Are you looking for some help to move forward in your business. Mastermind groups are a great way to do this.

Here is a great video piece on Mastermind Groups.

Since I started my own business 10 years ago I have been part of at least one mastermind group.  They have been great for moral support, brainstorming and getting clarity on where to go next.  Being with people who were all having similar challenges and trying to figure it out together was also a comfort.

However when it came to overcoming fear, it was an illusion that the mastermind groups helped me.  They were  supportive in  keeping me  moving forward in spite of my fear.   It wasn’t until I resolved the emotional energy around fear and dropped off my emotional baggage,  that I was actually able to transcend it.  Now that I have removed the Emotional Hot Buttons of fear I am soaring forward.  Before, my emotional baggage kept me flying close to the ground.

 Like filling a hot air balloon, we do lots of things to lift us off the ground; mastermind groups, professional training, personal development work and stress management techniques.  These are all valuable and our balloon starts to rise.  Many times it does not fly very high, because we still have ballast attached to the side of the basket.  It is when we drop off our Emotional Baggage that our hot air balloon begins to soar.

May your balloon soar in your mastermind group as mine is now soaring within my group.

Is Your Balloon Flying?

In the past (and maybe still today) I interrupted people because an idea would pop into my head and I wanted to share it.  That was my ego wanting to be seen and prove how smart I was so  I could gain your recognition and approval.  Basically I wanted your love.

Yesterday I had the opportunity of having someone interrupt me from sharing a thought because they were concerned about what I was going to say.  It sounded like “this is not the appropriate time.”  How would they know if it was the appropriate time or not, unless they knew exactly what I was going to say?  We never know what someone is going to say, because we are not them and we can’t know their thoughts.  We need to be vulnerable in the face of our fear and have the courage and patience to listen.

Being told not to speak created an emotional reaction in me such that I no longer wanted to be part of the conversation or share my ideas.  On the way home I realized an Emotional Hot Button had been pushed.  My father would interrupt my mother on a regular basis and tell her that she didn’t know what she was talking about. I have emotional baggage around this.  It doesn’t feel safe to express myself.  Synchronistically,  I was working with a client yesterday who was holding old emotional energy in her mouth and throat.  She said “I feel like I want to scream.”  She felt like there were people both at home and at work who did’t want  to hear what she had to say.  Her ability to self-express had been shut down.

We can have a profound impact when our fears or ego shut down another person’s communication. We are telling them it is not OK to speak. Now I know why I’ve observed so many people sitting in class rooms or around the boardroom table who never wanted to speak.  They had been conditioned to believe it wasn’t safe, and no one wanted to hear them anyway.

Jacque speaks from Edmonton

Video Link: Divine Divorce Journey 1

Setting an intention and having it come to fruition can be easy or hard depending upon how you approach it.

For years I did it the hard way.   I would sit down once a year with myself for a planning session, set goals and then start diligently working towards the goals, being disappointed when I fell short of the goals.  What I missed seeing was all the work and progress that I had made along the way.  I was judgmental of myself for not producing the results that my mind planned twelve months prior.   I usually did a great job of keeping the target in focus and worked hard to take the appropriate actions to get there, the results just weren’t the planned ones.  Life often has a different plan for us than the one our mind makes up.  If we use our intuition to pay attention to what life is showing us we can produce amazing results in a relatively short time with ease and have more fun.

Over the past two years after going through divorce I changed the way I approach life.  I made the change because I did not have the energy to keep pushing myself while I was going through the divorce.  Life showed me that to survive, let alone thrive, I needed to cut back, stop pushing and take things one step at a time.  Using the Emotional Hot Button Removal Techniques I released the emotional energy that got in the way of me using my intuition.  I started to let my intuition guide me on where to focus my energy and how much energy to expend in any particular area.  I started to say No to activities where before I felt like I had to say Yes.

In conjunction with using my intuition, I set my intention for how I would like to” feel and experience life.”  My intention is to have fun, be vibrant and have a thrilling business.  I used this intention to help guide my direction and actions.  My intuition has made it clear that I am to write a book about my experience going through divorce and I am to share the Emotional Hot Button Removal techniques.  As a result of this knowing I started to write my book in January of 2010.

I also know that life for me is about adventure.  I went to Belize in December of 2009 and had the best vacation ever.  On the vacation I was being vibrant and had a ton of fun learning how to scuba dive and meeting the local people.  Because of this experience everyone asked when I was going back.  I just shrugged my shoulders, I had not thought about it.   Within three weeks all barriers that might prevent me from going to Belize to write my book disappeared.   I would now have to manufacturer a reason why I couldn’t go.  Which after being a coach for ten years I know this is a common occurrence for people, called sabotage.   So instead of manufacturing an excuse I used my wonderful mind  to figure out how I could have a virtual business and set this as another intention.   I figured out the technology required to continue coaching my clients and then I just let the rest unfold.

Over the next several months all the pieces for the adventure fell into place with ease.  Here is a video clip from the first leg of my journey.  Video Link: Divine Divorce Journey 1

Feeling a little frustrated?

How much EASIER would your life be if you did not have to constantly manage your emotional reactions?  Imagine having a positive impact on your relationships with others, without expending as much energy to do so. It is finally possible to resolve the emotional energy that causes emotional reactions. What are Management Strategies? Management strategies use your ability to think.   Almost all personal development, coaching and counselling are based on exploring and changing your thinking.  In the coaching and personal development work I’m most familiar with, our conversations explore the following areas:

• Taking 100% responsibility for everything that happens in your life and not being a victim or blaming others.
• Habits – choosing things to positively serve your body and your life rather than doing things which suppress emotions and have negative impacts; such as too much sugar, alcohol, smoking, lack of sleep, too many hours in front of a TV or computer, to mention a few.
• Attitudes – recognizing whether you experience things from a positive perspective or negative perspective.  Is the glass half full or half empty?
• Beliefs – challenging what you believe to be true about the way the world works.
• Control – attempting to redirect your emotional reactions; stopping yourself from being upset and having a negative impact.

Managing all of these areas takes focus and energy, and over time you will change some of your habits, attitudes and beliefs. This allows you to live a happier life, because you are more resourceful in the moment,  able to control your emotional reactions and you can take more responsibility for what is happening in your life.  Life will be better.  With practice and continuous work it certainly was for me. And there is something even easier: resolving energy. What is RESOLVING? Resolving virtually eliminates the need to constantly be managing and controlling your emotions.  What you were previously managing becomes easy, and upsetting emotional reactions virtually disappear over time.  You get to experience more bliss in life. Resolving the energy that causes emotional reactions is like draining old sludge out of your battery to make room for more vibrant energy to fuel your life.   It is the old sludge energy from past emotional conditioning that causes you to have emotional reactions such as frustration, anger, anxiety, worry and fear.  By resolving you are eliminating energy from your body rather than adding new thinking or learning.  It is like deleting a virus from your personal human hard drive. I was recently doing this work with a friend of mine and his relatively new big flat panel TV stopped working one day.  His normal reaction would have been to get angry and upset.  Instead he very calmly dealt with the situation, finding someone to help him take the TV in to be serviced on warranty.  He didn’t have to expend any energy on being angry or on trying to control an emotional reaction.  He just took care of business. When is it good to Manage? Being able to manage your emotions is very useful in the moment when situations occur that push your emotional hot buttons (associated with unresolved underlying energy).  When you are resourceful in the moment your actions will have a positive impact on the people around you.  Having a positive impact is always a good thing in my books! Then at a later point in time you can sit down and resolve the energy. How do you Resolve the old energy? We will show you how in the Emotional Hot Button Removal workshop.  Click Here for more information

‘There are days when I hear my friends’ stories of corporate politics and backstabbing … I wonder… why do people have to play that way?”

In this month’s news letter from Catalyst Business Coaching I will talk about this from the corporate perspective and how to respond appropriately.  Here I would like to talk about this from my personal perspective.

People who responded to the post indicated that people behave this way due to watching reality TV and drama magazines.  This is the social conditioning argument, they are taught this in family life, school, team sports, dating, and the list goes on.  ”This is a sickness that pervades more than just the work place.”   I agree it is everywhere, because we as people are everywhere, and we have different kinds of insecurities.

From my own experience as I look back on who I was in the corporate world 10 years ago, the back stabbing seemed to come from a place of fear, lack of abundance, wanting to be better than someone else and looking for approval. Essentially I wanted to be loved and was afraid that I might not be. I felt separate from others and hence entered into competition with them. Unfortunately it was a game that was all about ME rather than a game that was about US.

Don’t get me wrong.  At the time I believed that I was acting in the best interest of the WE. I thought that my solution was the best solution and the right way to go.  So I excluded other’s opinions and when they didn’t agree with me I would talk about it with my “friends at work”. I would speak about how the other person was wrong and I would use great logical arguments as to why I was right.  Was this backstabbing?

Do we promote back stabbing even more when one person’s perspective is fueled by gossip and a dash of embellishment?  How many of us tell stories about other’s?  Even after all the work I have done, my ego still wants to be right and I have to catch myself when I speak about others.  My ego continues to behave as if I am separate from others and yet I know that I am connected to everyone.  It is a constant practice to be impeccable with the words I speak.

Jacque