Be Mythical

How to parent teens the happy way... with Jacquie Forde This is the second show we've done with the fabulous social entrepreneur, coach and business woman Jacquie Forde. I knew she'd be amazing to speak to on the topic of parenting teens and older children and flipping heck... she didn't disappoint! Jacquie is married with three daughters and here she shares how she was always searching for the answer to be the best parent she could be and then when her eldest daughter was 17, she discovered something that transformed her approach to parenting. Jacquie shares some incredibly touching and inspiring stories of how their family has changed for the better over the last few years. Yes, there were tears for both us. :) Here were my best bits: Having an awareness of how thoughts and feelings really work has not just transformed how Jacquie parents her daughters but it's also given them far more resourcefulness and resilience. Giving up the belief that we have to be right all the time as parents makes for a much easier, closer relationship with our children.  Jacquie shared a story about one of her daughters learning from a bad experience with alcohol - given the love, trust and the space, our children will learn the lessons they need to learn for themselves.

How to give children a super start in life... with Piers Thurston Piers is a top personal and business and is a father to two children - in this episode we explored how his understanding of 'quality of mind' has affected his parenting and has helped him to give his children a great start in life. Here were my fave bits: Children are a great reminder to us of how we were born happy! Even when we have an understanding of how our minds work, we'll still get caught up in thought from time to time. That's just human and the more lightly we take those times, the more fleeting they seem to be. Preparing our children to live the game of life entails showing them that it is a game and our best chance of playing it happily, is to be open-hearted and open-minded.

How to home school the happy way... with Stuart Norman Stuart Norman is a Transformative Coach and teacher of the 3 Principles understanding.  Stuart and his wife have been enjoying home schooling his daughter since last year so I thought he'd be a great person to speak to about how parenting can be a lot easier and more pleasurable than parents often believe is possible. I loved Stuart's metaphor that life is more like a game of snap than the game of chess that we sometimes act like it is! This applies to life in general but has been particularly helpful for him and his wife in their approach to home schooling: We're not in control - life will play out in its own way, and that goes for our children too. We don't know what the future holds - understanding that means we worry less about how we can make our children conform to our view of what we'd like their future to be like. Learning (and life in general) is meant to be fun! :)

Life as a teenager with anxiety... with Sebastian Eck   Sebastian Eck realised that he was struggling with anxiety in social situations and dating when he was in his teens. Sebastian has since found a natural calm and confidence and has gone on to run workshops for people who are homeless and has created online resources for people seeking peace of mind. Sebastian and I spoke about all kinds of areas relating to anxiety and the causes of it. Here were my best bits: Seeing through his story of anxiousSebastian realised that his anxiety was purely a belief that he'd created and believed. He believed he didn't know how to make a connection with others. He now sees he already has everything he needs - he can naturally connect with others, we all can once we drop the beliefs that are in the way. The struggle to become wholeSebastian described doing lots of self-help and self improvement work. He created a mask which allowed him to go out and socialise and talk to women but it felt like a struggle. What he has seen since he's already complete and that we all already  have happiness inside us. Realising that he's not running the showSebastian described the huge shift of realising that he isn't the one who needs to make things happen, life is just coming through him, there's a force that's playing out and making life happen, without him needing to be in control.  

Steve Light suffered with anxiety from a very young age and then discovered something that changed his experience of life for the better. Steve's passionate about helping others to free themselves from anxiety and other mental health issues and has founded self-help groups and creates online resources. Steve was his usual beautifully honest self, here's were the key points: Searching for the answerSteve thought if he looked hard enough he would find the reason for his anxiety in his genetic make-up, his biochemistry or maybe his past. He didn't find the answer until he discovered that his anxiety was coming from his thoughts moment to moment. The addiction to self-helpSteve tried lots of courses, including NLP and other selp-help techniques, to try to rid himself of anxiety. He found each of them gave a temporary improvement before he went back to feeling anxious again but that was enough for him to attend course after course in the hope something would help. Beliefs vs understandingSteve's finally let go of the beliefs he had about being 'an anxious person' when he began to understand the ever-present underlying calm and happiness beneath his thoughts.  

The best parenting questions in the world... with Jack Pransky  I'm delighted to share this conversation with the utterly wonderful Jack Pransky about a subject he is awesome on: parenting. Dr. Jack Pransky is a Three Principles Author, Trainer and Practitioner: a Coach of Coaches and a Counselor of Counselors. Jack's worked in the field of prevention and community organizing since 1968. He wrote the fabulous parenting book "Parenting from the heart" which I highly recommend. Jack talked about these questions to ask ourselves when we're speaking to our children: Am I feeling love in my heart in the moment?If I'm not, now is not the time to discipline. What is my child learning from what I'm doing?Is that really what I want my child to learn? How am I seeing my child in the moment?I am the one who is making up what my child is like in this moment - and I'll get more of what I see. Why is it important to me that my child does this thing I'm asking?Why would this be important to my child? Do I really know what's going on in the mind of my child that driving the behavior?How can I observe and listen to better understand?

How to treat anxiety... with Chris Morris Chris is a well-known coach and a meditation teacher who suffered from anxiety from childhood and has spent years exploring a tonne of different self-help techniques and 'thought-based' approaches to understand how to treat anxiety. Chris didn't shy away from being his usual naughty self. :) Chris said things which are a bit contentious but we wanted to give you a different view point to many of the guests we have on the show. Chris doesn't solely work with his clients using a three principles approach, he uses other techniques and approaches (including A Course in Miracles, meditation, Byron Katie's The Work, and NLP) to treat anxiety in his clients. Techniques like this can work well in a one to one setting, when the coach has the level of understanding that Chris has. These were the main points: Our sense of self is built around the beliefs that we've decided define usWe cut ourselves off from certain types of experiences, beliefs or types of thoughts - often without realising we're doing it. Sometimes we've experienced things in our past that have scared us so we shut down that part of us then we're only able to experience life from within the frame of thoughts that we haven't cut ourselves off from. If what we're left with is anxious thoughts then that will be our experience of life. The actors that we castWe are entities made up from a collection of thoughts. We cast a character in a film but then we forget and let the character run the show, we forget that the one watching the character is us! We can't see what we can't seeWe tend to have no clue about the underlying beliefs we have about ourselves and the world. We're only aware of the thoughts we're aware of - which sounds obvious but is something that we forget moment to moment. If we can find a way of holding up a mirror to ourselves, which could be through talking to a coach or a good friend, we get a glimpse of the beliefs that we have.

On this week's show I get to speak to the fabulous Jill Whalen. Jill is a professional conference speaker, trainer and writer, she's a retired website marketing consultant who underwent a huge transformation from being a bit of a coach potato with an allergy to vegetables to someone who is now into yoga, running, spirituality, and healthy eating! Jill now shares her experience of personal and business transformation with others. Before Jill came across the three principles, she'd suffered with years of anxiety so I thought she'd be a super person to speak to see what's changed for her and how that change happened! Jill was great! These were my best bits: Anxiety is so often caused by not feeling good enough. That feeling often leads to all kinds of addictions too - basically ways of making us feel better about ourselves. It's so freeing when we see that it's only thought making us feel not good enough and we're actually always perfect inside Just start to look inside and you'll realise that it's NOT the outside world creating your feelings! That can be difficult to begin with as the ego can have a tight hold on you but the more you notice that your feelings are coming from thought, the more layers of 'ego slime' drop away Start noticing how made up all your labels are. Jill talked about realising that she'd made up all these beliefs about herself - that she couldn't sing in public or that she hated healthy foods - seeing the thought-created nature of her labels, was a big clue to the thought created nature of her experience.

This is the second time that we get to be a fly on the wall to a coaching session between certified transformative coach John El-Mokadem and his new client Kate who wants coaching around issues in her relationship. Kate believed that past trauma had set her on the course for her current relationship issues but she discovered in this session that the past isn't always how it appears. This episode was a wisdom-bomb-a-minute but here were my absolute faves! Kate's big insight! "I realised that there was never anything wrong. I was always OK, I just thought I wasn't"This is a huge realisation that her past self wasn't broken and that means that the past can't dictate her life in the present or the choices she makes going forward. Yesssss! How do we meet our partner's needs without subjugating our own  needs?John described how the more of his beliefs about needs have dropped away, the less he seems to need on the outside and the more he sees that his needs are already met on the inside. Life doesn't need to be a certain way for him to feel happy. How do we get into a quiet space?John explained how the very act of noticing an icky feeling and realising where it comes from [thought], the more he seem to settle down and start to look into the direction that fresh thought and insight comes from. How do we stop just drifting along in life?Kate's concern is that she needs agency - she needs control over her life and circumstances, John described how he's seen that his happiness doesn't come from illusory control, and his previous attempts at control were making him less happy. The destination that we're all working towards, it's all here in this moment. What about dealing with real life issues like a shortage of money?The more we're coming from insecure thought (life has to be like x, I need to be like y, i need to earn z) all get in the way of allowing success and happiness to flow through us. Life is already being handled, we don't need to make it happen. The more we let go of insecure thought, the more ideas, answers and opportunities that we notice.

Amazing relationships are natural I was thrilled to speak to the wonderful Rudi and Jenny about how it's so natural for us to have amazing relationships very naturally as we see the role of Thought in our relationships. Rudi and Judy are Three Principles Facilitators and film-makers who have been travelling the world, interviewing other facilitators, teachers and people who have had their lives transformed through understanding the principles. They were as fabulous as ever, these were my best bits: It can seem that we're a type of person, e.g. a jealous person or a person with a temperJenny talks having a blind spot when it came to her jealousy - she could see that her feelings were coming from her thinking in every area except her jealousy. She described it as thinking she must just be a jealous person and that was fixed. Over time she began to see that her jealousy was just a thought too. That's the case with pretty much any trait you can think of. The biggest relationship change is the one we have to our own thinkingJenny described how the biggest change in their relationship, has actually been the relationship that each of them have with their own thinking. Sometimes we can be wrapped up in thought and thinking it looks and feels real, and other times we see that our feeling are coming from thought. The more we see through the illusion of thought, the less worried we get about the content of our thinking and the more we see it's just thought. We can't have a relationship without thought being includedI loved Rudi's phone metaphor - just how we can't have a phone conversation without the intermediary of the phone, we can't have a relationship, conversation or any kind of interaction without the intermediary of our own thoughts. The more we recognise the intermediary of thought is always present, the less seriously we take the thoughts which are getting in the way with connecting with the other person. What about when we have different goals or values to our partner?Jenny spoke beautifully about the conversations they'd had over the years about big decisions such as whether to have children. They've been able to have some very honest, open conversations from a neutral place which has allowed them to move forward through life without needing the other person to have the same opinion.