Today, I was invited to be a co-host on the motivational morning Roast n Toast group zoom with the radiant Andi Lewis and brilliant Dave Scholes.
Every week I have had the pleasure of listening to inspiring and authentic people sharing their thoughts and messages from the heart.
This week, it was my turn to share and so I chose one of my favourite subjects and core values as the topic…Transformation & Growth.
I had that famous combination of both excitement and nerves. What comforted me the most was knowing how many awesome and supportive people are in our amazing group.
So what actually is transformation?!
Well, in my experience and from my understanding, it is a change in form, from the inside out and it will only occur when we are really ready for it.
Often times, I would say that it can spark from a catalyst, some sort of life experience, even a tragedy that shakes things up for us at a deep level. It can also emerge from the pain of living or thinking a certain way and a need to heal or change this.
Deep transformation is made up of many, many shifts and changes, some big, some small, everything is intertwined It’s a thought, feeling and behavioural based experience that involves the mind, body and soul.
It’s also a progressive journey, we have to think it and feel it, so that means changing the thoughts and changing the feelings whilst taking the action; on the job learning. We can’t just theorise about transformation, it requires significant implementation.
I think transformation (as well as love) is actually the point of our existence, it is why we are here.
The world around us is always responding to our vibration and by vibration, I mean the energetic combination of our thoughts, beliefs, feelings and emotions from our conscious, subconscious and unconscious.
When we make shifts and changes on the inside, it reflects and becomes apparent in our external reality whether that is in our work or businesses, in finding or exploring our purpose and passion, in the quality of our relationships, how we live and what we radiate authentically.
In the natural world, the perfect example we have of transformation is the caterpillar transforming into a butterfly, which really is a marvel isn’t it! It’s not just a slight change but an absolute recreation!
I am not suggesting for a minute that we need to completely recreate ourselves but we probably do need to integrate all parts of ourselves. Our capacity for transformation is real and exciting! It can also often be painful! Darn it! That’s the big catch! It stops some in their tracks.
To reach any kind of breakthrough often requires some level of break-down. I am not referring to a complete nervous breakdown (although that is the path for some people) but there has to be some kind of dissolving, releasing, crumbling, decaying as a necessary part of transformation. It’s the cycle of death and re-birth.
When we want to invite new ways of being, new patterns of thinking, new habits, new perspectives, new beliefs, then in order to make this happen effectively, we have to let the old ways crumble and fall down. Sometimes it can be very hard for us to let go of the old patterns but holding onto them would be like trying to build on rocky foundations.
So, we take all the learning that we can from old patterns but we don’t activate them in the same way anymore, we mould it into something new and we re-write the next chapter of our story.
Contrast is also very helpful but we often don’t see that, we can tend not to like contrast but how would we know what we DO want for ourselves if we hadn’t experienced the opposite?
To find out who we DO want to become requires knowing very well and being very familiar with who and how we no longer wish to be. We have to know what needs to be released, what we are tired of and what thoughts, stories and beliefs don’t serve us anymore.
In order for the caterpillar to transform, it actually turns into a gloopy sticky liquid mess before it evolves into a butterfly. I am sure many of us can relate to that at times!
There is often pain & struggle in the necessary dissolving of the old, in preparation for lightness and flight and the magic!
This is what growth is about. We are not really growing when we are sitting in the comfort zone permanently and that can look very different for everybody.
I have been releasing my own old patterns, stories and limiting beliefs for the past couple of years, rest assured, I had a lot of work to do!
I have transformed my relationship with myself and in doing so, I have been able to transform my relationships with my family, with painful emotions and with anxiety, with control, insecurity, food and weight, with alcohol, money, with confidence and self-worth and with my belief system and spirituality.
Like everyone, I am still work in progress because we are constantly evolving and that is a great thing! It can take time to change deeply ingrained patterns but it is doable step by step.
My work background was in training and business development and I was already a qualified coach, but I had a quest for understanding how true transformation occurs so that I could heal myself and my pain.
My real path of self-discovery began when I chose a ‘word of the year’ two years ago and followed it like it was the answer to everything….and it was for me…..that word was Energy!
I learned everything I could about how energy worked in the mind and body, anything I felt drawn to, even if I could not explain why! I went with and followed my own energy as an indication that my intuition was guiding me.
I would recommend having a word or a mantra of the year that is aligned with your values and brings purpose and meaning to your path…if that floats your boat.
I explored, researched and studied anything connected to energy, that included psychology, psychotherapy, how the brain works, how the mind works, the energy of emotions, meditation, mindfulness, yoga, the ego states, conscious, subconcious, the unconscious, mind body connections, alternative healing, metaphysics, astrology, moonology, kinesiology, tarot, the gut brain connection, the law of vibration and the law of attraction, chakra energy centres, shadow work and all sorts of scientific and spiritual teachings! Wow, I hadn’t realised how much I had consumed because I really enjoyed it all. My mentor tells me that I have been guilty of not acknowledging my own achievements so I was pleasantly surprised to read and share that.
All in all, I found that the underlying key to it all for me, was in working with and understanding emotional energy and in particular integrating what lurks in our shadows. When I refer to the shadow, I mean the parts of ourselves that we have denied, disowned, rejected, supressed and repressed. There is gold hidden here for all of us to tap into!
I started weaving some of these techniques into my coaching which I was doing through my job and on a very part-time basis and found the results to be powerful.
I knew I was on my true path to the point where people would come to me from nowhere and I knew there was a bigger energy at play. Destiny!
It became impossible for me not to follow it with my whole heart but that was mixed with fear of the unknown on so many levels.
I was offered an extended 3 year contract with my amazing, well paid job where I worked with fantastic people but instead of saying yes, I handed my notice in and left at the end of September 2019. I can tell you my decision did not make a lot of sense to many people…least of all my husband!
It was scary, and it came with its own challenges and showed that I had even more growth to go through…..and then a few months later obviously covid hit and I thought it was game over, until I adapted.
I am so happy that I trusted my intuition and chose faith over fear and did the work, because now I am blessed to say I have built a unique and thriving coaching practice and very much hope this continues.
I have a knowing that there is some more to come for me and I don’t know what that looks like yet and who knows how things will change or evolve! None of us can be sure just how things will unfold but I take each day/week/month as it comes and I feel immensely privileged to do this work and help people.
My point of sharing this is not to blow my own trumpet but to show that ultimately, this journey stemmed from a desire to heal my own pain, to find the answers. To start to mend this wound, a wound of deep-seated insecurity that permeated my life in so many ways.
What I considered to be my greatest pain, my weakness or point of struggle has been transformed into my purpose.
The law of attraction (also known as the law of mirroring) says that the universe will present us with people and situations to reflect back to us what requires healing within ourselves.
Mostly we will see the true real glimpses of this when we are triggered or when we are under stress, this is where the shadow part of ourselves can no longer be hidden, it spills out.
All our relationships are key for sharing this, they hold up a mirror for us to see what requires healing or harmonising within ourselves.
Often what our ego deems as the ‘negative’ stuff in our lives is actually an invitation for growth and to really understand what messages we are getting so that we can turn the challenges into opportunities and our weaknesses and pain into superpowers.
We are way more powerful than we can even comprehend! The answers for transformation are within our emotional energy.
It is very common for us to misread emotions, that’s not our fault, we generally haven’t been trained to work with them or fully understand them. We also don’t like many of them! So we use all sorts of avoidance strategies to protect us from actually feeling our emotions and we have thinking brains that get involved and take-over.
But working with emotional energy is a gift for us all, to understand what is actually happening beneath the surface in ourself and others. We can all develop this skill to receive these powerful guiding messages. These messages are the keys to transformation.
Questions for you:
What challenges have you transformed into opportunities?
What struggle or pain have you transformed into a superpower?
Top 3 TIPS:
1) Notice your triggers – who and what you are triggered by, in people, situations, actions under stress: it will show you what requires healing or harmonising. See it as an opportunity for transformation.
2) Get into your body and out of your head (not off your head….that’s different!!) because our subconscious speaks through our body via the language of emotions/feelings. We need to honour and be with our emotions and get comfortable with the uncomfortable, don’t run away, just listen and tune in. You can use breathwork, meditation and stillness for this.
3) Really good questions are the answer! Get yourself a good self-enquiry process, be prepared to dig deeper and honour your fears. Be like the owl and don’t be afraid of the dark, because the shadows contain so much for us to work with. We can’t just focus on positive psychology, we have to face the dark, otherwise it’s like sprinkling confetti on a cow pat…it still stinks!
Challenge:
We transform when we can respond rather than react to things, people etc. It starts with awareness. We are human so we can’t always do this but we can certainly improve it.
Write down when you are triggered, who or what it was enabled your state to be changed?
Make a note of what that looks like and feels like – doing this in a non-judgemental way is vital!
We all react so it’s not about bashing ourselves, just be genuinely curious and intrigued so you can position yourself in more of an observational capacity. Pay attention, this is the law of mirroring in action – reflecting back to you what requires integrating from within and it is our greatest opportunity for transformation.
You are way more powerful than you know!
Good Vibes, always, Amanda G
07789911174
Lovely blogg you have here