Slowing Down

This weekend, I’m taking time to just be.

No work (I’m scheduling this post in advance), nothing to do.

Just listening, noticing what I might have missed while I’ve been in GO mode.

Watch this space.

Mini Temporary Thoughts

The thoughts that stop us from taking action are just mini, temporary thoughts.

They’re not our true thoughts. They’re not what we want the MOST.

They’re just temporary – and the more we remind ourselves of that, the less power they have.

How I Healed My Chronic Shoulder and Back Pain

For the last 18 months, I’ve been suffering from what I thought was a shoulder/neck/back injury.

It turns out, it was something entirely different.

In early 2020, I injured my shoulder doing my 100 push ups challenge.  Essentially, I just pushed myself too hard in one of my training sessions and spent a week in a lot of pain. I took time off my work to heal and thought it would be over after a couple of weeks of healing.

However, nearly every day since then, I’ve had pain in my shoulder. After about 6 months, it started spreading to my neck and back too.

I stopped doing anything that could aggravate it. Dancing, swimming, rock climbing, lifting things, using my laptop (switched to a desktop), sleeping on my side, even chopping up hard food with a knife.

I saw four different physiotherapists and two doctors. Everyone said it was my posture and work-from-home working conditions.

So I bought a fancy electric sitting/standing desk, and a specially-formulated chair. I had a physiotherapist come to my house to measure my body and create the perfect ergonomic working conditions.

One slightly uncomfortable movement could have me lying on my back in pain for hours, and there were certain activities (sitting, sleeping, and working on my computer) that tended to induce pain.

Fast forward to May 2021. I got an Xray (about 15 different photos) and a shoulder ultrasound, to check if there was anything going on.

Not only did the results come back normal – the physiotherapist told me they were some of the best scans she’d ever seen.

And yet I was in chronic pain that had me lying on the floor in between all of my coaching calls.

Then someone mentioned the words “Dr. Sarno and the mind-body connection.”

I listened to the audiobook version of his book Healing Back Pain, and watched his documentary, All The Rage.

Within days, without doing anything other than consuming knowledge, my pain was reduced to about 20% of what it was before.

Just from learning.

And now I have barely any shoulder, neck or back pain at all.

The book and documentary explain the theory that the mind instructs the brain to create real physical pain in order to distract the person from facing the emotional pain they are truly facing.

At first, I thought “but I’m not in any emotional pain.” Well, yes, that’s the point. Because my brain had been using physical pain to cover up my emotional pain.

It turns out, that at the beginning of 2020 when I injured myself doing push ups, the actual injury healed quickly. What remained, was a conditioned pathway of pain, a convenient place for my brain to target as a distraction from my emotional pain.

When I started doing physiotherapy and my shoulder started feeling better, my back and neck started to cause me incredible pain, for seemingly no reason.

Because the pain wasn’t related to something physical. It was my brain finding places to create pain, in order to avoid dealing with the true emotional pain I was feeling.

“Patients often report pain in a new location as the old one gets better. It is as though the brain is unwilling to give up this convenient strategy for diverting attention away from the realm of the emotions.”
― John E. Sarno, Healing Back Pain: The Mind-Body Connection

Just to be clear, the pain I was experiencing was totally real. It wasn’t “in my head”. The only thing that is different about TMS is that the pain wasn’t being triggered by something physical like an injury, it was being triggered by my mental/emotional experience.

“Chronic physical pain can sometimes be the result of emotional tension. We can feel measurable, quantifiable pain throughout our bodies, he writes, in response not to injury but to emotional distress. And our minds create this pain (often by depriving certain body parts of oxygen) in order to distract ourselves from these “unacceptable” emotions, such as anxiety, anger, and fear. When unaddressed or repressed, he says, these emotions can essentially be churned subconsciously through the body to emerge elsewhere as physical pain. Unaddressed rage, for instance, can become back pain (or neck pain, or pain anywhere). “Unconsciously,” he writes, “we would rather have a physical pain than acknowledge any kind of emotional turmoil.”

One of the clearest examples I have is my friend Emily’s birthday. We all met at a nature reserve, walked around, sat in the cafe, and I had no pain at all the entire day. The moment I got home and turned on my computer, I remembered I had a task to do that was going to be incredibly emotionally uncomfortable to deal with.

BAM. Instant tension headache and back pain.

I had to spend the next hour in bed with a hot water bottle and painkillers. It came on so suddenly, and because I had just read Dr. Sarno’s book, it was abundantly clear what had happened: my brain created physical pain to avoid dealing with the emotional pain.

And it worked.

So you might be wondering, were the unconscious emotions I was repressing?

Anxiety, stress, and grief.

While I won’t go into too much detail, currently (and for the past few years) I have a loved one who is very unwell and is getting progressively sicker. I have also been working non-stop without a vacation or holiday for almost two years (I LOVE my work as a coach and that’s why it never even really realized I wasn’t taking breaks. Plus, as we all know, the pandemic kind of put a stop to vacations). I also had a terrifying experience with an earthquake a few years ago, that gets reignited every time I feel another small quake.

My mind has been holding onto a LOT of emotion, and clearly didn’t feel it was safe for me to process it.

So instead, it induced chronic pain.

That’s TMS.

The beautiful thing about TMS, is that once you diagnose it, it’s a quick path to recovery.

I AM SO GRATEFUL!

A Simple Tool To Overcome Procrastination

You know that thing on your to-do list you’ve been meaning to do for ages, but you just keep putting it off?

99% of the time, it’s because of this one thing:

The items on your to-do list aren’t actually actions – they’re end results.

TO DO:

Generate leads

Write book

Do livestream

Your brain is confused. “What does that even mean bro?”

Right now, as you’re sitting on the couch scrolling through Tiger King memes, “Generate leads” sounds about as doable as “Fly rocket to Mars.”

Your brain needs you to translate “Generate leads” or “Write book” or “Do livestream” into something it can actually DO.

• Instead of “Generate leads”
  > “Write “lawn mowing services” on a Word doc, print it off, walk to supermarket, pin up on bulletin board with my phone number attached.”

• Instead of “Write book”

  > “Open notes app on phone. Write a bullet point list of the main sequence of events.”

• Instead of “Do livestream”
  > “Brush hair, choose a quote I like, log onto Facebook, press “go live”, add a puppy dog filter, and talk about what the quote means to me – just for 30 seconds.”

Give your brain something it already knows how to do.

Tiny, bite-sized, could-do-it-in-your-sleep, action steps.

Make it doable

My June 2021 Goals

Usually I have mostly business-related goals, but this month I’m feeling the pull to focus on my health and relationships. I've healed my shoulder (whaaaat?! More on this soon!) so it feels like a great time to get back into some more rigorous health routines.

1. Do a cardio workout at least 4x a week
   I was doing cardio before, but kind of being cautious and holding back. Now that I know I’m safe to exercise, I’m excited to just go for it! I track my satisfaction across different life arenas, and my health arena has been steadily climbing. My goal is to get from a 7/10 to an 8/10 in the health arena this month.

2. Join a dance class with Daniel
   We just signed up to Lindy Hop Swing Dancing classes (1940s/1950s style) and some of our friends are coming too. I’ve done it once before and it’s a real workout!

3. Actively revisit the Ultimate Relationship Program
   Some of you may recall that I was doing this Tony Robbins relationship program with Daniel. It’s super comprehensive and definitely not a “10-day program” as it’s suggested to be. I’d recommend spending at least 3 months on it! So now we’re going to revisit the next level of teachings and content. We just celebrated our 6 year anniversary in May, and we’re ready to dive back in!

4. Double my emergency fund
   I was leaving this goal for the end of the year in my planning, but it looks like I’m ahead of schedule. Does anyone else get major satisfaction from building an emergency fund? (I’ve watched a LOT of Dave Ramsey videos haha).

What are your June goals? Comment below or write your own post for us to get inspired!

May 2021 Goals Review

Five months into 2021. How can that be REAL? Here’s my rundown of my May Goals:

1. Complete the back healing work by Dr Sarno
   DONE. I’ve finished reading (listening) to his book on audible, and I have to say, May has been the month with the least back/neck/shoulder pain that I’ve had in the last year and a half. I’m OVER THE MOON! I’m also doing 21 day e-book program by another author, who put it together through the teachings of Dr Sarno. I’m going to do a proper review/talk about my back pain, but for now – if you have any type of chronic pain at all, READ OR WATCH SOMETHING BY DR SARNO! I mean it when I say it’s life-changing.
   

2. Mindset journal every day in May
   INCOMPLETE. Some days I did this in my journal, some days in my phone, but there were a few days I didn’t do. I realise it was because I wasn’t checking in with my goal list for May enough, to stay on track. I let myself off the hook too easily. However, I can say that daily, I still thought about the question, “Who do I need to BE to create the result I want?”
   

3. Implement steps to make my daily work tasks more effortless
   DONE. I changed some of the privacy settings on my social media accounts so that I’m not receiving as many spam messages, which is really helping me stay on task. I’ve also been repurposing my blog content and social media posts to create new ones, and that makes the “show up every day” motto that I live by a lot more effortless. Additionally, today I started getting up at 6am to write and create content to make the rest of my day more effortless (hey, it’s May 31st, it still counts towards this goal!).
   

4. Start tap dancing (excited about this one because I danced for 13 years as a kid!)
   DONE. I’ve been to four classes and I’m loving being back. I joined an advanced class and discovered that while I know how to do all of the steps, the challenge has been to re-train my brain to learn choreography as quickly as it’s being taught! I posted my life assessment categories the other day, and the satisfaction in my “hobbies” category has increased because I joined tap. In June, I’ve signed up to do Lindy Hop Swing Dancing and a dance fitness class too. I’m excited to get back into dancing in a big way!

Did you hit your May Goals? Let me know in the comments!

Discipline is Choosing Between These Two Things

Discipline is choosing between what you want now, and what you want most. – Abraham Lincoln

I heard this quote and immediately knew it was going to stick in my head.

Choosing what we want MOST over what we want NOW is one of the biggest keys to success.

Doing the thing we said we’d do, not the thing we feel like doing in the moment is how we get what we want – it’s how we hit all of our goals.

What I want most, is to give more value to my audience on Facebook and Instagram. But what I want now, is to avoid writing, thinking and putting my work out into the world.

So I’ve given myself a challenge this week: I’m going to create/write/work at 6am every morning, before I start my coaching calls around 8 or 9am.

The goal is to wake up, write, publish, and then start my day from there.

Getting the essential work done first.

Wish me discipline!

Balancing Masculine & Feminine Goal-Getting Strategies

Balance isn’t always 50/50.

Balance is whatever makes you FEEL balanced.

For me, 90% masculine strategy, 10% feminine strategy is my perfect balance.

I’m GO GO GO, no BS, have a simple plan, take action, attack.

I thrive on that, 90% of my day.

And then I’ll balance it out with 10% being, allowing, flowing, letting what will be, be.

That part is important too.

But I feel my best when I’m in “unleash the beast” mode for most of my day.

That doesn’t mean my way is the only way to hit your goals. I’ve got clients who are crushing the game and they’re the most “allowing, come what may, let it be, be patient and manifest it from the universe” people ever.

You might find 60/40 is optimal. Or 20/80.

Excellent goal-getting doesn’t require you to find equal balance.

It just requires you to function at your personal optimum.

Let me know in the comments – what is your optimal masculine/feminine percentage?

The Simple, Easy, Ugly, Random Challenge

"If it’s not complicated and difficult and pretty and consistent then I can’t post it."

I just got off the phone with a client who said this to me.

And I had to immediately write it down.

Because I think SO many people have this thought about social media.

We want eveeeerything to be perfect from the get-go.

And it PARALYSES us.

What if instead, creating content could be simple and easy and ugly and random?

If you've been avoiding posting about your project, business or passion, I challenge you to just post something simple and easy and ugly and random today.

Because it’s SO much better than posting nothing at all.

#SimpleEasyUglyRandomChallenge

Need Goal Inspo?

Here is a list of all the impossible goals my clients are currently pursuing.

1. Getting a book published with the world’s biggest publisher

2. Falling in love/finding a relationship

3. Becoming a full-time copywriter

4. Creating a full-time income as a coach for dog parents

5. Editing the first draft of their novel

6. Taking a business from side hustle to full time

7. Landing $1000 projects in their design business

8. Starting an online media publication

9. Selling their photography prints in galleries

10. Hiring employees for the first time

11. Getting influencer collaborations with 5-star hotels

12. Starting a personal styling company

13. Creating 5 new clients

14. Raising funding for their monopoly-style board game

15. Launching a membership site for learning german philosophy

16. Getting famous speakers on their podcast

Your impossible goal can be ANYTHING.

You just have to commit to it