Over my 23 years of studying personal development, I've tried anything and everything to make my life easier. Some of it worked and made things better, other stuff took me down a blind alley, other things were profound and are now part of my staple toolkit. But for me, and this is only MY opinion, my clients pay me to supply them with results - not fleeting improvement then getting sucked right back into the S**T again.
In 2010 I started to notice problems appearing, in several areas in my wheel of life. So I applied all of my usual strategies and methods to better things... and nothing worked. Despite all my best efforts, and practising what I preached, things just got worse. Health, relationships, money, family... all started to crumble and worsen no matter what I did.
Now I don't know if you're the same as me, but I've learned that I need to get better at asking for help. And it took me ages to summon the nerve, but finally I went in desperation to my old Coach from 4 years earlier. And he gave me some advice.
First thing he said was that "Its OK - you're going to be alright" and I started sobbing. Have you ever had someone say exactly the right thing to you at exactly the right time, but you didn't even know it was exactly what you needed to hear?
He then gave me some advice on what to do about it. Now what he asked me to do had two effects on me - firstly, it sounded like precisely what I needed right now and it felt spot on, BUT secondly it went against everything I believed in. Every cell in my body wanted to attack the problems, solve the challenges and try and our-strategise the issues.
I heard myself talking about the protest incident at Tienanmen Square - remember this scene? It felt like I was staring right down the barrel of a tank gun, attached to a stonking huge war machine that was threatening to crush me. And my nature is to look for its weak point, or stop the tank, or build my own tank!
My Coach suggested I sit down with my back to the tank, and meditate. As if there was no tank there...at all... and every iota in me said "That's INSANE!"
So for 6 months we spoke on the phone every week. And for 6 months I was at WAR. Not on the outside mind you - not attacking the problems in my money, health and relationships - but in turmoil on the inside. At war within myself.
Tomorrow I'll tell you what happened :-)
