 Sitting down to write, I am overcome with a deep sense of vulnerability as I decide to share my personal story. I know this feeling in my body is not unlike the discomfort that clients feel entering the coaching process. I am witness to the trepidation on people’s faces and aware of the fear that arises when one agrees to change, expand, and create success. Every day I am humbled by the willingness my clients exhibit and I am grateful for the trust they place in my hands to guide them on their journey. I stand on their shoulders today, drawing strength from their bravery. It has been 14 months since I lost my husband, John Driscoll, to brain cancer. John was an amazing man, husband, and father and he spent 40 months battling glioblastoma multiforme, a horrible diagnosis of which there is no cure. For the last 15 months of John’s life, the tumor and treatments weakened him physically and caused him to lose his ability to communicate over time. I opted to leave full-time work to be his primary caretaker, his confidant, and emotional support while he worked through the physical, emotional, and spiritual experience of accepting his death. It was the most daunting, deliberate, and life changing experience I have ever had. My husband died in August 2016, at the age of 44. The experience has been challenging at best, heartbreaking at worst. Along with the shattering of hopes and dreams, I have been left to be single-parent, emotional stability for 3, and the lifeline to the legacy of the one my boys lost. And while the responsibility can easily take my breath away, my role at home is clear and my dedication to my children unwavering. The rest of my life, however, is less clear. I have struggled at times to understand myself after such a difficult experience. At times, I have been confused, struggling to understand “my place” in this new world. Everything has been forever changed; not just because of the loss, but because of the experience I had with John. Bearing witness to his death was primal and deeply spiritual. John chose to do everything he could to heal. This was ultimately a process to unfetter himself from fear and live his last few years with rigorous honesty and authenticity. John’s choice to love himself into death and to forgive himself to be with God was an honor that I can not describe….so how can I help others understand its impact on me? This interpersonal quandary has often left me feeling alone and isolated, separate and unusual. Returning to my private practice was initially difficult. However, most of my coaching clients had known me for years and everyone was very sensitive. It helped me, returning to work. I felt my purpose again. My work comes naturally to me, it is instinctive and intuitive and I love helping others. Going back to work helped me find my footing. As 2016 came to a close, I knew it was time to to expand to broader pastures. I was ready to take my work to a larger audience outside the comfort of my home community. I was excited to return to my former employer in Boston. It was a unique opportunity and it allowed me to blend my Success Coaching, the tool of EFT, and my knowledge of recruiting and sales. I had a full tool box to share and I was thrilled to be with a company that I resonated with and respected. With Hollister Staffing, I was able to expand in a way that was aligned with my strengths and capacities and could also offer me an opportunity to keep my private life relatively private. The new year rang in a considerably expanded coaching business. As I worked with new clients on their visions of success, there were times that I felt I was holding back. I knew there were examples from my own life that could assist clientele in moving past obstacles. When properly used in the coaching process, personal stories can be a useful tool to help bridge understanding and facilitate action. I was hesitating. I feared I would distract clients with my narrative. I believed my story “too much” or that “people would feel bad for me.” Looking back, I realize this was my own fear of being vulnerable. I was afraid of the empathy that could enter our conversation. What if I lost control, or more aptly, what if I lost my shit? I was running from potentially awkward moments. I was avoiding my truth. I was exiling the parts of me that caused me pain. As I looked within, I knew I was holding back for the same reasons my clients were. In order to create true success, we must be willing to accept both our strengths and our weaknesses. It is extremely beneficial in life to allow ourselves to be both challenged and excited, reaching goals and working on shortcomings, being both satisfied and unfulfilled. The beauty of embracing a “both/and” philosophy with ourselves is that it allows us to release the rigidity and judgement of dichotomous thinking. Right-versus-wrong mindset stifles growth and creativity, while a more open-minded one leads to greater inner peace and innovation. In an “aha moment,” I noticed I was stuck in my own inflexible thinking “in order to protect myself.” Because of my grief, I could not welcome the “both/and” potential that existed beyond my sorrow. I had placed my experience with John under quarantine, rigidly holding it away from my work and life. I was apprehensive to share the meaning and value that living through John’s illness provided me. I witnessed, first hand, what is important when you are dying. This knowledge is the reason for living. It is the reason why I am upright...motivated to serve each day. Becoming aware of this self-imposed limitation, I had to ask myself: Why am I so afraid to share? Aren’t these lessons and examples precisely what is needed in the coaching process? I knew there was only one way out. It was to commit to being truthful and share my experience if it would be conducive to the learning of my clients. Now, there are times when I share an anecdotal story. There are other times when I share the pain of the experience of swift, uncontrolled change that ravages your life. I tell clients that I am here to embody the truth for them that we each have the resources to get through “it.” Mostly, I share the importance of what they are doing and how commendable it is to work on yourself as there is nothing that compares to loving yourself and moving beyond your fears. What matters is to take chances and to risk authenticity because this is the one life you get..and time is not guaranteed. It has been several months since that first “aha” moment. Since that time, I have had the blessing to talk about John in a way that has helped others grow. Opening up in this way has also assisted in my own healing. I have integrated a more full self into the work I do; talking about my life, love and loss. I am embracing all aspects of myself. And so...I am both a widow and a success coach, I am both suffering and succeeding, I am both sad and I am joyful. As a result of my ability to hold all parts of myself, I am helping others do the same. To me, this is true success.
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 As the New Year approaches and you set your sights high for an abundant 2017, I ask you to consider your relationship with your goals. Are you feeling resolved in achieving them or are you resistant? In my method of coaching, this critical question helps the client and I determine how quickly and effectively they will reach their aims. When an individual is resolved, the process is filled with steady action and one is able to move along with focus and confidence. When one is resistant, they often face challenges, set-backs, self-sabotage, and inconsistency with their action steps. Because resistance plays such a big part of one’s ability to obtain success, I wanted to provide you with some tips on discovering your resolve-resistance ratio as well as provide you with an EFT Tapping Audio that can help you reduce your resistance so that 2017 will be filled with delightful manifestations of your greatness! To understand whether we are moving with determination (resolve) or blocking our efforts (resistance), we look to the mind-body-energy system for cues. Both resistance and resolve are made clear as we investigate these aspects of ourselves. The mind thinks about our goals and it is also the storehouse of our conscious and unconscious beliefs about our abilities, strengths, and weaknesses. Our energy is our emotional body; the vital place of our being where we emotionally enable our goals (by being enthusiastic and confident, for example) or we sabotage our goals (by fearing failure or feeling apprehension about our abilities). And finally, our physical body which is the instrument through which we experience the world. Our bodies are the interface between our inner landscape and our outer landscape. Our bodies respond to our thoughts and our feelings, creating chemical reactions that instigate anxiety or relaxation. Your body “tells the story” of your resistance through butterflies in your stomach, a tight chest, stiff shoulders, or a furrowed brow. Alternatively, when you are relaxed (resolved), you feel ease and flow throughout your body, translating to a flexible and composed disposition as you traverse towards your goals. By evaluating resolved versus resistant, we are asking to review all parts of ourselves. When we look to the mind-body-energy system, we can break down aspects of ourselves and see that which is either in harmony or in opposition to our goals. Any aspect of ourselves that are not aligned or supporting our goals (be it thoughts or feelings or behaviors) represent resistance in our system. Resistance will block, deter and delay us from creating all that we desire! So why not clear it??? An easy and quick way to remedy resistance is to use EFT Tapping! With my proven methodology, we set goals and then evaluate all parts of you that are resistant versus resolved by reviewing the mind-body-energy system. To help, first identify all aspects of you that are aligned with your goals! We want to highlight the strengths and capacities you have. We want to reinforce all that is serving you in your goal setting. The second part of our evaluation is to identify aspects of your sytem that might be resistant to your objectives. Here is a starter list for you to use. I hope this helps you identify what type of resistance you are holding in your system. What comes from this list will be what you clear from your system with the EFT Audio provided at the end of this blog:
Any negative responses in the mind-body-energy system are considered resistance to your goals! Being resistant does not mean you can’t reach your goals, but it does make for a challenging road! Why make it hard when it can be easy? Creating success can be joyful. Reaching goals can be focused and fun! Try being “one” with the process by releasing resistance. By letting go of your resistance, you will have greater confidence in yourself and your abilities. With less resistance and more resolve, you will feel exuberant and open. You will have faith in the accumulation of your efforts and you will feel proud of yourself! In order to help you reach your goals with ease in 2017, I have attached the following audio on RELEASING RESISTANCE. Here are my suggestions to make this audio most successful:
The time IS now for great success! Please use this audio often to help you feel the possiblities that are before you in 2017. Additionally, I am happy to help you at any time, please reach out should you want to fast track to success. Email at any time gdriscolltappingspecialist@gmail.com Happy New Year! With love, Gretchen Driscoll Success Coach & EFT Tapping Specialist www.gretchendriscoll.comaf Success Coaching & EFT Tip and Tap for Today: Releasing the "Hard Work” from Your Dreams and Success9/30/2016 I think part of what drew me to the work that I do is that I am innately curious about people. I find people and their stories intriguing and I love to listen to what others have to say. People will share a great deal if asked, and I find that word choices can be indicators of feelings and beliefs that lie outside of someone’s direct awareness. The way we describe our lives can be very telling as to what blocks us from accessing our easy and destined success. This week, there was a particular word that seemed to be in everyone’s vernacular. The word was “hard”. In the office, I noticed for several days in a row the idea that “things were hard” kept coming up. Because the theme was so evident in all of my coaching conversations, I took my “listening” the larger context of my world. WOW. “It being hard” is everywhere….all the time. Here is a quick sampling of some of the ways I heard “how hard it is”.... “Work is hard” “Weight loss is hard” “Marriage is hard” “Parenting is hard” “Reaching my goals is always hard” “It’s hard to make money” and “It’s hard to save money” and “It’s too hard to get out of debt” “Success is hard” “Life is hard” “Grief is hard” “Sales is hard” and/or “Selling myself is hard” “It’s hard to get what I want” As I said, our word choices speak to how we feel about ourselves and our experiences. The words that we use can be indicators of feelings, beliefs and patterns of interacting with this world. As you read this, what resonates with you? How often do you use the word “hard” to describe parts of your life? Given the volume of how often I heard it in the last 7 days, I am guessing there is at least one aspect of your life (or more?!?) that you describe as “hard”. Our perception of reality is influenced by our thoughts, feelings and beliefs...both conscious and unconscious. How well we achieve our goals is based on our ability to act towards our goals. Our action - and - our inaction - gets motivated through our perception. So, if you want something but you believe it is “hard”; every time you think of the goal, you are associating it with the meaning of "hard" Your goal and the meaning of "hard" are connected through conditioning. How inspired are we to move towards something that we associate with being arduous, fatiguing and requiring a great deal of effort? We are not...which explains why we sabotage, resist, and avoid. How frustrating! A common example of this is weight-loss. As a veteran in the fitness industry, I worked with hundreds of people on weight-loss goals. Very few people I’ve met believe weight loss to be easy. In fact, almost everyone I have met holds the belief that “weight loss is hard”. People who want to lose weight but believe it is “hard” often lose motivation quickly (because it’s too hard), act in ways that don’t support their weight loss (because it’s hard) and will often lose the weight and regain it quickly (remember...it is hard!). This becomes a vicious cycle of "hard reinforcement". The cycle of “weight loss being hard” creates evidence "that it is hard” which reinforces “how hard it is”. As a Success Coach and EFT Tapping Specialist, it is my job to help clients in their goal setting and achieving. In order to successfully achieve goals, we must be emotionally aligned and excited about the goal. Our thoughts, beliefs and feelings need to resonate with the action steps to get to the goal. We must believe that the work we do will feel satisfying and come with some ease. In order to believe all of this wholeheartedly, we must eliminate the parts of us (beliefs, feelings and thoughts) that still think that “it is hard”. The beauty of using EFT in Success Coaching is that we are able to systematically dismantle the limited beliefs you have about achieving your dreams. EFT helps us relax into our goal. When we’re relaxed, action comes easy. When action comes easy, we feel more empowered and we make progress quickly. How fun! This blog and each blog that will follow will allow you, the reader, to experience the benefits of Success Coaching with EFT. Because I believe so deeply in the power of this work, I have created this blog space for you to be able to experience how universal many of our obstacles are. As you read and participate in the Success Coaching Tapping Audio, listen deeply to yourself and think about your experiences with others. Can you recognize how common it is that "we think 'things' are hard?" We are not alone in our struggles. My goal is to help you feel less alone and provide you with a free tool that you can personalize inside such a universal struggle. Please use the audio below to help you release “the hard” from your goal setting. Find detailed instructions below on how to personalize it. Please reference the Tapping Points PDF, along with the audio to create success with ease...one Tap at a Time! It is understood that you have read, understood, and agreed to the waiver prior to taking part in EFT or EFT audios. Here’s how to best use this audio:
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AuthorGretchen Driscoll has dedicated the last 20 years to helping hundreds of individuals and corporate clients clarify goals and achieve success. Tapping Points PDF
It is understood that you have read, understood, and agreed to the waiver prior to taking part in EFT or EFT audios. Archives
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