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For many of us the arrival of the New Year marks the start of a new life cycle.
We take stock of our lives and intend to make changes.
Changes prompted by an inner knowing that we are off-course.
How are those
changes going? For the vast
majority of us, this taking stock is rather superficial. We identify our
indulgences (the ones that make us feel guilty) and we make resolutions to stop
them. In turn these resolutions are also taken superficially and dropped
as soon as we can forget them!
This year my wish is that we
start living exactly how we want to live; that we take active steps to stop
doing those things that do not work for us, which do not feel good for us or
which we do solely to please others. Although this may sound selfish, in
effect it is not. A fact of life is that you can only pass onto others
that which you possess yourself. -- So if you are miserable and depressed that
is what you will be capable of passing on. Alternatively, if you are happy
and fulfilled, then these will be the qualities that people will be able to
imbibe from you.
Let this year be the year of You.
Remember that by giving yourself permission to be who you really are, you are
likewise empowering everyone to shine as they are. When your world is
working for you, you will likewise empower others to make the world to work for
everyone. Take time to look at your life
and time to visualise how you would like to live it. What are your dreams?
As you get clear about your vision, start the movement towards it. Don't
procrastinate. If you find that stuff comes up that stops you moving, start
dealing with it, or ask for help if that is what you need. Just don’t
give in or delay or avoid. This is your year and you deserve it.
Life needs to be fully lived
every second of every day; life is all too short and is just too precious to
waste.
Stress
and overwhelm – Awaken, there is a different way to live your life
Do
you make a living or do you make a dying?
In response to the growing number of clients that I see manifesting
a very modern condition of stress and overwhelm in their lives, I have
cobbled together the following commentary.
Forgive me for providing an intellectual narrative, I have written
this in the hope that it is causal in getting at least one person to
change themselves for the better.
Our
culture has got itself into quite a bind… and as a Life Coach I enjoy
clearly showing people, one-at-a-time, that there really is a different
way to live your life. A way
that is better for you, your family and all peoples.
We've
turned our personal shortcomings into a disease. Individualism has
generated chronic self-indulgence and hugely inflated aspirations to
happiness while sapping our will to overcome adversity. Past generations
had much worse to deal with, but showed stoicism, forbearance and
fortitude. Chimney sweeps and match girls had no time to worry about
stress; they were too concerned about where their next meal was coming
from. While parents once buried their tiny children in droves and suffered
pestilence, war and poverty with a cheerful smile, we are running to the
therapist's couch over the smallest setback. It can all be boiled down to
"Buck up!"*
-- as a Life Coach… I do not think so!
Our
modern way of life
Information
overwhelm, constant change, unlimited options, great wealth, instant
global communication, always-on, profit-centred living is claiming its
quarry… Nature always seeks equilibrium – is the awakening of people
to the insanity of this reality nature’s gentle way of slowly bringing
the madness of our culture to a gentle stop? The stress and overwhelm that
so many people wallow in on a daily basis is a very modern set of
phenomena that urgently requires that the old-fashioned distaste for
emotion is abandoned if we are going to grasp the nature of the beast we
are dealing with. There's a real danger of an ostrich mentality, insisting
to all with depressive tendencies that what they feel is not real, they're
just unwitting victims of a gigantic cultural fraud. Rising stress and
dissatisfaction seems an inescapable consequence of the kind of rapid,
disruptive change driven by market capitalism.
It's
not that people have gone soft so much as that they are profoundly
disorientated by the ceaseless discontinuity of change. Experience becomes
utterly random and meaningless. You were doing really well in your job but
you still got fired; you thought your relationship was strong but your
partner has fallen out of love with you. Appalling images of suffering in
the world are interrupted by advertisements for car insurance: barbarism
and banality, cheek by jowl. What lies behind the escalating weight of
emotional distress is that awful struggle to make meaning, that instinct
that our lives should have a narrative and a purpose and should make some
sense.
Whereas
previous generations had a very strong grasp of the meaning of their
lives, whatever the catastrophes which befell them. Meaning inspires
resilience: if you have some explanation for what happens, it gives
strength. That's what past generations drew comfort from. It is the sheer
meaninglessness of the chaotic instability of our experiences, which
exposes us to despair. We
have no answer to "why me?"
We have no account for the suffering that is the inevitable lot of
human beings - death, disease, betrayal, frustration - other than to
employ desperate strategies to avoid them.
Inevitably,
there are many casualties many of whom turn to a life coach to catalyse
their awakening. A life coach
bestows help, not disbelief. Coaching
that can develop an account of our lives which connects with that of
others in the wake of declining religious and political narratives.
Coaching
can play a crucial role in the lives of many who manage, as Baudelaire put
it in 1845, a kind of heroism of everyday life, in which they make
themselves at home in the maelstrom of modern life. It's an achievement
all the more remarkable for the fact that it can call on few of the
markers such as extended family, community and faith upon which previous
generations relied so heavily. Perhaps as a coach I can stand-in for some
of those missing roles.
I
know that in each of you there is just as much endurance, forbearance and
cheerful determination as shown by any previous generation.
I am
interested in working with a life coach
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