I am talking today directly to Business Leaders and Business Owners.

 

If you are experiencing Imposter Syndrome chances are that there are times when you feel lonely.

Maybe some of the time, maybe all of the time.

 

Despite of being surrounded by people all the time.

Despite of having a great group of friends.

Despite of having a partner.

Despite of having children.

Despite of being busy all the time.

 

Feeling lonely comes with a lot of shame.

With a lot of self-judgement.

It’s embarrassing to admit that we’re feeling lonely, especially when we see how amazingly well our friends are doing on social media.

 

You might have read my article about my challenges with loneliness.

Despite of me being married for 25 years, having a very close relationship with my family and having incredibly deep and authentic friendships I am extremely grateful for.

 

But today I don’t want to talk about me.

I want to talk about YOU.

 

If you’re experiencing loneliness despite of having everything that “should” make you feel connected and content – I am writing this article directly for you.

You matter.

You matter to me because I know how you feel and I would love to give you a hug even if you would probably tell me you don’t need it. You don’t want to come across as vulnerable or needing help.

You are probably the one who always helps others. 

OK – I will hold off with the hug for now????.

 

 

Imposter Syndrome is a reflection of how we see ourselves.

Imposter Syndrome is only a result / a product / an outcome of our internal world. Of our beliefs about ourselves.

 

If you understand the above two sentences and they resonate you’re reaching a very important point in your self-awareness. This article is for you.

If you think the above sentences are a lot of BS or you simply don’t know what they mean – this article is not for you just yet and it’s OK. X

 

But back to Imposter Syndrome and Loneliness.

Imposter Syndrome is all about masking how we really feel.

It’s all about pretending we are something we think we should be but we don’t believe we really are it.

It’s a constant theater.

It’s waking up in the morning, putting a costume on and getting on the stage.

Playing the role to keep our job in the play.

 

Depending on our internal script, we might play

a confident character, (that used to be my role)

an angry character,

a character who hides in the corner,

a rescuer who constantly tries to be there for everyone else,

a bully who thinks that if she/he yells at people will gain respect,

a character who pretends to be humble but secretly craves acknowledgement,

a micromanager,

a perfectionist,

a people pleaser,

a procrastinator.

 

Roles are endless.

 

It’s only natural that if there is a disconnect between how we truly feel and who we portray to be when we get on the stage of our workplaces and businesses – loneliness creeps in.

People know your character but they don’t know YOU.  

 

And that’s a lonely place to be living from. 

It’s also exhausting.

Sometimes to the point of experiencing anxieties, panic attacks, nervous breakdowns, depression.

It’s exhausting to keep the act up.

 

Just because we feel that

….if I showed them who I really am

 

they would not accept me.

They would not want me here.

They would not approve of me.

They would not respect me.

 

They would not love me….

 

 

 

Sweetheart,

You’re experiencing loneliness because you have lost the sight of who you are and how amazing you are EXACTLY as you are.

You don’t believe you are worthy of people’s attention purely just for who you are.

It’s never a conscious decision.

We don’t wake up and say to ourselves “You know what, let’s start pretending I’m someone else from now on.” It’s a subconscious gradual manifestation of us wanting to protect ourselves from being hurt.

 

THE REAL QUESTION IS

Do you believe you are worthy of your own love exactly as you are?

Do you see your own greatness?

Do you love yourself when you are alone with yourself?

 

Because THAT’S the real loneliness you are experiencing.

You can be surrounded by millions of friends, your family, partner, and children but if you yourself don’t accept yourself for who you are the loneliness will forever stay there. 

 

I LOVE YOU.

 

And I am not saying this flippantly.

I am not saying this because it is “in” to talk about self-love, love and personal development.

 

I am saying this because I’ve been on my journey of reconnecting with myself for years.

Years.

I’ve been through the pain, fear of facing my own emotions, seeing my internal beliefs which led me to being disconnected from myself.

I am still on that journey. Good days and trying days.

Life throws things at me just to test how far I have come on my journey.

And I have to smile, often saying – here we go, the next layer is ready to be uncovered????.

The difference these days is that I hold myself with compassion and love instead of beating myself up.

Acceptance brings peace and opens up the space for further exploration.

Today – I EMBRACE my loneness when it pays me a visit because it’s trying to tell me something.

So I listen. 

 

 

Whether you are my coaching client who works on overcoming Imposter Syndrome with me or we’re only connected virtually – I will leave you with this invitation.

Please stop and reflect on

• what’s your relationship with yourself before you start looking at your outside relationships?
• what’s the way you talk to yourself in your head?
• how do you feel when you are in your own company? Can you simply BE with yourself without doing anything?

 

Imposter Syndrome brings loneliness because you are disconnected from yourself.

 

Wherever you are on your own journey

I see you,

I hold you,

I love you.

 

Just how I see, hold and love myself. Even if it sometimes sucks.

 

And why am I talking especially to the Business Leaders and Business Owners?

Because we have an impact on so many other lives.

But it all starts with us…

 

 

Have the most amazing weekend and you know that I am here as your Imposter Syndrome coach. Reach out.

 

Michaela xx

We speak about leadership SO MUCH these days. Everyone has something to say about how to be a great leader. Including myself, of course, I am a Leadership Coach after all?.

From my own 20 years’ experience as a leader and coaching many leaders on different levels from the managers to VPs, I see one major difference between the ones that are series about being great leaders for others and those who say they want to be great leaders for others but what is really driving them is acknowledgement and approval from the outside world.

 

The first group has genuinely others in mind. If you work for somebody like that, you are a very lucky person! Stay there and learn.

The second group pretends to have others in mind while really what they are after is for the world to say “you are a great leader”. This is an ego-driven leadership. And very often this can be a subconscious attempt to be approved of, admired and loved because of the person’s emotional (often subconscious) wounds.

 

Nobody likes ego-driven bosses. We all have had a “privilege” working for them. A few names immediately pop into my mind, that’s for sure.

And as I said above, I was certainly one of them when I was younger and hungry to prove myself.

So there’s no judgement here.

 

On the contrary – I want to stick up for these girls and boys, women and men.

They need help.

Not in a patronising way.

 

I am going to talk to YOU directly.

If YOU recognise yourself as one of those leaders who is afraid to fail, who wants to be constantly approved of, recognised as THE leader who has things always under control and never asks for help because you think you “should” know how to handle every situation – PLEASE STOP AND TAKE A BREATH.

It’s not leadership – it’s a sure route to self-destruction. It might take 30 years but you will pay a toll at some point in your life. Health, relationships, your sanity, loneliness, emptiness. Or all of it.

And I get you.

I know that company politics is often tough. I know there is still very little space for being genuinely vulnerable, honest and open – even though your company says it wants to promote all of the above.

I know it – I coach many of you across different industries.

No matter where you work (and what position) – the story is often very similar.

 

The truth is that your bosses are as scared and uncertain as you are.

People often try to protect their own. In any way they know how.

And it’s often a chain reaction.

You do it because you see your boss behaving like it. And she does it because she sees her boss behaving like it.

 

NOW

I am a deeply spiritual person. I am also a very practical person. And yes – these two go together. They dance together very well.

BEing combined with DOing.

And remember – I’ve been where many of you are.

Scared of failure, scared of being a disappointment, working fourteen hours a day just to have things under control, going insane in my head – not being able to switch my busy mind off, waiting to be approved of, waiting to be told how good I was.

There is nothing wrong with enjoying a compliment. Nothing at all.

But if waiting for the compliment is the only thing that is driving you – that IS a problem.

And a sign that it is time to get serious about YOUR OWN RELATIONSHIP WITH YOURSELF.

 

Your desire to be constantly acknowledged and praised is based in FEAR.

You are scared.

It really is as simple as that.

And I want to give you a hug.

 

Depending on your upbringing that fear might show up in many different ways:

• people pleasing
• being aggressive
• being a complete idiot as a leader (sorry)
• not being able to create healthy boundaries and saying “no”
• trying to figure everything out on your own – not admitting you don’t know something
• over-delegating and talking to your teams from the ego place of power (makes you feel powerful and important)
• not being able to delegate
• telling your team how to keep their life-work balance while you don’t know how to do it yourself

 

I could go on.

 

***

And so I invite – if any of the above resonates, please start doing the work.

Don’t ignore the signs.

It’s YOU asking for YOUR own attention.

Not your boss’s, not the outside world.

Your own attention.

Especially if you are a LEADER, it is your responsibility to first sort your relationship with yourself.

You cannot lead others if your own relationship with yourself is rocky.

 

Be an example to your team.

I am not saying jump on the desk in the office and shout “I’m not OK” but maybe look in the mirror and ask

“How can I start feeling empowered, not scared? What needs to happen?”

 

Don’t wait until you’re asked to pay that toll fee.

Start taking care of your SELF before the toll invoice comes in the post.

 

 

As always,

 

With LOVE

 

Michaela xx

“What is it that you do now, Michaela?” A question that is coming up a lot at the moment.

I am grateful that people are curios because I can invite them to experience a powerful coaching session with me and tell them that what I do now is:

I help High-Achieving Professionals who struggle with anxiety to get rid of that anxiety and consciously create extraordinary results from the place of ease, self-awareness and with purpose.

This is not a randomly choreographed positioning statement, this is something I feel extremely (and I mean extremely) passionate about. Why? Because I’d been there. I’d been in the place of fear of failure, anxiety and excruciating pain created by my own inner critic for six long years. Six. Let me tell you, that’s a long time living on the edge, constantly expecting something at work to go horribly wrong.

Until I realised that nothing was going to go wrong. Things were going to go as I CREATED them. (When the penny dropped about four years ago, my mind exploded!). And if something does go off track and life happens, I’ll stop and either ask for help or re-examine my perspective I’m taking on the situation. You might think it’s obvious – well, it wasn’t to me.

And why do I focus on High Achievers?

First of all, I am a High Achiever myself. I used to think that High Achiever was a dirty word. That I should not stick out, I should go with the flow, should always do what I was told, should be less vocal, should, should, should… I used to think there was something wrong with me. Not anymore. My name is Michaela and I am a High-Achiever.

Secondly, NO ONE should go through what I went through. As High Achievers, we can drive ourselves crazy without realising it. Or realise it and still drive ourselves mad. At some point I did realise that things were not OK but I believed that that was simply how things were in the high-pressure jobs.

Do any of these sound familiar?

• You measure your worth purely by the results you achieve.
• Not achieving your targets / deadlines / project outcomes is your worst nightmare.
• When you get stuck you don’t want to ask for help because you believe you ‘should’ have the solutions.
• More you get stuck in the story in your head, harder you try to fix things instead of stepping away and letting things breathe a bit.
• You believe that you are going to get ‘discovered’ one day soon and people will realise that you haven’t got a clue about anything (Imposter Syndrome).
• Perfectionism, hmmm.
• Insomnia is your best friend. An occasional panic attack in the middle of the meeting comes as an unexpected ‘bonus.’
• You look for any distractions just to escape from your own thoughts. (more shopping, more Netflix, more travel, more partying, more gym, more working…) But it never works.
• People you interact with have no clue how you really feel and what’s going on in your head. You are ashamed to share it.
• You feel alone. Even if you are constantly surrounded by people.
• Everything is personal.

Maybe you can relate to some of the above. Maybe to all of it.

And if you do, let me tell you this.

You are NOT your results and you are certainly NOT broken. What is happening is that the story you believe to be true is broken and is not serving you anymore. On the contrary. It’s harming you and it’s time to rewrite that story. Somewhere, somehow, at some point in your life you started believing something that is causing you to feel the way you’re feeling. And I know that it is difficult to let that story go because even if it is an unhelpful story, it is a familiar one and (as strange as it sounds) it brings you a level of comfort caused by the familiarity of it. New story would mean exposing yourself. That would mean being vulnerable and you don’t do vulnerable. Who knows what that would bring? Uncertainty. I feel you.

But as a High Achiever, you have SO MUCH TO GIVE! So much to share with the world. So much meaningful contribution that you could bring. What about if your current story was stopping you from REALLY achieving some incredible stuff? Stopping you from discovering your true purpose, just because you are busy chasing this month’s targets and deadlines? Or stopping you from chasing those deadlines from the place of ease and real confidence.

Might just be the

• time to re-write your story and shift from fear to possibility?
• time to replace your beliefs that drive how you feel, think and act?
• time to get in touch with what’s really driving your anxiety and let it go?

I remember when I made that decision. I simply had enough. I think even my own fear was fed up with me. Fed up with the same old story and how sorry I felt for myself. And so, for the first time in my life, I asked for help. The rest is history…

And that’s what I do and why I feel so passionate about it:

I help High-Achieving Professionals who struggle with anxiety to get rid of that anxiety and consciously create extraordinary results from the place of ease, self-awareness and with purpose.

If you’ve reached your ‘enough is enough’ threshold and would like to explore what that shift would look like for you or what your purpose as a High Achiever is, I invite you to have a powerful coaching conversation with me. Allow me to hold safe space for you so that you can decide what you want your next step to be. Remember, I’d been there. I’ve got you.

Block the time that suits you either here https://meetings.hubspot.com/michaela40 or send me an e-mail to [email protected].

And if you would like to become part of our community, join our newsletter and stay connected with us here https://michaela-smith.com/.

 

With lots of love,

 

Michaela x

Hello my friend, 

 

When we say self-love – what comes to your mind?

Really. Take a second to give it a thought. What is self-love to you?

 

It took me a while to feel comfortable with the concept of self-love, probably because it didn’t make any sense to me. “Is it having a massage once a week, cheering myself up with a new pair of shoes when I feel down or what do they mean by self-love?”

Self-love might sound selfish. We might feel like we should not be giving ourselves so much attention. We should just get on with life, look at how we can help others – not ourselves.

I had a total emotional block when it came to paying attention to how I felt. To listening to what was asking to be heard. I completely ignored any signs that my body was giving me or anxieties that were coming up. My concept of self-love was to push through and stay ‘strong’.

I see a lot of that. When I ask a question: ‘How do you take care of yourself?’, the answer is often vague or I get the usual standard kind of answer – I go for a walk, I spend time with my friends, I eat healthy, etc. There is nothing wrong with those answers but somehow they feel like they are not the real answers, they are sentences we hear in YouTube videos and they get stuck in our heads as something we should do. And say when asked.

We all have our journeys and we all have different timing. Thanks God. We discover things, feelings, emotions, signs when we are ready. Life is clever like that, you see. Unfolding.

For me personally, after a few years of inquiring into what self-love means, I’ve realised that self-love (to me) means a total acceptance of who I am. With all my flaws, mood swings, anxieties, doubts, fears, all of it. Without the need to change anything because I ‘should’ be a certain way. These days, I know when I am practicing self-harm instead of self-love. I simply don’t feel good. It really is as simple as that. The trick is to catch it, pay attention to it and ask what is off and why? And listen.

Don’t take me wrong, sometimes I wish I was this perfectly sophisticated, gentle female creature, spreading eternal light, eating healthy stuff, exercising regularly, taking care of my body and spirit more and then I stop and realise that it feels completely alien and say to myself, “Fuck it, let’s have another doughnut.”

Because you know what, we are all perfect exactly as we are. And THAT’S self-love to me.

 

Have a great day.

 

Michaela xx

Hello my friends,

As human beings, we are mostly programmed to seek certainty. To know what is coming, to have a stable job and income, to predict certain outcomes, etc. In other words, we are control freaks?.  Nothing wrong with that (well…) – that’s how our society functions and that’s how most of us have been brought up. I certainly have.

Until one day we realise that this “certainty” thing is not about us controlling things but about us being controlled by the outside circumstances. We become the slaves to our mortgages, lifestyles, image… You name it.

Striving for constant certainty brings other “side effects”. Anxiety, stress, fear and other uninvited friends. Simply because when things don’t go as planned we don’t like it and we try our level best to get things back to the way we think they should be. Everything outside of our perception of certainty is uncertainty. And uncertainty is scary.

When you stop for a second and think about the above – it’s madness. The above is the reason we get stuck in the jobs we don’t like, get stuck with the partners we should walk away from, often do things without questioning them, etc.

We are willing to put up with a load of BS, often all our lives, just to have certainty. Better the devil you know, right?

There are people out there that are OK with uncertainty. I admire them. A lot. And I have been listening to their life stories, their perceptions of certainty and uncertainty, their ways of thinking and feeling for a while now. A few years. Wanting to unprogramme my certainty programme that I have been carrying all my life. My parents did the best they could (and I love them to bits), just like millions of other parents out there but the certainty programme they brought me up with was rubbish. Complete rubbish. I don’t like it. Caused me a lot of anxiety in the past.

First time I “dared” to break my pattern of what I thought certainty was (secure job and income) was two years ago. I was 45 at the time. I resigned from my cushy corporate job in Japan. Without another job, without knowing what was I going to do. And it felt soooooooooooooooo liberating. I somehow KNEW I was doing the right thing. Simply knew it.

And it felt like I discovered what the true certainty was. True certainty means trusting what feels right. To YOU. Listening to your gut. And no – we will not always be able to do what feels right. And it’s OK. But if we, from time to time, simply stop and have a date with ourselves and listen to what really matters to us – we might be able to do at least one little step at a time towards letting go of the certainty as we know it and saying hello to the certainty we know is our own authentic voice.

Trusting instead of controlling is a huge step. But boy, does it feel right.

As my coach says. Living with ‘I don’t know’ opens up a gate to endless opportunities. And that’s not scary, that’s exciting.

To receive my regular Blogs, join our community and subscribe to the newsletter: https://michaela-smith.com/. We woud love to have you. 

 

Have a wonderful day. 

 

Michaela x 

 

Hello my friends,

I hope today’s letter finds you well.

A few weeks ago, I told myself I really wanted to enjoy this summer. Whatever the weather. To be very mindful of what is happening in my life, how I am spending my time and who with. Not just during the weekends or holidays but every day.

And then I asked myself what it actually meant to enjoy my summer. What did it mean to me? How was it going to look like?

And not surprisingly, good old action-oriented plan started coming out. Want to do this, want to do that, want to work on this, want to go and see these places, want to finish that….

Luckily, I swiftly caught myself and realized that what I started ‘plotting’ was no different from my pre-summer months. Maybe the nature of the activities changed but when I looked at my list, it just looked like another action plan – filled with after-work activities. Didn’t feel so good.

Why am I writing about this?

Because I find it fascinating how we often believe we are in charge of our own thoughts and actions while the truth is that most of the time, it is the other way round. Mindfulness might be a fancy word everyone talks about these days but for most of us, staying mindful is an everyday process of checking in with our inner world. And that, my friends, have nothing to do with any sort of action planning.

And so, I threw my action plan away and asked myself a different question. How do I want to FEEL this summer?  And a very different list started coming out. A list that felt much more aligned with what I was looking for.

As always, I invite you to pause a little and check in with yourself. Give yourself a little bit of time to hear what you (not people and circumstances around you) want. And if what you’re after is an action-packed list of summer activities, absolutely go for it!

Wherever you are in the world – swimming in the sea or experiencing another lockdown – as always, I am sending lots of love.

If you would like to join our community and receive regular Saturday letters, subscribe to my newsletter here https://michaela-smith.com/.

Stay well and enjoy your summer.

 

Michaela xx

Hello my friends. 

Over the last few years, I’ve spent a lot of time processing and applying (with more or less success) the concept of acceptance.

HARD ?.

But my gut was telling me, that the spiritual teachers, Buddha masters and modern quantum scientists – they can’t all be wrong. Something must be in the art of accepting what is – otherwise the concept would not have survived for thousands of years. (And another, much less poetic, reason was that I felt like crap and was tired of always having expectations, always chasing some next thing thinking it was going to make me feel better. Got tired of it, wanted a new way of approaching life. Wanted to be more at ease with myself and the world.)

What do I mean by “acceptance”?

I believe that, these days, most of us understand and realise how powerful our minds are. The quality of our life, our mental health, our physical health, our sense of self-worth, the way we see life and people around us – ALL starts with our thoughts.

I consider it to be good news. I mean, I consider the awareness of knowing that our thoughts can destroy us or help us flourish to be good news. Because that awareness allows us to work with our thoughts, choosing what thoughts we want to entertain and stop ourselves from letting our thoughts ruin our lives. 

What does the above have to do with the “acceptance”? The following:

As human beings – our thoughts are set up to run on autopilot. More and more people (thanks God) realise and learn that if we let our thoughts do whatever they want, they (vast majority of time) create a real mess in our heads.

Why is that?

Mess happens because what goes on in our heads (if not observed and regulated) 100% of the time is either thinking about our past – very often feeling hurt, betrayed, etc or creating (very often) catastrophic future scenarios bringing up the feelings of worry, loss of control and anxiety.   

In its natural state, our mind is not able to stay present. The never-ending chatter either keeps looking back or focuses on our future which hasn’t happened yet. This is where meditation and mindfulness come in play (but that’s a different topic).

When it comes to the “acceptance”, it is incredibly difficult to accept our everyday life, situations and people in our lives exactly as they are because our thoughts tell us otherwise. Does the below sound familiar?

“I wish I have not done/said that.”
“I wish I haven’t sent that message/e-mail.”
“What she told me was really hurtful. I don’t want to speak to her ever again.”
“OMG, I am so stressed about that presentation I have to do next week, I’m going it screw it up”
“I am going to lose my job, I am sure of it.”
“When I get promoted, I will be happy.”
“I wish I had more time.” 
“I wish my husband/wife/colleagues/bosses were different.”

The list is never ending… It’s constant. You achieve or change one thing, mind gets satisfied for about three minutes and it starts all over again. 

The idea of ACCEPTING WHAT IS, is inviting us to detach from the idea that things SHOULD be different. Says who?? (…your thoughts – in case you haven’t guessed the answer)

It invites us to NOT judge the situation. Judgement causes resentment and that energy consumes all our focus. It affects our mental wellbeing which over time manifests in dis-ease, illness and ill-being. 

Accepting situations and people as they are allows us to focus our energy on CREATING our life – not on FIGHTING what is.

Simply put; situations and people are neither good nor bad, our perception and our thinking/judgement makes them good or bad. Situations and people are what they are. And our thoughts (if not controlled and regulated) will try very hard to persuade us that things SHOULD be different.

The whole concept of “accepting what is” is a process. It’s training and it takes time because it is not natural to our egos and our thoughts. It means constantly bringing ourselves (mindfully) to the question of “how do I want to feel?”. And if your answer is “I want to feel at ease and not in resistance, resentment and fight mode”, than accepting things as they are is your way forward.

If the above triggers your curiosity and you would like to learn, discuss or apply the concept of acceptance, as an accredited Transformational Coach, I will be delighted to be your buddy and support.

Visit me on michaela-smith.com and get in touch. I offer a free 60-minutes discovery session to talk about what you want to address and how we can work together.

And I leave you with two quotes from two of my favorite mind teachers.

“What happened, happened, and couldn’t have happened any other way ………. because it didn’t.”
~ Peter Crone

“You can’t create a new future holding onto the emotions of the past.”
~ Dr. Joe Dispenza

Have a good one.

Michaela x

At the age of 46, I’ve experienced enough highs and lows to know that long-term life strategy makes more sense than short-term wins. A bit deep for an introductory sentence, I know. Apology.

As a qualified Transformational Coach and working as a Senior Leader in a global corporation for almost fifteen years, I’ve come to realise that most of us seek one thing and one thing only.

Happiness.

The meaning of happiness differs from person to person and it changes as we grow older.  

Happiness can mean successful career, lots of money in your bank account, senior title on the business card.

It can also mean a family and a house full of children. Or staying single and without commitments.

Or simply watching the sunset and having a good cry because you need it.

It can be all of the above or none of it.

Each of us is different and each of us has a different relationship with happiness.

My happiness is to help people figure out what happiness means to them. Help them step into the awareness of their own desires – not those of the society, family, bosses and social media.

Whether it’s my team members or my coachees, I find it fascinating to watch how people flourish when they are given an opportunity to be heard. Hearing people without a need to correct or advise them is the biggest gift we can give to someone. Because people always know what to do and what makes them happy. They just need that space to listen to themselves instead of listening to all the noise that surrounds them.

 

And so, I listen. I listen so that you can figure out what happiness means to you and act on it. Truly.

Whether it’s career, music, family, money, friends, nature or flying to the moon – it’s your birthright to be happy.

If you’re feeling a little (or a lot) lost in the world of someone else’s happiness and you need help figuring out your next life move, I am here to help.

michaela-smith.com

You are not broken and you don’t need fixing. You are simply experiencing highs and lows of life.

Michaela xx

Hello my friend,

I hope all is well with you, wherever you are in the world.

Today, I would like to touch on RESILIENCE. I have spoken about resilience before but Covid has introduced things we never knew we would have to cope with. And it is fascinating to watch how we, as a human kind, cope with our current everyday reality.

I don’t know about you but I have a feeling that we are not coping all that well. What I see most of the time is an attempt to force previously used solutions to the new challenges. (even though we say to ourselves that we are “flexing” our approach…)

It made me think about how resistant we are to change.

To be perfectly honest, it makes me angry and I often have to stop, detach (often from my own train of thoughts), take a deep breath and remind myself to be kind. To myself and to my environment.

I am old enough to know that my emotions of reactive anger and occasional frustration will not help me feel better. Far from it. Been there, made a video. Million times over.

I also know that I cannot control my outside environment and things that are outside of my control (and currently almost everything is outside of my control). But I can control my responses and my inner dialogue. I know that I can have the best coaches in the world trying to make me feel better but if I don’t make that internal effort myself, it will not happen.

“What does all of the above have to do with resilience?”, you ask.
“A lot.”, I answer.

In my view, we can only cultivate resilience if we are fully aware of what is happening inside of us. If we are clear on what is important to us, how we want to feel, how we want to approach external (uncontrollable) challenges, take responsibility for our actions and really understand what resilience actually means.

And to me, forcing old solutions to the new challenges, expecting my past “proven” methods to work again, forcing and pushing through the challenges without stopping and reviewing whether they actually make any sense – is not understanding what resilience is. It is pure bullying and madness.

This is a meaning of Resilience I found in one of the dictionaries:
“Resilience is the process of adapting well in the face of adversity, trauma, tragedy, or significant sources of stress.”

Resilience basically means that we deal with whatever obstacle we encounter in such a manner that the outside world does not even notice we went through any challenges. But most importantly, it means that we don’t go into an autopilot trying to force our way out the life obstacles. But we stop, review our options, look at things from different perspectives and consciously choose our responses. So that we can bounce back from any adversity as quickly as possible.

You don’t have to tell me – not an easy task. But personally, consciously choosing the way forward seems like a better option than going with the flow of automatic emotions and reactions. (which we often regret)

RESILIENCE is a big topic and I am doing a small presentation on what resilience means to me on 27th February at 5pm UK time.
If you are interested in joining us, you are welcome to

Have the most wonderful rest of the day and (if you’re celebrating)

Happy Valentine’s Day?.

Michaela xx

I’m sitting in the middle of a vast meadow, surrounded by the field of a rich green beautifulness, turning my smiling face to bath in the bright sunlight and breathing the crisp winter air. I love winter.

I am happy.

I have everything I need right here, right now. I feel complete.

It wasn’t always the case. Life used to be complicated.

My own expectations of myself, a constant comparison of myself to others, a never-ending fight to be more, to get more, to mean more, made it complicated.

My expectations of others, my dependence on the external gratification and ego-based self-promotion made it complicated.

My thoughts, anxieties, habits and beliefs made it complicated.

Until one day I woke up and all those complicated complications were simply too much to carry. I wanted simple. I craved more space to breathe, wanted to understand who I really was.

I needed a paradigm shift because my old one did not serve me anymore. I needed transformation and I needed help.

Many questions, many answers, many mind-blowing conversations, many wise people entering my life, many profound inner discoveries and many aha moments later –

it’s my turn to be your help.

So that you can be sitting in the middle of a vast meadow, surrounded by the field of a rich green beautifulness, turning your smiling face to bath in the bright sunlight and breathing fresh air.

So that you can be happy.

Michaela xxx