The Tao and Truth of Failure (and how I failed)

How many failures have you had in your life? Me? I've had lots...lots and lots. 

• I was a failure as a prospective wife - we got engaged, had a child and then he had an affair with someone even younger than me - I was only 25 and he was already 18 years my senior. I am 37 now and never been married even though I had always very much wanted that to be a part of my life.

• I was a failure as a provider - my son's father didn't contribute a bean for six years after we split up and I was as broke as they come. I left with nothing and no job (I had helped my fiance build his business and worked in his Juice Bar for about a year before we split and therefore could not keep my job). I rented a house in a small village for my son and I that was so small he couldn't fit a full sized single bed in his room and I couldn't fit anything other than a bed in mine (not complaining though, we loved that house!). I paid the rent through housing benefit and my friend gave me £1000 to buy a car as my car went as well when the relationship ended (I couldn't afford the finance on it any longer). I retrained as a teacher on an unqualified teachers salary and we muddled by but overall I failed to be the mother and provider I wanted to be.

• I was a failure as a writer - I wrote a novel in my spare time, I put my heart and soul into it and although I sold about 2000 copies many of those were heavily discounted as a marketing 'ploy'. I now only sell maybe one a month and the profit is only about 50p per copy. 

• I was a failure as a business woman - I ran a magazine for parents of young children when my son was first born and we were living abroad, that I started from scratch. I taught myself design and layout, sold the advertising space, wrote the articles, interviewed people, ran events, did the photography...everything. I won an award for the business plan I wrote for it as well and got lots of publicity as a result and Barclays Bank even made me an official referrer for anyone who opened an account with them to get their marketing plan written. It failed to make money though, in fact it just racked up debts, I was rubbish at selling the advertising space and that was how it made money - I fundamentally just wanted something that would make other mums feel better and more connected, not to be selling advertising.

• I was a failure as a strong and powerful woman - I have such a passion for acting, I love it, it is in my bones and for a little while I wondered if I should actually give it a go. I had moderate success, I was cast in a couple of adverts, some short films, did some narration and even got nominated for a Best Actress award for a short that showed in the cinema. I also though met a devious small time Director who raped (I hate that word and it being associated with me, it's the first time I have ever used it) me and another girl and was investigated by the police and it all got rather horrible and I don't really ever talk about it. I failed to stop him, to report him (I only did so when I found out he had done it to another girl who was younger than me and I wanted to protect her). I failed to be strong. 

• I was a failure as a mother - I have one, beautiful and amazing son, I love him like my heart could burst. I also had another child though...a child created accidentally with a man who I didn't love and didn't want to be with and who was distinctly creepy (as it turned out...it didn't start that way obviously). I didn't want my existing child to always have to have this man in his life because we had a child together or to be around him at all - I chose my existing child over my unborn child and I had an abortion. I saw my unborn and unknown child on a scan before it happened, at nine weeks - they hadn't realised I was having an abortion and thought I would want to see. I cried, I said sorry, I said goodbye, I grieved and I punished myself endlessly. I still hold my stomach some days and talk to them to apologise again and again and again. I failed to look after my unborn child, I failed to care for them no matter what the circumstances...I failed as a mother.

• I was a failure at being a lifestyle coach - I wanted to be showing photos of how well I was doing, how I was enjoying a lavish and wonderful lifestyle, I wanted to lie and pretend that all was amazing and that I had never made so much money in my life. But it wasn't true..even though I contribute to several magazines, have a twice weekly radio show and have run some great events I still spend a lot of time working day in day out at a computer screen, designing stuff, marketing stuff, creating stuff and sometimes I'm in my PJ's till about 11am just doing stuff to keep the dream alive and to keep some resemblance of a proper business running ...I'm not looking glam and supping herbal tea as a take another selfie of how amazing I look (although believe me I still want to be that person some days). I also don't earn a lot of money still, some months I have earned nothing at all.

• At the end of the day I had to take a long look at who I was and what I wanted and what I was doing all this for because I came to the rather hopeless looking conclusion that I was a total and utter failure at being me - I have spent most of my life moulding myself to the right job, the right image, the right words, the right way of being, the projection that looked the best to others and I got tired...actually, I am tired, I am tired right now still of trying to hold true to an image that is not me. 

The me that I really am enjoys nothing more than a Friday night at my local pub with my son playing with his friends out in the large pub garden, having a few glasses of wine with the groups of friends that can be found there most weekends and relaxing and talking about utter crap.

I like to sing and dance like a loon - I like to kick my shoes off at a party and get onto the dancefloor and just chuck myself around a bit. I like to sing loudly and proudly with the force of Beyonce when I am alone and the windows are up in my car.

I like to have the time in the day to relax and chat with my son when he finishes school each day instead of him waiting until 7pm when I would come home weary from a day in London just in time to immediately cook him dinner and get him in the bath.

I like to create new possibilities and new ways of looking at things for myself and for others - I have a deep belief and unending belief that somewhere in among all my failures is a suggestion of where success lay for me and for others too, I feel it is a journey that has been a wonderful teacher and has given me so many gifts. This is what I bring to others - I can see the gift in them when they have lost all sight of where they are going.

So I decided that whatever happens next for me...whether I leave Coaching and get a 'proper' job or whether I continue along this path, the important thing is to be completely authentic from now on.

I read something this morning

'..that the opposite of a correct statement is a false

statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may

well be another profound truth'.

Niels Bohr

 So my profound truth is that in many ways I am a failure but it is also a profound truth that I have not failed too. A divine dichotomy if you will. Whilst I failed to be a mother to one child, I succeeded in protecting another, whilst I failed to be strong as a woman, I succeeded in moving through a painful event in a way that no one would ever have known anything had happened. Whilst I failed to make the magazine work, I succeeded at learning a huge amount that most people never learn to do for themselves.

In the face of every failure there is a success - the two co-exist and therefore neither really exists at all...there is no success or failure, only a life to live and love to give and a choice of how you face the world.

I am your Coach who is not perfect, who has failed and who has succeeded at the same time. I would like to Coach you, to hear you and not judge you and to help you realise the nuggets truth in your heart so that you can speak from that part of you and change your world and the world around you. 

Love Nova xxx

How Coaching is Different to Counselling and Why I Chose One Over the Other.

One question that I get asked a lot is why Coaching is different to Counselling - or is actually different at all? 

The short answer is that yes, they are different, substantially different in fact and I made a choice to focus on one rather than the other in my own practice for very specific reasons.

I studied Psychology at University and then after graduation I trained for a further three years to become a Psychotherapist.  It was a very rigorous process that rightly explored every aspect of who I was, went through every hidden emotion, every subconscious thought and brought them to the surface to be examined and experienced again. I spent long weekends away with my training group on top of the normal training where we were taught to become comfortable with every possible scenario that might come up in the Client/Therapist relationship.

One memorable time was when we were doing our sexual therapy training and had to ask each other, within a big group setting some of the most intimate questions you could think of - 'How often do you masturbate?' for example, and we had to answer the entire group honestly and openly until everyone knew the most secret parts of your humanity. It was a daunting task but it was perhaps the most valuable training I have ever had (I've had loads!) because it has made me aware of things that in 'normal' life I might never have come across/dared to ask/thought might exist. 

It was exhausting and uncomfortable, I faced up to every weakness, confessed every secret, had my every judgement broken down, confronted all my fears, learned what it felt like to be totally vulnerable and then went to work to build a new me - a stronger me but a me that still had a long way to go and probably a me that felt more frightened of the world than ever before.

The problem I had with Counselling as a profession was that I didn't like how long it took to make huge leaps in the process of change, I felt that it was damaging to hold people in a space where they felt so much pain and suffering and to explore that to deeper and deeper levels. I wasn't sure that there were many people skilled enough, strong enough and mentally robust enough to take someone to a dark place and know how to bring them back again safely.

I also noticed when I was working with some of my clients that Counselling simply served to confirm over and over again to them that they were damaged, that they were incapable of finding solutions for themselves because they had so much going on in their past that was to blame for their current state. Most people didn't want to 'get better' they wanted to be held and to listened to and to be loved. This is a valuable and wonderful thing to be able to give to someone - to give them the space and the time to feel special and worthwhile, but what you want in the end is to move them forwards to feel empowered and free to choose their own emotions and not be beholden to a past that no longer exists. Many people are more frightened of leaving the support of counselling that the number of people who are willing to make changes for themselves with the support of counselling.

Counselling has it's place of course - I myself had to undergo counselling as part of the process of qualifying and again later as an adult I had a short spell of counselling around a specific issue. I found Person Centered Counselling was much more 'me' than Psychodynamic Counselling but neither were as dynamic, as fast acting, as helpful or as empowering as Coaching. It was all helpful though and I still believe that whatever helps is helpful - i.e Do whatever helps you personally.

When I noticed that many people who received counselling did not have a real drive to move forward and did not understand that they themselves were responsible for this movement forward and relied instead on the Therapist to do it for them I became hugely frustrated and despondent with the Counselling world. It didn't suit my values and beliefs or my view of the world so I knew I needed to find something different.

Coaching was very new when I first discovered it, the Life Coaches at the time in the UK were focused on too broad an approach, they tended not to have the depth of training and knowledge that Therapists had, nor did they have the same breadth of experience with a huge variety of issues or problems - some still don't, you don't have to have had any experience or training at all to call yourself a Coach. What happens (which is very similar to Counselling) is that Coaches are people who have gone through issues themselves and realised that they can help others who are not as far along the road as they are now, to feel better and to show them a road map out of the woods that they themselves were once lost in.

This is fantastic if the Coach is focused in this particular niche - if you want to earn more money you need a Coach who has been in a place of no money and found the map to wealth and can clearly explain to you how they got there. What they also need to have however, is a clear understanding of how to listen fully to where you are (because no two people are the same) and apply it to you and your circumstances. Or they need to be really clear on the type of person they can help and not take on those who do not fit this model.

Coaching with the right person, with a very clear idea of who they can help and what knowledge and experience they bring to this process is what you want. Not everyone will agree with me when I say that Coaching requires experience but I believe that it does, especially for someone who has not had any formal training. The great thing is though that we ALL have experience in something - we are all experts at something and Coaching allows you to move forward very quickly with an issue (or several) if you find the person who is an expert in that area(s). Take the Coach who is very intuitive - they may not have gone through a divorce themselves but if their expertise is being highly intuitive they will be able to ask the right questions around where you are and where you want to go and they will sense clearly where you are at every stage of the process and tweak it to be in alignment with your personal progress. You do not need to have had the same experiences to be a Coach in that area, what you need is to be an expert with people and deeply in tune with what they require at every stage. 

So, why did I choose Coaching over Counselling? Because I want to see people move forward, I want to work as an equal partner to them, not to take the role of therapist and client, I want to hold the space for change and nurture that change whilst holding the other person accountable for their own progress in a gentle and non judgmental way.  I also want it to happen quickly for them so they do not become reliant on something (whether a process or a person) outside of themselves, with a clear goal in mind so that it can be measured as to whether the coaching is helpful and whether it produces results. I want people to know their power when they have completed Coaching, not to have just been exposed to their weaknesses. I want people to have an end date in mind and what they would like to have achieved by this end date, I want them to work towards something tangible, not just 'feeling better'.

How is Coaching different to Counselling?

• Coaching is forward thinking and present focused.

• Counselling is past focused

• Coaching is creative and exploratory

• Counselling is reactive and exploratory

• Coaching creates a process where the client is responsible for the results

• Counselling creates a process where the Therapist is responsible for the results

• Coaching is direct and challenging
•  
• Counselling is indirect and challenging

• Coaching is delivered through various different means

• Counselling is always one to one or group

• Coaching is often fun and exciting

• Counselling is often upsetting and draining

• Coaching is fast acting and has a specific end date

• Counselling is at the pace of the client

• Coaching focuses on the how and the when as well as the why.

• Counselling focuses on the why

• Coaching doesn't require any formal training or education

• Counselling requires a long period of in-depth training

• Anyone can become a coach

• Counselling is only open to those who are accepted onto a training course after interview and passing certain criteria and can only be practiced by those who pass the course.

There are many other differences too but these are the main ones. There are also a lot of similarities, both are there to support, nurture, understand and serve others in their journey to be changed by the experience. 

In my opinion, having a mixture of the two, taking the best of both worlds is the perfect scenario for clients. Therapists know how to use an understanding of your past to understand your present and a Coach knows how to affect change from your present to your future. Having both a deep understanding of the human Psyche and an ability to drive the process forward towards tangible results is a winning combination. You don't need to BE both a Therapist and a Coach but it is helpful to have an understanding of the differences and similarities.

I choose to Coach now but my skills as a Therapist will never leave me and they enhance my Coaching no end because I take the best of Therapy and blend it with my Coaching (not take the best of Coaching and blend it with Therapy). The important thing is to know what is right for you? This approach is right for me and for my clients but what is right for one person is not right for another...the only thing I know for sure is why I have made my choices, why you make yours is an entirely different story...

To find out whether my approach of a mixture of Therapy and Coaching is right for you why don't you book a FREE session with me? I give all prospective clients a free 45 min session over Skype or the phone so that we can talk about where you are right now, why you are there and how we might be able to get you to where you really want to be...book your no obligation chat with me using this link http://goo.gl/20DuIE  or by emailing me: info@lovelivingevents.co.uk

I also have a FREE GIFT for you that you can download straight away! You can do some Coaching for yourself in the comfort of your own home by exploring some of your values/beliefs/thoughts and emotions in my FREE workbook 'Your Ultimate Journey to Dazzling Self Respect' 

Love Nova xxx

What's the Big Deal about Confidence??

What's the Big Deal About Confidence?

I walked into my first networking event, a shy 21 year old and headed straight for the teas and coffees. My hand shook a little as I tried to pour the hot liquid into a cup and I knew that my nerves were giving me away. I took a quick glance around me and decided to be very brave and head towards someone else standing on their own. I said a quiet 'hi' as I stood alongside her and asked her what she did, she took one look at my youthful (I still looked about 12), scared face and my shaking hands and waved to an imaginary person across the room before making her apologies and moving swiftly away. It destroyed my already wavering confidence and I didn't dare talk to another person that night, busying myself on my phone instead and trying to look important (or about as important as a 12 year old might look in a room full of business owners). The fact was that I didn't feel important, I didn't feel like I belonged there, I didn't feel like anyone would want to talk to me and the events of that night just served to confirm I was right.

I don't recognise that person now, I can't imagine why she had such a hard time talking to new people. These days I have delivered talks to 200 rowdy sixth formers all sat staring at me on a stage, I have worked with high profile businesses and advised them on how to move forward, I have worked with individuals to help them see the amazing person that they are and now I run a business that offers self development events, talks and workshops. I don't always feel confident, no one does...I still feel that girl that I was getting anxious before a meeting or feeling out of her depth and suffering from imposter syndrome...but I can remember that the girl I was, is not who I choose to be now and that I have another 25 years of experience on top to reassure me that things have changed dramatically.

Do you need to wait another 25 years to change how confident you feel? No, of course not. In fact things changed very quickly after that networking event for me, it was a turning point and here are my tips for how you can do the same...

Go easy on yourself – There is nothing intrinsically wrong with who you are, if you are naturally shy that's ok, let that be a part of who you are, start where you are right now. Look at how you would like to be, do you want to be able to talk to new people with confidence, to be able to tell people about who you are or what you do without feeling embarrassed or ashamed? What exactly is it that you want to change? Know that where you are now is the result of what has happened in your life up till now. You are not as confident as you could be because it has served you to be that way. It protected you from difficult situations, it saved you from talking to people you don't like, it has been your friend...but now, perhaps, it is serving you no longer, now it is perhaps holding you back. Say thank you to yourself for the way it has helped you in the past but know that you make a different choice now so that life can develop in the way you want it to.

Know that being confident is ok - For me, a big step forward was realising that I didn't need to be arrogant or boastful in order to appear confident – the people around me that were the most genuine, the most authentic and who were prepared to be vulnerable were also the people that came across as the most confident. Confidence is just about being you, about sharing with others, about listening to others and finding ways to connect that feels comfortable and authentic. I felt much more comfortable about appearing 'confident' when I got out of my head the idea that confident people were also insufferably arrogant!

You don't have to talk to be confident around others - Start by just asking questions, start by listening, be as quiet as you like and just figure out who the person is that you are talking to. You don't need to tell them everything about you, just ask them about who they are until you have an idea of how you can connect to them on a topic or an idea that you feel comfortable discussing. Start small, take props if you need them that you can fall back on when you feel a little anxious, but don't bury yourself, keep your eyes on the room and on the people in it. Look for people who seem a little lost and walk over to them and say something like 'Hi, I haven't been here before have you?'

Remember to be human – sometimes in work situations we assume a professional air that we use as a way to be someone that others will want to invest in. That's ok, it helps sometimes to be behind a professional title, to represent a business or a company instead of ourselves, it can help us to feel more confident. It is also important for confidence overall though, to remember that we are all human. Sometimes it is easier to connect with someone when you are able to add a little bit of yourself into the proceedings. I'm not talking about over sharing or saying something inappropriate to someone you have only just met, but something simple like 'do you fancy sitting down, my feet are killing me' can just break the ice and give the other person the chance to say 'oh me too I've walked all the way here today'...or whatever.

Remember that others successes are not your failures – when we don't feel very confident it's easy to feel that when someone else does well or when someone is good at something, that it is a direct reflection on us. We feel that somehow the fact that they have done well highlights the fact that we are not doing as well ourselves...let this idea go, it only works against you. You haven't failed, you haven't become less because they have become more. In fact, what has happened is that you have highlighted to yourself where you would like to be – this is a great thing! It shows you where to go next, what to work towards and it is a gift to you because it proves that if one human can do it, so can another – you have just been shown proof that it is possible. Just as there is not just one winning lottery ticket, not just one successful business, not just one wonderful marriage, not just one person who changed their life, the person you see being successful is not the only one who can do it – even if it is in the same thing you want to be successful in, there is room for you to do the same.

Find a way to reassure yourself – Facing new or difficult situations is easier when you know that you have found a strategy that works to keep anxiety at bay. I used to feel sick whenever I had to do a talk, go to a place on my own when I didn't know anyone etc. I would actually physically start to feel so sick that I could hardly move. It was a fabulous excuse that my mind made up so that I wouldn't have to face those situations, I could just say I was ill! One day though I was so sick of feeling sick (!) that I purchased some of those pressure point bands that you wear on your wrists and instantly felt better. I began to take them with me wherever I went because I then knew that I had a way of coping with the sick feeling. After a while I never actually needed them but I carried them with me anyway just as reassurance, eventually I forgot all about them and never needed them again. Find your own crutch (a positive one...we are not talking about a crafty vodka every time you meet new people) that you can use for a little while, something that gives you reassurance and then let it go when you are ready.

So what's the big deal about confidence? There isn't one really...it's no big deal. Be you and let others see it, that's all you need to do. The more you let others see you the more they want to be around you and the more others want to be around you the more confident you feel about who you are...no big deal at all. 

If confidence is an issue for you then have a chat with me and let's see if coaching might help...there is no obligation and I might even be able to help in the half hour chat we can have about where you are right now...Book your FREE slot or email: info@lovelivingevents.co.uk

Download my FREE E-Workbook 'Your Ultimate Journey to Dazzling Self Respect'! 

Love Nova xxx