Life Manual Newsletter No.18
Welcome to our first Audio based Newsletter!
A broad range of questions were posed by readers for our promised interview with Jeff Allen, Master Trainer with Psychology of Vision. Jeff was asked about:
Letting go
- at the end of a relationship
- after bereavement
- letting go of control in the workplace
- what happens when you just can’t let go, despite your best efforts
- and ‘Letting Go and Letting God’
This gave us an opportunity for a wide discussion on using our Letting Go skills in response to a variety of life challenges, including the current ‘recession’.
You can listen to Jeff’s responses and further discussion on letting go with co author Christine Herbert, by downloading the MP3 audio file below.
These questions followed up our series on Letting Go in previous Life Manual Newsletters. If you missed them, you can access them in the Newsletter Archives in the right hand column.
Chapter 10 of Life Manual, Independence and the Power of Letting Go, covers letting go, the tools for letting go and why we hold on, in detail, with exercises to enable you to gain insights into your own challenges. Although we would normally recommend that you follow the whole programme, this chapter can, and has been used to gain great progress in acquiring this important skill.
We hope you enjoy our first Audio newsletter. We will be having more interviews with Jeff in the future and would love to have your suggestions for future topics. As always, please send your suggestions to christine@pov-lifemanual.com
Life Manual Newsletter No. 17
As I was writing this newsletter on The Stages of Letting Go, I saw some statistics on relationship breakdown, and the way that with each relationship, the chances of breakdown increase. It made me deeply aware of how much pain there is in our world, and how many people are feeling the pain of relationship breakdown, or struggling as they face that possibility or choice.
With that awareness, I felt it was important to go into greater detail on The Stages of Letting Go, than is possible in the length of this newsletter. Not only may we be suffering ourselves, but we all have friends who are struggling and would welcome some helpful insights. We need to let go of our ‘baggage’ when we are in relationship, not only if it ends. This article will help your understanding of what we need to let go of to bring our lives and relationships into True Perspective. Please share freely
Jeff Allen Question and Answer – Your Questions Please!!
Jeff will be answering your questions on all aspects of Letting Go in February, so please send them to me as soon as possible. Add a comment/question below of email to: christine@pov-lifemanual.com. We will make the Q & A recording available for you to download, along with a summary of the main points.
(We respect your privacy, so full names will not be used. Even if we are not able to use your direct question, we will make sure that the most common, as well as uncommon, questions are covered.
The Stages of Letting Go
This article builds on the concepts already covered in previous newsletters, Letting Go To Move Forward and Letting Go and Commitment. (You will find links in our Newsletters section in the right hand column.) Download The Stages of Letting Go
It’s important to remember that no relationship can move forward while we are holding onto our grievances, or trying to change our partner. The only thing we can change is our own mind and heart. The joy is that as we change, our world changes. We will see all manner of amazing outcomes as we concentrate on our own personal healing and transformation.
Letting go of blame, guilt, expectations, healing our old heartbreaks and learning to love and care for ourselves, while choosing and committing to our own best life, will make a huge difference to all of our relationships. Although The Stages of Letting Go is written in the contexts of a relationship that is ending, it will also help you to understand what needs letting go in your present relationship.
Let Go and Trust the Outcomes
But please remember we cannot change in order to change others. We cannot let go with the aim of bringing a partner back, or closer, because then we are still holding on, and prone to manipulation. I have seen miraculous healing when people let go, are really willing to face their pain and their issues.
Sometimes it has been a huge healing, and later the two partners found true love at a whole new level. At other times the partner has moved on in their life, alone for now. Everything they healed in their letting go needed to be healed, or they would just repeat the same mistakes again. When we do that we multiply our heartbreaks and lose the power to feel love or loving at all.
I have also seen people who are willing to keep letting go of the pain and issues in their relationship, who are willing to commit wholeheartedly, keep moving forward to deeper levels of love and intimacy. As Jeff so often reminds us, remember to keep breathing through the pain – it is our own, and it was already there. The present pain has brought it all to our conscious awareness. Trust the outcome of your process too, remember that the Universe only wants the best for you, and be willing to be openhanded to the future as you work through the present difficulties.
Keeping Safe
Psychology of Vision is dedicated to the healing of all relationships, we do not heal alone. Recently Chuck Spezzano, the founder of Psychology of Vision, was asked about keeping safe if you are in an abusive relationship or where there is domestic violence. You can find Chuck’s response on Domestic Violence here. Keeping safe, and where there are children, keeping them safe, is very important. Please read this article if this is an issue for you. Although we may know that everything can be healed by healing ourselves, it is very important that we do not put ourselves in harm’s way.
Transformational Communication
Letting Go does not mean that we never talk about the issues in our relationship with our partner. Communication is essential to move foreward when we are still in relationship. However, what is needed is transformational communication, where we share our feelings to find win-win solutions. In addition to the 12 Principles of Transformational Communication on this site, that we have previously discussed, Chuck Spezzano has recently published Communication, The Bridge to Healing excellent guidance and insights into transformative communication. Highly recommended reading for everyone. As Chuck points out, communication lies at the heart of all of our relationships, and these pointers will help develop our expertise.
Further Resources
However, in a case where your partner has already left, to keep calling them will only delay your healing, and keep you holding on. It can also be difficult to know how to handle a separated partner making contact while you are letting go. Some suggestions to consider, based on Jeff’s guidance in Life Manual, are published as If S/he Contacts You.
For a deeper understanding of the process of Letting Go, with many exercises to help you move through and transform your experience, I recommend The Power of Letting Go: Chapter 10 of Life Manual.This deals with Letting Go in the wider contexs of how we always need to let go of our accumulated feelings and grievances about the past, to make a space for a better future.
Looking forward very much to receiving your questions for Jeff, who has just returned from the Trainers and Mastery workshops in Hawaii. Comments or questions on our Newsletters are also welcomed to the email address below, or by commenting on the Life Manual Newsletters online.
Warmest love to you all,
and every wish that we are all able to let go of the past to make way for a much better future.
Christine
email: christine@pov-lifemanual.com
The Balancing Act
Life Manual Newsletter No.16
In Letting Go to Move Forward, Newsletter No. 15, we explored the concepts and tools of Letting Go. In our lives as well as our relationships, letting go lives alongside commitment. True commitment is taking whole hearted action based on our choices. Misunderstanding commitment can lead us to living half heartedly, which is the same as a life half lived. It can also leave us standing still in our lives, either torn between choices or feeling that we are carrying the weight of the world on our shoulders. Whether in our relationships, friendships, families or careers and jobs, this blocks the happiness and success that true commitment can give us. When we add expectations to our commitments, and move on to blame when our expectations aren’t met, everybody gets to be unhappy!
Commitment
Commitment can be a very confusing concept. Often it is seen as a one time promise that we make at the beginning of a relationship whether to a partner, friend, job or career, or even our children. Unfortunately, commitment often becomes a ‘have to’ or a ‘should’ as time goes on. ‘Shoulding’ on ourself, means we build up resistance to the things ‘we have to’ do. They become an increasing burden, and cause great stress in our lives. We are like a donkey walking uphill carrying big panniers on our backs. Every ‘should’ or ‘have to’ is like another rock thrown into our pannier, and we are walking more and more slowly and painfully up the hill. One day we may wake up and find the accumulation of rocks or ‘shoulds’ has become so great, that we literally can’t get up off the ground. (Link to Chuck’s video on stress)
Commitment is a choice followed by action, and we will make choices over and over again in every aspect of our lives. I was given a great insight into how choice works many years ago. I was travelling with a wonderful aid worker in Uganda, and we went to see the village ‘aunty’. The ‘aunty’, was a very wise woman who had given great service to her village all her life, but was now very sick. She was just lying on her veranda, unable to move. She was being looked after by her ‘niece’, a beautiful young woman who had left a job in the city of Kampala to come back to this remote village and look after her ‘aunt’.
“Oh this must be so difficult for you!”, said my companion, for good jobs were very hard to come by. “No”, said the young woman. “Not at all – I chose!” It was said with simplicity and humility, and yet revealed such wisdom. She had considered her options, the choice had been made and committed to, and the past and alternatives let go. That is such a beautiful place to live our lives from. It’s a commitment to the moment, to living in the now, with great acceptance of life and its outcomes. It’s a clear, untroubled mind able to respond to each of life’s moments.
Commitments + Expectations
A burden that we mistakenly put on our long term commitments is our ‘expectations’. In our minds, we are saying ‘I have made this commitment to you, so you owe me.’ When we sit back and look at this we can see that it is quite funny. Somehow our choices have come along with a set of rules. That immediately undermines the strength of our commitment. It’s the same as saying ‘I am only going to do this if you give me this in return.’ We do it to our partners, our bosses, our friends, our children and even to God. It stops both the flow of life, love and laughter. Many of us impose our expectations without conscious awareness, even though we know how we run when other people’s expectations are placed on us.
Going back to our analogy of the bird in the palm of your hand from part one, it is a cage we have put around our bird. Even if the bird can’t see our unstated demands, it feels them, becomes insecure, unsure and shrivels. At first, our new bird in the hand may try to learn to fly within our restrictions, but pretty soon it will tire of the effort – especially as many of us have a habit of adding to our list of demands. Many of our birds or partners, have a rebellious streak and will break the boundaries of the cage and fly off in any case, or increasingly behave exactly the opposite to how we would wish.
Letting Go of our Expectations
If we have the courage to look closely, we will find that the demands or expectations that we are putting on others, are the same ones we put on ourselves – they are the rocks in our panniers, causing our stress. Why would we want to hand this pain around?
Often, if we had critical parents, we can see that we are still unconsciously carrying our parents voices in our minds. If we can see the absurdity of that, we can let go of those voices. And we can forgive our parents, for didn’t we just see how easy it is to fall into that place.
Understanding, acceptance and forgiveness are all tools of letting go that free us from our chains of false commitment, our expectations. Changing our focus, having a vision of how would we like our lives to be, enables us to make new choices, and set goals for going in a new direction in our lives.
We can symbolise letting go of our rocks by dropping them in a river or the sea, either in reality or in our imagination. We can write them down, “I let go of …”, and bin, burn or flush the results. If we have a belief in Higher Mind, Angels or Heaven, we can hand over our rocks, asking for help to let go. Every time we find we are filling our pannier, it is time to empty it again.
If Only He/She Would Change
If we carry on down the road of our expectations, we will find ourselves in the land of complaints. ‘If only s/he would change!’ Now not only do we have expectations, but we have added on the burden of blame. Think about this deeply. When we say that our partners ‘would be great if only’ … what we are really saying is that they don’t live up to our expectations, that they are not good enough. We all know how that feels. We feel it, have often felt it deeply in childhood, so it is an old wound. None of us can grow or fly in such an environment. If we look closely, with courage, we can see that what we are really saying is ‘I don’t love you as you are’, which is really the same as ‘I don’t love you, I love who I want you to be.‘
Letting Go of Blame
Blame, even unspoken, pollutes love and relationships. As we saw in earlier Newsletters, blame announces that we are victims and have no choices. Blame keeps us and our relationships stuck. If our partner is buried in a heap of blame, then we need to get out our imaginary shovels (the mind is easily impressionable), and see ourselves shovelling all that blame into barrows, or trucks if the habit is very engrained. We can ask the angels to dispose of our blame safely, or just see it evaporating in the light and heat of the sun. It is time to let it go. Are we giving the things we are demanding, or waiting for someone else to step up in commitment.
Our happiness improves when we commit to seeing the best in people, including our partners and friends. Our attractiveness increases when we ask rather than demand. We can state how something feels for us, inviting another to share our world. Understanding and acceptance are powerful tools that can dissolve many problems and issues.
The commitment to a process of accepting and understanding another person’s feelings and meanings is another significant way to express our commitment. … Expressing commitment by welcoming another’s feelings, even if they threaten us, is one of the most effective ways to demonstrate that we love and care for a person.
John Amodeo & Kris Wentworth, In Being Intimate (sadly, out of print)
Commitment or choosing, also means letting go of judgements, blame and expectations. It means not imposing our standards and needs on another human being. It means letting go of the ‘shoulds’ and rules, even the ones we impose on ourselves. Its principles are understanding, acceptance and forgiveness. It’s gift to us, is to discover our own freedom, that we are a bird in the palm of life, constantly free to choose, to commit to act, to commit to giving our love, and then loving. As a dear friend sang many years ago …
All is choosing
Commitment and Letting Go are Partners
We choose, we follow our course of action, committing to each step along the way, but we let go of the results. Then they can come back to us, perhaps in a form greater than we could have imagined. We will be able to enjoy and experience the gifts of life more fully, for there is little enjoyment to be had in receiving the things we demanded. When our demands are met, we may have temporary respite and relief, but pretty soon we are thinking up the next test of love for our lover or partner or even God.
Our needs and demands are not our love. Chuck Spezzano
That is not to say we can’t ask for what we need – with our palms open and upwards. Our true lover then gets to freely choose. He or she can then feel the joy of their own giving as well as our response. We can express – share our feelings, so another can understand, but not to insist on ‘my way’. (Link to Transformational Communication)
Being able to let go, at the same time as being able to choose to take the next step and commit, whether it be to ourselves, him, her or an it, is a skill we all need to develop, no matter who we are sharing our life with. After all, commitment and letting go are not so much a balancing act as partners in life. We are letting go to step forward, to step toward something more true for ourselves, our lives and our loved ones.
The Stages of Letting Go
Next month we will look at the stages of letting go – how to let go of our partner and deal with our emotions when a relationship breaks up. Sometimes, we get so clear and clean in this process, that we find love again, and a partner, new or old, responds to our openness.
I have seen spectacular results from friends, including some very young ones, who used Chapter 10: Independence and Letting Go to develop their letting go skills. If you need more insights into your holding on and expectations patterns, or need help to let go of a relationship, you will find it here on the Life Manual site. Normally we recommend that you follow the course sequentially, but from my experience working with just this chapter, I am confident that it can stand alone.
For more insights into how to change your life and relationships
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Choosing to Move Forward – More Resources
Wounded Relationships
While writing this, I am also deeply aware that there are women and men living in deeply wounding, even violent and addictive relationships. The first priority and commitment we all have is to our own and our children’s wellbeing and safety. If you are holding onto a relationship that clearly is in deep trouble, and are unable to let go, particularly a relationship that threatens your mental, emotional, physical welfare, please read Wounded Relationships in the Wise Women Online site.
On the Wise Women site you will also find
3 Wise Women
All of the emotion and energy freed up from expectations and blame, can now be put into focussing on commiting to living the life we choose. That’s exciting, what will you choose? I have written about the importance of having a vision for our lives in earlier Newsletters which you will find on the POV Lifemanual site. You can also find more information and resources 3 Wise Women on Wise Women Online.
The Stages of Letting Go
Next month we will look at the stages of letting go – how to let go of our partner and deal with our emotions when a relationship breaks up. Sometimes, we get so clear and clean in this process, that we find love again, and a partner, new or old, responds to our openness.
I have seen spectacular results from friends, including some very young ones, who used Chapter 10: Independence and Letting Go to develop their letting go skills. If you need more insights into your holding on and expectations patterns, or need help to let go of a relationship, you will find it here on the Life Manual site. Normally we recommend that you follow the course sequentially, but from my experience working with just this chapter, I am confident that it can stand alone.
Choosing to Move Forward – More Resources
Wounded Relationships
While writing this, I am also deeply aware that there are women and men living in deeply wounding, even violent and addictive relationships. The first priority and commitment we all have is to our own and our children’s wellbeing and safety. If you are holding onto a relationship that clearly is in deep trouble, and are unable to let go, particularly a relationship that threatens your mental, emotional, physical welfare, please read Wounded Relationships in the Wise Women Online site.
On the Wise Women site you will also find
3 Wise Women
All of the emotion and energy freed up from expectations and blame, can now be put into focussing on commiting to living the life we choose. That’s exciting, what will you choose? I have written about the importance of having a vision for our lives in earlier Newsletters which you will find on the POV Lifemanual site. You can also find more information and resources 3 Wise Women on Wise Women Online.
Wishing you all success in life and all its relationships
Please feel free to email with questions and comments
Christine email: christine@pov-lifemanual.com
Life Manual Newsletter No. 15
When we master the art of letting go we are able to live fully in the present. Then the people, feelings or qualities that we were holding onto, that we may believe we have lost for ever, can come to us again.
What is letting go? What happens when we hold on?
What are the tools for letting go?
In a recent interview with Psychology of Vision Trainer Sue Allen on Managing Life Change, we explored what influences our ability to manage the many changes through the stages of life. Sue pointed out that accepting, or even welcoming, change as a natural aspect of life, allows us to move more comfortably through changes. However,
“…if we avoid the pain or discomfort of change,
we are holding onto the past and our role in it,
and then we actually intensify the pain and its duration.” Sue Allen
You can prove this to yourself. Next time you are feeling intense emotion about something that isn’t working in your life, that you feel you can’t control, set the intention to let it go. As peacefully and wholeheartedly as you can, say to yourself, “Ok, I let go of this.”
You can strengthen your intention by physically reinforcing it. Hold your hand open and imagine it flying away with your blessing. You will immediately feel a downshift in the strength of the emotion. Your muscles will relax and it feels as if you start breathing again. When we are holding on, it is as if we holding our breath. We can’t move forward.
When we hold on, we not only intensify the pain, but we push away the very thing or person we are holding onto. We have all experienced stepping away, either physically or emotionally, from someone who is behaving dependent or controlling around us.
“Our needs are not our love”. Chuck Spezzano
Our Needs are OUR Responsibility, or Response-ability.
The measure of someone’s love is not how much they meet our needs. Picture a bird sitting in your upraised palm, free to fly if it chooses. How much pleasure does it give you? How much can you love and admire it. Imagine what happens when you close your fingers over it. You may have it, but now it is in pain, and you can’t even see it. Nobody is happy. Any time you are holding on, just imagine opening your palm, letting whatever you have been holding on to sit on your upturned hand. It will help to ease the pressure, may even make you laugh, and overtime will change your habit.
Letting Go is NOT Pushing Away
It’s important to know that letting go is not the same as pushing away. “I don’t need him/men/her/women,” has nobody fooled!!! We have left the pain and the needs unhealed and marched off into the distance – until the next time someone fails to meet our needs, when all of the pain will come up again
In Life Manual, Jeff Allen uses a wonderful example with the emotion of anger. Many of us don’t like to feel anger, having been taught that feeling anger is wrong. So, everytime the emotion of anger comes up, like yesterday’s newspapers, we take it out and store it in the garage. This can go on for quite some time, with our store of newspaper getting larger and larger, until something finally triggers us so hard we finally lose our temper. It’s like going out into the garage and dropping a match in. Pretty soon we are all burned out and everyone around us is suffering fire damage;-)
It’s the same with our needs, where we don’t accept them or deal with them ourselves, they store up. We are probably carrying a pretty big dose from childhood too. When the person or thing we have decided was sent to meet all our needs, stops servicing them or walks out … Guess how we are left feeling?,
Taking Care of OUR Needs
What we push away, only hurts us more. Now we are not only tensing our muscles and holding our breath, but we are putting all of our energy into pushing. We are forcing ourselves to feel something that is not true for us. Our needs, (and we all have them as long as we are human, even if we have learned to cover them over to avoid the pain) are our own. Learning how to lovingly meet them and handle them is part of our maturity as a human being. We can ask for help, we can ask for what we would like to have happen – but always with our palms open. The other person has the right to say no, or to be too busy, too tired because they are meeting their needs. Often, we are feeling upset with someone for not meeting our needs, when we haven’t even stated them aloud. People have differing needs, different priorities. What we consider a natural need may come as a complete surprise to someone else. This is a great clue I learned from Chuck Spezzano, which can take some pondering and meditation;
If you can see something is missing, then you are the person who has it to give.
Tools for Letting Go
Feeling our feelings fully is the most basic but powerful way of letting go. Owning our feelings, not spreading them around through blame, takes courage, particularly if our garage is stuffed full with unmet needs. It’s our feelings that are screaming at us, not our needs. It’s our feelings that want attention – to be heard, to be attended to. When we pay attention, recognise them as our own, we can burn through them. We can release them, so we can meet today’s needs, not all our yesterday’s. Then we can look at our options for taking care of ourselves, of being self loving, treating ourselves gently and lightly, because we recognise that the person who wasn’t taking care of us was ourself.
Acceptance is another great tool for letting go. When we can accept what is happening in our lives, a very important stage in recovering from grief after bereavement, then we can move on to our future. Accepting that our needs are not being met, that they are OURs to meet and that all humans have them, puts them into a perspective where we can deal with them. We can look for solutions rather than a person to fulfil them.
When we burn through our feelings, lean into them quietly, knowing that they will dissipate, we can hit new layers, or deeper levels of the pain of unmet needs. But the deeper we are willing to go, the more we are willing to let these old feelings burn through, the deeper the level of healing, the deeper the peace we will find, and the deeper the benefit in our daily happiness and joy. After all, there is no point trying to get yesterday’s, and all our yesterday’s needs met – yesterday has gone. It is time to let them go.
When we are willing to take responsibility for our feelings, for our needs, while being open to receive rather than take what others wish to give, we are well on our way to true partnership.
We can be the change we wish to see.
Wishing you may let go to move forward with ease,
All love
Christine
Chapter Ten of Life Manual : Independence and the Power of Letting Go will help you to understand your personal issues with holding on, including the underlying heartbreaks through it’s exercises. It will also show you how to let go and the way through letting go of a relationship that is over. Letting go is not just a tool for life but a whole stage in our personal transformation.
This newsletter is adapted for Life Manual readers from a longer article published in wisewomenonline.net Please also see my note there on the importance of having support in bereavement,.
Life Manual Newsletter No 14
Psychology of Vision (POV) tools and principles can be applied to change not only our own lives, but the lives of everyone around us.
The other day I was having one of those days when nothing seems to be moving forward. It was the kind of day where a quotation by Franklin D Roosevelt seems apt
When you get to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on.
I can’t say I enjoy these kind of a days, but I also know that
- they are temporary
- they are just a sign of the next level and remembering Chuck Spezzano’s advice,
- the size of the block is equal to the size of the step up.
Choices
I know I have choices about how I handle these days, including
- trusting that it will clear if I pay attention to the feelings.
- I can announce a day off, read a book or watch TV if I wish to, or
- I can decide that I would like to move through this right now.
Sometimes I follow Julia Cameron’s (The Artist’s Way on Amazon)advice and write my ‘morning pages’. It’s amazing how often our feelings shift as they flow onto the page in detail.
Sometimes I will choose to find an exercise or insight that shows me a way through. I found one the other day that was so insightful, I rushed over to my Newsletter editor to share it with you.
Exercise
Now, don’t look ahead – that will spoil it for yourself. It will take you approximately 5 minutes, so make sure you can spend that time before starting the exercise, with a pen and paper. Relax, be gently aware of your feelings and write down
I want every good thing,
I was amazed how much that brought up for me. Firstly resistance to even writing it down!!! If you are really strongly resisting writing this down, dismissing it as rubbish, remember this is resistance!! Then I started hearing a life time of ‘can’ts‘ from family, schooling and a variety of religious teachings. There was a whole bunch of mistaken beliefs in there.
Now write it down twice more, I want every good thing, with pauses to observe what comes up for you.
Now do the same with these phrases – one at a time.
I deserve every good thing
I will have every good thing.
You will hear so many false self concepts or beliefs coming up. And when you see them you can bust them. You can see yourself popping each thought as it comes up, and if you can do that with humour, all the better. Another way to deal with these false and limiting beliefs is to write them all down, and then you can burn or bin the pages, telling yourself that these old beliefs are over. It is your mind, so it will believe you. If it doesn’t, then check out the resisting thoughts or beliefs coming up now.
What Beliefs Will You Put in Their Place?
It isn’t enough to just let them go. These beliefs have become a habit, an attitude that carries us through our day.
What do you want to believe instead? Write that down.
Hear yourself saying it aloud. Does it sound / feel believable? Repeat your new beliefs regularly. You can take them up a level when they resonate so much that you know they are the truth and are ready for the next step.
Luckily, with Psychology of Vision, we don’t have to just work at the conscious level. We can commit to the whole next level, for example ‘I commit to receiving every good thing‘.
Then we can take it to the vision/purpose level. Write and imagine it in detail. What does every good thing look like to you? How would your life look? How would you be living? What would you be doing? Who would be in your life? How would your relationships be? You can turn it into a powerpoint display or video or vision board. (Link to more information on using visual tools)
The Breakthrough
I committed to efficiency and effectiveness in my own life. It was on my vision sheet that I review and rewrite on a weekly basis. I find that really helps me to have a focus for everything I do in the week ahead, so in itself it starts the efficiency process.
The breakthrough, when it came, was miraculous, magical. I was achieving my usual tasks so rapidly, so easily and effortlessly, that I thought I might even be missing out steps . . .
How POV Works – Managing Life Change
You might want to investigate how Psychology of Vision is making a difference in the world. I recently interviewed POV trainer Sue Allen about Managing Change in Women’s Lives. Sue was so insightful in the way that she applied POV principles to help people who may know nothing about POV to have a different world view. I recommend you read it to understand more about how these principles apply.
Teaching Emotional Intelligence in Schools
That prompted me to ask Sue about the VisionWorks programmes for schools. As an ex teacher, I have wondered for a long time how we find a solution to the unhappiness, poor learning and bad behaviour of our youth. I had wondered how a programme with, for example, ‘visualisations’ was received by students. At the end of our interview, I knew that a solution really existed, that really works for our young people, and for their teachers who often struggle to deal with their own, let alone their students emotions. Please read the summary, Emotional Intelligence in Schools and you can also download the full interview in MP3 format, and be as astonished and inspired as I was. This Psychology of Vision programme is creative and attractive to youth, and it really works.
The principles of Psychology of Vision can be applied in any situation. You can read Sue Allen’s Top Tips for Parents practising emotional intelligence with their children and find out more about POVs Steps to Conscious Parenting Programme.
These resources can help you understand more about applying Psychology of Vision principles in our daily lives. They work, because they do reflect the truth of who we are, magnificent, beautiful, capable, loving human reflecting the universe that created us.
With all love and wishing you happiness and trust in the future,
Christine (email: christine@pov-lifemanual.com)
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Life Manual Newsletter No.13
‘As you believe, so shall it be’. This phrase will be very familiar to anyone brought up in Christian traditions or familiar with a Course in Miracles. Although thousands of years old, it recently it has become a central theme of personal development programmes. It is reflected in other common sayings, such as “Be careful what you wish for”. It is the idea that we create our world with our thoughts and beliefs. If we believe life is unfair, unkind, that we are victims, that we can never be successful, that we are held back by our past, then our reality will reflect those beliefs back to us. This is a theme that you can explore fully in Chapter 5 of Life Manual, The Power of Choice.
In a recent newsletter, we discussed the importance of finding and releasing childhood beliefs that are still operating outside of our awareness, influencing our daily lives, our relationships and our success. It means having a willingness to let go of negative beliefs about life and ourselves to adopt a positive view. How much resistance do you feel to letting go of old beliefs about how bad it is, has always been and will always be?
Trusting the Universe
It can be difficult to believe that the world is working for and with you. To believe you have a Higher Mind, an essence that is and knows the beautiful truth of you and how well our world works. For some that can be religious faith, the belief in a divine creator, although sadly that doesn’t necessarily mean that we belive in an all loving, all giving God who only wants the best for us. Once we believe in a wonderful creation working in our favour, our world view and therefore our world, changes dramatically. Then we can let go of handfuls of old beliefs not in line with that truth. Trusting that the universe is working with and for you, speeds the process of personal growth and development 100 fold.
And no, we can’t fake it, for what makes beliefs powerful is conviction, not mere affirmations. (Link to Valerie E Thompson interview on ‘real’ as opposed to ‘false’hopes.) Anywhere we have lack of trust or lack of conviction, it will work against us. It’s like stepping forward with manacles around your ankles. It doesn’t matter whether you distrust yourself, others, God, the universe, it all comes down to the same thing. A lack of Trust will be reflected in a life that feels unsafe, a future that feels frightening or unsafe. On the other hand …
As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live. Goethe
Trust – A Natural Capacity
Look back to your own childhood – were you born with trust? Is trust a natural capacity that each of us has, until something or usually a lot of somethings, get us to change our minds? From my own experience, the second strongest quality that all children have, next only to love, is a strong natural belief in fairness. It is extraordinary how with the earliest of words and often tantrums, children respond to perceived unfairness, long before they have the words to understand that concept logically. Trust is something to recapture, it is there within us waiting for us to drop all those old stories about how unfair life is or has been, so that we can get back to our natural trust and connectedness to the world we live in.
Commit to Trust
Luckily, another great ‘tool’ of personal transformation or growth is commitment. We can choose to commit to trusting. We can commit with conviction. As Chuck says, “Be willing, and if you can’t be willing, be willing to be willing.” Commit to trust just as you commit to growth, success, relationships, jobs, friends and even the boss. Commitment is always a step forward into the future, and if we are not stepping forward, we are holding back, for nothing in our world stands still. When we commit, with conviction – wholeheartedly – we can trust that the true way forward will be shown to us. Unsurprisingly one of Chuck’s books is called “Wholeheartedness”. We came to live wholeheartedly, just as children do. Half heartedness, lack of trust and commitment is a recipe for a life half lived.
I know if you are reading this newsletter that is not what you want for your life. If you are following the Life Manual Programme you have committed deeply to being the best that you can be, your true self. You have committed to always gaining an insight into your challenges, problems and dilemmas. With Life Manual you always have the tools at your finger tips for taking the next step, with the support of Jeff and myself, and the Life Manual Forum. But remember, you have to pick it up and truly use it, it isn’t a miracle pill if it is sat on your shelf! If you want your healing or transformation, really want it with conviction and commitment, you will have it.
Take Your Next Step with Trust
If life has been difficult or confusing of late, or you aren’t sure of your way forward, commit to your next step with trust and conviction. Commit as many times as it takes to step forward, remembering that you are not stepping forward alone. That in itself will bring about miracles. Goethe wrote beautifully of this in the 19th century.
Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative and creation, there is one elementary truth the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents, meetings and material assistance which no man could have dreamed would have come his way. Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now.
Wishing you the very very best of yourself,
All my love
Christine
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or email:christine@pov-lifemanual.com
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But Who are you Fooling?
Life Manual Newsletter No 12
To some extent it is true that whatever you tell your mind it believes – at least on the surface. You will see benefits from affirmations and pre rehearsing events in your life. But if you remember the Iceberg Model from the previous newsletter, the unconscious mind is more susceptible to pictures than words.This is the more powerful part of our mind.That’s why in Chapters 15 & 16 of Life Manual, Vision and Mastery – The Unconscious Mind, we have moved from exercises and stories to visualisations which work with the unconscious picture mind.
As we explored previously, we can’t be fully healed or changed until we have the courage to face our unconscious, the place where we have stored our deepest secret beliefs about ourselves and the world. In a sense, nothing in there is real – but our mind thinks it is. It is our past stories and experiences and we have the choice, and the chance, to change it in the present. An example was those oh so dangerous white railings, that I used in the last newsletter, that triggered my worst fears from the past. Facing a dangerous situation in my present, all the terror of a previous situation in childhood was triggered, leaving me incapable of responding to the present. Our old unconscious fears can be something we giggle at once they are healed, but they show the power of that part of our mind when they are triggered.
Synchronicity
One important way to change our mind at the unconscious level is through visualisation. This is so much more powerful than affirmations that attempt to address the subconscious via the conscious mind. The unconscious mind works with emotion and pictures, it is our prelanguage mind. Link to interviews with Joe Vitale and Bob Proctor on the power of pictures in manifesting the life you want
Getting out of the Box
Sanaya Roman suggests the visualisation below as a way out of survival mode, where we feel that we are living behind a wall or in a box with no way out. You can use a box or a wall if it feels more true for you. Try it for yourself, it’s a very good example a visualisation that helps your powerful mind to solve problems or change attitudes. You can easily record this into your phone or MP3 player, perhaps with some gentle background music, so you can concentrate fully. More Information about Sanaya Roman Sanaya Roman, Creating Money:Attracting Abundance, H J Kramer, 1988 (Amazon Link)
Visualisation
As with any visualisation, begin by sitting comfortably and closing your eyes. Allow your breathing to settle and relax your body. If you have a specific process or take a guide or master with you, that’s fine. Use that too. Having a guide, or a vision of a master with us, is always recommended when working with the unconscious mind.
Once you are relaxed, imagine that you are in a box that stands between you and having what you want. (Adapt if you are using a symbolic wall).
What does the box look like?
What is it made of?
How thick are the walls?
Really see and feel, visualise that box you are trapped in.
Then, in your imagination, start building doors and windows in the box. Make as many doors and windows as you want until you feel free and can see beyond the box. If you have visualised a wall, you can use whatever tool is appropriate to you to take down the walls, until you are satisfied that you can easily and feely pass through to the other side.
When you are ready to leave your box, see the clear fresh world beyond the box, and see yourself walking into that world. Feel your freedom, your lightness of being, your new or true you. Really feel how the world is full of opportunity, how it is all working with and for you. Experience your new powerfulness.
If you have a guide or Master, thank him or her for being with you. When you are ready, become aware of all of your senses, smell, touch, taste and come back into the room.Open your eyes and become aware of all of your surroundings.
Profound Change
As Sanaya Roman writes, “Working with symbols, vision and emotion can create profound changes in your life. Each time you do this exercise, the things represented by the box or the wall will begin to change, and new opportunities will come to you. If you already have POV Life Manual you might want to follow this with Jeff’s Visualisation in Chapter 13 for strengthening your connection to your inner world and unconscious mind.
Please feel free to comment below
or email:christine@pov-lifemanual.com
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I came across another version of the Iceberg Model, a theory of the levels of the mind, the other day. It had just a solid blob of unconscious mind, and that reminded me just how useful the Psychology of Vision Iceberg Model is. In Life Manual Chapter 4, Jeff describes the largely underwater part of the iceberg of our mind as ‘The Hidden Aspect of us that can do great harm to our ship’. There can be few people who don’t know about the unsinkable Titanic!!!
Separating the unconscious and subconscious mind really helps us to understand there are two levels of our hidden mind. The habit patterns formed in past experiences are stored in the subconscious mind.The gushing fears and terrors are hidden deeper in the emotional visual unconscious mind. It gives us different ways to grasp what is going on in our deeper mind, which needs to be faced on our way to healing our emotions and gaining true emotional awareness.
In the POV model, Chuck Spezzano lists the aspects of our hidden mind.
a) Emotions and Feelings
b) Insights and Beliefs
c) Images and Experiences
We need to connect with those feelings, not just find the patterns beneath. Many schools of personal development ultimately fail their clients… for they fail to recognise the power of our emotions. If we only change the habits and beliefs, we will still have moments when the bogeymen of our unconscious, the stored emotions jump out to meet us. We can also fail to find our authentic self and hence one school of personal development gives rise to wonderfully turned out people, with perfect manners and echoing, who leave you with a sense that, actually, no one is in. As we go further in our progress, we will find the deeper mind, that reveals its presence through powerful emotions. As these are formed in early childhood, there is no pattern, just an image that triggers deep emotions.
How does the Iceberg Model help?
Using a personal example, as a 4 year old I flew out to Singapore, a three and half day flight back then. I had absolutely no fear at all, and loved the experience. I never had a fear of flying, until in my 20s I took a baby on a plane – not even my baby! I was uncomfortable and fearful throughout the flight. I had absolutely no idea why I had suddenly developed this fear.
I actively avoided flying which I had previously loved, but the day came when I got on a plane with my own child – a very small plane. Again I was clenching my seat. In the following years I learned to control the fear, and even took both my children to Africa. It was many years later that I spotted the pattern. I remembered my mother saying what a terrible time she had on that flight with my baby brother. He refused to drink anything, for almost the entire flight. As a child I had absorbed her experience. As a child or an individual, there was no fear of flying, but a fear around babies flying!!
Knowing that pattern and the habit it produced around babies flying, busts it. The old experience no longer has power over me, but at some point I needed to release the fear, just feel into it, and burn through it. We describe this in Chapter 11 of the Life Manual and if you have attended workshops, you will know it is an important part of the Psychology of Vision process.
What about the Images and Experiences?
In the previous example, I have some information from family that helps me to understand what formed the baby flying fear habit. But so much of what happens to us when we are small, is beyond the patterns of our subconscious mind. Our emotions are very powerful in early childhood and the grief and fear we experience so massively, are stored in our unconscious mind. For example …
I am not sure what emergency in Singapore caused us to be taken to school in trucks with armed soldiers, or later in troop carriers. From these you can see very little, and the 50s were a great time for not telling kids what was going on. But as a kid you pick up the fear of those around you. I can bring an old childhood picture of the soldiers with their rifles staring out, and feel and even remember the smell of sweaty fear. Smells from the past can be powerful triggers too. Armoured troop carriers in the heat and humidity of Singapore are horrendously uncomfortable and you want the journey over as quickly as possible. One day, we stopped …for a very long time … on the causeway between Singapore and Malaya. All I could see through the tiny mesh windows was white railings and the sea – and I can still see them. Those strong childhood images signals their unconscious dimensions. The soldiers were all running around shouting, and gone for a long time. I still have absolutely no idea what was going on … but you don’t need much imagination to recognise the levels of fear that white railings against the sea instilled in my childhood mind.
In adulthood, with my two children, we were on a ferry that was set on fire as part of a robbery. Stood on the deck, in life jackets waiting to be evacuated, carrying my baby son, I was incapable of speech … it was taking all of my energy just to keep my body in the upright position, I was literally shaking so badly. It was as if my worst nightmare of a lifetime was coming to pass. I had seen that calm sea through the railings so many years before,and once again they signalled terror. Of course, it was a scarey experience in itself, but my level of terror left me incapable of thought or speech and seriously impacted my ability to even stand up.
Beyond the Habits of the Mind
That kind of fear is deeply unconscious. Triggered by a childhood image, we are straight into the deepest fears of our unconscious. It’s a place where we have no thoughts, no habit patterns, just fear gushing like a powerful fountain and maybe some odd images like the white railings. Clearing the fear of my overly exciting childhood took a long time, although I laugh now. In one clearing spell the image of a large white rabbit flew by me, and I guess someone put a big white rabbit in my cot, and that scared me too. We need to face those unconscious pains and fears, to release them, not only to prevent ourselves being a walking time bomb for emotional disaster, but most of all, to find and release the beauty, creativity and vision that also resides in the unconscious mind.
The joy of the Psychology of Vision method, is that you don’t have to know the patterns, although it can help to clear up a whole load of misunderstandings and bad habits of flight or fight. By dealing with our emotions, which is NOT stuffing them down or explaining them away, we clear a whole lot more. And most of that ‘stuff’ that we stuffed down in early childhood, does actually look very funny in adulthood – once we take the fear out. Who, but a child, could invest so much emotion in a set of white railings against the sea. Do you have any idea how many sets of those we have in Britain? And yes, I get that my children, especially my son, may find themselves on a ferry one day, and re experience my fear. Maybe it was one of the reasons he became an Air Traffic Controller and is keeping the skies safe!!! Chuck says so often that everything we clear up, our children don’t have to, and that has been a big incentive to me in facing my hidden fears.
If you have been gushing, blessings. It isn’t fun, but it is very worthwhile. Please email me with any questions or your own stories,
Oh, and if you haven’t been gushing or pursuing your course – what on earth can be holding you back from experiencing your full happiness and laughter? Have another look at what you are missing. All of the tools of the Psychology of Vision model, organised sequentially around the layers of the mind and the stages of relationship – for the price of a two day workshop, with a payment plan of 16 Chapter installments.
All love and joy
Christine
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Many of us experience times when problems or life events are going round and round in our minds, and we feel buried in our emotions. Sometimes, we may share the confusion with a friend or partner and find clarity and a release of the emotional charge. Then there are times when we keep telling everyone how bad it is, and it doesn’t feel any better. What is the difference between these two occasions?
This is a great example of the power of intention. If our intention is to understand, to share for feedback, to find a way through, then that is what we will achieve. If our intention is let everybody know how bad it is, then we are just reinforcing how bad we feel and how badly we feel life treats us. If we keep on talking about it, keep on telling our story, we may also be achieving our unconscious intention of avoiding our emotions altogether.
I always think of this, humorously, as a headless chicken syndrome, someone running around clucking to anyone who will listen, and getting absolutely nowhere. It generally tends to exhaust the rest of the flock, and even if the intention is to receive comfort or support, the clucker is unlikely to get it, as everyone is scurrying out of their way. When you find yourself clucking, it is time to stop, take stock and discover your intention.
Discovering Your Intentions
This is where the “If you were to know …” questions used in Psychology of Vision, are so powerful. They take us beneath the conscious mind, what we think is going on, to the old patterns and programmes being played in our subconscious. I find that as soon as I ask those questions, my whole mind stills, and I can sense the access to my inner being. It’s like slipping beneath the chicken or ego mind, to the peace beneath.
Talking to ourselves, we need to rephrase. For example, “If I were to know, what is it that I am really wanting from this situation?” or “If I were to know, what is really going on for me right now?”, or “If I were to know, what do I really need right now to help in this situation?”
Often, when we can see what we were really trying to achieve, we can bust ourselves, and see the humour in the situation. If you feel embarassed or guilty, let it go, we all play headless chickens from time to time.
If there is a strong emotional charge … a past event or pattern is being triggered … and if you are in touch with your emotions, you will feel it when you ask your subconscious mind or Higher Power what is going on. Often, headless chicken routines are resistance routines, ways of running away from our feelings. With this understanding, you are then ready to … cont’d
…Set Your Intentions
What do you really want or need? A hug? Clarity to see a way through the problem or dilemma? Then ask a trusted someone who is truly available to you, for that help. …
For more on clearing old habit patterns, setting intentions in communication (Transformational Communication), you can subscribe to receive the full fortnightly Life Manual newsletters via email.
Life Manual Newsletter No. 9
Years ago, I read books that told me how wonderful life and the world could be. It gave me hope that my inner yearnings weren’t just ‘pie in the sky’. From time to time, as I worked through various personal development or change programmes, I would read them again, to reignite my hope or to grab hold again of a dream that was slipping away. I think it is very important to have that reassurance. So, I went off to the park the other morning, and sat amongst the magnolias, to think what does ‘success’ in personal change mean? What have I truly achieved in pursuing the Psychlogy of Vision model of change and healing? We are all unique, and we all have different ideas for what success in our lives means. For some it is relationships, for others it is abundance or maybe inner peace. Perhaps it is best summed up as the ability to create the life you want, to pursue what is important to you and enjoy it.
It isn’t some kind of permanent bliss, although feeling blissfully happy and content is definitely a feature. You will feel more connection with your higher mind, or however you envision your wiser self, and trust that everything that comes up for you, is just the right thing at the right time. You will be learning to trust that the Universe is working for you, not out to get you. I love the image that all good things are always pouring upon us, it’s just that some of us have our umbrellas up!
Keeping the End in Sight
I can only truly say what it is for me. I offer it as a motivation or to reinforce your belief in what is possible for you. I am happy with who I am, and how I am living in the world. I do what I love doing, writing and teaching. The last few months, I have put together websites, made videos, written these newsletters and many other articles, and am on my second children’s book. Money has never been high on my agenda, but nowadays, there is always enough. I live with a great view in a home full of light, which is important to me. My family are in great shape, wowing me with their next steps and achievements. I am not rich or famous, but I haven’t asked for that! Maybe I will for the next step.
What I have, is what I wanted most, the reason I resolved and cleared the negative habits and stories of the past. These include:
- Long and frequent times and days of peacefulness, joy and content.
- A sense of connection to all that is
- A love that flows in, through and around me
- A frequent feeling of deep gratitude that just springs up unannounced, not only for the wonderful moments of life, but for the peace and contentment.
- Pleasure and joy in the peace and wellbeing of family and friends
- Compassion that can’t help but pour out as love and care at the sight of pain, whether individual or collective, as in disasters
- A deep love for our beautiful planet and its peoples.
- Certainty abou the unlimited possibilities for myself and the world.
Some habits I consciously put into place … like more balance in my life, or more conscientious tidying as I go along. But mostly, just setting the direction seems to take you there. Many things just change as we are reunited with our true being, the person we came to be … for me the person I would have been without all the traumas along the way. (Except I have an inkling that I put them all there, just so I could find a way through, have an adventure, and then share the learning).
….And if you are struggling, and need more certainty, you can read my story from childhood dilemmas, and the steps along the way, until discovering and working with POV and its brilliant model.
To celebrate my ‘coming of age’ I have started my website for wise women to share their learning and insights, developing a library of hints and tips that may save a few hundred years around the world. Please contribute!!
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Newsletter No. 1 The Forgotten Secret of Change
Knowledge, vision, action:
These are inseparable. We need vision to lead our life forward, a map to show us the way and tools to change our attitudes and actions if we want a different result...
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