I have been exploding with energy since Saturday. This morning, reflecting on it, I saw another piece of what underlies this shift. And it started with something that was very very scary.

I have a therapist. There are things in my past that have needed healing for me to move forward fully and authentically as who I am. This is not your conventional therapy.  This therapist is not a person looking on, he's there with me, connected to me, and holding awareness and safety and possibility and healing. 

About three months ago I became aware of something that I wanted to address.  I had alluded to it in passing in previous sessions.  Yet, I was afraid to come out and talk with him about it.  I was afraid that it would cause problems and mean that I could no longer work with him. This would be quite awful because I have made a lot of progress during our work together. Then about a month ago I did it. I talked to him about this issue. He was so open and accepting. It was an amazing session. 

Instead of causing problems as I had feared, talking to him authentically about the issue the opened up whole new areas of exploration and ways of healing.

And…

I have attended a new church, changed my diet, have more energy resulting from the change diet and am going to a new social group.  So much has changed so quickly. Yesterday I had so much energy that when I missed the bus I didn't want to get in a taxi and so I got on other buses and got myself downtown.  It is 6:45 AM now should be in bed barely able to move but I'm up writing this.

And I am finding answers to how change happens with regards to coaching, and I found this great training because I got up last Saturday and had energy and started exploring Immunity to Change offered free through Harvard Edx. Then, through some miracle I cannot retrace, I found on the internet a West Coast training happening nearby – the first time such training has been offered – and I am going! So much has happened!

What looked like taking a step into the abyss has turned out to be taking a step into freedom. What I thought would happen was simply a story. It was not true. And if I had listened to that story I would not be where I am today.

So much has come together for me in the past week and a half. I am blooming.

I have changed the way I eat – cutting way back on carbohydrates. I call it my energy diet. I got up at 7 AM this morning and I'm not falling asleep at 930 at night. I'm also taking and antibiotics and it has been a particularly exciting weekend.

I went to a new church – a Congregational Church not far from me. It's very liberal and open to a variety of ideas and I really really liked it. I sat down next to Monty after the service and talked with him with confidence. I saw a lot of people there that look like me and that I thought – I would like to be friends with that person.

I am going to a new social group on Tuesday. It meets at the Church, an easy bus ride from my house.

I am going to a training on a faith based version of Immunity to Change.  I have talked to the trainer and it sounds great.

I finally understand how change happens. Listening to Dr. Kegan speak in the Immunity to Change class I heard him say the following "qualitative development… – Moving aspects of thinking and feeling from a place where we are run by them (subject to them) to a place where we can look at them and be in relationship with them – where they are object for us. Awareness. Expanding the client's mindset. My coach suggested to me another approach using inner freedom – where the client becomes an inanimate object and the client as inanimate object asks questions.

When I heard Dr. Kegan explain how change happens, and that this shift must occur for change to be lasting, I was ecstatic. Finally it made sense. This is consistent with my therapy experienced. And it's a deep. I want to go deep with clients.

And I want to become a career coach. There is a training I want to attend to become that.

And what I really want to do is heal people. One way to do that would be to become a psychotherapist so I could heal others as I have been healed.  I wonder what other ways I could be in this world and help heal people? That is why I'm going to become a coach who works with people deeply and earns money that I can put towards my education as a psychotherapist.. So I will go to school after I retire, perhaps continue coaching for income, and become a psychotherapist. Perhaps a certified counselor instead of a mental health counselor. This is my intention. This is my life. This is my passion. I am excited.

My personal ultimate outcomes are expanding my capabilities as a coach and having more time. These are interrelated as more time will allow me to spend more time studying coaching and coaching.

I have talked with my doctor about what I eat and see suggested a book "Why We Get Fat…" Then yesterday I was coaching my player and she told me about another book "The Four Hour Body…" and her experience following that diet. There are strong similarities between the approaches in that they both reduce carbohydrates from flour markedly, cut out sweets, and you eat meat, fat, and lots and lots of vegetables. She's been doing this for a week or two and having more energy and needing less sleep. Then she had some pizza. She immediately felt lousy, had brain fog, and had pain in her joints. Very likely this was because she re-introduced gluten and flour into her diet.

Since I had my player's experience and my doctor's recommendation I bought the book "Why We Get Fat…" on Kindle, skimmed it, and decided to give this new diet a try. I am so tired of being tired. I need 12 hours of sleep a night and more rest on the weekends. It gets in the way of doing what I want.

So, today, my niece helped me re-arrange kitchen so that I am ready to cook on my stove. (My disability also results in less than average strength.) And I am purchasing different food tonight from Safeway.com. I am ready for my one-week experiment.

What I like about it is that you eat when you're hungry and eat until you are full. And I can stop worrying about what I'm eating because I have a list of what's okay and I can just choose from that.

There is almost no such thing as ready. There is only now. And you may as well do it now. Generally speaking, now is as good a time as any.

I had an inkling that I was moving forward a bit too boldly and might hurt some feelings… I was reacting rather than responding. Reacting is acting on one's initial feelings and desires where as responding is taking a moment, a breath, or perhaps longer to consider the situation and then decide how to respond.

There was a request for information on sick leave taken by employees. It was sent to Personnel. I work in a small group that provides assistance throughout the organization and had worked on this topic. Personnel sent my paper and a more recent Excel spreadsheet. After a quick review I could see that the spreadsheet did not agree with my paper. I asked myself – do I write just to the department or do I include the department and the person originally requesting information on sick leave?

It took a lot of time to work with Personnel on the original project. I was frustrated that some of our agreements regarding data analysis were apparently not adhered to when the updated Excel spreadsheet was created. I just wanted to be done with it. So I wrote an email to both the personnel department and the original requester.

Later, actually about 15 minutes later, I realized that another more fruitful approach would have been to send back a question to Personnel asking them why there is a discrepancy between their spreadsheet and the numbers in my report (which they provided). This would have opened dialogue and possibly learning.

Instead I reacted. I let my feelings from the previous project color my reaction to the current situation. If I had left the response until tomorrow I would have had time to separate the past from the present and, I believe, sent a more useful response.  I also would have caught the earlier bus…

Laurel

I am taking an Advanced Communication coaching training class for six weeks.  As part of the class we are asked to do a key initiative. I have always wanted to write a blog but never tried it out. So, my key initiative is to write a blog.

Topics will include: 

• my daily life, 
• my two outcomes of expanding my coaching capacity and expanding available time, or 
• selecting an advanced communication skill and writing about it. 

I want to have fun while writing this blog. Initial ways I have thought of to have fun are: 

• write in different places, 
• pose curious questions to myself, 
• select the topic that looks the most fun to me each day. 
• No shoulds. 
• Some curious questions are: how can I have more fun doing this today? How can I use as many advanced communication skills as possible?
  

My result is to ask for feedback 2-3 times throughout the course by posting on my Facebook page, the Coachville Facebook page, and asking for feedback from fellow class members.

Ultimate outcomes of interest to my clients:

• Business and career success – success as a student preparing for a career
  
• Increased vitality
  
• Increased creativity
  

I want to learn more about each of these.

I am collecting information on how various people, who have expertise in the field, believe that change happens. I found the article below to be enlightening because it both shares a change process and how the author applied it to her life.

This is an excerpt from the Feminine Power Facebook page, May 30, 2014, written by Katherine Woodward Thomas. I hope this is a sufficient citation. https://www.facebook.com/pages/Feminine-Power/150915932489.  They are also offering a course which looks really exciting.


Break Through Old Patterns that Keep You Stuck

Katherine here. Recently, I was reminiscing back on the huge break-through I experienced in my life nearly eight years ago, when Claire and I began to discover Feminine Power http://bit.ly/FP7WeekCourse

At the time, my first book had just been published, and though it had popped onto the Los Angeles Times bestseller list, I was still working really hard to launch it into the world in a way that would allow it to reach its potential.

I was writing a ton of emails, sending press releases to hundreds of radio and television producers, magazine editors and newspaper columnists.

Yet for every 100 emails I sent, I would only receive one or two back. And those were usually rejections.

I was discouraged and disappointed. I had poured my heart and soul into writing this book and was confused as to why I wasn't receiving the support I needed to ensure its success.

All sorts of old feelings were coming up. I wasn't wanted. I didn't belong. I wasn't valued. I could never have what I wanted.

Inside of this flood of negative feelings, my enthusiasm was going downhill fast. I began withdrawing my efforts and seriously considered calling it a day.

These feelings were all too familiar. In fact, with everything I'd ever done to launch my own creative contribution into the world, I would run into this same brick wall.

Over and over again...in spite of how hard I tried to give my gifts to the world, I was unable to attract the support that I needed to make my greatest contribution.

This was my inner "glass ceiling." The inner wall that I couldn't quite get beyond---a pattern that repeated itself again and again, preventing me from taking my contribution to the next level.

Fortunately, Claire and I at the time were developing many of the distinctions we now teach in our session on Power Base #1: The Power to Transform Your Life in our 7-Week Feminine Power Online Coursehttp://bit.ly/FP7WeekCourse

And because we've always valued walking our talk, we would always do our best to apply what we were discovering to our own lives first before teaching it to others.

And when we turned our attention to discovering which of my core beliefs were being activated by this situation, at its center we found I had a belief that I was "invisible." It was a belief that had formed when I was too young to know the word "invisible."

I had a corresponding belief about others, too. That no one really cared about me or about what I had to offer, which left me little possibility of ever getting the support I might need to launch my voice into the world.

I was stunned to realize, in spite of the many years of personal and spiritual growth work I'd done, I was still operating inside of this old belief and living out this pattern. It was almost clockwork.

Now, it wasn't like I didn't know I had an "issue" with coming into the fullness of my visibility and my power.

I mean, we've all been working on ourselves for years now, analyzing our problems, doing our best to make changes on a behavioral level and trying to dominate our insecure feelings with affirmations or positive thoughts in an attempt to override them.

And while we've been making slow and steady progress with this somewhat masculine approach to our growth (i.e., analysis, behavior modification and domination of our thoughts), for most of us, it's been insufficient to truly liberate us and enable us to graduate from our old, self-defeating patterns.

Yet Feminine Power is all about the power of relatedness, and inside of the principles we teach, we've discovered that these old disempowering beliefs quickly transform when we learn to connect with the parts of ourselves (usually younger parts of ourselves) that are holding the emotional center of the beliefs. Rather than trying to force them to change, we learn to nurture and heal them.

And so, Claire and I, being our own guinea pigs, decided to spend some time connecting with the younger part of me that was holding this very old, very sad story of invisibility.

And that's when everything started to radically change, and I was able to evolve beyond this painful pattern that had been eating up my life for years.

To break through your own inner glass ceiling, you must first become related to the parts of yourself that are holding the emotional center of your old false beliefs.

Then, you can learn to lovingly mentor these parts of yourself into making more true and empowering meaning of your experiences, so that you can begin to make different choices that will organically generate different results.

In first naming my belief, "I'm invisible," I could feel the intense heaviness of it weighing on my heart. When I moved toward the intensity of the feelings, welcoming in the heartbreak and frustration of not being seen, I noticed that this part of myself was really young...maybe only 2 or 3 years old.

Once I saw it clearly, I could challenge this assumption of invisibility.

What was really true about who I was at the deepest level? What was really true about the possibilities I held for impact and contribution in my lifetime?

When I went deep into my soul, I was able to see things from a more mature, wise part of myself. I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that I'd come here with valuable gifts to give. I had a profound sense that I was born to have an impact for good, and that I had both the power, as well as the responsibility, to presence myself and what I had to offer in the world.

I began to dialogue with the part of myself that was holding my belief of invisibility, steadfastly challenging it and standing for the deeper truth of my own destiny to make the contribution that I was here to make.

As a result, I organically began responding differently to the challenges I was facing in getting my book out into the world. I was naturally much more creative, resourceful and resilient to the setbacks I was facing.

Instead of retreating and withdrawing, I became curious about why I might be having such a hard time. Inside of no longer experiencing my situation through my old interpretive lens, I could see that the business of writing a book was radically different from the business of supporting that book to find its audience.

I quickly became inspired to develop the missing skills and capacities I would need to make the book a success. And soon after, I began to have a completely different experience.

Other people began responding very differently to me, extending support, lending a hand and inviting me to participate in all sorts of things that were beyond my wildest imaginings. I began experiencing a tremendous amount of synchronicity and support in ways that humbled, delighted, surprised and amazed me.

I'm happy to report that, as a result of the work Claire and I did together in those early years of creating the Feminine Power teachings, the book I wrote has become a national bestseller and has sold tens of thousands of copies to people all around the world!

We now have thousands of students from many different countries who participate in our virtual classrooms and online learning communities, and a thriving network of supporters who partner with us in all that we are inspired to create.

So, now I have a new problem! I'm getting too many invitations to accept them all. It's a good problem to have and one I am deeply grateful for.

As I've been thinking about the many things I feel thankful for, I realize that the gap I once felt between who I knew I had the potential to be, and how my life was actually showing up has all but disappeared, and I am---finally!---liberated to make my biggest contributions.

Feminine Power Key: How to Break Through Your "Inner" Glass Ceiling

To truly liberate yourself from false beliefs and the patterns of the past, you will need to learn to build an empowered relationship with the "self" in your body.

You may have noticed by now that there's a "self" in your mind (who has a lot of ideas about how things should be!) and there's a "self" in your body (who primarily experiences life emotionally).

The power to transform your life awakens when these two "selves" are in an empowered relationship with each other.

The first step in this empowered relationship is learning to bring the "self" in your mind into relationship with the "self" in your body in a loving way that allows your more mature self to mentor the "self" in your body to make more true and empowered meaning of "her" experience.

Feminine Power Practice:

1. Close your eyes and drop your awareness down into your body, breathing all the way down into your hips and connecting with a very deep and wide center within yourself.

2. From this deeper, wider center, extend a sense of deep presence and care to the self in your body---literally enveloping yourself with a sense of deep safety and love, suspending any and all self-judgments or criticisms.

3. Ask yourself, "What are you feeling?" and listen for the response, helping the self in your body to accurately name a very specific feeling she is experiencing such as lonely, uneasy, ecstatic, or confused.

4. Mirror back the response by lovingly saying, "I can see that you are feeling..."

5. Do this at least three times. Do this throughout your day to begin building a loving, caring and connected relationship between the different parts of yourself---the foundation from which you can begin to challenge your limiting, self-sabotaging beliefs and break through the glass ceiling on your potential.

Share your experiences in the comment thread below!