Nine Essential Life Ingredients

Working with clients from all walks of life, I’m in the privileged position of being able to identify the ingredients that really make a difference to happiness and authentic success.  Rather than thinking of the physical things- money, a comfortable home and healthy relationships you might want in your life, I prefer to consider the ingredients as being the methods of gaining these things.  Life Coaching is often about expanding and refining these methods and they stay with clients to enhance their lives as they evolve further……

 

1.  Regular Quiet time – Finding out what works best for you (such as meditation, being in nature, prayer, free dancing, singing or running) and fitting it snugly and consistently into your day is a critical ingredient.  This isn’t necessarily ‘quiet’ time because there’s no noise, it is more that these times are about taking attention away from mind chatter and towards your intuition.  The quicker and easier you can get into a ‘quiet’ state, the better! 
   
2. Decision Making- From the quiet time above flows effective decision making.  It is easy to go round in circles when you haven’t all the necessary information and this is about logical research (your head) and tuning into your intuition (your heart).  You might use handy processes for narrowing down options, trying them on and making your selection, but once chosen you need to fully commit.  With commitment, decisions take the shape of goals and plans.  You can achieve and feel you’re progressing towards the life of your dreams, one great choice at a time.
   
3.     Connection.  Fully connecting with yourself within a spiritual context comes from point 1 (above) and from this place you can connect with others from the heart using tools to developing rapport, build relationship, define boundaries and increase trust. Exploring different groups to find your ‘tribe’, the people who share your values and priorities, and networking to build a circle of people with different skills and knowledge that you can draw on, are both important to our wellbeing.  As is deciding who to trust for more intimate relationships.  We grow through our connection with others and finding a special love connection is also about our own development.  What’s happening on the inside is key to attracting healthy relationships.
   
   
   4.  Managing conflict.  Inevitably some of the contacts you make will be problematic.  We are all different with different experiences and values and sometimes our needs conflict.  Taking a spiritual view of conflict means there is something to be worked through that will be rewarding to both once resolved.  This gives impetus for tackling the issue rather than avoiding it.  Understanding Transactional Analysis helps view the situation clearly and then it is important to have assertiveness skills to make your case and the ability to tap into your courage to move forward even when fear shows up.
   
   
   5.  Emotional Clearing.  When we see negative traits in others, it is likely we are projecting onto them what we don’t want to see in ourselves.  We need to take responsibility for all our feelings in order to move forward.  There may be strong evidence that we are an innocent victim but that view will not help us progress.  Once we have taken responsibility, we need to find ways of making sense of our feelings, accepting them and letting them go.  This is where emotional clearing techniques come in.  Emotional Freedom Technique, Byron Katie’s The Work and Colin Tippin’s Radical Forgiveness Process are ones I regularly recommend.  As you work with these, you begin to develop your own variations and it’s important to find what works best for you.
   
   
   6.  Self Nurturing.  Sometimes we might be tempted to ‘squash’ our feelings with food, drink or other addictive substances/behaviours.  We need to learn how to best take care of ourselves, what things nurture us and what harms us.  This can be different for different people but it includes our diet, what we need when we’re stressed, appropriate exercise etc.  When we value the quality of our energy sufficiently, feelings of guilt or unworthiness are set aside and we can take great care of ourselves.
   
   
   7.  Managing yourself and your time.  After a while we realise that we cannot rely on any parent or boss to consistently manage, inspire and encourage us and it’s better that we claim this role for ourselves.  We know what triggers our interest, ambitions and desires.  Finding out how to inspire ourselves and what to do when we get stuck are important for our personal productivity.  Getting the balance of yin and yang to move forward with intuition and drive will help us not only to get things done but also to be doing the right things.  Once we master this for ourselves, we are in a position to lead others to do the same.
   
   
   8.  Seeing the big picture.  It is easy to get involved in the drama of life’s ups and downs and for your emotions to be at the mercy of your environment.  Stepping back to see whole situations in the context of whatever spiritual beliefs you hold will help you to keep focused on what’s important.  Developing the observer position, where you step back and view what’s happening rather than always being in the thick of it helps foster self-awareness.  The often negative self-talk we have in our minds usually giving a constant commentary, can begin to be addressed once we have this awareness.
   
   
   9.  Sense of humour.  Keeping our sense of humour, helps improve our mood and deal with life’s ups and downs.  We know we are not taking things too seriously or personally when we can laugh at them
   
   
   If you’ve all 9 ingredients in your life, congratulations!  If there are any you’d like to work on- do get in touch!