Are the Most Loving, Courageous and Compassionate Parts of You in the Driving Seat?

Image by Yogendra Singh from Pixabay 

A couple of months back my life was sent into a tailspin and I knew that in order to level out and keep moving forwards I had to deliberately focus on things that were going to help rather than hinder me. This is really no different than everyday life, but when something dramatically different happens it’s a lot easier to notice the dynamics at play because they are more exaggerated.

When I saw renowned author, coach and speaker Tony Robbins being interviewed last week, he described this really well.  “Whether we feel pain or love depends on three things: our state, our story and our strategy”:

• State is about my focus
• Story is about the meanings I attach to things
• Strategy is about the action I take

He makes the point that these are all decisions, things that we can control, but we each tend towards patterns which can be helpful or unhelpful. When asked which of the three would give the best returns, while acknowledging all three are interconnected and changing any one will change the other two, his choice would be changing our state of being, our focus.

“People have habitual patterns of focus. For example, do you look at what you have or what’s missing? Do you look at what you can, or can’t, control? Do you focus mainly on the past, the present or the future? Clearly when you focus on what you have, what you can control and the present those are more empowering choices than the alternatives.”

That is his key point, that we each have choices. I may have subconscious patterns, but as Tony says:
“Inside of you, there are parts of you that are incredibly gracious and generous, but there is also a part that is selfish. We all have loving parts and not so loving parts, playful parts and boring parts, courageous parts and fearful parts”.

Then he said poignantly:

“The real question is not Who are you?

The real question is Which part of you is in charge right now?”

In fact, Tony firmly believes he doesn’t change people; he just gets them to put another part of themselves in charge.

So as I was facing the end of my relationship, I knew I had to be careful about which parts of myself I put in charge. Especially since an issue I’d been contemplating for a long time, re-establishing my career, suddenly became more urgent.

What I’m here to do has been a nagging question in my life for as long as I can remember. In school and going to university, choosing which subjects to study, starting my career and looking for jobs, I just couldn’t see anything that felt like the right fit.

I distinctly remember when I immigrated to New Zealand in 2006, it was the year I saw the movie The Secret which helped me awaken to the power I had within me to change my life, but I still had no clue what I was meant to be doing with my life. All I knew was that I wanted to start a family and time was ticking.

So I made the best decision I could at that point and took a job which – while it didn’t light me up in the way I wanted – gave me some security while I set up home with my now ex-partner, and we started a family.

Having finally got the family I so desired, I found that juggling that and my work life was too much, and left the field of corporate change and transformation six years ago to take a more hands-on role with my kids. Bringing up my kids (with a strong desire for them to be an authentic expression of their best self), has proven to be a personal development bootcamp for me.

As Lisa Marchiano puts it “You’re going to project your stuff on your kids. There is no way that you are going to get through any amount of time with your children and not meet those parts of yourself you cut off and sent backstage”. So as I’ve undertaken the journey to me, this question of “what comes next?” has been ever present.

There is no doubt I’ve become extremely passionate about helping others undertake their own journey. Uncovering why I subconsciously chose certain patterns of state, story and strategy – and learning to make different choices – has been revolutionary for me.

As people have contacted me over the years to ask for my advice, I realised that helping others uncover their own blocks and make positive shifts in their lives would be really fulfilling. The question on my mind has been, how? Then last year someone said to me they could see hypnosis being a good healing modality for me to learn.

I wasn’t entirely convinced about the idea of practicing hypnosis. My connotation with it goes back to some sessions I had in my early twenties. I remember the lady having a falsely soothing voice, and I can recall falling asleep during the sessions; I didn’t consider them effective.

Then, when my attention was so abruptly returned to  this notion of “what next” in my career a couple of months ago, I knew it was a pivotal point that could see me sucked back down that same old corporate road if I didn’t choose a more self loving focus.  

There are a lot of feelings to process at the ending of a relationship, I couldn’t just shove them down and soldier on regardless. So I set to work in the same way I have over the last few years as I’ve processed grief from my childhood, grief from my mother passing and uncovering the patterns of beliefs and behaviours that no longer serve my highest interests.

I knew when it came to money, I had to go wider and focus more generally on abundance and its associated energies of love, compassion, joy, connection, adventure, play, laughter, invention and imagination as I wrote about in How Is Your Ability to Connect With Abundance Right Now?

Then, this week as I looked at a Diploma in Clinical Hypnosis with renewed interest, things finally clicked into place.

On my own journey to me, as I’ve so often written about, I’ve used various techniques to uncover and heal the emotional traumas that had remained stuck within me, long after the mental, physical, emotional events that had caused the trauma had ceased to be an issue.

It suddenly occurred to me that the common factor in the various techniques I use is this act of what I call going within which involves quieting the thinking mind and going into a state of deep relaxation where it feels safe to explore past issues, in other words, what I use is self hypnosis. It was a light bulb moment!

I’d gotten stuck with a story in my head about what hypnosis was, and – while acknowledging it as a powerful modality - was not completely aligned with the idea of using it to help others until I realised it is actually my own go-to medium all along. It’s no wonder someone suggested it to me as modality to use to help others.

As Tony said, change my state, story or strategy and the results start to change, everything has lined up.

I can see now why for so much of my life I just couldn’t see what I was meant to be doing; I was lined up with problem rather than the solution. And because I can see that is so normal in our world, and that there is a growing desire for change, this presents a huge opportunity to help others who are seeking that change in themselves.

It seems fortuitous that with the launch of We Rise Up (which I suspect will become another movie of its moment), the focus has moved in the last fifteen years from using personal empowerment for personal success to a redefining of what success looks like - creating new models and structures in society that work for all people, creatures and the planet.

Where in your life are you lined up with the problem rather than the solution? What parts of you are in the driving seat? Let’s find the most loving, courageous and compassionate parts of you and put them in charge of defining and driving success in your life and watch your deepest yearnings finally be fulfilled.

​If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Normal Is Dysfunctional That Is the Growth Opportunity, Reclaim the Sweet Spot of Being in Your Element, What If The Thing You Dread Is Actually Your Dreams Trying to Unfold? Clear the Fog of Trauma to See the Magnificence of Your Being, and What’s Your Relationship with Money? … And a simple technique to improve it. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.