Coach with Kate

I was breathing fast, I couldn’t see much being blinded by the bright sun in my eyes, I had my two small children on foot with me and I was in a busy parking lot and my hands were full of the dinner I had just bought and was bringing home to ease my stress.  I felt high stress at that moment.

And then I did something different, I didn’t resist the stress or push past it, or ignore it and move forward faster, I noticed it.  Then I noticed what was causing it, my children felt untethered and in danger.  I stopped walking, I instructed my children to each hold onto one of my pockets, then feeling them secure, we were able to cross the parking lot together and no more stress.  (well at least until I had to buckle all the car seats LOL)

That moment in time, that lesson was a hard-won lesson.  It was a simple solution.

I went through life trying, trying to get it right, trying to do a good job, trying to meet external standards, trying to learn, trying to measure up and prove my ability or worth.  And I was succeeding.  Give me a challenge and I liked to rise up to it.  This did serve me; it stretched me, helped me grow, I learned what I could do, I sought to challenge, and I passed hurdles like college and graduate school.

I also sought a life, work I loved, a family, friends.  At some point (like especially after the birth of my third child)  pushing to get life to work stopped working.  I couldn’t control all the factors.  I didn’t have the strength to keep doing everything at the level I wanted to do it and stay a kind person.  The relationships I sought, the parent I desired to be for my children, these were not about pushing or getting it right and I was out of my skill set.

I set out to learn, learn, learn.  And guess what it gave me?  More external standards, or in easy terms more ways to drive myself crazy.  I kept trying to get it right, to manage my life in a way so that I could somehow be peaceful and enjoy my beautiful life.

The problem was not with anything I was doing, it was that I had things backward.  In trying to manage my life, I somehow wasn’t in my life.  I didn’t know how to manage myself if there was not a clear standard set in front of me.  I was a great student.  I was a good athlete.  I didn’t feel so great as a stay at home mom, which was a more open-ended role.  I loved it, I wouldn’t change it, but I was untethered and it put a lot of pressure on my children to be the indicators of my proficiency.

The golden key that opened the door to my life with me in it, was to turn things on their head.  To take full responsibility for myself, to manage myself first, able to respond to myself.  This is exemplified at the moment I described above, I noticed what I was feeling and addressed the need.  It sounds so simple because it is.

Yet, we are not encouraged to live this way.  We might be encouraged to meet a standard, or please another person over ourselves, or be driven by perfection, or be driven by a goal, or bombarded with so much information we can hardly serve it all.

Let’s return to the golden key: Manage yourself then manage your life.  Manage yourself is the opposite of control, it’s about connection, faith, trust, and love.  Do you want the key to those things?

Manage yourself means start by noticing yourself, connect to yourself, listen to yourself, feel what’s there, take care of yourself, love yourself.  That’s a full-time job, eh?  I can hear the objections, I don’t have time, I’m okay I’m an adult little one’s needs are more important than mine, something is more important.  So how is that working out for you?

Really put a hand on your heart and ask yourself “how are you?”

If your answer is not peaceful, joyful, full of love, excited about life, let me show you the way there.  Let me help you quiet down and connect to yourself.  No, it won’t be easy, because often we are not quiet because we don’t like something that’s within us: pain, uncertainty, trauma, we keep hurtling ahead to stay away from those things.

Remember the golden key: turn things on their head.  Let me show you how when you allow space for whatever is there to surface you can release it and skim it off until the waters inside you become clear and you see the peaceful center of it all.  Peace is not something we seek, it is something that has been there all along, it is within us.

When we connect to ourselves, eventually we will go within.  Within we will find ourselves and our connection to God and our peace.  Imagine, with me, living life from that place.

Let me show you how.

Book a call to learn more below.  I’d love to connect with you.