 Have you ever felt totally lost in the moment? I don’t mean the kind where you set off driving in the car and then suddenly find yourself at your destination with no recollection of the journey in between.
I’m talking about getting totally caught up in the moment, in a really positive, uplifting way, whether deliberately through meditation through to having the best sex you ever had. The feeling of being swept away as you are looking into the eyes of a newborn, or getting lost in the moment at a concert, or the giddy feeling of diving into warm crashing waves, running in the rain, looking out at the awe inspiring view from the highest mountains, or shooting your best score, best time, creating your best piece of work. If you know the feeling I’m talking about, you know what your own energy feels like when it’s flowing. You know what real connection is. Anything less feels inadequate, and it should. I know that when I’m browsing Facebook, or checking my emails, over and over, what I am really looking for is connection. At the same time I know I’m not going to find the connection there that I’m looking for. I’m really looking for that flow of energy that is me, that is you, the energy that creates planets, people, animals, everything we can see, touch and feel. Being lost in the moment is exactly where our radar is set. When your energy flows you feel glorious. You have greater clarity, greater capacity, greater compassion, greater knowing. More than anything, it just feels good. Yet, here we are in these bodies, these trillions of cells, each its own consciousness, our unique gift being conscious thought. It’s a wonderful gift, in perceiving what we don’t want we can start to create what we do want. But it’s also a peculiarity of humans that we have come to think of ourselves as separate from everything else when it’s just not true. We come into this world through others, treated in ways that – while not usually deliberate - diminishes our worth (think of well meaning statements that start like “stop…” or “no….” or “what were you thinking?”). These early experiences create our subconscious. For years and years, layer upon layer, we do a really good job of building the case for why we are not worthy. Then there comes a point where life is simply not working for you the way you want it too, or for some the pain is too much, and you start reading articles like this. Time to shed the layers. Go about it the hard way or the easy way. The hard way is when you think it’s all down to you, that you have to figure this out, you have to do something. The easy way is to get lost in things you really enjoy, as much of the time as you can, and let the life you want show up. Most don’t get this easily, unless you suffer a really catastrophic event, because most of us struggle with our conditioning. We have come to believe “if it’s going to be it’s up to me”, yet the orchestration of the many millions of moments, choices and ‘coincidences’ that lie between now and our desires showing up are beyond even the best planning skills. I could never have predicted my partner showing up on my doorstep nearly 10 years ago, I could never have orchestrated the many moments between the desire for children and the journey to having them, and I could and would never have found my way to the mentor I’ve had this last decade. I was simply in a place of knowing what I didn’t want, and full of hope in finding what I did want. Right now I’m proudly sticking my head in the sand, getting lost in the moment writing this article because it feels great. Sure I’ll be interested in who reads it afterwards, but even if it’s widely read nothing will feel as good as letting the words flow through to start with. Instead of flicking through my apps and emails, I start typing, I start connecting with the energy within that is tugging on my sleeve to express what’s within. When I used to work in my corporate job, my partner would switch off the TV at the end of the evening, I’d stop doing emails and put down my phone. I’d momentarily sink into the silence and feel utterly incomplete, like there was something I still had to do. Little did I know that this was it, that tugging sensation, there were thoughts to be explored, things about life to learn and express. What tug on your sleeve are you ignoring? How often are you in the flow of your own life? Feeling great? You know that it’s only a decision away, a decision to feel hopeful, to start becoming more aware, tuning in, taking up the many chances and choices around you, letting yourself go and enjoying what life has to offer. If we’re not already connected, just fill in your name and email at the top of the blog page to subscribe to my newsletter. I’d love for you to comment on, or share these thoughts with others, or contact me directly - shona@shonakeachie.com - I'm always happy to help. shonakeachie.com is both a place where you can continue to read my articles (and even watch videos...first one live on Facebook), and it’s a portal for potential clients to get insights and connect with my consulting and mentoring services. It’s aimed at those who want to create change in their life or those seeking to evolve their business.
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 Last week I caught up with an old friend, who was telling me about a pretty serious problem that they’d battled with since their early school years. The decades of issues that then ensued stemmed from being bullied on an otherwise normal day. When they apologised for the way they had treated me, I was stunned by the revelation within my own subconscious. This was not a person that had treated me badly, in fact I had felt that I was to blame for the rift between us. As a child I had done fairly well at the things I turned my hand to, and I always had plenty to say, so I thought people got sick of me. The one thing standing between us and our best life is, it seems, our subconscious mind. We now know that each person thinks 60-70,000 thoughts a day, and over 90% of them are a repeat of yesterdays. That is an overwhelming amount of thoughts that we are largely unaware of, that sit buried in our subconscious. Our subconscious mind starts building it’s foundations in the earliest years of our lives. We come into the world a conscious being, with traits, talents, perhaps even a purpose, yet for many years we are treated as if we know nothing. The well meaning older beings around us, in a bid to save us from ourselves, convey messages that constantly undermine the way we feel about ourselves. It’s not usually deliberate, I know firsthand as a parent that for every time I recognise the beauty within my children, there are dozens of other interactions serving (in intent) to save them or some piece of property from harm. Worse, there are the vain attempts to save me from being dragged into some spiraling vortex of their disappointment or anger at one thing or another. I know how difficult it is to let the beauty flow; the urge to control, from beginnings of being controlled, is strong. Some remember the feeling as a child of being stopped in the tracks of your heart’s desires, whether it be as small as being stopped from alleviating a parents robe of a waist tie that, in your awesome imagination, would serve as a lasso or a set of reins, or whether it is as big as heart wrenchingly being kept from another parent or loved one. There is a reason ‘Let it Go’ is such a popular song with kids, all those pent up feelings, making their way into their subconscious. Magnets for all other thoughts thereafter that reinforce some version of you not being worthy. It struck me that I had just learned more depth to a saying I had once heard “people don’t do things to you, they do things for themselves”. The things that we do, we do as a result of the thoughts in our head, and usually we are doing them out of fear and a lack of self worth. My friend wasn’t fat, or greedy, as the bullies had alleged, in fact quite the opposite. Who knows why that event had served as such a strong magnet for further thoughts that maintained a lifetime pattern of expulsing food. However it’s easy to see how the feelings and thoughts begin if we experience rebukes for the early impulses to reach for a piece of cake or something else yummy. That fear of greed can stop people from going after their dreams as they worry they will appear too greedy to others. Whatever your fear is will keep you back from being the person you came to be, the person you’d be the happiest as. The unrestrained, uninhibited version of you. For me it was about not wanting to stick my head above the parapet, not wanting to be seen as a tall poppy, not wanting to put myself out there lest it make others feel bad, or me appear arrogant. Even as I write it here, there is a subconscious voice I’m aware of; we can never erase our subconscious. The best we can do is to create new thought patterns, stronger ones. Looking for the root cause has little fruit to bear, in fact it’s unimportant. What is important is to consciously (at first) create new thought patterns that better serve you. There is not one person among us who has nothing to give, and there is no greater gift than being who you truly are in this world. Over the years as I’ve read, or heard others talk, there have been certain calls to action; statements made that have resonated deeply within my soul. Noticeably an old mentor speaking from stage “if you’re going to be somebody, then stand up and be somebody”. I’m now so well persuaded that our purpose for being is to let our light shine, that the only thing scarier than putting myself out there, as I said recently, is not doing it at all. Still, announcing my website to friends and family was a wrestle with the subconscious, as was publishing articles before that. Looking upon the relationship with my old friend through new eyes is still a wrestle of the subconscious. Rationally I can fathom it all out, but rewriting the way we feel about things in our past is not so easily won. We have played the same tapes so often there are a million more examples just waiting to prove our new found understanding wrong. You came into the world hearing “listen to me”, yet you knew your own truth. Be kind to yourself, and if you can’t be kind, give yourself a kick up the butt instead. You came with something to offer, someone to be. So what is it that you have going on in your subconscious that’s stopping you living your best life? If we’re not already connected, just fill in your name and email at the top of the blog page to subscribe to my newsletter. I’d love for you to comment on, or share these thoughts with others, or contact me directly - shona@shonakeachie.com - I'm always happy to help. shonakeachie.com is both a place where you can continue to read my articles (and even watch videos...first one live on Facebook), and it’s a portal for potential clients to get insights and connect with my consulting and mentoring services. It’s aimed at those who want to create change in their life or those seeking to evolve their business.  At work I was well known for my 3 o’clock in the morning emails, simply because that was the time my brain would start to ‘thaw’ after some sleep, exhausted by the previous day’s activity.
The quest to figure out who I was proved tricky because I couldn’t even tell you what I was feeling in relation to all the things I used to juggle, except an overall sense of not being at one with myself. But it’s taken deliberate time out to figure out what specifically feels good and what feels bad. I’ve found myself in the position of family nurse now that we have children. With two small patients who can’t convey very well what is actually wrong with them, I find my observational skills have intensified. What’s really struck me this last week that they’ve had a cold, is how quickly I had previously dosed them with pain killers. Paracetemol and Ibuprofen are common place in most of our homes, with many liquid forms available for our children from baby stage upwards. But here is the problem, if we continually dose ourselves or our kids with painkillers or some other synthetic ‘remedy’, in order to suppress our symptoms and just carry on, are we simply storing up trouble further down the line? Our physical state is the last line of attack when it comes to listening to our inner knowing. If you have things showing up on a physical level, whether it’s an accident or an illness, it means you have ignored what is going on at an emotional level. Emotions are important, they are quite simply our best indicators of where we are in relation to that good feeling, forward flowing being that we all are in our most natural state. There are many versions of feeling bad, from outright despair to the lesser intensity of simple doubt, but they all feel bad, and are all indicative of a thought pattern that is working against us. When you feel bad, listen. If you don’t it will show up physically. Many years ago the author Louise Hay outlined the mental patterns that are associated with hundreds of diseases and conditions, including each vertebrae of the spine. Our mental patterns, often subconscious, affect us emotionally, then physically. We now know that our physical symptoms are not directly related to your genetics, as scientists like Dr Bruce Lipton can now explain for those that want that. My personal experience of panic attacks had already taught me that lesson back in the early nineties though, I know the power of the mind to create my reality, I just hadn’t reckoned on the power of the subconscious thoughts that were embedded early in life and reinforced throughout, as like attracted like. For years I worked in corporate roles that were so busy I would come home feeling numb. My osteopath used to ask me about the symptoms I was experiencing throughout the day in order to better help alleviate my back pain, I was clueless really. Generally I was too busy and distracted to even pay any attention to the triggers or the times it would shift or flare up and so on. Now I’ve learned to tune in. That is not to say I’m in some Zen-like state for the best part of the day, heck no, I did mention I have two young kids right? It does mean that I unfailing make time for 15 minutes a day to close my eyes and just breathe, to press pause on whatever else is going on around. I also make sure that I take my yoga class once a week, and that I get out in nature as often as possible. I’m also learning to prioritise the stuff that feels good – like writing these articles. But when it comes to my body, I admit I have had a tendency to plough on, ignoring what it’s telling me, just like many if you. This is despite many lessons in my life to pay heed, like the panic attacks and the many failed pregnancies before finally tuning in and then having our two beautiful daughters. When it comes to taking care of them, my biggest hope for them is to be who they are. To do that they need to learn to tune in, to listen to their inner knowing. How can I teach that if every time it’s communicating I tell them to calm down, cheer up, wisen up, buck up, take a dose of Pamol, whatever, many versions of ‘please just behave and let me get on with my day’ or worse "listen to me and not your own knowing". I know when my kids are being horribly grumpy or naughty there’s something more going on. Left unattended, inevitable within a few days there are physical symptoms of some sort. On the other hand, catch what the body is communicating and it can heal very quickly. For example, a common cold is often a sign there’s so much going on you are disconnected from the needs of your being, it’s time for you to let go and stop worrying needlessly about every little thing. No wonder it’s so common these days when we are busier than ever and, by default, are taking our kids on the same ride. It’s time to get back to basics, listen to what our inner knowing is saying, rather than suppressing it. In listening, you will find a life that flows more easily, more healthily. One that you won’t lie in a hospital bed regretting, as those who do tell us, they should have danced to the beat of their own drum earlier. Tune in, what’s your body telling you? If we’re not already connected, just fill in your name and email on this blog page to subscribe to my newsletter. I’d love for you to comment on, or share these thoughts with others, or contact me directly - shona@shonakeachie.com - I'm always happy to help. shonakeachie.com is both a place where you can continue to read my articles (and even watch videos...first one live), and it’s a portal for potential clients to get insights and connect with my consulting and mentoring services. It’s aimed at those who want to create change in their life or those seeking to evolve their business.  To successfully ride a bike you need to create forward momentum and keep it up. If you don’t get that initial forward momentum while you hop on and get your feet in the pedals, or you let the bike slow right down, you wobble and you fall. The trick is to get back on again.
It’s the same with life. In the process of launching my website this week, I shared with family and friends how audacious it all feels and how I need to build confidence to move into the next phase (I’m thinking of building an online course on how to create conscious change in your life). It’s not that I have zero experience with that kind of thing, it’s just that I’ve never done it in my nakedly authentic shoes before. In short, I’m wobbling. So much so that I had to give myself a big pep talk in order to just press send on the email to let my friends and family know about the website, it felt like there was no going back, it’s out there. Then one of my dearest friends responded that they were in awe of my drive and tenacity in seeking out my destiny this last couple of years, and I suddenly realised that the only thing more scary than putting the real me out there, is not doing it at all. So I choose to get back on the bike and keep pedaling. After that, as I was listening to Anita Moorjani speak at the Hay House Summit about her experience of dying and being brought back to life, it reminded me of everything I have come to discover on this journey to ‘who I am’. I’ve become a student of life; I wanted to know why I was here, what the heck it was all about. Honestly there were times, and still are, when I’d feel so depressed I wonder at the point of being here at all. Not to say I’ve ever been suicidal, it’s more a sense of absolute knowing not to compromise on feeling good because feeling bad seems so pointless; so empty. THAT has been my biggest lesson of all. The secret to being who you are, to having everything you want in life, to feeling good about your life, is to make feeling good your highest priority in every moment of every day; to tap into the forward momentum of your own energy. Now when I feel any shade of bad, I step back and I realise I’ve just been sent a really simple message. That whatever I’m focusing on is not in the slipstream of my best life, it’s not what the real me is intending at all. For that is how I’ve come to view life, the best version of it. It’s a fast moving river, full of light feel-good energy. It is the forward momentum, our job is to tune in to what feels good and get on the ride. When we are not being the real us, we are shrouded in our thoughts, conscious and subconscious, filled with fears, wobbling, unclear. I also happened to listen to Deepak Chopra this week, not my usual first choice as I often find his words a bit too academic for them to resonate. However, he was speaking on the back of Eckhart Tolle (also at the Hay House Summit) and I just hadn’t got around to switching it off. He gave a lovely example that summed up what I've come to learn about this physical life. Here was the conversation. He asked a lady in the audience what she had for lunch that day, “salad” she replies. He then proceeds to rhetorically ask the audience where she just found that answer, in her memories of course. But where is that? This was the pivotal point of the conversation, as Deepak explains no scientist can point to a cell or a neuron where the ‘salad’ memory exists, or any other memory. Yes science can point to an area of the brain that seems involved with the processing of memories but, as he succinctly points out, the memory of the salad specifically is nowhere on a physical level. Instead it’s where the greater part of your energy is, on the non physical level. He continued, that’s also where you’ll be when you die because you never left there, you are there; non physical energy having a physical experience. “Very profound” I thought, “I’m with the salad”. It made me chuckle. Regardless what you believe about life’s big picture, there can be no denying that feeling good feels better than feeling bad. So whether you think there is a meaning to life or not, it just makes sense to do more of the things that feel good. As I put myself out there, I’ve realised that I’m still all about change and transformation, it’s just more niche, more focused. The best use of me, is to have me help in making the shift from ambition to purpose, from profit to a deeper prosperity, from self to connectedness, anything less just won’t fire my cylinders, it’s too much like trying to paddle upstream in a tremendously fast flowing river. So I ask you, what’s making you wobble? Are you out there trying to make ends meet, maybe even thriving by other people’s standards, but all the while with a gnawing sense that there must be more to life? Take heart, there are many of us out there who are on the same journey. In truth, ultimately, we all are, we just all get there at different times. The point is, you can do it. Yes you will wobble, yes it is tricky learning how to get that first kick start and create some forward momentum, but you can do it. Did you get that? You can do it, and it’s a whole lot more satisfying than not doing it. If we’re not already connected, just fill in your name and email on this blog page to subscribe to my newsletter. I’d love for you to comment on, or share these thoughts with others, or contact me directly - shona@shonakeachie.com - I'm always happy to help. shonakeachie.com is both a place where you can continue to read my articles (and even watch videos… soon-ish), and it’s a portal for potential clients to get insights and connect with my consulting and mentoring services. It’s aimed at those who want to create change in their life or those seeking to evolve their business. Note that the Hay House Summit is an online summit free to listen to/watch until 26 May.  It is such a gift when people believe in our potential, especially when it opens our eyes to the truth of who we are.
One day as I was driving alone, I started recounting all those memories of the people that have helped me and cheered me on. While it sounds very cliché, there really is no way to describe how I felt other than gratitude. Of all the positive emotions, gratitude is way up there. So in terms of your journey to knowing your real self, starting with the things you are truly grateful for is a good choice. The first person that stood out for me was my swim coach. Unbeknown to me at the time, the head coach of the swim team I had joined had said I’d never make a great swimmer, but Bill Tinney believed in me and gave me separate coaching. He taught me all he knew, including the study and practice of Mark Spitz’s strokes (Spitz was a 9-time Olympic champion and won 7 gold medals in the 1972 Olympics, the year I was born). When there was no more to teach he graciously handed the reins to another great coach, Owen Flannigan or Mr. F as we called him, who intuitively knew the power of the mind. Thanks to those men I competed at a fairly high level in my sport, learning when I was 14 that I had just missed qualifying for the national squad. That gave me a shock because I hadn’t even realised I was in the running and it helped me recognise that it wasn’t really what I wanted to do. So after years of 3 hours of practice every day, I quit at 15 and have never looked back. Then when I started out in the field of customer experience transformation, I had never worked in a large organisation, never in the field of customer services and had never managed a team, yet my manager saw something in the interview process that obviously fit the bill. A year after starting that job I was awarded with a national customer service award and went on to win it the following two years also. It started a career that I loved, in a world that just seems largely unwilling to embrace the simple truth that customers can and should more directly drive the types of services and products companies offer and the way in which they’re offered. But with too many egos, processes and mind bogglingly complex systems in the way, it became disheartening. There are so many more examples in my life of people who have believed in me, who pushed me beyond where I might otherwise have gone and have helped me to discover more of who I am and am not. When I embarked on this current chapter of mine, let’s call it the ‘discovery of who I am’, I remember talking to my previous boss about the possibilities of what lay ahead. He is someone who also values authenticity and had taught me a lot about where my own natural strengths lay. But he couldn’t reconcile the person he knew with someone who might spend time alone writing. At that point I had had very little time to myself in years; a more solitary life was appealing. Days in the office were filled with meetings and, even in the middle of the night, I had been called upon by my children for feeding, changing or comfort. Time for uninterrupted thought was at a premium in my world. Also, in embarking on each big change in my life, my preference is to retreat. Ultimately I know everything will turn out well and I find solace in time alone, feeling connected to me again. So taking the road less travelled and starting to publish my writing, while moving away from the corporate career and moving cities, was cathartic. I needed time to incubate into this new phase, not even knowing what it was I had to say. Now I love the process of writing, it's like being a vessel that words just pour through and it feels good. It is with thanks to those of you who have read my writing and encouraged me to stick with it, that I’ve rediscovered my authentic self, and what it has to say. Having withdrawn into myself deeply at the outset, I’ve enjoyed connecting with those of you around, the seekers, for the mutual joy that the answers bring us. Now I’m ready for the next stage of the journey. What I believe is that all of us have the power within us to be and do amazing things, when we do them from a point of our true self. We are not always in a place to see our own potential, and that is the magic of others who believe in us. Think about the people in your life that have believed in you, and those that you believe in, and go and create some more magic. If you enjoy reading these blogs, or know someone who would, I'd love you to subscribe to my newsletter above and be part of the next chapter as it unfolds.  We come into this world having chosen it so
And in the arms of well meaning people we grow Even without ill intent or deceit It is as strangers our adult we meet For in their well meaning Our family and friends Push more and more upon us It has no end And so as adults we ask Who am I, this mask? Under it is the person I should ask For I came into this world with an intention I know If I follow my bliss I will see it grow Seek only to feel good In every event And in it You will see your life of intent As you become more of who you were born to be You will look back on those earlier times and see That each were doing the best they could From that limited place that we all have stood Wrapped in so many layers of doubt Our young souls screaming to get out In life if we revel in how imperfect we are Those are the lessons that will take us far As we find our way back to who And from where, came our energy You will find that person you were born to be Please see that you are so much and more Destiny is knocking at your door Go forth through the years And explore who you are For that is the person With whom you can go far Always and forever know Only you can make it so |
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