Wednesday, November 30, 2011

7 Benefits of Working Collaboratively for Life Balance

Two years ago, my partner Jacque and I set the intention to work easy. Since then we have worked collaboratively to teach people how to release their emotional baggage quickly and easily, and give them back their lives.


Working collaboratively has been invaluable for both of us in our business. Here are the benefits we have received: 

Less Money
It was clear I needed to do more to promote my coaching practice but I thought I would have to spend more money to do so. Working together we combined our resources for Maestro Conferences and Constant Contact to promote our businesses. Plus we invested in the development of a blog at  http://workeasy4lifebalance.com/ 

Saves Time
We joined forces to collaboratively promote our businesses by jointly writing a monthly newsletter and blog articles. In less than an hour each month we were able to quickly outline each month’s newsletter. Developing the articles felt like a breeze. Plus jointly developing and delivering our Emotional Hot Button Removal Workshops, rather than competing, saved both of us a lot of time.

Creativity and Productivity
Working together we came up with more creative ideas to promote our services. Instead of struggling on our own through the process of coming up with ideas for articles we have a conversation, and the knowledge we want to share freely flows out of us. We also decided to start the free monthly Catalyst LIVE! tele-call to share our conversation about living magical lives with listeners. Working collaboratively has greatly increased productivity as well as enhancing the quality of ideas we generate.

Learning
We each have unique talents and strengths that we can share as strategic business partners. Jacque brings vast knowledge of business to our relationship that I can draw from in my own business and to support my entrepreneur clients. She has appreciated and grown with my knowledge from 20 years of spiritual exploration and teaching in both formal and informal settings.

Support
Mastermind partners are a huge source of support. This is especially true for Jacque and I as we are both coaches. We use our coaching skills to support each other’s personal growth and business development; especially if either of us is emotionally triggered. We are able to use our unique coaching techniques to bring our emotional reactions to completion and keep moving forward.

Accountability
Our agreement to meet regularly every Monday morning has kept us on track to keep building our businesses. Our commitment to one another has been invaluable to take on new challenges. With dividing my time between my business and serving Self Employment Program clients, without our scheduled meetings it would have been very easy to lose focus on the promotion and development of business and to let our workshops lapse. Most of our business meetings start with a check in, allowing us to clear anything that might keep us from being at the top of our game. Our partnership has kept both of us focused on all aspects of our business.

Fun
Finally, another intention we set was to have fun and do work that we love. This way work would feel easy rather than hard. By bouncing ideas off each other we inspire each other, giving us more energy to pour into our work and life. We have fun, get things done with ease, and produce better work together than either one of us could have done on our own.

Working together really has made our lives easier and given us life balance. Who could wish for anything more for their life than inspiring work they love and a sense of balance in their life?

Who could you work more collaborative with?

Lynne Brisdon, PCC
Lynne@LivingInVision.com
Living In Vision Enterprises

Wednesday, October 26, 2011

Casting out Demons and Lightening Up

This time of year always seems like endarkenment to me. As the days get shorter, the weather gloomier, it feels like an emotionally down season. Unresolved material gets stirred up from the past like the ghosts and skeletons of Halloween.


Perhaps there’s some wisdom in the Indian celebration of light – Diwali which celebrates the casting out of demons by lighting lanterns. What if we took that approach to casting out old emotional demons and celebrating a new lightness of being?

Or, for those of you following the planetary ascension progression of triple date portals this month, 11:11:11  is an invitation to set intention for enlightenment. As the world becomes darker each day we can choose to raise our inner frequency, to shine our inner radiance and light up the world around us.

There will always be darkness and light. Where do you want to put your focus? It’s all about intent. There may be more darkness in some areas of our lives than others. Like sweeping the proverbial dirt under the rug, we may choose to keep ourselves in the dark about the very things we want to change. Working with people as a healer and a coach it’s interesting to notice how we would rather hang on to our pain, or negative stories than change or let them go.

What is it that keeps us from letting go of old ways of being? Usually the biggest barrier is being afraid to look inside. We continue along blithely accepting we are the way we are, unwilling to look under the surface for fear of what we may find out. We imagine what’s going on inside will be even worse than what we’re currently experiencing. Like the ghosts and goblins we imagined under our bed as kids; it could be scary, emotionally overwhelming or traumatic to look inside.

We are deeply conditioned to avoid pain and trauma. The irony is that quite often our fear of facing what we don’t want to feel is more painful than experiencing the energy of the actual event. When we allow ourselves to feel the energy of an emotion and move through and beyond the emotional experience, it’s quite painless. We can move energy with virtually no emotional trauma, unlike traditional counselling therapies where releasing can be very traumatic; lots of crying, major catharsis, etc. Recipients may feel much better afterward, but can be emotionally drained by the process and often only a small amount of emotional energy has been released.

On a more subtle level, we may be deeply identified with our own behavioural patterns. We are so used to being a certain way it feels normal. For example we may have been depressed for so long we don’t know what it feels like not to be. Or we may have felt anxious or overly stressed to the point that we can no longer recollect what calm feels like.

We start to accept these states as being “normal.” We may become adept in our avoidance; choosing to focus on the parts that are working and ignoring the parts that aren’t. Or we may have become a victim, knowing that life could be or should be better and being disappointed by what is not happening. It may seem like we have our nose up against a brick wall – not knowing which way to turn, or how to look over the wall. We feel stuck and struggle in a life that feels like a never ending Halloween horror show.

Another reason we resist looking inside is most of us have had the experience of wanting to hide some part of ourselves from others. We talk about the skeletons in our closet or our demons. We feel that these parts of ourselves are suspect, we feel like we are not good enough. We fear what will happen if we expose those parts of ourselves; that we will be judged, ostracized or shut out in some way. We may feel a sense of being punished, hurt or that love will be withheld.

So we try to keep them hidden, but they jump out regardless. Others see them whether we want them to or not, they show up in our everyday behaviour. For example  when we try to be confident when we're not, people notice, even though they may not say anything to us.

What would happen if we had the courage to step away from the story of who we are and let go of the image we attempt to hold up?

It is only by exposing our demons to the light and accepting them that we can truly let them go. With acceptance we can move to resolution and completion by fully feeling our present and past emotional experiences. Then there is nothing left to hide.

Imagine boosting yourself up to look over the wall and finding paradise rather than the boogie man. What would it take to look over the wall that is standing between you and paradise?

 Learn techniques to resolve and complete past emotional experience in Emotional Hot Button Removal Training.

Lynne Brisdon
Professional Certified Coach
http://www.livinginvision.com/

Friday, October 7, 2011

Getting to Gratitude

While celebrating Thanksgiving we are reminded to be grateful and appreciative. Reminding ourselves is useful because it seems gratitude is an elusive state of being. Cultivating more of it would be hugely beneficial. Imagine what it would it be like to be consistently grateful? What would be possible?


Being grateful and appreciative feels wonderful. It’s joyful and uplifts the spirit. We feel generous and able to share. It’s empowering, gives us confidence and the ability to take on new challenges. Not only does it feel great, it gives the whole immune system a boost. When we feel good our energy radiates, positively impacting others. With these benefits it makes sense to access gratitude more often. What keeps us from doing so?

‘Well that’s obvious,’ you might be thinking, ‘there’s so much going on in my life, how could I possibly feel grateful all the time? I’m far too busy, feeling overwhelmed, frustrated about what’s not working, and worrying about what needs to be done.” Judgment and criticism may be more constant ways of being. Energetically, these feelings are stressful, heavy and difficult.

Fundamentally, it’s a choice whether you feel gratitude or find yourself grumbling and pushing hard, but it’s easier said than done. If making the choice was as easy as flipping a switch, most likely you would. The difficultly lies in habitual thinking and feeling patterns; the more we think and feel in certain ways the harder it is to change. These patterns, like ruts in the road get deeper the more they are used.

The choice we need to make is much more than an intellectual decision; it’s a deep, internal commitment. Like the air we breathe, our habitual thoughts, feelings and behaviours are invisible to us. That is, until we take the approach of observing ourselves and becoming aware of our thinking habits and their associated feelings. Then we can make new conscious choices.

One of my habits has been to worry and be concerned about having enough money. Growing up we always had enough. My parents were careful, worked hard and made practical choices. I learned to be frugal with money. Even though we enjoyed what many couldn’t, it seemed whenever I asked for some little extra thing I heard, ‘We can’t afford it.’

Attempts to change my relationship with money have been challenging. It’s hard to break out of old patterns. Especially with money, it all seems so black and white, so finite. In my experience when there’s a fixed amount coming in, outflow needs to be controlled so it can all work out. The problem is, there are often unforeseen expenses which I seem to have no control over.

Years ago, I was expressing concerns about making ends meet, and my daughter, who was about 12 at the time said, “Don’t worry Mom. There’s always enough.” She caught me off guard, because she was right. We always had a place to live, and there was always something to eat. I chose to trust my ability to consistently earn the specific amount required to cover expenses each month – and I did.

Now its time to update my beliefs. Instead of being limited to consistent income and having fears about its decline, I’d like to be grateful for what I have and put my focus on increasing income. Trusting the inbound flow and being grateful for it opens up to a much higher likelihood of recognizing opportunities to have more. Worrying about not having enough reinforces limitation and shuts off the flow.

What if income wasn’t finite and came from unforeseen sources. That would be a different experience. As I ponder this I allow all the old beliefs and feelings of worry and concern to surface and as they do I, resolve them. Releasing internal conflict allows me to access the feelings of having enough, even having more than enough.

From this place I can also choose to be grateful for all the talents and resources I have to share. This feels much more empowering. What if, I simply believed in my own abilities in the same way I believe in others?

Making the shift from grumbling to gratitude has huge benefits for us. The law of attraction states that we attract to us the energy we send out. So if we are exuding the grumbling, closed down energy of limitation and not enough, that is what we are likely to attract more of. If we send out positive vibrant energy others perceive it and want some of that energy for themselves. When we exude the energy of gratitude we attract the same kind of energy back to us opening up whole new possibilities and opportunities.

What would you rather do? Open up exciting new possibilities or attract more difficult challenges?

Monday, September 5, 2011

Finding Forgiveness

When we think about forgiveness it’s usually associated with thoughts about people who have wronged us in some way. We feel hurt or offended and hold on to the memory and the charged emotions tied to the event. We think in terms of the person who has caused this; it is their fault. It ties into judgement and blame and we feel that if we forgive them it makes what they did OK. You may hear yourself say, “I can forgive, but not forget.”


This is not truly forgiveness. We are still holding on to a charged memory of what was done. We keep it as a reminder of what happened and make the other person responsible for what they did. It’s as if we want to hang on to it so we can show them in the future how they have hurt us.

When we look at forgiveness from an energetic perspective: For - giving – is for giving that energy back. We no longer need to carry this energy within us. When we hold on to it we keep ourselves in a disempowered place, being a victim to circumstance. We are caught in judgement of the other.

Rather than feeling like a victim and staying caught in judgement, it is useful to consider what role we have played in this drama. What part of it can we take responsibility for? It takes both people for the scenario to unfold and we are both playing a role. Both Victim and Persecutor are playing their part. What role have you played?

When we identify the role we have played and take ownership of it we can let go of the need to blame the other and forgive them and ourselves for what we have played out. In Self forgiveness we can forgive ourselves for the choices we have made thus far, and for the roles we have fallen into. You may want ask yourself if you have been playing a role based on your conditioning.

In relationships especially with a significant other, the roles usually stem back to our parental relationships. We attract into our life someone who plays the role of the parent that we had issues with, or in some way sets up a replay of the dynamics we experienced growing up.

In my colleague Jacque’s case, she had experienced the ‘poor me’ feeling in relation to her father’s aggressive behaviour. She, like many who have been persecuted took on that role herself, believing she needed to be this way in order to survive and protect herself.

She recognized she could forgive herself for being like her father. In her words, she “became assertive and aggressive if things didn’t go my way and got angry. I did this to keep myself safe, to survive and be successful. Survival and success were intertwined. I thought that in order to be successful I needed to be dominant and push hard and push my ideas forward. Just like my father.”

When met with resistance, she got frustrated, or angry. In the workplace frustration turned to being highly judgemental toward her co-workers. Disillusioned and thinking they were wrong, she made herself right. In business relationships, she was considered a difficult person to work with: smart but difficult. In her personal, marital relationship she chose a man she could dominate – who let her run the show. If she hadn’t been able to run the show there would have had nothing but conflict in their relationship.

Now Jacque has forgiven herself for being a hard, driving, demanding person who didn’t have much empathy for others. This is now so at odds with the person she has become. In letting go of her charged emotional baggage, she has developed empathy for others. Empathy has become natural and she wouldn’t choose to treat people the way she did.

There are two ways to forgive. One is to intellectually forgive ourselves for who we were and choose who we want to be now. The other way recognizes the significant emotional charge we’ve been hanging on to: repressed emotions from childhood and into adulthood. We can forgive ourselves in a deep and lasting way by letting go of the emotional energy we’ve held in our bodies. Simply resolving and being complete with the energy makes forgiveness easy and permanent.

It’s been said that harbouring resentment and not forgiving is like drinking poison and expecting someone else to die. It festers inside us. When we forgive, we let it go. It’s a big relief.

Lynne Brisdon
Living In Vision Enterprises

Saturday, August 6, 2011

Addictions Caused by Emotional Baggage

For many, being affected by addiction is closer to home than we’d like to admit.

• Have you been concerned about a spouse drinking too much?
• Has your child become hooked on drugs?
• Are there people in your work team who are absent, depressed or have accidents far too often?
• Are you someone who eats and treats yourself every time your mood changes?

Addictions show up in all kinds of different ways and have significant impacts in our work and our families.

Why do people have Addictive Behaviours?

Many develop addictions or addictive behaviours to avoid feeling pain. “At some base level all addicts experience great discomfort with being in their own skin” was a remark I heard years ago in an interview with an addictions psychologist. Another source talked about addictive substances being used as a tool to manage feelings the user felt powerless to handle on their own.

At the outset a behaviour may not be addictive but rather something you do to just relieve “the pressure.” It may escalate into a habit and before long the behaviour has become an addiction. These addictive behaviours range from somewhat healthy behaviours to very unhealthy and costly behaviours. Addictive behaviours include:

• Using alcohol, nicotine, marijuana or other drugs
• Eating disorders, caffeine, chocolate
• Internet, working too much,
• Gambling, shopping, Television
• Excessive sports - triathlons, marathons, golf or billiards
• Hobbies taken to the extreme

How do you distinguish between an addiction, a habit or a practice?

A practice is something you do because you love, or commit to because of the benefits it brings you. It is something you practice to become better at.

Habits can be good or bad. It becomes a problem when there is negative affect on your health and well-being.

With addiction there is a compulsive ‘need’ to do it. Nervous energy builds up and you can’t seem to stop doing it. There may be feelings of fear at the prospect of not doing it anymore.

If the latter is the case, you may want to seek help.

An idle habit like having a glass of wine at dinner can turn into an addiction when it becomes an every day need and then turns into drinking an entire bottle of wine. Habits become compulsive behaviour when used to subconsciously suppress emotional pain. Consciously we may not even know that we are suppressing something.

As a young adult I drank because all my friends did and it was a symbol of acceptance – or so I thought.  It didn't bother me at first but I began to suffer from terrible hangovers.  In my attempts to stop, I examined my reasons for drinking a little more closely. Being a bit shy and self conscious, a few drinks would loosen me up. I could converse much more easily, and had more fun. However, for me headaches and being completely dysfunctional the next day were more difficult to bear than the pain of starting a conversation. I cut way back on my consumption and consider myself fortunate to have learned this lesson early in life.

Beyond the impact on personal well being and the ability to function effectively, addictions are very costly in the workplace, and at home.

Read more about the Impact of Addictions at Home.

What are the impacts of Addictions at Work?

The cost of addictions in the workplace is high. Substance abuse and dependence can be the cause of absenteeism, accidents, injury, death, poor work quality and costly mistakes, reduced morale, productivity loss, staff turnover, co-worker disputes, property damage and theft. “An employee with substance abuse problems can cost between 25 - 50% of their salary through low productivity, sickness and accidents.” It is estimated approximately 6% of workers suffer from additions to drug and alcohol.

Most statistics on addiction are based on alcohol or drug abuse. These statistics do not take into account the significant health problems that come from eating disorders and food addictions. It is estimated that stress and depression costs the Canadian economy more than $50 billion a year and are responsible for a significant amount of absenteeism at work.

A study in 2010 by the Center for Addictions and Health states the following:

“The average short-term physical disability leave is about 33 days, and on average employers pay $9,000 for each case. The study found the most common reasons employees take physical disability leave include respiratory illness, muscular skeletal problems, injury and digestive disorders.

Meanwhile, depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder are the mental illnesses that appear most in the Canadian workforce, with each case leading to an average 65-day leave and $18,000 bill.” As reported in the study by the Centre for Addictions and Mental Health.

It is often stress at work and at home that leads people to addictive behaviours in the first place. Our substance of choice is used to numb out emotions provoked by the stressful situations of life. Two major factors; unresolved emotional conditioning carried from childhood and reactions to the stressful situations play off each other in a dynamic process to provoke emotional reactions.

With a backlog of unresolved emotional baggage from childhood, employees are not able to withstand pressures in the work place, such as:

 shift work and long work hours
 poor job design, including boring or extremely demanding work
 unrealistic deadlines and performance targets, or inadequate resources
 lack of opportunity to participate in decision making
 inadequate training and supervisory support
 bullying, harassment or victimisation at work
 fear of job loss and uncertainty about the future
family and social problems.

Part of the solution is to support employees in letting go of their “emotional baggage”. When we do this we are addressing the cause of the problem, rather than the symptom which is addiction.

If you would like to drop your emotional baggage and free yourself from existing or potential addiction, consider our Emotional Hot Button Removal Training. We have several options to choose from.

Lynne Brisdon
http://www.livinginvision.com/
http://www.workeasy4lifebalance.com/

Friday, July 1, 2011

Has Emotional Conditioning Affected Your Health?

Most of us know someone who has a negative outlook on life and is often sick. They might be fretful, worrisome, perpetually angry or judgemental, and they are also prone to illness: complaining of aches and pains or have some sort of chronic disorder. This is not to say everyone with health problems is negative, but to explore the connection between emotional conditioning and health.


In his discussion about the ‘Pain Body” acclaimed author Ekhart Tolle talks about how negative emotions such as “fear, anxiety, anger, bearing a grudge, sadness, hatred or intense dislike, jealousy, envy – all disrupt the energy flow through the body, affect the heart, the immune system, digestion, production of hormones, and so on.”

All of us have a pain-body, the question is, what impact does this have on your health and wellness? Are you feeling great most of the time, or are you feeling a loss of energy, catching every cold that comes along or dealing with a chronic condition?

Natural medicine practitioner Dr. Nance MacLeod confirms Tolle’s assertion that negative emotions cause us to become sick both physically and emotionally. Stress, depression, high blood pressure and frequent colds are common symptoms of the energy stored in our minds and bodies.

Comments like MacLeod’s about how the mind affects behaviour and how thinking affects emotions are rooted in the practice of psychology. This approach asserts that the only way to deal with our emotions is to peel back the onion; eliminating layers of psychological bulk. This often involves some form of talk therapy to dig down and uncover the memories that have been stored away in our brains.


A New Solution
What do we do about the emotional energy that is stored in the cells of our body? Tolle and many other authors offer little insight into decreasing the density of the pain body other than to feel it. They provide no guidance on how exactly to feel this emotional energy. Tom Stone, who has made it his life mission to resolve the problems stemming from our human conditioning, has changed this.

In “The Power of How” Stone describes in detail the simple, elegant techniques he has developed to resolve the pain-body. It turns out there are specific ways to feel into this pain to bring it to resolution quickly. What was once difficult took several months, even years, is now relatively easy and fast.

Not only can we resolve our emotional conditioning within our mind we can now resolve it in our body too. People who have tried all sorts of personal development and psychological work for over 30 years attempting to drop off their emotional baggage have found they were able to gain much more significant traction when they started using the Emotional Hot Button Removal techniques.

You may not be aware of how your emotional conditioning is affecting your health. The first step is to acknowledge and feel the emotional pain you are carrying. In the words of one client who was acknowledging her readiness to work on her pain body. “OK...the river of denial has run into the turbines of a dam...” (Sounds messy!)

For many the capacity to feel has been shut down for some time. My colleague Jacque describes how she had completely shut down her ability to feel emotional energy in her body prior to using the techniques we now teach. “I did not learn how to open up my body to such feelings until two years ago.”

You may want to consider how your emotional concerns might be affecting your health? What kind of impact is your ‘pain-body’ having and how disruptive is it to living your ideal magical life?


Wishing you radiant wellness,


Lynne Brisdon, PCC
http://www.livinginvision.com/
http://www.workeasy4lifebalance.com/

Next month we will talk about the connection between addiction and emotional conditioning.


Register for the next Emotional Hot Button Removal training

Workshop - Oct 1 in Vancouver, BC

Tele-seminar Series - starts July 4 at 6:30 p.m






Saturday, June 4, 2011

Understanding Emotional Pain

Many people are familiar with Eckhart Tolle’s books “The Power of Now” and “A New Earth”. Tolle talks about how the ego and mind control our life and our consciousness. He also refers to remnants of pain in the body as the “pain-body.” Many other writers refer to the pain-body as emotional conditioning from childhood and less formally as our emotional baggage.


We have been talking a lot about childhood emotional conditioning, but haven’t defined what it is or where it comes from. Emotional conditioning is an emotional response to outside stimulus. The outside stimulus might come from a traumatic event such as physical abuse, accidents, deaths in the family, etc. Or it may come from sexual abuse; approximately 30% of all children in North America have suffered from some form of sexual abuse. These experiences have an overwhelming effect on a child, who’s brain is significantly smaller than that of an adult; and hence less capable of processing the thoughts, emotions and feelings from the event.

A second form of emotional conditioning comes from our parents or others who have a significant role in our upbringing. From these people we receive repetitive messages about what is appropriate behaviour and what is not, whether we are good or bad, whether we have succeeded or not. These messages influence how we judge ourselves and often become our own story as an adult.

These events and stories are stored in two ways; our memories and in the cellular memory in the body. The brain determines what events to store as memories based on the amount of emotional energy associated with the event or story. The situation might have been very pleasant and when the memory is recalled positive emotions are elicited. However if the situation was overwhelming there will often be resistance to recalling the event or the story because the subconscious mind is afraid of being overwhelmed by the experience again.

Psychology, counselling and coaching help people change the stories they have in their memories. As these memories are often recorded when we were children, the associated feelings remain stuck at a childhood maturity level even though our brains and bodies have matured. These professions work with people to shift their thinking, beliefs and perceptions to unlock old memories and look at them from an adult perspective.

Emotional energy held in the body is the remainder of any feelings we were not able to face in the moment they occurred. After each event, small remnants of pain are left in the body. Children in particular find negative emotions far too overwhelming and have limited capacity to stay present and feel the pain.

Unfortunately, this defence mechanism of not feeling an overwhelming emotion remains with us as we become adults. The tendency to suppress overwhelming feelings when they occur, results in a cumulative build up of negative emotion. If we were able to stay present and fully experience the feeling in the moment we could prevent this emotional backlog or baggage.

What kind of emotional baggage do you have? How big is your pain-body?

The size or intensity of your pain-body determines how much drama it causes in your relationships, at work and the rest of life. Some people have a very small pain-body, which is less dense in Tolle’s terms. Others have a very large pain body “waiting for the next event to react to, the next person to blame or confront, the next thing to be unhappy about.”

Learn more about how you can resolve your emotional conditioning, let go of emotional baggage and minimize your pain body in the next Catalyst LIVE! Teleconference, June 8 at noon.

Next Month we talk about How Emotional Conditioning Causes Health Problems.

Much Love,

Lynne Brisdon, PCC
http://www.livinginvision.com/


"Learning to feel better requires that you become better at feeling."
The Reconnections - Daniel Jacobs  E-Motions post

Saturday, May 7, 2011

Ultimate Emotional Resourcefulness

How to Quickly Let Go of Anger, Frustration, Worry and Guilt

Emotional reactions can leave damaging scars on our relationships both at work and at home and they slowly erode our health. They detract us from having more joy, happiness and a greater sense of peacefulness in our lives. Essentially we don’t experience the full bliss and magic that life has to offer. Life and work feel harder than they need to.

Having an emotional reaction could be getting angry and frustrated or feeling guilty and shameful. Anxiety, worry, stress and depression are all the result of emotional reactions as well.

What causes an emotional reaction? You’ll probably say it’s your husband, your wife, your kids or your boss! However these people are not the root cause of your emotional reactions; they are simply in your life to push your buttons. They are here to show you what needs to be healed and what you could resolve to have an easier and more joyful life.

Your emotional reactions are usually the product of events which occurred in early childhood. Traumatic events occurring later in life are also a factor. In either case they come from our incapacity to deal with overwhelming emotional experience. When we are small our capacity to process the energy of emotional overwhelm is limited. Later in life intense or extended periods of emotional overwhelm leave us with more emotional energy than we are able to process.

This backlog gets stored away in our body at an energetic, cellular level; waiting for a time when we can be more resourceful and capable of dealing with incomplete emotional experiences. We commonly refer to this as emotional baggage. The good news is we don’t need to keep it.

While traditional talk therapy provides a way to process emotional overwhelm it can take a long time. Cognitive behavioural therapy and emotional intelligence practices are also very useful for controlling or managing emotional reactions. Unfortunately, when you are fully caught in the grips of an emotional reaction logical thinking significantly declines, or disappears completely.

Using rationale approaches to process and manage emotional reactions can diffuse the energetic backlog to a point, but rarely embrace the option of feeling through and completing the emotional experience. Attempting to address a feeling based, energetic irrational pattern is not entirely effective. On the other hand, Emotional Hot Button Removal techniques allow us to quickly and efficiently feel into the energy fuelling emotional reaction. By feeling through the energy completely, it vaporises and disappears from your body for good.

With the energy gone you can be calmer, more centered and deal with challenging situations easily. No longer victim to emotional reactions, you have them less often and become less volatile when you do.

Here's what it's like for my colleague Jacque Small.
"Now that I’m using these techniques, I also have greater access to my gut feelings which I now allow to guide me in life rather than spending hours and hours trying to figure out what to do. I also have great access to positive feelings of joy and happiness because I am making better choices for myself.

I learned that the volatile emotional reactions I use to have are optional. In a year I accomplished what I had not accomplished in the previous six years of personal development work."

Wishing you much ease and joy,

Lynne Brisdon, PCC
http://www.livinginvision.com/

“Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned.” Buddha

Thursday, March 31, 2011

Relationships are a Brilliant Place to Learn

Ever notice how it’s the people we’re closest to who push our buttons. What if we considered them a mirror for our own growth and learning?


What usually happens is we look at the other and judge: we don’t like what they’re doing. We think ‘They hurt me,’ or ‘I’m jealous’. We have judgments about how they handle money, or parenting. We don’t like how they deal with children, extended family, how they approach sexual intimacy, their work focus (or lack thereof).

All these topics are major focal points for dissent in relationships. We observe the other’s behavior, our ego judges them. It’s like looking through an invisible wall: all we can see is the person on the other side. We see their behavior and we make ourselves right and them wrong. The wall keeps us from seeing what’s on our side. If the wall became a mirror instead, and we asked the question, ‘how does this apply to me?’ then we could start learning about ourselves.

When you can look beyond your own judgments and be really honest with yourself you can see how it applies to you. For instance ‘she’ is noticing ‘his’ behavior is out of character and off purpose. He’s not focused on making enough money. If she is really honest with herself she’d recognize she’s not happy because she is off purpose and not generating enough income. If we are critical and judgmental of another, it really applies to us.

Rather than have its sense of identity and rightness threatened, the ego will typically blame and make the other person wrong. And then we drop into the victim role. When we do, the energy from our emotional conditioning is ignited. We get frustrated, angry – emotions are triggered. The other person is not being the way we want them to be and ultimately we are not being the way we want to be.

When we’re caught in this kind of emotional conditioning it’s really hard to see how we are contributing to the situation. The other shows up in our lives to simply be a mirror. That person is there to help you see what is really occurring - there to help you resolve your conditioning.

We aren’t really aware of our behavioral traits we gathered while growing up or of the habits we were taught. Until we can truly look at others as a mirror we’re not entirely conscious of what is going on. We live predominantly from emotional conditioning and ego.

Similarly, in the workplace, consider what happens when we want to make something happen and we can’t. Our ego drops into judgment triggered by all the associated unresolved emotional energy surrounding this issue. On top of that, we habitually resist feeling things fully so we have stuffed all the hurt, loneliness, sense of being abused or taken advantage of. It all comes up and we over-react to the situation. The person we are in conflict with is really ourselves.

When you begin to see yourself in the mirror of relationships you start to learn about yourself. Your habits, behaviors and unresolved emotional conditioning are revealed. At this point you have the choice to own your behaviors, resolve your conditioning and change your habits. When you do, you’ll be able to be more calm and centered, and chances are your relationship will be better too.

Relationships are a mirror for healing. They show us what needs to be resolved within ourselves. It’s an absolutely wonderful learning environment. It can be the best school we’ve ever gone to.

Enjoy your learning,
Lynne Brisdon, PCC
http://www.livinginvision.com/





Friday, March 18, 2011

Step off the Emotional Roller Coaster and Get what you want.

A practical interactive one-day course guaranteed to change your habits.
Saturday April 14 in Vancouver


Ever find your emotions get you into trouble?

  • You get angry and do something you later regret and want to retract.
  • You have a great idea then decide it’s not important after all and don’t do it
  • You plan and get ready for something you really want to do, then get sick and have to cancel.
  • or you suddenly, and mysteriously lose interest.

If you have brilliant ideas and exciting goals but get stopped in your tracks …
• are frustrated because your vision of a new and better life seems unattainable
• run out of energy before you get traction on the steps you need to take.

Then this workshop will help you turn stress into joy and goal fulfillment.

You’ll empowered with step by step methods to simply to move past old patterns and behaviors that keep you in lower potential.

Lynne Brisdon, Professional Coach and Vanessa Wiebel, Professional Body Integrated Certified Co-active Coach, synthesize the Five Elements of Chinese Medicine and the Hero’s Journey into tools you can utilize in your work and private life. You can finally become the person you know you truly are.

You will get the basic concepts, and have lots of opportunity to personally apply what you learn in this interactive class setting. You’ll take home your unique understanding of your antidote to personal obstacles.

During the day you’ll gain greater clarity of your vision, and explore the journey to reach it. You’ll recognize how the perspectives from which you view it affects your relationship to the journey; and in the end have action steps to take home.

The course includes a follow up group session via phone conference, and the option to do further in-depth one-one coaching with either Vanessa or Lynne.

Exploring your relationship to your vision reveals how you can move past obstacles which appear to be stand in your way over, and over again. You’ll see how often externally based obstacles get hooked into our internal conversation and create blocks. And, at times how your own fitness, health and constitution play an often over looked roll.

With our intent to connect and collaborate with conscious purposeful people Lynne and Vanessa have joined forces to offer this new workshop introducing a new form of understanding emotions, choice, motivation and actions.

Vanessa shares her gift of expert knowledge of Five Elements theory making it practical and applicable. Her insights gained over nearly twenty years of practice give us tools to stop being ruled by emotions and get into advantageous action.

Layering this information with the ‘Heros Journey Model’, passionately presented by Lynne, the synthesis of both models gives you a lens to observe your patterns, apply tangible steps to move beyond your obstacles and achieve success.

Vanessa Wiebel, BSc, RST, CST, CPCC, Professional Certified Co-active Coach
Amplifying Brilliance by awakening your inner voice and calling it to action LEAP.

Vanessa invites you to discover and be your authentic self. She enables you to step more fully and richly into the life you dream of and aspire to have. Highly skilled, with unique education and experience gathered over 18 years in the allopathic and eastern medicine fields . Being also gifted skilled communicator she now brings this combination to coaching along with her natural intuition .

She also combines bodywork either in person or via verbal guidance with co-active coaching. Vanessa takes her clients compassionately to the edge, where they never dare to look , in a gentle, yet firm way. This allows you to find new approaches and perspectives, from which you are empowered to make new, true choices along your path; toward sustainable wellbeing and joyful life.
http://www.vanessawiebel.com/
778-991 5822


Lynne Brisdon, Professional Certified Coach
Living In Vision: Illuminating the Path to Your Greatest Future

Lynne specializes in helping people step off the emotional roller coaster. She has continuously honed her coaching skills over the past 12 years, building on deeply rooted, spiritually based transformational methodology. Through clarification of vision and intent and the resolution of habitual or subconsciously held detractors, significant and lasting change is made.

Her gentle, yet impactful style leads clients to their desired results and previously elusive levels of self acceptance. After working with Lynne clients find they are happier, healthier, have fulfilling relationships and successful careers and businesses. They are more comfortable in their own skin and some have even said it saved their lives.
http://www.livinginvision.com/
604 570-0764


Register for this workshop   




Tuesday, March 1, 2011

Improving Our Relationships

As we delve further into the realm of relationship it is apparent we can have wonderful intentions and clarity of how we prefer to be in relationship and still be challenged by situations that come up with our partner.

When things are going well it’s much easier to express yourself in a loving way and be appreciative of your partner, however when conflict arises it’s challenging to love without conditions. Culturally, often by parents, we have been conditioned to withhold love toward someone who is exhibiting behaviors we don’t like. Often when someone does something we don’t like we let them know about it in the form of a verbal reprimand, nagging, or silent withdrawal of affection.

Often we aren’t even conscious of our decision to share our love conditionally. We habitually hold the stance of – I’ll love you if…. In many cases we demand to be treated in certain ways before we willingly express love and affection.

This leads to relationships where we tolerate each other and either avoid conflict altogether or have bouts of escalated conflict followed by cooling off periods. This kind of relationship stagnates and we wonder where the love went or why we are even continuing in the relationship.

What would happen if the next time your partner pushes your emotional hot button you were able to keep your heart open and love them anyway?

Many years ago my former partner complained regularly about a perpetual situation at work. It aggravated me that he would come home and vent his anger night after night. I would get angry and ask him to stop because it felt like he was taking it out on my daughter and I. This would often escalate and we would yell at each other and on of us would stomp off. One day I tried something new. I practiced a centering technique when he started complaining and stayed present to what he was saying. I realized that he was simply aggravated by a situation he felt powerless to control but had to deal with nearly every day. It had nothing to do with me at all. I stopped taking it personally and let him have his rant. He would vent his energy and then we could go on with our day.

If we make a conscious practice of being present to our partner with an open heart to love and come from a place of love we can start to make very positive changes. Rather than becoming caught up and engaged when someone else is provoked, we can stay in curiosity and wonder – open to what is. From that place our partner starts to feel heard and acknowledged. Being open and curious doesn’t mean we have to agree, however if we listen to their perspective and allow ourselves the opportunity to see it their way we can begin to understand where they are coming from. With practice, it’s possible to talk about our different points of view and come to a decision about how we would like to hold our mutual perspectives and move on.

Ideally, if both partners are willing you can come to an agreement about how you would like to be together when things are going well and especially when they are not. With a little research we can find all kinds of ways to manage perpetually ‘emotionally loaded’ conversations. The work of John Gottman Ph.D in particular has lots of great information on how to mitigate the risk of escalating conflict. Gottman observed that couples who resolved conflict with positivity 4 out of 5 times would stay together.

To take it a step further we can permanently resolve the underlying emotional energy that is provoked in us when our partner displays behaviors we don’t like. By being aware of the physical sensations in our body we can feel into these sensations and release the energy that is causing our emotional reaction. Eventually it will become easy to be curious and listen and not need to control the situation, as I did in my earlier example. Also, in retrospect if I could have seen that he was operating from his own conditioning I might have recognized the pattern of venting one’s frustration when you get home from work was probably modeled by his father. I wonder what would have happened to our relationship if I had resolved my emotional conditioning and become more empathetic towards him?

Ultimately, the only person we have any control over is ourselves, however if we are curious about what is happening on both sides we can open up some room for things to change. Holding ourselves and our partners in a loving way creates space to feel accepted for who we are and encourages us to take the risk of letting go of old ways of being.

Lynne Brisdon
Professional Certified Coach
http://www.livinginvision.com/

Wednesday, February 2, 2011

Relationship Intentions

February is here and Valentines Day is around the corner. On this auspicious day many of us give our sweethearts a gift, do something special or go out for dinner. We celebrate the day treating our loved ones with special care. What about the rest of the year? How do you treat your loved one?

What could happen in your relationship if you actually chose how you would like to treat your loved one? Set an intention for your relationship and then practice being that way for the rest of the year. Magic is possible.

We often think that we are the way we are and that we can’t change the way we are being. This is absolutely false. For several years now I have been setting intentions for how I want to feel and what I wish to experience and seeing desired results. And, I believe that if we can choose to change who we are being, it only makes sense that we actively choose who we would like to be in relationship too.

I have also observed my colleage Jacque actively setting intentions, about how she shows up in this world, and for who she would like to be. She is now substantially different than who she was when I met her.  Two years ago when Jacque got divorced she set the intention to be calm and bring her relationship to a close from a place of grace and ease. I watched her do this successfully. Now she’s exploring a new relationship and once again has the opportunity to set an intention for this relationship experience.  When setting an intention for relationship we actively choose our ideal experience.

Jacque talks about Relationship Intentions

The questions to ask yourself are: How would I like to be? What is the experience I would like to have? How would I like to feel?

For example I would like to be:
• Treating others with love
• Flexible, supportive
• Curious, coming from a place of wonder

The experience I would like to have is:
• Fun
• Learning & growth
• Sacred Connection

I would like to feel:
• Deeply loved
• Enjoyment
• Intimacy

So now you are probably thinking: yes I can want all of these things, but what happens if my partner doesn’t want what I want or doesn’t behave in a way that supports me to feel this way? This is a very good question, because we cannot control other people’s behaviours, the only influence we have is by changing our own behaviour. We can, however create our own reality. This means we need to treat ourselves, and our partners the way we want to be treated and then invite them to join us. Then we start having the experience of being treated this way.

To experience learning we need to be curious and self-reflective. To feel love we need to treat others with love. When we start being who we want to be we will start having the feelings that we want to have. As you start treating your partner from this place consistently, don’t be surprised if their behaviour towards you starts to change and you start receiving more of what it is that you want.

So, what is missing in your relationship? Who are you willing to become to get it?

Wishing you a blissful relationship.

Lynne Brisdon
Professional Certified Coach
http://www.livinginvision.com/

Quote: You cannot be lonely if you like the person you're alone with. ~Wayne W. Dyer

How to Have Your Relationship Needs Met

Relationships can be disappointing. Often we look for something from others and don’t receive it. At work this might be having a job well done or consistently achieved business goals go unrecognized. In personal relationships it could be our partner is not expressing love in the way we want to receive it. When we deeply desire or need to receive recognition or love and it doesn’t happen, we feel hurt and conflict arises.

Let’s define desire as something we would like to have happen, but are unattached to it happening, and need as being attached to an outcome. In many cases the other person is not aware of your desire to begin with so the first thing to remember in getting what we want is to communicate with a clear request. From the female perspective, it might be: “I would love you to give me a hug when you get home from work.”

If we make the request and are not attached to whether our partner gives us a hug or not it remains a desire. However, an unmet desire escalates to a need when charged emotional energy is attached to the outcome. “The mind writes a story that sounds something like, “My partner doesn’t show me any love, I have asked him to hug me and he never hugs me, I really need him to show me love, I feel empty inside because he is not connecting with me.”

On the other hand, men generally have a desire to decompress and be silent when they get home from a long day at work. They may have been in meetings all day, battled bumper to bumper traffic on the way home and just want to chill out when they walk in the door. In fact, they might have a need to talk about how bad their day was before zoning out in front of the TV or retreating to the garage. Heaven forbid if she wants to share her day first!

This almost guarantees a communication breakdown, especially if being heard is a need occurring on both the feminine and masculine side. A cycle of conflict begins when he feels unloved because she is not giving him space nor is she showing him respect by listening to his concerns about work. That’s when the man starts to withdraw from the relationship. At the same time the woman feels unloved because he is not showing her affection nor listening to her when he comes home. Now both have unmet needs and believe that if the other person really loved them, they would recognize and respond to their needs.

Once you recognize the downward spiral of feeling unloved is occurring, there are two ways to deal with it. First, have a conversation about it and come to an agreement about how to deal with this dynamic. This is applying a logical outcome to what is largely an emotional situation. The second solution is to resolve the underlying emotional conditioning that has both people caught in a need rather than a desire.

To implement the communication strategy, the first step is recognizing the dynamic is occurring and then come to a mutual understanding about it. Second you need to share in behaviorally specific terms what you want to have happen and make this specific request of your partner without any attachment that he/she will agree. When you have made the request you also need to listen to what the other person wants and define a scenario that would work for both of you. This can be a challenge if you both have to have your specific needs met ‘your way’ in order to feel loved.

The second solution is resolving the underlying emotional conditioning that causes both partners to feel unloved in the first place. Requiring a partner to express love in a certain way is connected to our need to feel loved in order to be whole and complete. When we feel the need to be loved, we are looking for love outside of ourselves, rather than feeling a sense of love from within. When we feel love from within, we may have a desire for certain actions from our partner, but we can be very flexible with what a negotiated solution looks likes. Having the outcome be the way we want it, has nothing to do with love.

When we have resolved our underlying conditioning and make clear requests of our partners with no attachment to the outcome we arrive at optimum solutions for the relationship. We are able to express ourselves lovingly and be more flexible in our requirements of the relationship. Maybe you can offer to give the hug you want instead of asking for it!

Wishing you much love,
 
Lynne Brisdon
http://www.livinginvision.com/