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Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.

Rumi

In this quote, the word ‘love’ is a placeholder for having a sense of wholeness, well-being, and worthiness.

It describes how any barriers you experience to enjoying your own sense of wholeness, well-being, or worthiness were created by and within you.

This is actually powerfully good news.

You built them.

You can dismantle them.

All it takes is the awareness of why it was necessary, and even essential, to create them in the first place.

And this is all contained in who you think you are.

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Your self-concept is who you think you are and it can be limiting or restorative.

Learning how to attain a Restorative Self-Concept is key to experiencing meaning, success, fulfillment, happiness, and well-being.

A Restorative Self-Concept is…

1. Knowing that your wholeness is never altered, only your awareness of wholeness. 

2. Understanding that who you think you are is adaptable and has been shaped by your perceptions of your experiences. 

3. Recognizing that these adaptations to your self-concept are manifestations of innate resilience.

4. Approaching adversity as opportunity and invitation.

5. Accepting that any separation from the awareness of your wholeness is created from a place of abiding wisdom, in service of evolving your consciousness. 

A Restorative Self-Concept relies on the foundational understanding that you were whole when you arrived here as your Original Self. This is the ‘you’ who existed before the world had a chance to impact you. This is the ‘you’ who can never be harmed. This is the ‘you’ that remains intact and acts as a magnet drawing you back home to yourself.

Any negative changes to your self-concept will most likely have been a reaction to moments of stress, fear, or pain that were beyond your capacity to successfully process and integrate at the times they occurred.

This would have been during times when you were small, powerless, and unable to leave a situation that was harmful to you.

It’s common to refer to these as traumatic experiences. And, we do experience them as traumatizing. 

As Dr. Gabor Maté clarifies, “Trauma is not what happens to you. Trauma is what happens inside you as a result of what happens to you.”

What’s less obvious is that the trauma was constructed in order to save you from what, at the time, appeared to be a worse threat. 

The trauma was some form of separation from your knowledge of your immutable wholeness and worthiness.

This altered belief was a protective measure which would result in a limiting self-concept.

And it would have an adverse affect on your subsequent thoughts, feelings, and actions.

Even so, you’ve still found a way to live a productive life with moments of joy, connection, and gratitude.

However, now when stress, fear, or pain arise, your limiting self-concept takes over and it can be common to see this as evidence of your unworthiness or that you’ve done something wrong. 

Fortunately, with a Restorative Self-Concept, you learn how unpleasant people and situations are, in fact, showing you a way back to wholeness.

And, you realize that there never was a loss of your worthiness to begin with.

There was only a loss of awareness of your worthiness. 

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The process of attaining a Restorative Self-Concept weaves the elements of 

• Story
• Metaphorical Thinking
• Sensory Intelligence
• Emotional Intelligence
• Energy Leadership™
• Core Values Mastery
• Neuro-linguistic Programming
• Jungian Principles

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This is a comprehensive program for thoroughly transforming your relationship to yourself and others. Attaining a Restorative Self-Concept will give you a quality of peace that doesn’t require you to tolerate, deny, or ignore difficult people and situations. It also removes the need to fight against them. And, it nurtures your capacity for compassion and caring.

A Restorative Self-Concept develops an inner core strength similar to a physically strong core. With it, you’re less likely to be caught off balance or knocked off your feet.

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If You’re Here, You’re Ready…

As a Transformation and Executive Coach, what I’ve observed is that when we feel called to grow and evolve, we’re already where we want to be.

It’s simply our Rational Mind that needs help to catch up.

It’s the part of ourselves that needs evidence and wants proof to justify doing the uncomfortable inner stretches needed to evolve our self-concept.

That’s what coaching is… your Rational Mind’s guide, cheerleader, and shoulder to lean on in the challenging moments.

If you’re here, you’re ready.

You just need someone who knows what the path ahead looks like and who will walk beside you to support you in clearing out those barriers.

You’re not alone and you don’t have to be.

Schedule your 20-minute call to receive immediate access.

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20-Minute Virtual Coffee Date

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Restorative Self-Concept is rooted in principles also found in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, Radical Acceptance, Somatic Therapy, Compassionate Inquiry by Dr. Gabor Maté, and Self-Compassion by Dr. Kristin Neff.

It can be easy to think of transforming your life as something that you do or something that happens to you. In fact, a more helpful way to think about it is to see it as regenerative agriculture.

You might think that what you really need to do is to get rid of the unpleasant, unhelpful, or even painful parts of yourself.

Maybe the answer is to get rid of the negative people around you. This makes sense because when life feels stressful, fearful, or painful, your brain is designed to look outside of you, identify the problem, and fix it.

This way of thinking is how we approach nearly everything in life. And it’s a reflection of what we have come to understand as conventional agriculture.

In what we all think of as normal food production, other plants and bugs are seen as enemies. So, the strategies are to attack and destroy them. And just like human-to-human warfare, there is always what is commonly described as collateral damage. That’s an aloof way of saying we kill beings that we didn’t set out to. Because they are threats to our goals, we don’t recognize them as beings entitled to live.

When these dominator strategies cause damage to the soil by killing all life and draining its vitality, manufactured chemicals must be added to attempt to mimic what was there before. This never actually works. The soil continues to be degraded every time this process of ‘kill and fill’ is applied. When this process isn’t stopped the soil becomes dirt, a gritty substance that doesn’t nourish life.

This is a metaphor for our relationship to our inner landscape.

You don’t like a part of yourself? Spray it with weed killer or engineer it out of existence.

You don’t like the pests bothering you? Remove them from your life.

It’s Just The Way It Is

You might be thinking, ‘hey, that’s just the way it is.’ This is normal because culturally, domination of ourselves and our natural world has been normalized.

It’s probably easy for you to recognize domination when a country goes to war or when police brutalize their citizens. What may be more evasive is recognizing how often and when you do it to yourself.

This doesn’t mean that you’re not a good person. Being conditioned to dominate your more vulnerable aspects is something you were taught; it’s not who you are. And, you will have gotten a lot of social validation for it, especially in those tender, formative years.

You don’t even have to have been abused by toxic parents to have been conditioned to be dominating toward yourself. This mindset doesn’t have to have been planted in extreme circumstances to have taken root. Even seemingly simple thoughts will do, like:

‘There’s nothing to cry about.’

‘You’re so sensitive, what’s wrong with you?’

‘You always get this way.’

Every time you turned your vulnerable self away in order to be acceptable to those your very existence depended upon, you used power over yourself. And sometimes it worked really well. You were acceptable. Until the next time you had a sensory, emotional, or mental experience for which you needed support but were left on your own.

All this to say, you learned how to use the weed killer and bug spray to eliminate the parts of you that others couldn’t or didn’t give unconditional love to. And, because you’re smart, you found synthetic substitutes to keep your inner soil from becoming totally lifeless.

Your Biological Clock

Today, your soil has become too much like dirt. How you know this is true is showing up in a number of ways.

Your body says, “I can’t keep this up” through

• chronic conditions
• poor sleep
• an inability to choose enough nourishment
• a lack of willingness to make taking care of yourself your number one priority
• anxiousness
• sadness

These are all signs that your soil is teetering on the edge of becoming dirt. It becomes harder and harder to ignore as we age, although it can happen at any phase of life.

The Cure

There is a cure. It’s learning how to tend your inner soil. You’ll find it in discovering how the other plants and bugs are partners in your blossoming. You’ll be a powerful tender of your inner soil. Once you reclaim the vitality of your inner landscape, nourishment abounds.

Sure, you’ll get your hands dirty and sometimes you’ll be a bit sore from the work. Fortunately, every inch of ground you attend to delivers rewards that right now are beyond what you can imagine.

I believe in you because I already see the lush, diverse, rich garden that is your true self. And, I’ve been tending my own inner landscape for a long time so I am confident that I can guide you in reaching your destiny.

You’re destined to let your brilliance and beauty shine into the world and I’m here to help you do just that. Start now by enrolling in the Emotional Mastery Journey group coaching program. I’ll see you there!

Folks are usually about as happy as they make their minds up to be.

Abraham Lincoln

We all want happiness. Even more, we want the secret formula for how to create it.

This vital human experience is as elusive as it is visceral and as personal as it is universal. We all know when we feel it but when it comes to describing or defining it, words often fall short.

And, as the saying goes, ‘happiness is fleeting.’ This is especially true when it’s bound up in the conditions of life or the actions of others. Happiness, in its most reliable form, rises up from within you.

If I’m Happy, You’re Happy

One of the best ways to make yourself happy is to make other people happy. One of the best ways to make other people happy is to be happy yourself.

Gretchen Rubin

It’s pretty common to think that if you focus on making someone else happy, you’ll be happy, too. While it may seem contrary, if you don’t know what makes you happy, you’ll never really be able to make someone else happy.

If you’ve traveled by plane, no doubt you’ve heard the flight attendant give the pre-flight instructions. If trouble comes and the air masks drop down, be sure to put yours on before attempting to help anyone else.

The recipe for happiness is pretty similar. Make sure your happiness is on before you attempt to help others. That way you won’t find yourself drained, confused, and, well, unhappy.

Chasing Happiness

Happiness is not a goal…it’s the by-product of a life well-lived.

Eleanor Roosevelt

It’s easy to get caught up in the idea that happiness is ‘out there,’ something to be achieved, pursued, or caught. If that’s true, then you should be able to run fast enough to catch it. Unfortunately, all that effort usually leaves you empty-handed and short of breath.

You’ll never arrive because its true nature arises from what you experience inside of you.

Begin by shifting your mind into more full awareness of the present. This mindfulness holds a powerful key. Instead of looking outside of yourself, attend to this moment and ask yourself how you’re feeling. Observe and acknowledge what comes.

In this moment of quiet observation, check in with your values. They’re guideposts that point your way toward experiencing more positive emotions. See how the current situation either nurtures or conflicts with your values. This is the inner version of putting on your air mask first.

5 Ways to Find Happiness

There actually is a recipe for happiness. It’s simple but it requires time and attention. It starts with the center of who you are and expands out into the world, eventually encompassing all of life. Here are the 5 key ingredients:

1. Take time to become clear about what qualities you value most in yourself and others.
2. Become familiar with which situations create positive or negative emotions within you. Consider how you can choose to experience positive ones more often.
3. View the negative ones as opportunities to develop greater clarity about what gets in the way of your happiness.
4. Connect to your life purpose in order to experience a sense of meaning and fulfillment along with those positive emotions.
5. Once you have your happiness on, you are ready to share it with others.

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It’s Not Really About Letting Go

While it’s true that suffering is created by holding on to that which doesn’t serve you, just “letting go” won’t be enough.

What is more likely is that the wisdom and love disguised as that unpleasant person, situation, or condition will show up in a new form.

It will continue to create stress, fear, and pain as a way of communicating and getting your attention.

This is why so much of what is painful feels familiar.

Instead, learn the language of your deep inner wisdom, your Soul.

And, teach her that you’re willing to listen to a more pleasant language.

Once you agree to give your presence to what is calling to you, the pain will stop.

The point of this painful communication process isn’t actually to create suffering.

The point is to deliver one of life’s most important gifts… the ability to return to wholeness, to come home to yourself.

S.E.A.L.

When I experience resentments, negative self-talk, or feeling stuck I turn to a practice called S.E.A.L.

I see you.

I embrace you.

I appreciate you.

I love you.

It allows me to acknowledge whatever is showing up as a worthy and loving voice of my deep inner wisdom, even when it’s using a language that causes stress, fear, or pain.

As I wrap my arms around this part of me, I welcome her home, restoring her power within me.

I express my gratitude that she showed up for me today and has every day, even if I didn’t always recognize her.

And, I let her know that I love her which heals my heart and restores me to wholeness.

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Separation Not Required

Letting go of things often carries the idea of separation.

So much of what comes to my attention wants to come home, not be further exiled.

While it’s natural to want to push away that which feels unpleasant, when I learn the language of my deep inner wisdom, my Soul, I become more whole.

This is what allows me to receive the wealth and success of my life from moment to moment.

This is what confirms the truth that Love Lies Beneath…. everything.

Set up your 20-minute virtual coffee date and learn more about how this simple process can create greater wholeness.

Your 2-Minute Body Sense Meditation Audio

You can listen to this recording here or download it and have it with you on whatever device you prefer.

You’ll be amazed at what 2 minutes can do.

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Anxiousness

Anxiousness saps your energy, interferes with your sleep, and disables your immune system. Chronic stress is a leading cause of anxiousness and contributes to many serious health considerations affecting your heart, brain function, digestion, and skin.

Women are more likely to suffer from ongoing anxiousness than men and it can prevent them from not only enjoying life but even from succeeding at it. The lack of resilience resulting from chronic anxiousness negatively affects confidence, decision-making abilities, and communication.

Resilience is one of the most vital ingredients in personal and professional success. The ability to rebound in the face of adversity and stress is essential to creative solutions, innovation, and growth. A lack of resilience means that even the smallest setbacks become insurmountable barriers.

Your Daily Plan

There is a simple, proven way to support your body and your mind in relieving anxiousness. While you’ve probably heard of meditation and may have even tried a few different types, you may not realize that taking just 2 minutes every day will yield great benefits for your mental, emotional, and physical wellbeing.

There are 5 key benefits to having a daily meditation practice:

1. Clear your mind in order to be fresh for the day
2. Nourish your mind with centeredness and calm.
3. Grow a sense of trust in yourself because you’re demonstrating self-love on a daily basis.
4. Generate neurochemicals that improve your mood, perspective, and ability to come up with solutions to challenges.
5. Enhance your intuition and inner wisdom.

Download this 2 Minute Body Sense Meditation audio and put it into practice for 7 days. Notice how you feel before, during, and after the meditation. As the days go by, see what you observe about your sense of resilience.

If you’re having trouble keeping up with it on a daily basis, set an alarm on your phone.

The best time to do this meditation is before you get out of bed in the morning. If that’s not going to work for you, get creative. Take the 2 minutes before you get out of your car when you arrive at work or meetings. Give yourself the 2 minutes before you go to sleep.

If you miss a day, bounce back and start your daily meditation practice again. One thing I guarantee is that you’ll never regret the time you devote to even this simple practice and with repetition, you’ll gain truly valuable benefits.

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