Be Mythical

This week I'm speaking with the utterly wonderful coach and trainer Kate Barsby, who I'm also proud to say is a grad of Happy School. Four years ago, Kate lost her baby daughter Eliza, and that experience led to Kate having some profound realisations about the nature of love, life and what it means to be human. Kate has been so generous in sharing her experiences with us here. A little warning from me: This a beautiful conversation, full of love, gratitude and hope but because of the topic that we're talking about, I don't think this is going to be a good time to listen to this if you're currently expecting a baby.

Why insomnia is all made up... with Jen Lucas This week I'm exploring insomnia with Jen Lucas. Jen is a mental health educator, and she describes herself as recovering from many years of overactive seriousness! One of the ways that seriousness showed up in her life is dedicating years of her life to solving her insomnia. She now says 'insomnia is made up'! If you think that's a ridiculous statement then this is the show for you! In this episode you'll learn: Just because something seems real, it doesn't mean it is real - we can make so many things seem like a big serious struggle and devote a lot of energy to them, but that doesn't mean that there's anything going on other than a belief that we have. When Jen saw that she'd made up a story about sleep - she became a lot less interested in creating any stories about it at all - either good or bad. This is true in so many other areas of life. Can you see where, completely innocently, you've created a story? Techniques can create even more issues - Jen and I talked after the show about the various approaches that she's been recommended for good sleep such as using the correct lighting or not using devices before bed. She said that none of them worked (and in fact I know people who have ended up creating OCD around their sleep techniques) because it isn't those things that create our body's ability to sleep. Our body is designed to sleep all on its own! Just like it's designed to do so many other things very naturally and easily!

How to choose a purposeful life... with Samuel Hershberger This week I'm exploring purpose with Sam Hershberger. Sam is a life coach who works with entrepreneurs, coaches, and engineers and helps them create extraordinary lives. Sam believes that living with purpose is a choice we can all make. In this episode you'll learn: Choosing the experiences which feed the mechanism - just like feeding your body with good food is more likely to create great health, Sam was speaking about feeding your mind with things that are more likely to trigger the kind of thoughts that will create a great, happy experience of life. If you were going to die tomorrow, is this what you'd do today? When the thought of death scares us it's often because we're doing things that we don't want to be doing with our life. When we live each day and each experience in a way in a purposeful way then we're present with our own mortality. We're aware that each day could be our last and we're OK with that. Using higher consciousness! When we notice we have clarity, it's a great time in which we can make the choices that will serve us in times of lower consciousness.

The wonderful things that cancer showed me about life... with Bart Loos This week we're exploring questions of life, death, pain, suffering and reality with someone who has seen more about these things than most. Bart Loos shares his incredibly inspiring story of recovering from cancer and how that has shown him some very interesting things about the link between the mind and body and what that means for our experience of life. In this episode you'll learn: How we're all living within our own reality bubble - during the experience of being diagnosed, treated and recovering from cancer, Bart saw more and more clearly how that experience was being created by his own bubble of thought and the same was true for everyone around him. What happens when give up control - the cancer forced Bart to give up the constant battle for control over life that he and most people are fighting. Once he let go of that battle, he noticed that his mind was filled with much less fearful thinking and that he could make decisions from a calmer, more settled down place. We ALL have access to this place of calm and clarity - what Bart talks about is true for every human being, including you.

This week we're exploring a fascinating question that's relevant to all of us... what are we really capable of? What's the true potential of humans? I'm exploring this with Ian Watson, who is an author, trainer and consultant. Ian's got soooo much experience in the field of natural health and personal transformation. He's covered more ground in his quest to uncover the full potential of humans than most people would manage in several lifetimes! We cover a lot of ground in this episode: why self-help techniques seem to stop working, how change really happens, what's going on with consciousness, happiness, the call to adventure and more. This is one of my favourite shows. :) In this episode you'll learn: We attribute positive change to a self-help technique and then think if we do more of that technique, we think we'll improve further (which is rarely the case). Alternatively we go on to look for a new technique and start the cycle again. Recognising the real cause of positive change - an internal shift in perspective - means that we're less likely to go around in circles with technique after technique. Ian says that we continue to grow in consciousness over our lifetimes. We outgrow old ways of thinking, we start banging up against the edges of our beliefs and then we start to look for ways to create space for new ways of thinking. We can fulfil potential when we respond to the call to adventure instead of retracting through fear (Ian quotes Joseph Campbell' 'The refusal of the call for adventure' here). The unknown isn't a scary place - it's the place where everything that we're looking for resides.

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.