Identity

We have many Identities, the question is, are they ones we would choose to have?

Two descriptions of ‘identity’ in the dictionary are “the condition of being oneself and not another” and “character as to who a person is”.

We take on our identities at an early age, some of which serve us well and others not. They come from how we are taught to be in our environment, the behaviours we are to display, the skills we develop to get what we want, the beliefs and values that form from this and others around us we look up to. We don’t really get much choice in this when we are very young, as what we do, who we hang out with, where we go and the things we experience are pretty much governed by our parents and carers. So as these are the things that create our Identity, we can end up having identities we may not have chosen.
Examples of this are things like being told “You’re the clever one / the naughty one / the awkward one / the pretty one… “ and the list is endless. You may think some of these positive ones are ok, however in later life trying to live up to our identities at all times can become tough.

When we grow up we continue to ‘live out’ these identities and over time they become so part of us that we think they are who we are. D for Dare to believe you are not who you think you are explains that when we are living unconsciously we go about half asleep on auto-pilot and literally just ‘act out’ our identity as the norm.

When we begin to wake up and live more consciously, we begin to see some changes we would choose to make. There is a danger here though. The personal development industry is great at helping you to believe that you need to be different and has all the answers to help you change your behaviours, beliefs, values and all sorts and to ‘be’ someone else. I spent many years and many thousands of pounds trying to do this and some of what I did was helpful to some degree and other things just a plain waste of money. The biggest issue as I see it now is that the personal development industry comes from the place of wanting you to think you are not ok as you are and that you need fixing before you can feel good about yourself.

I now know differently. We are all perfect as we are. We do not need fixing. We do, however, need to wake up and be reminded of who we really are, and that is about helping us to see who we are when the identities we wouldn’t choose to have are moved away.

A model I was taught on my NLP (neuro linguistic programming) Master Practitioner course, created by Robert Dilts, helps to explain this.

The diagram shows that there are six levels in the pyramid. From the bottom up we can see how we are born into an environment that influences our behaviours, that in turn develops our skills and capabilities which inform our beliefs and values, and then these form our identity. With that identity we continue through life living it out as we have been ‘taught’ and thinking it is who we are.

With personal development we then begin to work on some of these levels such as beliefs and values, however the problem here is that it cannot make the difference we are looking for if we still live out the identity we believe is ours. The real change comes when we look at and consciously choose our identities. When we do that, the levels below fall like dominoes and we influence our beliefs, values and the rest from a place of choosing who we are. We can only do this when we are living at a higher state of consciousness, which is the sixth level (‘spirit’ in the diagram) and connect to the higher energy or Universe as discussed in H for Heart.

This is the most powerful tool I know to give us choice and allow us to be who we really are.

With love and gratitude

Nadine.

Joy

Pure joy. The ultimate feel good feeling for me, and one which I know I cannot reach unless I am wide awake and living life consciously. In fact the higher my consciousness, the higher the joy I am able to feel.

When I talk about a higher consciousness I am referring to the fact that when I am living consciously I see things with a different perspective, like wearing different glasses that let me see the things I couldn’t see before. There is a fabulous quote that sums this up:

“When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change”. 

In fact changing our perspective is really the only way we have any control of situations that we may wish to change, but have no influence to do so physically. So if I can’t change ‘what is’, I change my attitude toward it instead. Soon that new perspective becomes the new ‘norm’ and from that place I can continue to raise my consciousness and experience even greater control over my world.

With each new level of consciousness, new things appear in my life that I just didn’t see or appreciate for what they were before. It’s like riding up a floor in an elevator and each time the door opens new opportunities present themselves, and the level of joy I feel elevates too.

With love and gratitude

Nadine.

Kindness

“Be kind whenever possible. It is always possible” The Dalai Lama

When living half asleep, from the pre-programmed patterns of our sub-conscious, it is all too easy to slip into the culture all too prevalent in our society which is to put others down in order that we may feel better about ourselves. There is so much of it around and it leads to the thinking that we have to win all the time, beat others in competition, gossip about others, be right and have the last say in order to feel good, or even just ok about ourselves.

While that may make us feel good at the time it certainly doesn’t make us feel proud. Kindness however does make us feel good and proud. The bizarre thing is that it is also much easier to do than pushing and struggling all the time to be right or first.

The key to be able to be truly kind to others, to lift others up and make them feel good about themselves is so much easier when you feel lifted too and when you don’t feel the need to compare yourself with others.

We seem to always be comparing. Whether it’s about the material things people have, the relationships, the health (or illness), the lifestyle (or challenges) and even how people portray themselves on social media, the first instinctive reaction seems to be about how that makes us feel in comparison. The only reason we do this comparing is because we are not yet fully ok with who we are. We feel we need to be ‘better’ in terms of all kinds of things, and often that comes down to what I call the ‘success contract’ we’ve made with ourselves.

What I mean is that we have sub-consciously set up some rules that say what ‘success’ means for us, and success in this context can also be fulfilment or self love, but it’s the thing you call whatever you are striving for to be fully, absolutely, unconditionally happy and in love with you. When you reach that point there really is no need or desire to do this comparing thing with absolutely everyone and about everything.

What has to happen for you to be fully ok (if ‘in love’ is a bit too far to stretch your mind right now) with vourself? What is it that when it happens or when you have it, you know you are ‘there’?

‘There’. Where’s there? Why do we say ‘ I’ll get there one day’? Do you know where there is?

Living consciously takes you out of this internal battleground with your mind. It allows you to be ok with who you are right now, and that includes all the bits you ‘think’ you don’t like about yourself. It gives you the permission to be really kind to yourself and treat yourself in the way you would treat a loved one. In Y for Yourself First, I will talk about this some more.

Think about all the internal dialogue you say to yourself during the day. Become aware over the next few days about what you are saying to yourself and see if that would be the sort of things you would say to others you love. I found that exercise quite alarming when I did it myself.

Be kind to yourself whenever possible. It is always possible.

With love and gratitude

Nadine.

Let It Go 

L is also for Love, however having spoken about love in H for Heart and Humpty, I took the opportunity to have L for Let It Go.

‘Let it go’ was my mantra quite a few years ago now as I started my journey to conscious living. Quite simply it served me whenever I felt too attached to the outcome of things, and it was a relief to just let it go and allow whatever was meant to happen, just happen.

I must say it is definitely an easier way of living, but one that I was not conditioned to and I suspect not many others are either. Letting go is not about not caring about the outcome, but rather setting an intention or a goal, taking the actions to make it happen and putting in place all the things that are needed to succeed. Then to detach yourself, let go and simply go with the flow allowing the path you set to take its course, continuing to take action as needed but not getting stressed out with your happiness entirely dependent on the outcome.

Letting go is NOT giving up or giving in. It is simply allowing the outcome to be what it will be, and being ok with that.
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The fear of failure often pops up when letting go, as we think that if we don’t actually succeed in what we are working towards, even if it isn’t the right thing after all, then we will be ‘seen’ as failing. When living consciously we can see that failure is very much a part of living. Those that avoid it are living half asleep and dare never to do anything that would make them come alive. A great quote from Michael Jordan the basketball player sums up failure for what it really is:

“I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot, and missed. I’ve failed over and over again in my life, and that is why I succeed.”

In fact there is no failure, there is only feedback and getting back on track.

Letting go can require a lot of faith in whatever you put your trust in. With my trust firmly placed with Humpty I can be assured that if it isn’t meant to be then that’s where Devine intervention will assure that I do get back on track. So whatever happens, it will be the perfect outcome in the end.

With love and gratitude

Nadine.

Me to We 

The greatest experience of life is as a result of moving our focus from ‘Me’ to the ‘We’.

‘Me to We’ is another great saying by Richard Wilkins, founder of Broadband Consciousness, and simply means that when we do what we do for the greater good of others, we get the best rewards.

In fact it is in moving our focus to ‘we’ that we often find our purpose or message that we are here to share. Very often that message requires us to step out of our comfort zone in order to share it with the world and this can create a fear within us. If we were to stay in the ‘me’ this fear would overwhelm us and keep us small and by keeping ourselves safe the message goes nowhere.

However when we understand the impact we could have on the ‘we’ if we did get out there and share then we know we need to get our message heard. The message itself becomes greater than the fear and when this happens we move to the ‘we’.

For Richard this message is very clear. When you hear his story you will understand what almost killed him. They call it suicide, but it comes down to the little voice in our heads that convince us this is the only option we have. Richard was able to overcome that voice and is now on a mission to speak up to help others who find themselves in the same place that he was. His message (that he knows a better way) is bigger than his fear (of speaking publically) and that moves him from the ‘me’ (his fear) to the ‘we’ (helping others) – and he knows this as people have told him that his message saved them from doing it..

Whether we clearly understand our purpose or not, we will have an underlying inkling that has come from our own life experiences about what we are here to do. A great line in ‘Kung Fu Panda’ is “there are no mistakes” and for me that means everything we have experienced so far has been on purpose and is in fact perfect for the job of getting you to where you are in your life right now. Whether or not it is clear to you right now, know that your journey is unfolding as it should.

For many of us there has been setbacks, challenges and hardships amongst the happier times and they have been for the purpose of creating our experience, and it is in that experience that we find the message we need to share for the benefit of the greater good; the ‘we’.

Another one from ‘Kung Fu Panda’… “One often meets his destiny on the road he takes to avoid it”

With love and gratitude

Nadine.

Needs

We all have similar needs yet how we meet those needs differs significantly.

There are a few models that look at how we as humans progress through meeting our needs, a popular one being Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs which is well documented (google it to find out more). However, the one I tend to share more often originated with Anthony Robbins.

Robbins came up with six basic human needs that every living human on this planet has. The first two are Certainty and Variety, and essentially it says that we all need some level of certainty in our lives, whether that’s knowing we have a safe home to live, enough money to feed ourselves, certainty of a relationship or many other things in different areas of our life. This is balanced with variety so that we also have a degree of excitement and spontaneity. The degree to which these two are balanced in our own lives can change from person to person and from life area to life area, yet we need to have both needs met in some proportion.

The next two are Significance and Love & Connection. Our need to feel unique, significant and needed is very strong, and that is balanced with our need to belong and feel a part of something. Again the degree to which these two are balanced in our own lives will vary, yet both needs are to be met.

The last two are Growth and Contribution. As with any living thing, if we are not growing we are dying, and so growth of ourselves in terms of our experiences, maturity, knowledge and also consciousness is a key need. Contribution is the need to give back to others and society in some way.

All six needs are common across humans, but what differs is the way in which we strive to get them met, and they can all be met in both a positive and a negative way. For example, someone can feel very significant when they have a gun in their hand, and at the same time feel they belong to the gang that encourages that behaviour. Many people can get the significance need met through illness or they could find it by more positive means such as becoming a volunteer or getting qualifications.

Similarly the need for variety can be met by being social or going on holidays, or by infidelity and crime.

As a very quick overview these six human needs work at a sub-conscious level and how we have learnt to get them met in the past is usually a good indicator of how we react when faced with a need to get them met again.

When living consciously we become aware of what we are doing, saying and thinking to meet our own personal needs in each of these areas, and as we raise our consciousness we can choose those actions that will meet our needs and make us feel proud.

With love and gratitude

Nadine.

Ok & Not Ok 

It’s ok to be ok, and it’s ok to be not ok.

We seem to have created a society where it’s not ok to be not ok. Not every day we live is going to be great even when living consciously. Some days are going to be challenging beyond words and we can often find ourselves in the pits of our mind feeling anxious, depressed, fearful and other emotions that we wouldn’t choose. Sometimes simply trying to raise our consciousness to a level where we can choose a better feeling doesn’t get us there, so we start to think “what’s wrong with me?” “why am I flawed / useless / a failure” … and so on.

Knowing that it’s ok to be not ok allows us to just feel where we are and let it be. In L for Let It Go we spoke about easing into the flow of life as it is and letting it be, and often that really is the best strategy. Sometimes we just need to feel it through.

We know we will make it out the other end. A great quote says: “I’ve got a 100% record for getting through the bad times”. However, not all of us do. The suicide rate in the world is startling. People taking their own lives because something in their head told them it was a better option than feeling bad. They didn’t believe it was ok to be not ok. That ‘something’ will be explained in S for Script.

We are feeling beings and our emotions tell us what’s going on. If we block them we can cause a lot of dis-ease in our bodies which in turn can lead to so much ill health. Think about it, when someone we love is hurting either emotionally or physically, we want to do what we can to help them out of that pain and make them better again and happy. That is very well intentioned on our part. However, the person needs to find their own way through and in doing so release what they need to so they can find peace again. If we don’t allow them the whole experience of this and to release the cause of the pain they can end up carrying that around with them and the pain repeats. Our love and acceptance of where they are on their journey is sometimes all we need to give.

This can be a challenge for us as observers. I know as a mother that I will jump in at the first sign of distress for my son and find a way to deal with it for him. He has Autism and is non-verbal when it comes to expressing himself, especially when he is in meltdown. I have no way of telling what is causing his distress as he doesn’t say, and he doesn’t hold or point to any part of his body if it is physical. I have no option but to let him feel his way through it and trust he will find a way. Over time I have learnt to just show him my love, stay calm and let it be, and he always does find a way.

Whether it is with our children or anyone, if we show people that we are not ok when they are not ok, what message does that give and what kind of expectations are we setting for them to attempt to always live up to? There we sow the seed for them of low self-esteem and thoughts of not being good enough when they are not ok. It starts with us and being ok with being not ok ourselves and with others.

With love and gratitude

Nadine.

Pearls 

You will find more pearls when you go pearl diving.

Similarly you will find more trouble when you go looking for that too. It’s a simple case of what we set our radar on to search out in our everyday life. If we want to see the best in people we will see it, if we want to find the silver lining in a situation we will find it, and if we want to spot all the flaws in ourselves, guess what, we get to find them too.

Our energy flows where focus goes. It’s a simple law of the Universe that whatever we pay attention to will be attracted back into our lives as if we had wished for it. For those people who are always saying things like “bad things always happen to me” or “I always seem to attract trouble”, there is a simple explanation of why these statements are so correct. We attract all that we focus on.

Why do you think there is so much positive attitude training with sports people? Their coaches know that when they think about winning, when they can visualise the moment when they come first and when they repeat those thoughts and visualisations over and over again, they are training their mind to believe it is reality and that is what gives them their competitive advantage.

In our everyday lives it works exactly the same way. Think of it as a radar on the top of your head scanning the world around you for all the things it is set to find. Radar’s don’t pick up everything, only that for which they are programmed, and that programming of our personal radar is set by our expectations and our constant thinking.

Mother Theresa knew this. It is documented that when she was asked to go on a War Rally she refused. She knew that by giving thought (energy) to war it would exacerbate the situation not help it. She said “invite me on a peace rally and I will come”

Every day, in fact every moment there is ‘cause and effect’ happening. There is a reason why something happens, and what happens. Many people live at the ‘effect’ end, in other words waiting for things to be caused to happen to them. When we raise our consciousness we become the creator of what happens to us by moving to the ‘cause’ end of the equation.

In Broadband Consciousness this is known as the ‘Sausage Machine’, and it described like this.

When you put pork into a sausage machine you will get a pork sausage out.
When you put beef into a sausage machine you will get a beef sausage out.
So what do we need to put into the sausage machine to get a lamb sausage out?
Lamb! Yes.
So, using that analogy for the life we experience, what do we need to put into our sausage machine to get happiness out?
Happiness of course!.
What do we need to put in to get positivity, optimism, good luck and attract all the things we really want to experience in our life?
So why do we think that if we put ‘miserable old git’ into our sausage machine every day we will get anything other than misery out?

It’s a very simple formula that explains exactly how life works.

Whatever the situation we find ourselves in every day and moment of our lives, if we go looking for the Pearls we can be assured to find them.

With love and gratitude

Nadine.

Quiet & Questions

When we are quiet enough and still enough for long enough, we hear the answers.

Wouldn’t it be fabulous to have someone to always go to and ask about anything and everything we want to, and at any time of the day? Questions like “what is the lesson I need to learn from this situation so I can move on from it now?”

That question in particular is one I have learnt to ask over the years. I was finding myself in the same situations again and again, whether that was some ill-health, or the same relationship problems repeating, or financial challenges I often faced.

Life has this ability to put us in the best situations we need in order to learn the lessons we must be taught so we can grow and move on. When we don’t learn them, we go into a cycle of repeat until we do, and for some that cycle repeats until they run out of time!

When we are living consciously we become aware of this cycle, and understand that for every challenge we face there is a lesson being taught from which we can find an answer to our most pressing life questions.

So where do we go to find the answers.

Meditation can be the best place to go, and for some, myself included that find meditation a little challenging with my ‘busy’ mind, just going somewhere peaceful to sit, relax and allow some time to be quiet, we can learn to turn the noise off in our minds for a while and allow other thoughts to enter.

I also find that other activities such as driving alone in silence or writing in my journal or on my screen can also give me that space in time that I need to allow the answers to come to me.

Writing in particular I have found to be an amazing way to connect to my higher energy (see E for Energy) for inspiration. I can literally just put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard and like taking dictation I write the words that flow into my mind without ever pre-empting what the next word or sentence will be. This is powerful, because when you write the question you want answered at the top of the page, your give your focus and energy to it.

The key is in asking the right questions. Thinking is nothing more than the process of asking and answering questions, so to change our thinking we must change the questions we ask.

For example the question “Why do I always mess up?” will take your thoughts down the negative route of finding reasons why you mess up which isn’t going to make you feel great. However, if you can re-frame that question to “What can I learn from this mess of a situation?” takes you on a more positive route. In fact, by looking to see if we can keep improving our questions, the next one might be “What is this situation trying to tell me?” and then better still “What is the greatest outcome I could imagine to come from this situation right now?”

As your questions improve, so will the answers you get and by giving focus to the better answers your whole experience will improve and you will find the Pearls.

Ask better Questions and be Quiet enough for long enough to listen for the answers.

With love and gratitude

Nadine.

Rewards

What are the rewards for conscious living?

I mean, why bother?

Sometimes I feel that living in the land of the sub-conscious is a much easier life. Society tells you what to do, how to think, when and how to react to situations and you can be much more accepted by those around you if you just fit in. Whereas putting yourself out there and talking about Waking Up, Energy, Humpty etc can lead to a bit of isolation with your peer group, family, colleagues and all your ‘friends’ on Facebook who just think you’ve gone a bit loopy talking about all this weird stuff. The need to ‘fit in’ is a strong pull at times and it can be the one thing that stops us from living life more consciously.

However the rewards for living a conscious life are phenomenal, and if I could choose just one reward it would be remembering who I really am. Getting to know my real self again, what I really think and feel about things, how I would choose to respond to others, what it’s like to really feel love and knowing I have the ability to choose my behaviour and beliefs to serve me.

It’s a challenge to really sum it up, however ALFIE puts it this way:

AWAKEN to this human experience that we have been given. We are not on this planet to simply survive and make it to the next day. We are here to have an experience and we can only truly fulfil that when we wake up and start living life with our eyes wide open and with full awareness. It takes courage to wake up and face the amazing possibility for our lives and dare to believe we are not who we think we are.

LOVE from the heart and soul of our being, the fuel for our energy and what we seek to feel the most. When we let it free it becomes a powerful energy source for us and everyone in our path. When we come from a place of love in everything we do, all we say and in every encounter with another, we raise the vibration of our souls energy to the highest level and attract an abundance of good things back to its source; our lives.

FREEDOM to fly and to shine because we yearn for the freedom from what keeps us limited in the reality we have created. We want to be free to experience a life of possibility and unlimited opportunity, and be free to shine our light so we can see our real selves and give others a light to do the same. Darkness doesn’t go away, it just cannot be seen when we shine.

IGNITE the passion and our power to choose. We are at cause, not effect, of our reality. Igniting our flame lights up our soul and our passion to live as fully as possible, and away from our self-created boundaries, allowing the love to flow through us and being awake for the first time in our lives. Living a life with real choice in every moment makes way for an amazing journey and we get to live it.

EXPAND our consciousness, self and soul. We are all connected as one, and together we create all that is. The ultimate realisation of our purpose on earth and our journey’s fulfilment. We are energy and we cannot ever not be.

We don’t need to be fixed, we just need to be found. Remembering who we really are is the greatest reward.

With love and gratitude

Nadine.