I love the Apple+ show Ted Lasso.
It’s a show about an American football coach, Ted Lasso, who gets hired as a football (soccer) coach in England.
Having lived in England for 3 years and now in the US, I love the humorous take on the cultural differences and can totally relate. Also, it made me miss England!
But there’s another reason I absolutely love it: Ted’s relentless optimism and kindness.
My husband and I just watched the last episode (After watching it alone I made him watch it with me). I don’t want to give the ending away, and I won’t, but the team has to play a game and no one believes they can win (except for good ol’ Ted, of course).
Someone at the local pub tells him: “Don’t you know, it’s the hope that kills you.”
And that is the perfect lead in to my topic today. Because when it comes to creating the life your soul desires, it’s not actually the hope that “kills” you.
It’s hope without belief that kills you.
A dear client of mine came to me a little over a year ago. I had been facebook friends with her for a long time actually, and from what I saw on her feed I believed she was doing fantastic.
The reality was different. She wasn’t getting consistent results. And she was struggling with getting out of survival mode in her business. So besides teaching her how to make a consistent and massive impact, I also coached her on this last part.
Here’s how things kept going down for her: At the beginning of the month she would start out with renewed hope for what that month would bring. Halfway through the month, with little to show for it, she would start to feel anxious and that anxiety would get worse towards the end as she worried more and more about paying her bills.
She had been in this struggle for years and kept completely re-doing her marketing funnel, which created a self fulfilling prophecy because she never gave herself a chance to refine and fine-tune the funnel so that it actually started working.
I asked her: “In the beginning of the month, when you visualize and feel into what you want and you feel hope, what is behind the hope?”
Her answer: “Doubt”.
Essentially, she was feeling doubt-filled hope.
Now, if we talk about the fact that like attracts like, then what do you think she is attracting with that kind of energy?
Yes, it’s scarcity!
We uncovered the thinking and imagination that was getting in the way:
She saw herself as small and undeserving, because of childhood experiences and the things she was told (by her mother and aunt)
She was stuck in pessimistic thinking (I’m never going to be able to live my purpose, my life will be a waste, so it’s not even worth living)
God was a harsh, vengeful man in the sky
She kept focusing on what she didn’t want in the present (away from thinking) and at the same time kept projecting what she didn’t want to happen in the future (worst case scenario thinking), even though she went through several Law of Attraction trainings and spent every morning meditating and visualizing what she wanted until she felt it. The moment she got triggered by something (seeing a bill come in, posting on facebook and not getting likes or comments, etc) she would fall into that pit of despair and fear of scarcity.
So we focused on empowerment and liberating the self, as I described in the previous two posts. This made a huge difference for her. But there was more work to be done. And the next step was to build resilience (the ability to bounce back) through building an optimistic way of looking at her objective reality, ie the facts as they are in the present moment.
A great many of us have a more pessimistic way of interpreting and it is part of what creates the perception that there is a lack of safety. It’s also a big reason why we try to control things so much.
Martin Seligman, who studied optimism, shared that pessimism is the result of the 3 p’s: making things personal (about me), permanent (forever), and pervasive (everywhere).
So when you only get 1 like on your facebook post, then it’s because no-one loves you, you’ll never get clients, which means you’ll never get to build the business that you want and make the impact you were born to make. And that means that you aren’t going to be able to fulfill your purpose in life, which makes it all meaningless and you are a failure.
One thing that I noticed in my research, is that it’s not just the 3 p’s that drive a pessimistic way of looking at things. Another aspect is discounting: you dismiss all the things that you are already great at and then only see the 1 little thing you’ve missed.
We’re not aware that we are thinking those things in the moment. We just FEEL them as anxiety, fear, worry, shame, etc. And since we don’t like feeling these emotions, we do our best to move away from them.
For some of us that’s through binge watching Netflix, over-eating, over-performing, trying to be perfect before we are ready (which we never are), getting into solution-mode.
Since we usually use all means for meaning making (images, sounds, language, and somatic), you want to address them all, especially since these states of scarcity and fear of letting go are so deeply ingrained in us.
It all starts with interrupting the state…by stopping to operate from it and allowing yourself to sit with it for a moment. I call it the stop-drop-and-roll.
Stop, Drop, And Roll
When you’re triggered into the fear of scarcity and lack, it’s kind of like being on fire. The more you frantically run around trying to get away from it, the more you fuel it.
What do you do when you’re on fire? You stop, drop and roll.
So often we are so busy finding relief from what’s going on in our bodied, that we aren’t actually aware of what we feel. The first thing is to check in with yourself and become aware of your behavior (ie you need to stop).
What are some of the ways in which you avoid or try to relief your angst? This will be different from one person to the next. When you have clarity on this, you can start noticing what’s going on: “Ahhh, I’m doing it again!”
The awareness of the behavior is a way of interrupting the pattern and checking in with the body. What’s going on there?
The drop and roll has to do with giving yourself permission to feel the sensations that are going on in the body. Do you have permission to feel fear? Or do you fear your fear? Do you get angry at your fear? Because these just fuel the sensation.
Permission to feel is what quells it. It also allows you to dig deeper into the thoughts and imaginations that drive that feeling in the first place. Just quelling it doesn’t necessarily solve what’s going on. We need more information for that.
Yesterday, during one of the training calls, the client (in a practice coaching session) wanted to move forward on his next project, but he was felt stuck and unsure on how to proceed.
He started by saying he always liked keeping his options open and he kept saying to himself: “I need to choose the audience. I just need to have a strategy on how to proceed. That’s how I operate, when I have it all mapped out I can move forward.”
It would be an easy approach to just help him narrow down his options, do a pros and cons list, and get him the strategy he wants.
It would also be a gross disservice to do this.
Why? Because he was operating from fear of uncertainty.
Can you guess what his avoidance strategy is?
…
It’s getting into solution mode.
When your client has a strategy of getting into solution mode in coaching, it’s really hard to get their hierarchy of beliefs. They’ll give you what seems like beliefs, but they’re really just part of the behavior: “I need to do x. I believe that if I just have a strategy I can figure things out.”
So I had the coach ask him: Do you have permission to feel unsure?
The answer was short and firm: “No.”
The conversation went from frantic and chaotic (being on fire) to calm and much, much slower.
Now we can start to dig deeper into the subconscious, because there’s no more running around trying to escape from what’s really just a chemical flush in your body (ie an emotion).
Emotions aren’t dangerous. They can just feel dangerous because of the fact that we mistake the emotions with reality.
Identify Trigger.
Now we can find the triggers. What puts you in a state of fear of the unknown, of scarcity, of lack or things not working out?
Is it not getting responses on your facebook posts? Watching your bank balance? Or does it already start before that, when you share the post and you expect no one to engage?
Do you experience this when you are new to a relationship? You’ve perhaps sent a text and you don’t get a response immediately, triggering anxiety and worry?
Knowing the specific trigger is the gateway into someone’s subconscious thoughts that are driving the emotions.
Uncover Hierarchy Of Beliefs
With the nervous system calmed down and having located the trigger(s), we can now uncover the hierarchy of beliefs.
Here’s what that would typically look like if someone has a pessimistic way of interpreting a situation:
I worked with a client who would procrastinate pretty much by doing anything else every time he was going to make an outline for his group program.
He’d get triggered the moment he went to sit down, opened his laptop and stare at a blank Word document.
Here’s his hierarchy of meanings:
This is a big monster —> I don’t know what people actually want to have in a program (external reference) —> If I give people a program they don’t want, I won’t be able to sell it (worst case scenario thinking) —> Then I won’t have a successful business (making it pervasive and permanent) —> Then I won’t be able to provide for my family. I will be seen as a failure (wcs, pervasive and external reference) —> Then I’m a failure (personalizing)
As you can see, he has forgotten everything he researched and knows about what needs to be in the program (a combination of a strong external reference and discounting). He is also trying to predict the future, going to worst case scenario and then makes that pervasive, permanent and personal.
Not a happy place to be, right?
Quality Control Beliefs (And show how the 3 p’s and discounting are showing up)
Well, I want my client to see that. Most often, when they start seeing how they have mapped out their response to a trigger (in this case it is just looking at a blank screen on his laptop), they’ll already go: “Wait, wtf, this is miserable!”
I then point out that they are actually creating what they fear and ask: “Does thinking like this make your life a party?”
And then: “Do you want to keep this?”
I want a strong “no”. This is also why ownership is so critical, because without it they wouldn’t feel like they had a choice in the matter.
With a big resounding “no”, I’ll tell my client: “Let’s take away all of these meanings, so that it is just a blank screen on your laptop. That’s all.”
Meta-state with “not me, right here and right now”
I want my client to look through the eyes of an optimistic attitude first. So we first access the meta-state of optimism: “It’s just this situation, just here and just now (not me, not everywhere, nor forever)”
And I help my client look through this lens at the white screen.
Whilst this seems like a really simple step, it’s proven to be incredibly powerful. Now we can start building something new.
Building desired state
What do you want to feel instead when triggered?
In the case of my client above, he wanted to be creatively free and playful.
So now I start asking questions to build his new responses (from a place of optimism).
Here’s what showed up for my client:
I can write down a bunch of ideas and write down anything I don’t like. I can write from a position that I do know and then build on that. —> Anything I don’t know I can learn, and then investigate if I need more resources. —> Which means I’ll be able to refine and improve. —> This is just a prototype and any feedback I get will allow me to make it better. —> That way it’s an interaction with those who are my ideal client —> That’s the way to success.
How do you think he felt after identifying these new beliefs, compared to the other ones?
Of course, he needs to solidify these beliefs by taking action on them. He had his course outline done (and had fun doing it) in the next couple of weeks.
Are you starting to see how we are building on from the previous two steps of empowerment and liberating the self? We are clearing all the distortions that play together to keep us stuck in feeling unsafe, afraid of the unknown and hopeless.
Next up is building trust.
Going through these processes already stops the need for avoiding and procrastinating, and turns it into action. Together with building trust, this is the foundation for taking charge of how you think and feel, which is the energy that you send out into the world.
Once we’ve done with clearing the “old”, we can start focusing on the new and fully aligning with the principles of co-creating with the Universe, knowing where you want to go, connecting with your higher self and feeling the imminent nature of your desires.
To use the words of Ted Lasso: Do you believe in miracles?
That’s what my 10-week program is all about, the next one starting October 28th. You’re going to have a hard time creating anything big in your life if you don’t really believe it is possible or that the Universe is conspiring to shower you with blessings. And you’re not going to take the inspired action that will lead to a wonderful co-creation with source energy.
So it all starts with clearing anything that stands in the way of this connection, in a way that eliminating the thinking patterns that keep you in a state of fear and scarcity.
This, btw, is the biggest missing link in most LOA trainings and books. They tell you that you need to master your own thoughts, but you’ll be hard pressed to find a way to actually do so effectively and systematically.
My program has a two-fold focus.
One the one hand it teaches you how to integrate all the change processes with the work you are already doing so you can get greater and more consistent results with your clients.
On the other hand you get to fully align yourself with everything you know about manifesting and law of attraction, but which you’re not living right now.
If you’d like to make a bigger impact, feel in integrity about increasing your fees knowing that you can get 99% of your clients the results they need, or if you are finally done with playing it small yourself and want to finally break free to live you wild and free life, then let’s talk.
Simply email me and we’ll take a look at what it is that you need. If you are a fit for my program, I’ll let you know how you can secure your spot on the program.
With love and light,
Femke
PS: Watch Ted Lasso. It’s fantastic.
PPS: The client that I spoke of who was dancing between doubtful hope and anxiety unleashed herself from her scarcity mode and the last time she ran a program (which included the processes I taught her) she had 10 people sign up, which was a first for her. Not only that, but her client all got amazing results.