was on the comfort of experiencing loving feelings, allowing them and enjoying them. It was a very worthwhile outcome!

 

It’s likely that you’d fall into one of the categories other than the first five, too. The first five are mostly what I’m coaching people towards and are not usually people’s default experience of the emotional landscape, for various reasons, upbringing, trauma, etc..

 

When you’re numbing or dumbing down and not allowing yourself to feel, remember you can’t selectively numb: numbing sadness or fear will numb joy and happiness. 

 

If you’re at the whim of, or mostly experiencing stressful emotions, then life is going to feel pretty tough. Perhaps you have tears that you can’t control, and this causes some secondary issues for you, like embarrassment.

 

Is it time for a change?

What if you could change just ONE aspect of your emotional life? What would you change? What would that be like?

In the Use Your Body To Solve A Problem workshop, we begin to connect into the body-brains in the heart and gut. One of the competencies of the heart-brain specifically is emoting. If we’re cut off from our hearts and are mostly head-brain dominant (see previous blog) we are not experiencing – or, importantly, regulating – the rich tapestry of our emotions. We aren’t living and experiencing fully.

We are aiming for both emotional literacy AND emotional regulation. This will take focus and work, and won’t be achieved in one workshop of course, but it is a start on the journey at least!  Would you like to start?

 

Want to go deeper and more personal? Fill in an application for therapeutic life coaching here.

 

Why Is Rumination Bad For You?

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I’m not closed about the fact that I’ve experienced mental illness in a major way twice in my life, post-natally, after the birth of each of my daughters. I had post-natal anxiety and depression both times, although my experience of each time was different. The second time I was prepared, and was also introduced to Havening by my lovely friend and colleague Lynley. The first time I was unwell for a whole year before I started to heal, and the second time was done and dusted within 4 months. What a relief that was!  And certainly no more babies for us.

Although the illness manifested slightly differently each time, rumination was a huge problem in both. Was it a symptom or a cause? Who knows. but it needed to get under control.

There’s disagreement in psychology as to whether it’s a mental illness in and of itself, or whether it’s a symptom, or, whether it is a cause of mental ill-health.

As with many things in the understanding of human psychology, there is no definitive conclusion! Most of my undergraduate essays would end with the rough conclusion: It’s considered a bit of both…

What exactly is rumination? Google says:

Rumination is a thought processing disorder meaning that worrisome thoughts or even neutral thoughts are given excess analysis by the person who ruminates.

And is considered to be demonstrated as four different types:

Brooding, reflection, intrusive, and deliberate rumination.

I think regardless, a good way to label it is simply: overthinking.

Here’s the thing: overthinking is absolutely correlated with depression, anxiety, OCD, and phobias. It can also be part of a healthy person’s every day life, they just don’t know that they’re doing it: it can cause sleep issues and, aside from the things I’ve mentioned, it’s also just highly unpleasant being stuck in your head and not being able to turn off your thoughts, which just loop and loop and loop… you burn your friends and partner out seeking a circuit breaker from them… a little wisdom to give you and out. It can be TORTURE! Your head is working WAY TOO HARD and you’re giving it WAY TOO MUCH OXYGEN!

Imagine being able to notice your overthinking patterns, observe them, and have a way of simply letting them go? Not just now, but every time? Come and learn how:

Sign up from my upcoming in-person workshop Use Your Body To Solve A Problem and learn how to get out of your head.

Sigh up to my internal dialogue eCourse – Inner Critic to Inner Coach and get those thoughts under control.

 

 

 

How Head-Brain Dominant Are You And What Can You Do About It?

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No matter who you are, you’re likely to share a common problem with most other people: you’re head-brain dominant.  I can relate to this, as I am too.

Here’s the thing: a lot of us aren’t aware or focused on what goes on below the neck on a daily basis, hour by hour. It makes sense, doesn’t it, that we’ve become accustomed to being in our heads. With the exception of sports, our schools are focused on what the head-brain can do. When we get into university and/or employment, we’re valued for our thinking or our knowledge application, or the basic skills that only a head-brain can generate. 

We love our head-brains, they’re amazing, and of course we are going to want to keep using them, they’re kinda essential!!

And, there are some downsides to doing this at the exclusion of the rest of ourselves. If all our attention and focus is in our heads and on our thoughts and we’re solely relying on our thoughts to guide us, then we are going to run into problems. Some of these are:

  • Cycling or looping thoughts that don’t lead to solutions
  • Getting stuck in your head – indecision
  • Overthinking and under-action
  • Rumination – which can lead into depression
  • Negative self-talk, which feels bad and can also lead to and/or exacerbate depression/anxiety/stress/low self-esteem
  • Overwork / overload / burn out
  • Sleeping issues as can’t switch head off
  • Lack of emotional awareness or emotional numbness
  • Lack of emotional regulation – overblown stressful emotions or under-felt pleasant emotions 

What’s the solution?

Relying on your head-brain to work everything out is like buying a top of the line coffee machine, and only ever using the one basic setting. You’ve got the equipment in there, now let’s work out how to use it!

Modern neuroscience can now demonstrate that we have complex and adaptive neurological centres, not just in your head-brain, which is the biggest of course, but also in your HEART and in your GUT. There are reasons why we have in-built phrases referring to these intelligence centres, which have been handed down to us through the ages: 

What does your gut tell you? 

I had my heart set on it!

I can’t get my head around it….

We’ve always been aware on one level, and now we have the technology to scan the human body and confirm exactly what activity goes on and where. Here’s what we know:

  • Head: Cephalic brain: 50 – 100 billion neurons. Competencies are: cognitive perception; meaning making; thinking. 
  • Heart: Cardiac brain: 30 – 120 thousand neurons.  Competencies are: emoting; values; relational affect.  
  • Gut: Enteric brain: 200 – 500 million neurons. Competencies are: core-identity; self-preservation; mobilasation (action). 

On a more spiritual level, it’s believed that all three of your intelligences have a “highest expression” – meaning that when these brains are balanced and working at their best, they enable you to have access to specific resources, which you don’t have access to when they’re out of balance and misaligned. They are:

  • Head – it’s highest expression is CREATIVITY
  • Heart – it’s highest expression is COMPASSION
  • Gut – it’s highest expression is COURAGE 

(Source: mBraining.)

Who couldn’t do with a little more creativity, compassion and courage in their lives?!

Personally, I have found so much value in very consciously taking my focus away from what’s in my head, and placing it into my heart. Parenting is a GREAT example for me. My head can tell me all kinds of stories about how hard it is (I mean, it IS hard, but it doesn’t mean I need talk to myself about that all day). At the end of the day for me, the way to embrace parenting, is understanding that it’s a heart-led process, guided by love.

If YOU can learn how to acknowledge, connect to and balance out all THREE of your intelligence centres, you can start to solve problems, make decisions and process emotions more EFFICIENTLY, because you have THREE engines available to do the work for you, together, rather than burning out that one engine at the top. Imagine being able to let go of all that thinking, and allow your body to do some of the work for you? If you value efficiency as much as I do, it’s worth some discovery!

In this workshop – Use Your Body To Solve A Problem – you come with a specific life-challenge in mind, and we teach you how to access and align all three intelligent parts of you to get them working together, to process your problem. The aligned yoga postures help the body process this, and tap into your energy centres too. 

You’re allowing your body to DO THE WORK FOR YOU. 

Now, the question is, is your head-brain curious enough to come along and test it out?

Doing Hard Things: Why? And When Not To Do Them?

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As much as I don’t want to, sometimes you just have to do HARD THINGS. Uncomfortable things, painful things, things you don’t feel capable of, fearful things.

Why do we have to do them, and when should we not do them?

I’m doing a lot of them recently, and have been doing so this year. And yet, there are also things that I’m deciding not to do, which perhaps I probably “should” do, that if I did them, would also be good for me: grow me, connect me, lead to some kind of  positive outcome. So, why do we need to stretch ourselves to do the hard things, when we really don’t want to, and when is it OK to just not do them, and not be in the realm of just making excuses for ourselves?  It’s a tricky line to walk.

When the value-based reason/s for doing it, the higher purpose, outweighs the fear and/or pain of doing it: when the “work” is more important than the fear. If you don’t know and understand the bones of this equation for yourself, then it will lead to a lot of indecision and angst as you try and decide whether to do something that feels hard or just get out of it. It’s easy to make excuses for the hard things, because most of your Being will not want to do them and your unconscious mind will be a genius at coming up with legitimate reasons not to. If we never see past his dynamic and rise above it, we stay stuck. If we stay stuck and don’t do things to stretch and grow, we don’t evolve. This goes against your brain’s natural wiring, which wants to goal set and achieve, and one might say it also goes against your spiritual wiring, of the basic need to expand, as the physical universe is designed to always be expanding. Going counter to this is going counter to our true nature. It doesn’t mean you have to be stretching and evolving and growing ALL THE TIME – times of just cruising and enjoying your life with no real stretch are necessary! But if we don’t consciously practise the hard thing, when life throws a situation at us that absolutely REQUIRES us to swim in the deep end, then those times can be make or break. In other words, new or challenging situations will happen that require us to respond differently and get though them (think: having a baby; the death of a loved one and learning to live without them; a new job that throws you in the deep end). In other words, as well as the growth, thriving and confidence that’s available to us by having these experiences, there’s also the resilience to be built, which absolutely serves us by then being available to us when we really need it: If we’ve done hard things before, we will be able to do them again. 

 

 “Nothing in this world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain, difficulty.”

– Theodore Roosevelt 

“If you’re willing to do only what’s easy, life will be hard. But if you’re willing to do what’s hard, life will be easy”

– T. Harv Eker 

There’s a big difference between personal values and actual capability: a difference between the confines of trauma and learned helplessness, and your intentions. For example, there are some things you’re simply not capable of doing: the example that spiritual leader Eckhart Tolle gives, is that he’ll never be a professional basketball player, because he’s too old and simply not tall enough! However if you get so much JOY out of playing basketball, then you could do it. However, if you’re psychologically limited because you’re sitting in unresolved trauma, this can lead to something called “learned helplessness”. It means that you’re very CAPABLE of doing certain things, but you don’t BELIEVE you can do them, even simple things, which then causes you to do very little, and therefore not get any real-time and accurate feedback about your capabilities. Obviously, this leads to an extreme lack of confidence, and the cycle keeps you stuck. 

However, you can have INTENTIONS. And set very small and realistic goals for stretching yourself, relatively speaking.

Some examples from my own personal life at the moment. In February this year (2024) I attended a writer’s retreat weekend for the first time. Having not been to one before I had no idea what to expect. However, that’s not what made this situation special. The day before we were due to go I had a bit of a cataclysmic bomb dropped on me. I won’t go into detail, but it was huge and I didn’t sleep much that night. With the majority of the fibres of my being – not all fibres of my being – it became obvious to me) all I wanted to do on the Friday evening was curl up in bed and feel sorry for myself. In fact, I could have even just skipped the Friday introductory evening and attended the weekend anyway. Yet, those few fibres of my being felt pulled to go. I let my friend and colleague know I was in a bit of a state and she was feeling nervous and sleep deprived also for different reasons, and we agreed to look after each other. The evening ended up being profound and set the course of direction for me for the weekend. In fact, the weekend itself was profound and probably changed my life. Some part of me knew that the value outweighed the fear/pain.

I’m currently seeing my own therapist, and he had a different model for working than what I’ve been trained in and become used to. It’s not comfortable for me, and although I’ve engaged in short periods of it in the past to get through acute stress (post-natal anxiety for example) I’ve always found reasons to avoid it. In fact, I’d be OK if I wasn’t doing it now. Yet, what we are working on, and how we are doing it, I know is 100% important for me to do, and it’s something I’ve learned I can’t do in any other manner. I try and think of ways of getting out of it every time, believe me! Yet: it’s known to me that the value of the work outweighs the discomfort of it. 

I’ve recently committed to a six month programme with a business strategist. It’s not cheap, it’s a huge commitment and the doubts have been FLYING. There’s a million reasons not to do this! And there’s a lot of excuses flying around too. Again, I’m fine without it, there’s not a huge problem to solve. Yet, I also know, in a part of me, that there are things I want to do, messages I need to get out, projects I care about, people to reach, and that being able to “know” how to do all this alone is something I’ve realised is a fallacy. I’ve been in business for 18 years and most of that I’ve worked out by myself. It’s time to partner up and scale up! Again: the value of this outweighs the fears and doubts. It’s going to require me to trust and dig deep and I might well doubt it the whole way through, and yet my eye is on the prize which I know will be worth it. 

When not to do it, then? Quite simply this requires you to know what’s important to you. Without this, your criteria will be wobbly. This is a reason to get clearer on your values. Do you know what they – actually – are? Do you want to? 

With love,

Charlotte.

 

How Much Anxiety is NORMAL?!

Posted on  //  Posted in Coaches' Corner, Life Coaching, Parenting

A lot of my lovely current clients are dealing with anxiety at the moment, as so many people are, and wishing to turn the dial down, turn off huge anxious or panic responses, and get back to a sense of normality, in certain situations at least! Once they’ve experienced the amazing healing that both NLP and Havening Techniques can offer them, where they’ve settled dramatically and turned “off” the main panic response, they are noticing that they still might get “triggered” and are now pondering, what’s normal? How much can you realistically “turn off” and how much do you want to, actually? What’s normal and what’s not?!

These are very interesting ponderings, and of course, I have a professional opinion on this. So let me answer that for you:

There’s a big difference between an organic surge of adrenaline, in response to a trigger in your environment that’s out of the ordinary, and the layering on of thoughts – known in Buddhist psychology as the second arrow – which creates anxiety and/or panic for you, and/or makes that normal organic response worse and escalates things. We also need to consider: how debilitating is this issue right now?

  1. The Organic Surge of Adrenaline: Here’s the scenario: your nervous system has a good baseline, you’re fine. You’re walking around, living, and feeling OK or good. Something “not normal” happens, a trigger.  A car cuts in front of you on the motorway causing you to swerve. Your amygdala, the fear-detecting and safety-making part of your brain takes this information in very quickly through your senses, and sends a message to your adrenal glands to create extra energy, because your life’s been threatened, and you don’t want to be asleep for that….. you want to be able to spring into action now. Once the perceived “threat” is over, you recover and go back to your baseline OKness/goodness.
  2. Layering or the Second Arrow:  In the midst of a scenario like the above, your Nervous System is unable to just let the adrenaline surge and peak simply come and go. There’s past trauma in the mix, a reason to try and control things to the max. So now we have: OMG, it’s happening again! Why does this always happen? I was just anxious then! It might happen again tomorrow!  I should be better about this by now... and so on, and so on. Sometimes we can perform this layering process in the ABSENCE of an organic response, just by THINKING about the possibility of an organic response, or even one that you’ve had in the past. You get anxious right then and there, or exacerbate the anxiety that was organically and USEFULLY triggered.

Look – you actually can’t programme yourself to be a robot, no matter how hard you try. We’ve inherited this brain through evolution and there needs to be a level of respect for this ancestral heritage. Your brain is designed to keep you safe, respond to alerts and threats by surging your adrenaline so you can do what needs to be done in the moment with energy. You want to turn off this response completely? Good luck in an actual emergency. Well, you won’t need luck, cause you can’t turn it off completely, your brain won’t have it. You CAN teach it what’s appropriate to respond to and not, and turn the dial down when it’s NOT a functional response, absolutely yes! I feel like this is the essence of what I do in one context or another.

Do you have agency over #2, then? Absolutely yes! The layering over of thoughts that trigger or exacerbate the anxious response is absolutely within our control, and often I seek to heal this FIRST and re-train those thought pathways, so we can then get to the core issue, and the rest is organic from there, and you can enjoy your amygdala doing its job in an organic and functional way.

See if you can start to tell the difference between the two?

Much love, Charlotte.

The Burn-out of Christmas Future…

Posted on  //  Posted in Life Coaching, Parenting

Nevermind the Ghost of Christmas Past, what about the Burn-out of Christmas future?  And what can we aim for instead?

I’ve not been shy in sharing that the end of the year, before Christmas and New Year period, is not my favourite time. Usually I’d be gearing up to drink my G&Ts in my camping chair around about now, going away early before term end, avoiding all of the pressures and obligations. It’s the way we like to do things: spend heaps of time outside with the kids and live very minimally for two weeks or so.

This year it’s our turn to host the family for Christmas and my little one is in a dance performance, so, we’re staying home until January. I’m looking forward to having a Christmas at home after two years of being away. The kids loved putting up the tree and decorating the house, and we’re having so much fun with Elf on the Shelf!

AND – I’m talking to parents and people in the community about what a “crazy” time of year it is, how we’re drinking more wine to get through it, joking about needing a valium to get through this weekend in particular (3 x Christmas parties for the adults, 2 x birthday parties for the kids, as well as the usual Saturday morning gymnastics and swimming commitments).  Everything seems to have fallen on one weekend in December, and the kids are tired. Not that we’re not looking forward to all of these get-togethers, we are!! (For those reading who know what they are!) It’s just a lot to get into two days when we value our downtime as well.

I announced in my newsletter recently that I’m in the process of writing a book about relationship health, and within the book we examine this idea of “social contracts” – the unspoken agreement that we have with other people about what’s ok and not ok, and what’s expected by both parties, no matter what the relationship is. Most of the time this remains unspoken between people, unless something changes and a boundary might need to be drawn, or the relationship changes to accommodate a new way of being. I feel like the social contracts we hold around this time of the year are unrealistic. Certainly if we’re a people-pleaser, we will find it hard to say no, and might find ourselves running around, trying to be all things to all people, and turn into a spec of dust by the time Christmas day is upon us!

I’m personally an advocate of re-defining our social contracts with others: speaking them out loud when needed, and not being enslaved to the traditional obligations. I’m not talking about being thoughtless and hurting others and flippantly letting important people down – oh no. Our relationships are crucial (not all of them though – more of that in the book) and need to be treated with care. It’s all about BALANCE.

Here are a few hacks I’ve learned along the way, to not let things get too “crazy”:

  1. Planning: look at your calendar, take the time to see what’s coming up, and plan the essentials around it. By essentials I’m thinking about how to keep myself and my family resilient and well, with nutrition and sleep and time to rest. I personally meal plan on a Sunday for the 7 days ahead. If there are busy afternoons with late finishes, I’ll be planning a quick meal or leftovers, or a nice takeaway (the 80:20 rule, right?). This saves me stress and I can let go of thinking because I know there’s a plan.
  2. Prioritise: look, you can’t do everything and be all things to all people, all the time. Give yourself permission to say NO or just MAYBE to some things. My calendar is mind-boggling for next week with so many overlaps. There’s no way we will be able to do ALL of the things. I’ve let people know that I may or may not be there, depending on the family’s well-being and energy levels. I’ve been clear (being clear is kind – Brene Brown) so I won’t be letting people down as they know what to expect.
  3. Focus on the basics of self-care: my plan for myself and my kids to get through the next 10 days and then finish the year strong: lots of early nights. Nutritious food, as much as I can on that particular day. Low-sensory baths or showers at night to settle the nervous system. A bit more passive screen time than usual. Not planning any non-essential things – playdates etc. will have to wait, as will cleaning out my car, which resembles a bit of a rubbish bin. Epsom salts, candles, magnesium, focusing on sleep, nutrition and as much downtime and unstructured time in between the commitments as we can.  A healthy amount of physical activity, sunshine etc. Some adrenal-gland re-setting with yoga. (If you’re fatigued or waking up tired, you’re likely to have flogged your adrenals too much and now they’re tired and not giving you much energy. This can be re-set with the ways outlined above.)
  4. Focus on the present moment: yeah, I know, it’s a cliche these days. It’s also not easy, for anyone. I find that the planning takes care of a lot of thinking about the future: it’s written down, it’s sorted, I don’t need to think about it. When I find my brain whirring away trying to strategise or work out things in the future, I can let it go, as I know I’ve taken care of it (most of the time). I notice the thought, and do my best to breathe into the moment I’m in, and let a lot of the future take care of itself.
  5. Systems. We don’t rise to the level of our goals, we fall to the level of our systems. Do you have good systems in place at home that keep things ticking over well? Routines, rewards and incentives that work? If not, might be time to start implementing some next year. More on that in a later post.

I hope that this may help some of you reach the goal of a Resilient Christmas Future (and beyond).

With love, Charlotte.

 

Can Self-healing Turn You Into A Doormat Sometimes?

Posted on  //  Posted in Life Coaching

Ok, so here’s the dilemma. 

 

This has come up recently with a few clients and also for myself personally in my couple’s work.

 

We are all imperfect people (yes, all) and we all have wounds to heal. We all have painful places within us as a result from the past, which can feel unbearable when they get triggered by something in the present day. We would have developed coping strategies in our young brains which would have been the best that our brains could’ve come up with at the time. Now that we’re in adulthood, we recognise that these aren’t helpful and can also be somewhat triggering to the people that we love and live with – withdrawal, distancing, distraction, numbing with various addictions, dismissing, shutting down, anger, aggression, and so on. We all experience these to some degree, differences being that we just live with them and the impact of them, or we have the courage to heal ourselves (now, will in the future, or have done in the past).

 

Well, let’s say that your partner (with their personal wounds, painful places and coping strategies) conducts a behaviour that’s not cool for you, and it triggers you. Let’s say they make big financial decisions without talking with you first, and these decisions affect you, and this is just not an OK behaviour (please note this is not a personal example, just an example).

 

Let’s say that this triggers you into one of your painful places that isn’t healed yet – a sense of exclusion and not feeling important. You get angry and aggressive (coping) and your partner shuts down and withdraws (coping). You’re aware that you’re being triggered “disproportionately” – at 110% charge rather than perhaps a 10-20% charge, which would be more relative to the situation at hand.

 

Let’s say you’re a self-aware person and it comes up in a session 1:1 with your therapist. You want to heal yourself. Your sense of exclusion and subsequent anger is not something you like happening, and you know it’s causing problems, and you want to heal and change.

 

Let’s say you successfully heal the wound and no longer have the painful place, or the reactivity you once had as your coping strategy. Your partner again, makes a financial decision that affects you without consulting you. This is still reality, regardless of your own personal evolution.

 

What happens now?

 

Now that you’ve healed and the trigger is no longer causing a disproportionate reaction, then that’s OK, we can just leave it? 

 

Does this mean your partner is now off the hook? They don’t need to change?

 

Now you can be Zen and let things slide off you, without getting all caught up in the tangled and painful patterns of the past?

 

Maybe.

 

And – it’s much more likely that because you’ve changed your own inner world to be more balanced, that a particular behaviour is still not OK, and you recognise it as such. It has a negative impact.

 

Even if you’re only triggered at a 10% charge, it’s still not OK.

 

Just because we change ourselves, a damaging behaviour is still not OK.

 

Also – by asking our partner (or whoever) to change a damaging behaviour while not being willing to look inwards and change ourselves, is also not OK. These things interplay and they go together. Two sides of the same coin.

 

Now it’s time to understand how your own healing and changes can influence your external world, as well as your internal one.

 

Firstly, think of everything as an interchange. A flow of energy, vibes, words, verbal and non-verbal communication, conscious or unconscious signals, between us and the people around us. We are constantly influencing one another, for better or for worse, we can’t not. This may be completely under our conscious radar. By changing ourselves, we will be giving out different signals, that others will either consciously or unconsciously pick up on – vibes or blatantly obvious communication or behaviour changes – and then they react differently to us as a result. 

 

Great! Good outcome there.

 

Secondly, once we’ve changed our triggered reactions from a 110% charge to a 10% charge (for example) we can look at some other important things: 

 

BOUNDARIES and;

 

COMMUNICATION.

 

We can begin to get clear with ourselves with what’s OK and not OK in our important relationships. We can begin to communicate these in a way that protects the other person’s self-esteem and the relationship. 

 

There is interplay. These things work together. 

A thought for the day.

 

Love, Charlotte.