Note to God: Weaving Wisdom Out of Pain (Post written on: Oct 21, 2015)

Post written: Oct 21, 2015, and for whatever reason I kept it as a draft until now.

Themes: Finding the positive outcome of painful experiences; choosing thoughts deliberately empowering yourself through self-awareness; giving yourself time to heal and allowing time for the processes of life to happen organically; releasing pain from the past; moving forward in your life.

Dear God,

I have asked you, the Universe/God, this morning, out of curiosity and because I would love to use this as a moment of learning and even deeper clarity and well-being: what is the meaning and reason behind my little shin cut from Friday afternoon? It happened so suddenly, mindlessly and pointlessly. Ridiculous! I’d like to better understand and fully absorb, in the most resourceful way possible, what this means and what are you trying to tell me through it? 

Nothing happens in vain; everything has a reason for being and for happening.

First thoughts:

Realization of how much I don’t want to feel hurt or pain. It feels so OFF to be hurt physically. I don’t want a single hair on my body to be hurt or injured.  I extrapolate this one step further – I can also hurt myself not physically but in other ways – emotionally and with my thoughts. This type of self-inflicted pain (I was stretching but without paying much attention to where my feet were placed). 

Pain is not only physical - it can be generated from within with the THOUGHTS we think. 

Hurtful thoughts are ones that lower our mood, deflate our spirit and bring us down.

If they are thought on a consistent basis they can turn into resistance (manifested through ailments and low energy) and can hold us back and away from moving closer towards our goals and desires. It is like creating a roadway deviation or an accident which then creates a traffic jam and thus slows you down on the road to achieving your dream. Nonetheless, there is still always hope because this implies that you are still on your way to your destination (Feelgood-Ville) however, moving more slowly and possibly even feeling other un-resourceful emotions now such as frustration, doubt, and fatigue.

You and I, we can always turn such thoughts around. We can question them, we can shed light on them rather than ignoring and planting them deeper in our psyche. We can bring them to the surface like picking a ripe tomato and analyzing it. If it's a rotten tomato - let it go! Throw it away! Free yourself of all the rotten tomatoes in your life and you will only ever need to eat delicious, fresh, organic, plump and nutrition tomatoes :-) i.e. you will only ever need to focus on and entertain beautiful, uplifting, positive and empowering thoughts.

Moral of the story:

Choose predominantly and then chronically, exclusively powerful, empowering, resourceful, loving thoughts.

Thoughts that move you closer to what you want and desire. Take the faster road, traffic-free and unencumbered, to reach your desired destination, and also notice that you enjoy the journey more because you are flowing, driving at your desired speed, possibly enjoying a beautiful, spectacular scenery! If you have not been used to being mindful or aware of your thoughts, then perhaps now is the time to start. No better time like the present. All we truly have is this moment right NOW. What are you thinking right now? What are you habitually thinking? How are you thinking your thoughts? How are you interpreting your experiences? And subsequently, what meaning are you giving to all these experiences?

Increased Thoughts Awareness:
As you begin to pay more attention to how and what you are thinking, you can decide deliberately, consciously, eagerly what thoughts will help you feel better and move you closer to what you want.

• Key Question: What do you want to feel? What do you want to think?
• Stop the negativity, stop the self-criticism, stop the comparisons to others, stop the self-doubting, the hesitations; stop the judgments, criticism and fault-finding. 
• You are GOOD, you are PERFECT, you are all that is so make peace with it, embrace it and know with all your heart that embracing things as they already are will not hold you away from what you want and all you ARE becoming.

Allow the Healing Process. Life Does Go On!

Healing takes time and progression; there is a certain order to things that we cannot micromanage. As with the external, so with the inner healing. Whenever we experience internal emotional pain we need to fully acknowledge and appreciate that there is a grieving process and then a healing process (the more significant or deeper the hurt, the longer or more delicate the healing is required). Do you allow yourself to grieve and heal properly? 

Sometimes we don’t properly grieve & heal because it is too much to handle and too painful. We want to be strong rather than ‘weak’, or we simply don't want the hurt feeling. Unfortunately, this does not make the emotional hurt disappear. Rather it remains embedded in the psyche as recurring thoughts, attitude, or expectations. If you want to move forward in your life and release past hurts, acknowledgement and proper healing is essential.

A bruise or cut needs to be treated and allowed time and space to repair - blood has to clot, new cells have to form, old cells slowly begin to harden forming a thin layer of old dead skin cells…then it becomes itchy until eventually the scab comes off. At this point there is vulnerable, virgin skin beneath that is exposed. 

That patch of skin won’t ever look the same; however it will be brand new, repaired and no longer hurting. Soon you forget about it and go about your daily life as if nothing happened. You only remember if you bring your attention to it. You realize that the injury is quite inconsequential in the big scheme of your life for other things have come to pass and now take your attention. 

This is the magnificent blessing and gift in the pain. The fact that life goes on, feelings pass, healing happens, and new things will take its place. You feel happy once again!

Rejoice!  All is well. :-)

Supercharge Your Resources - NLP Process for Personal Power

I recently conducted a Life Coaching session which was great fun and which generated important insights for the Client. The Client experienced key personal realizations and discovered empowering resources that had been dormant inside of her.

There was valuable learning for both Client and Coach particularly on the subject of Personal Resources.

Life is a vast ocean of possibilities.

What is a Resource anyway?

• A supply of something (such as money) that someone has and can use when it is needed; a place or thing that provides something useful. Source: Merriam-Webster Dictionary Online 

• "Anything that helps a person or group reach a desired state or transform a problem state," (NLP University Press).

• A resource is a tool of sorts; your assets, strengths, capabilities.

We can consider resources as tools in the toolkit of self-awareness, identity and behavior. Resources influence beliefs, self-talk, attitudes, and behavior.Ultimately, a person's resources (tools) are the vital components used to find solutions, solve problems, and surpass the myriad of life's rollercoaster moments.  Having a clear understanding of our great internal resources can empower a person's sense of confidence and resourcefulness - an "I can do it" mindset.

Similarly, there may be resources you want to develop and strengthen as you know they are currently weak in yourself and which would be great assets in helping you achieve your goals. For instance, some resources people typically wish to improve upon include:

• Being assertive
• Self-Confident
• Visionary
• Effective communicator 
• Punctual
• Disciplined
• Consistent
• Flexible
• Courageous
• Committed
• Spontaneous
• And more...

Strengthening the Resources That Work For You

As the session progressed the Client identified some wonderful new resources she recently uncovered; of these new resources she chose 1 that was especially potent in improving her sense of self-appreciation, positive thinking and personal empowerment.

In order to further deepen and strengthen this wonderful new asset, we applied the Resource Supercharger Process (created by Robert Dilts), which is designed to embed this recently developed resource more richly for the person and thus ensure it can reliably support the person moving forward in life.

If this technique piques your interest, you can learn about the Resource Supercharger Process at: http://nlpuniversitypress.com/html3/R68.html.

The Resource Supercharger Process

Below I present a broad overview of the process and how it can yield potentially life-boosting results for the Client. We take Self-Compassion as a resource someone would like to enrich as it is integral to healthy self-esteem, well-being, and personal satisfaction.

The Process:

Starting in the present day, you identify the New Resource you want to strengthen and you fully associate with the emotions, actions and thoughts that stem from knowing you have this resource within you. Feel completely who and how you are possessing this resource.

Once done associating with it, you take 1 step forward into your imagined future. Over the time that passed leading to that future point, the resource has enhanced, strengthened and deepened further bringing you to the Future You with that life experience.

In this future, you experience the resource as having gotten stronger. You then imagine and associate with who you are in the future with this magnificent resource that strengthened over time.

For example, Self-Compassion having enriched over time leads to a Future You that is more assertive, confident and appreciative of self; you may value your time more, prioritize your happiness, and say "No" when appropriate in diplomatic, respectful ways.

You then step back into the Present and look over your future seeing how this resource influenced your behavior. In that Present moment, you then assume you have that deepened resource from the future actually in your Present. You then associate yourself fully with how you would live with this boosted resource Today. 

From the Present You to the Future You - You are helping yourself i.e. You have all the answers within already.

You then re-step into the future and in the Future You this resource has enriched even beyond what it strengthened in the first step - it is now supercharged!
You can associate fully in the Future You and how you would be assuming you have lived your life with this deepened resource.

In other words, you take the enhancement you experienced from the deepened resource in the first round, and then double it or even triple it in the second round. The point is to saturate yourself with the total absorption of having this resource in your self and life, and feel who you would be with that revved-up resource.


We finish by stepping back into the present and looking forward into the future to see how life will evolve now with this new knowledge and expanding resource.

This nicely highlights 2 valuable NLP Presuppositions: 

(i) we have all the resources within us already

(ii) no one is fixed or broken

In closing...

As the session came to a close it was clear that applying NLP techniques can generate tremendous clarity, satisfaction and awareness about how truly great we can be when we decide to focus on our strengths;

We stretch the boundaries of our unlimited potential;

We consider who we want to be, 

And we give ourselves the opportunity to imagine.

-Jen xx