Possibility and Abundance

Possibility and abundance may not sound possible when you are thinking about trauma work but the sheer fact you are reading this article and are looking into coaching means there is a tiny part of you that believes in possibility; possibility that you don’t have to live with daily anxiety, that you are not going to be sad forever, that there is hope for happier and more peaceful times.

Abundance might be an even harder idea to believe right now when each day feels like a slog or emotionally heavy, but when you do your trauma work, one of the great benefits is that you lighten the mental load and allow for new things to be present like more happiness or simply to have hours, nights and days where you feel peaceful rather than on guard waiting for the trouble you believe is about to show up any minute now.

And when you lighten that emotional load things shift in all areas of your life including your relationships, career, health, and wealth.

One of the most amazing things that came from the deep inner work I did as part of my training as a coach, and I continue to do with my own coach, is being able to go to bed and not have 100 thoughts suddenly screaming at the top of their lungs in my head about all the negativity I was feeling or the need to be different from what I was at that time. I sleep so deeply and peacefully whenever I have those shifts through process coaching.

When you sleep better that immediately has an impact on creativity because now your brain has energy to use on thinking and actually believing in new opportunities.

What do I do during Process Coaching?

Process Coaching can sound daunting or like there are great expectations about what you need to do.

In reality process coaching involves having a safe place to say, feel and be everything you need to be in the moment. It can be messy too. The only thing you need to bring is your willingness to be open and to speak your truth. That’s it.

What I do as your coach is listen to what you say, and I mean really listen to it, and then I might reflect back what you just said so you can see what it sounds like, or I might offer a reframe that gives you an opportunity to see a different perspective, or I might simply acknowledge what you said and allow it to be in the space. That last point about allowing it to be present in the space can be so powerful just by itself because you know you are safe.

Invitation

If you are interested in exploring what is possible and how you might be able to live in abundance please get in touch, I would love to talk to you.

Emotional Intelligence for Men

Emotional intelligence according to the Oxford English Dictionary it is the “ability to monitor one’s own and other people’s emotions, to discriminate between different emotions and label them appropriately, and to use emotional information to guide thinking and behaviour.” Sounds easy enough but so many men struggle with this every day.

Emotional intelligence relies a lot on one’s own ability to understand their own emotions, which is where men often come unstuck because we’ve been conditioned to not talk about our feelings, least of all the ones that make us feel uncomfortable like shame, fear, embarrassment and sadness.

We’ll do anything possible to avoid them, often numbing the emotions through less healthy habits. As a result, it has disrupted our ability to pick up and respond to emotions we do want to feel more of. We hint at them through actions and change our behaviour in hopes that the other person will respond favourably towards us. We do it with our friends and especially our lovers.

We will behave in certain ways believing that if we do well, we will receive what we really want from the other person – sex, intimacy, real conversation etc. This leads to exasperation when we do not receive the reaction we want, often resulting in us pushing away the very people we want closest to us. Affairs are a classic example of poor communication in relationships. The person that men often have an affair with fills the void that they are too ashamed to talk about with their partner or spouse because men don’t talk.

Here’s the bottom line. Until we learn to talk about how we feel and what our needs are we will never have them met or get the responses from people we want. People are not mind-readers so unless we talk about what is real for us it gets left to guesswork and we all know how well that goes, not very.

How can you get connected to emotions?

  1. Start making a log of your feelings

If you are not ready to talk to other people about your emotions and feelings yet, at least make a start at paying attention to how you feel by keeping a journal. I do not mean writing pages and pages about every part of your day (unless that becomes your thing because you’ve opened the floodgates at last).

Keep it simple and log 1 thing that went well and one thing that didn’t go well today. For each write a brief summary of how you influenced the situation and if there is anything you would do differently in the future.

This isn’t about being right of wrong, it is about learning. You can start to identify patterns you follow in certain areas of your life. For example, if you are always getting into arguments with colleagues, are you talking to your colleagues respectfully or are you making demands?

2. Practice with friends

When you start talking about emotions it can feel a little weird and embarrassing. After all, isn’t this meant to be the very thing men do not talk about, at least not seriously? Find a friend who you trust and don’t mind being embarrassed in front of and tell them you want to talk about how you feel but don’t know quite how to articulate it.

It can be a man or a woman but somebody you trust. Start by talking about how you feel in the moment. For example, you might say ‘I feel really strange talking about emotions and it makes me feel embarrassed I don’t know how to do it’ or ‘I feel like a sissy when I talk about emotions but I want to be able to connect with more people’. And if you really have no idea how to talk about emotions ask someone to help. Get a coach or talk to a friend who is more emotionally aware than you. There is nothing wrong with using someone else as a sounding board.

Talking through how we feel with another person can be a great way to get clear on what we want to say before we have to say it to the person we need or want to speak to. It helps to take some of the fear out of what we want to say because when we talk to the person we need to speak to, we have already heard ourselves say the words out loud before rather than just in our heads. It is amazing how hearing the words out loud before we have a conversation takes a lot of the fear out of the conversation we are about to have. And the more confident you become about what you want to say the more spontaneous you will start to become in saying how you feel.

3. Get curious about the other person

A great way to learn about emotional intelligence is to get curious about other people. When we show genuine interest in others, people will open up and talk about how they feel and are encouraged to share more. If you don’t understand something they say, ask them what it means to them. An example might be if someone has told you they are sad, ‘what does sad mean to you?’.

Sounds odd but your sad and their sad may be completely different because of your different life experiences. It can also be really helpful for the other person as it gives them a chance to explore their emotions further and get clear on what this emotion really means to them. Maybe their first feeling is sad but what they really feel is anger? And play around with it with other emotions like good, fine, happy etc.

4. Take it to work

Ever felt like the dumbest person in the room and tried to cover it up by being quiet or bluffing your way through it? Yep, me too. Here’s a challenge for you, next time you don’t understand something speak up. ‘Hey, I am super confused about what we are doing right now, anyone else feeling it?’.

You’ll be amazed how many people let out a sigh of relief when you do. Nobody wants to say it out loud but when someone does other people jump on-board too. It is the biggest reason businesses have so many meetings that seem to be about nothing but other meetings. There’s disorganization in there for sure but the biggest issue is nobody is willing to admit they’re super confused. You keep having meetings and more meetings until someone cracks part of the issue and then you make some progress until the next bottleneck nobody will admit they’re confused about, and the cycle begins again.

Having the self-worth and humility to speak up when you are stuck can completely transform a business environment, especially if you are a leader. People will be drawn to you because you’re open enough to admit when you don’t know everything.

Conclusion

Emotional intelligence is not something you go from sucking at to expert in a single experience. It is a process and ever evolving but once you get the ball rolling you will be amazed at how many areas of your life start to change.

Being open with your partner or spouse will directly impact how you show up at work. Being frank and open with your friends will impact your relationship with your significant other. And being honest with yourself will directly impact your actions and overall life satisfaction if you are prepared to stop and look in the mirror.

Wherever you are the more you lean into emotions the more you will learn about yourself and encourage others to learn about themselves, but it starts with you. Let’s get started. Comment below how you feel right now.

Invitation

If you are interested in learning more about emotional intelligence and how it can help you, get in touch today.

Making Friends – A Guide for Men

More and more men say they have few or no close friends in their lives, especially close male friends. The mental and physical health damages of loneliness are profound and increasing numbers of men end up taking their own lives as a result. What’s the answer? We need to learn to socialize and make friends again, especially with men. It is important because when we connect with other men, we have a sense of accountability and belonging. Humans are social creatures. Some people are more social than others and that’s OK, but we all need connection in one form or another.

When did we lose our ability to connect with one another?

Not that many years ago men used to socialize a lot. We had our colleagues at work, we went to the pub with the guys after work, we played sports and we went to social events. Now we sit at home playing video games, watching TV, watching porn, scrolling through social media, and rarely go out. We’ve slithered off to our caves and it’s killing us in droves.

The biggest issue we face is we have forgotten how to connect with other guys without using technology. Likes and comments on social media posts and gaming chats don’t count. Everything is so fast in the modern world. We are all so ‘busy’ that we don’t make time for one another.

How do you connect with other men?

It starts with learning to talk about emotions. Men are great at brushing off questions like ‘how are you?’ with simple responses like ‘fine’, ‘good’, ‘ok’. When was the last time you said how you really felt?

It’s ok to not be ok. Responses like ‘I’m doing ok, but I’ve been having a tough time at work’ or ‘I’m not sure how I feel but I have had an argument with my girlfriend, and it’s been busy at work’. When you say it out loud to other men, you will be amazed how many feel the same as you right now or have felt the same in the past. And if they haven’t then it is totally ok for them to say, ‘man that sucks, I don’t know what to say but I feel for you, must be tough’. Validation is key to healthy conversations.

Real conversations start by sharing openly. It can feel a little weird to start with, but it gets easier over time. If you are a complete novice to talking about your feelings get a notebook and before you go to bed write down 1 thing that went well and 1 thing that could have gone better in your day. Also note what your part was in that thing going well or badly. This brings a consciousness to your day, which can easily go missing as you drift from thing to thing keeping yourself busy from thinking about how you feel.

Go to social meetings. If you have an interest or want to meet new people, social events arranged by groups on Meetup can be a great way to connect with more guys. There are hundreds of groups covering everything from discussion groups through to activities. But it doesn’t have to be through Meetup. If you have always wanted to try something new like joining a men’s group, sport or have a special interest, search for an independent local group that offers what you want and go along to a meeting.

Really not sure what you want but you are craving company, go to a coffee shop or a pub that has a bar where you can sit facing the server. Servers often are happy to talk to customers and will strike up conversations with people sat at the bar. In fact, if you are struggling to learn how to talk to people become a server or speak to one about how they talk to strangers. Sure, they get paid to talk to them but there’s still a skill in learning to openly talk to people and the more practice you get the easier it becomes.

A great way to start getting comfortable connecting with other people is start making eye contact with people you walk past in the street. Eye contact and a smile or a small nod of your head is so profound. You never have to see them again and it makes a world of difference to you and other people – it says ‘I see you and you exist’ without having to find the right thing to say. The number of times I have walked past someone and smiled and received a smile back are countless. I might be the only person who makes eye contact with them in the day and it reminds them they are seen, and they don’t drift around unnoticed.

The most important thing is to start connecting with more men in person. Until you do there is going to be a hole that just gets deeper and deeper. You are allowed to make mistakes too. We don’t always get social meetings ‘right’ first time, that is just an opportunity to learn and develop.

Invitation

If you want to talk about your barriers to connecting to other men, get in touch today and let’s have a chat. We can make it a virtual coffee date if you’re not in Vancouver. I am all about Bro dates.