​There isn't really a gentle way to write, this, so I'm just going to say it, and pre-warn you that there's a little depth to it. Ok, now that you're a little more ready, here it is. At 35, I'm now a bit over a year from outliving my Mum. And while i place my focus being able to show up more in my business and for my clients and in my relationships, what I occasionally come face to face with in my day to day experience right now, is in some ways aspects of my Mothers experience at this time in her journey, that are still linked to my experience right now in my journey. Sometimes i still am processing and learning about things that happened when i was 8 from both our perspectives, from what i think and feel and what comes up in the present. And the confronting reality of this next year for her was that, for me to now be here writing this (funny, i just wrote "righting" this), she resigned to "I can't" and physically, mentally, spiritually, she surrendered and gave in.

So now for me at 35, no matter which way i experience this from, when i feel the "i can't" or the flow on for me of "she couldn't," the challenge for me now is to re-double my commitment to go all in and step up and live and love life even more than before. Instead of the default setting behind "holy fuck the mountain is huge, I can't", the question to be asking every day now instead is "how can i each day live a life i love and abundantly be of service and joyfully make a lasting positive impact in the lives of others?" Plus "how can i create and attract more of the support and resources i need to be and do that?"

It is amazing how one tiny shift in perspective and our focus, repeated often enough starts to make such a massive difference in how our reality unfolds and will unfold going forward. I think sometimes, for all of us in this industry, called to do this work, whatever the challenge is that feels like a mountain for you, sometimes we have to remind ourselves not to get overwhelmed by the size of the mountain, but bring it back to simple, single pointed focus on HOW CAN I, in my personal life, shape things to unfold in the way i now choose going forward? How can i have an outstanding quality of health and vitality? How can i have amazing, mutually fulfilling, heart expanding, joyful, growth enhancing relationships going forward?

And in business, HOW CAN I make the most positive impact and touch as many lives as i can in ways we both love going forward? How can i be simultaneously compensated extremely well, for the massive value i provide through thick and thin, so that i have the freedom also to live a life i love? How can i be supported to grow into my brightest, biggest self along the way?  

​These are the kind of questions we need to ask ourselves instead in our moments of going "holy shit, that's a massive mountain." What about you? Are there any "I can't" or "i cant be" moments playing out in your world right now? How can you shift your shift your focus to create more of what you desire in your world this week? I would love to hear.

Happy Monday to you. Hope you have a great week.

About 10 months ago, I found myself one Tuesday morning, sitting, transfixed to the TV watching "I am Not Your Guru" on Netflix. Within about an hour of that, having just jumped online and found out i'd just missed the Sydney UPW event, i found myself writing an email to Team Tony Robbin's telling them what I thought of that movie and asking them to let me know when the next round of events were on in Australia. Immediately, getting to one of those events went onto my bucket list. Yesterday, here was my view around 4pm at the National Achievers Congress in Melbourne.

​
Peak states (beautiful states)- what they are:

A concept first made famous by Abraham Maslow in 1964, who describes peak experiences as "rare, exciting, oceanic, deeply moving, exhilarating, elevating experiences that generate an advanced form of perceiving reality, and a moment of feeling wholly and completely the true self and in alignment with our true identity [1][2].  Peak experiences can range from simple activities to intense events;[3] However, it is not necessarily about what the activity is, but the ecstatic, blissful feeling that is being experienced during it [4].


Activities that create above-mentioned strong feelings of happiness, serenity, joy, love, bliss:

The socially sanctioned ones-
Celebrations
Getting drunk
Weddings, Birth
Recreational drug use
workouts

Some additional Wellness ones:
Meditative states
Time in nature
Relaxation treatments (like Reiki and Massage)
Dance
Singing
Breathwork
Tantra

Anybody who's known me for any length of time knows that i'm a bit of a fan of the old peak states. I've always been one to run for fun, It was my Brother who first told me he could totally see me being Terrence from Yes Man one day, you will find me at ecstatic (drug and alcohol free) dance classes often, if not creating them daily for a party of 1 in my lounge-room and I'm pretty sure i'm said it in some blog before that i didn't quit tantra trainings until one day i realised i'd gone from being the quietest to being that loudest, most annoyingly ecstatic b@$ch in the room and realised the cycle was complete! Plus i might have covered just a little bit on peak states over the years in various studies of psychology. 
 
Clearly they're a bunch of fun. But why do you and your business and leadership endeavours want to know about peak states? What are the advantages of peak states for our personal and professional development? As Tony Robbins talked about a whole lot yesterday, when we more often put ourselves in beautiful (peak) states, we are more magnetic to everything we want to create and attract in life. And because we are more magnetic, we are more influential in all aspects of life...for our clients, in our relationships. The more time we spend in peak states, allowing our most authentic, heart-connected, soulful selves to shine through, the more we close the gap between the vision of the business and life we love and our embodiment of that vision every single day.

What are our most common resistances to peak states?

But as i too have been telling people for years too, because it is not our default setting as humans to exist in this state, it takes time to consciously build your ability to maintain peak states for longer and longer periods, just as it takes time to build up and strengthen your muscles at the gym. If the above states are not a frequent or natural thing for us, then our body is incapable of holding the energy of our highest potential, of our true energetic frequency for long.

For example, when I first started on my energetic wellness journey, I used to find that I’d receive a Reiki treatment, or go to a dance event, go into peak states and then, as as often the case for many people, i'd feel the come-down after. But the more i worked with and learned about energy, the more i came to understand that this was because, with each massive influx of the higher vibrational energy, it would purge my system like turning on a garden hose. The stagnant water in there has to go somewhere once the pressure of all the new water flowing into it starts to take effect. So while it can be easy to go, oh well "i felt like crap after that, so i wont do it again", I can assure you that it gets better and easier the clearer you get in your connection to true self and the more familiar your energy system gets (eg strengthening your energetic muscles) with running and holding your highest potential within your body. 


One can also choose to see the training period is an annoyance or see it as the gift that it is, in that it shows us that there is a better state we could be existing in than the one we had often been in by default up until that point.  

As Tony mentioned yesterday, 3 of the key reasons we suffer in life relate to either our fear of losing something, our fear of having less of something or our fear of never having or being something (again.) Thus one of the other things we struggle with about peak states is letting go of our attachment to and expectations about maintaining the state and how that should look.  Yes the nature of human experience is that there is a natural ebb and flow and it would be difficult to appreciate the high, without the occasional low, right? But i think it's worth mentioning as well that, for me, some of the best experiences I’ve ever had have been ones that were short lived. I only got to spend 9 years with my Mum, in this lifetime and i could be sad about that. But if i had a chance to do it all again consciously knowing i'd have 9 years with her, would i do it again? Hell yes! I'm freaking grateful i had great 9 years, some people out there only got 8 months. And there there was at least one 48hr love experience. One weekend with a guy that changed my life because, even though it was brief, I had never ever received love anything like that, ever at that. So would I take it again if it were longer? F#$% yes. Would I take it back knowing it would be short? Hell NO.

Images: From Tony Robbins at the National Achiever Congress Melbourne 2017

​What can you do if you want to start training yourself into greater and more longer lasting beautiful states?

Aside from any of the above, a few months back, I created a slighter gentler way to help us feel fully alive in ourselves, of living our passion more of the time and that is the 30 Days to a Life You Love Program. Thirty days of daily and weekly tasks designed specifically to help you live more of your passion and manifest more of your highest potential, more love, every single day, which puts you in the optimal state, the optimal energetic vibration to align with and successfully manifest your vision of the business and life you love. And you don't even have to leave the house to do it if you don't want! It literally helps you take the gap between that reality and this one and close it. While you can sign up for it any time, the next round starts the 19th June 2017. if it's something you'd like to know more about, let me know.

Until next time, have fun, take care.

References
 1- Corsini, Raymond J. (1998). Encyclopedia of Psychology. United States: John Wiley & Sons.
2- Maslow, A.H. (1964). Religions, values, and peak experiences. London: Penguin Books Limited.
3- Polyson, J. (1985). "Student's peak experiences: A written exercise.". Teaching of Psychology, 12. pp. 211–213.
5- Maslow, A. H. (1962). Toward a psychology of being. Princeton, NJ: Van Nostrand-Reinhold.

Maslow, A. H. (1962). Toward a psychology ​

​ ​All of a sudden we have two lots of DNA and the genetic memory encoded into them we've just taken on. In utero, we start to be chemically and physiologically influenced already by the biochemistry, the personality, the behavioural patterns, personal preferences and the energetic frequency of our Mothers. Plus what we can sense and perceive from our Fathers, the perhaps family in the home around us, the people and places our Mumma hangs out. Not to mention, by the frequency of the earth, the universe, and a whole bunch of spirits and energy beings, some intentionally and by agreement, and some perhaps more unconsciously. Not to mention possibly our other experiences across the various dimensions of time and space. And then we're born. And a whole new onslaught of sensory experience and learning begins, as life happens around us, people, animals, thought forms, emotions, signals, energy, electricity, wifi, beings, happen all around us and our parents direct (or in some cases perhaps neglect) the care given to us. We observe, we learn by cause and effect and the older we get, by wether our parents direct or our allow us to self reflect.

If you've ever spent lengthy amounts of time with babies and toddlers, you'll well know though that, despite all that,  there is always a wilful, very much sentient, self-aware, soulful part of us constantly spontaneously emerging though and it pushes back with force based on their developing wants, needs and desires throughout that period. 

Throughout childhood, as we grow, depending on whether our parents approved or didn't approve of any particular emerging part of that and behaviour we carried out, or emotional states we exhibited, acknowledged, or didn't acknowledge, we started to develop an identity, an ego construct of who we think we are and how we should operate in this world. Depending on what they approved of or didn't by praising it or scolding it, early on we may have begun to develop much of that identity as a direct reflection of our parents wants, needs, likes and dislikes. Until such time as the soul's desire to re-merge and self-validate and self-love, becomes stronger than the need for and attachment to external approval. 

And it just so happens that, over the last few centuries, a large part of that construct happens to be defined on what we do and like doing. When we talk to others about who we are, we have conversations and categorise and define ourselves based on our occupation, like "I'm a Coach, I'm an engineer, I'm an NLP Practitioner or Naturopath. The next set of questions are about what we like to do. "I love to dance", "i play golf," "I like hanging out in nature." Plus we have an ongoing dialogue and running summary of life, how things are and who we are cumulatively running in our heads the whole time. An ongoing stream of thoughts, which, if repeated often enough, become beliefs, patterns and the long standing stories that define us. All of this is brilliant. It all developed to help us survive and thrive as best we can in the world.  And we need to understand how this works in order to effectively work with and communicate with and relate with others in this time in history. So let's not throw all of that off the wagon.

But, take away all of that for a moment, and what else happens? Turn the mind down for a second and who are we? We don't cease to exist. We start to exist, in the present moment in a whole other way. A way in which we simply sense the world around us and again, either we sense the ongoing impact of all of that above playing out in our body chemistry and emotional body. and there is the possibility of, with our soul's eyes, seeing the world. And, as we just sit and be (and you'll speed this up if you sit in nature) the clarity of that soulful clean state and energetic state come back into play. Especially when we intend to bring this part of ourselves back to the forefront.


So to me, i think authenticity is about allowing ultimately the reintegration of the whole and creating space for the clarity of that to re-emerge. While it may, for a time, at times, involve separating or differentiating where we end and another begins, it's not about hurling off the part of ourselves we inherited or constructed in this lifetime as "bad." They're all a part of the multi-faceted being we have become in this lifetime and they will continue to inform our experience going forward. But authenticity i think ultimately is about allowing the whole to work together and coming into perhaps allowing the soul to inform the whole, so that we can have the experiences that we're here to have, bring through the amazing creations and innovations we are here to create. Not to mention have the beautiful experiences we are here to have with others, just by being present in each moment, not just with ourselves, but in witness and in connection with the beautiful people who emerge in front of us at any given time.

Not just as an accumulation of the identity and their doing-ness that they present with before us, which is part of it. But there's also another incredible level of experience to be had when we sit with another, intend to realign with our soul and our innate, soulful energetic signature of all we are and will be beyond what our mind believes we are and relate from that place. It's breathtaking and a privilege that so many of us in this life time only experience looking into the eyes of a beloved. Or maybe our nearest and dearest. And with good reason...you're stark naked vulnerable when you look at another from that place, and that's scary and your stuff can come up and clear very quickly in that place. But it's also where we're most powerful. Not to mention the place from which we have the power to make the greatest difference. Not by having to do anything huge. Just by being, simply, authentic, amazing, us. And letting the rest unfold.

There's this interesting discussion that i've often had with clients and friends over the years in reflecting upon what in particular drew them to either wanting to work together or us to each other. And it often goes a bit like this. "I was drawn to you because of your strength. You're really strong in your masculine, but not too strong, like those women who've basically turned into a man in their job to meet the other men." Then yet others these days will hug me or endeavour to get a sense of me and remark about how gentle my heart and my energy is. I've often thought in response, it certainly wasn't an easy journey i, or anyone, goes on to be able to hold both polarities of myself, the "masculine" and the "feminine" traits.  Which is why when people have said i want to learn to be both i've often joked that you sure as hell don't want to have to go through what i've been through to LEARN to be both!

In terms of the strength side, yes, there is a certain strength we as people and we as women only find in the arms of adversity, in those moments where we our conviction and commitment to what we love the most and believe to be so is tested, where we either sink or swim, fight, flee or freeze. But here's the thing. It doesn't have to be huge crisis moments of adversity you face that "make you" and re-align you with what you love and care about the most though. What we fear and the magnitude of that, is different for everyone and the intensity of it is relative to their frame of reference and what they've been through in life. Not to mention, the relative to the depth of our love and how much we care. Therefore, i would now say to anyone who wants to develop this same kind of strength, don't wait to manifest a crisis, turn inwards and face not just what you love, but what you fear the most. Learn how to be present with what you fear, to feel everything that you feel in those moments and then make a conscious choice what your next move is.

Otherwise that thing that we fear, whatever it is tends to run our lives and choices. We start making our decisions (wether consciously or not) based on avoiding that one thing and the potential consequences of that one thing. And wether consciously or not, we attract people and experiences which reflect back to us that one thing. But also even the beautiful people around us might behave differently towards us than we see them behave towards others if this one thing we're avoiding experiencing is blocking them from being able to be all of themselves around or for us. Or us from seeing them as anything other than the projection of what we fear.

So to be able to claim our own strength and show up as everything we're here to be, to show up as and for love, and claim the experiences we're here to have, we have to face up to the demon/s within in and without. For women, so often this is conflict or our fear of the intensity of our own anger. We don't ever want to become the perpetrator and so we run from facing the wild part of us that could lose it's shit and do and say things we would legitimately regret doing. Yet until we, either in real life or some therapeutic space, have the experience of standing there face to face with some real or imagined "perpetrator", fully feeling our wild anger and fear bubble and swell up inside of us, to learn how to master the experience of it, the more we push it down, switch it off and try and be nice, the more we've given our power away to that thing or person we fear and the less able we are to show up as all of ourself. Because we're too busy trying to suppress and deny this one part and keep everything nice.

Literally all of us have a fierce side that, if we just owned it, trust me, no one wants to fuck with, like, ever! But we've got to own it and learn how to wield it. So that we can then feel safe for more of our gentleness, softness, our love and vulnerability to shine through. Not to mention, for the masculine part of us to feel like "he" (we) are "safe" to be around. For all of us, no matter what gender, for our feminine to flow, and for us to be able to claim what has truly showed up for us to claim, we have to be able to stand there with the strength of Mumma wolf and say "this is mine", and if we had to, not be afraid to grit our teeth and snarl a little to hold our ground on the opportunity or experience our soul knows to be ours. Also to have the strength to swallow our pride, step back and humbly downward dog bow to our adversary every once in a while too, for when we, for whatever reason, need to.

Once we've faced that fear, we can stand with conviction in our yes, our no, our maybe's, hold to our boundaries. And show up in our authentic self at the same time. That too is a part of what separate us from being a Follower into being a confident Leader, who leads from love, with love, in all that we're here to do and be.

If you need some support with integrating this part of your journey, sing out. I'm here for you.

​Until next time, have fun, take care.