As I mentioned I am just returning from being fully engaged leading an intensive program at The Haven.  Now back home I find myself feeling a bit lost and disoriented.  It’s not like there isn’t tons to do.  I have bills to pay, household projects friends to catch up with and Thrive! work such as coaching and consulting.  Yet I am still swimming and uncomfortable.  I know this is classic transition stuff.

I love the work I get to do at The Haven, being present and engaged with people , not to mention I get fed and all basic needs met while I do what I am passionate about.  Back home I don’t have the same structure and though I have a great partner both at home and work, the practical day to day things like food, bills, marketing and financial oversight, don’t happen unless I play my part.

So I miss the ease of having all the basics taken care of and I miss the intensity of a residential program.  Indeed there is a letting go process that is happening.  I also believe being away,  my homo status shifted and I find myself in chaos or the neutral zone.  A wonderful time for creativity and new possibilities but equally filled with uncertainity and discomfort.

I don’t have the answer or the ‘right’ path yet.  I want to find a way to bring some of the energy and juice I generated while working at The Haven back into my life and work here.  I don’t want to change everything and I don’t want to lose the new seeds of possibility that got planted.

I guess I believe this happens whenever we go through an intense emotional experience. There’s often a wow! moment and then there the re-entry back into our more familiar world,  “whoa”.  I believe it is that phase when “wow!’ meets  ‘whoa’ – that has incredible potential for change and transformation.  I also know it’s not easy staying in the chaos and discomfort long enough to really listen and figure out what needs to stay the same, what needs to change and what is up for creative synthesising.

What I do know is I am in that phase now.  The writing is helping and I want to figure out an answer.  Best that I wait but that isn’t easy!

Still I do think ‘being’ not ‘doing’ in the change is what will create the more creative, intersting outcome. For now Wow! meeting Whoa is a touch uncomfortable – best I breathe and stay with it!!    I’ll keep you posted!!

This summer a spend over a month at The Haven, an amazing center for personal and professional development.  I have been a part of The Haven for close to 30 years and I believe the learnings there turned my life around.  But that story is a bit long for a morning blog. Still there are some elements of the story worth revisiting and today’s topic is The Haven’s Communication Model it is a simple model offered generally towards the beginning of every core program.

The first time I learned about it I hardly noticed it and definitely did not practice it enough to have any idea of the possibilities for a richer life I could discover once I put it into play.  Indeed I now refer to the practice of the model as my spiritual practice, meaning the model assist me in connecting to a larger reality and allows me to connect to people with greater depth then I ever dreamed possible.

I realized the magic in the model pretty early on.  I found myself talking with someone about my life, sharing a very horrible event in earlier childhood and instead of having the usual response of “wow, it’s amazing you survived, that’s horrible what happened to you”,  he started laughing.  I was so surprised I looked up at him instead of wallowing in my sad story.  Immediately I was intrigued.  “Why are you laughing?, no one has ever done that.”, came out with a bit of energy.  His response was tears and laughter with the comment, “honestly your story is so outside of my reality and I just could not think  of anything else to do and I started laughing because I felt so helpless.”  Instead of getting angry I continued to look at him and saw he was quite sincere and curious about his response and me.  He wasn’t laughing at me.  even more important I had a moment of being outside of my story.  In that moment I got how trapped I was inside my own self-generated horror story.  Reliving over and over and generally getting the same response of ‘poor me’.  May be that was one of the first moments I really got how I create my own reality – and then go about believing it is the only one.

Having the awareness that each of us constantly creating our own experience through the way we take in data through our senses, interpret the data and then generate a internal response, intention and action – (the key pieces of the communication model) was huge.  That I could alter my story through the willingness and courage to expose my inner authorship and ‘check it out’ with someone else – turned everything around.

Now it sounds simple but still not always so easy.  Stories are addictive and sometimes I like to have people feeling sorry for me.  However, the price I pay is too great.  I prefer to think I may not be able to control everything or everyone – but I can take charge of my responses, reactions and reality creation.

This summer was a great refresher.  Thirty years later and I still can learn so much just by engaging my curiousity and using the model – how cool is that!!

For more information on The Haven or The Haven Communication Model visit:  www.haven.ca.

I had the idea for a blog months ago.  I had just completed a wonderful writing project where I shared my thoughts weekly with a group of folks and got some great feedback.  I had said then I would get this blog going and did not.  Now I am set but after watching Julie & Julia have put tremendous pressure on myself.  I loved the movie and no way can my little blog compete with Julie.  Still I am committed to get started!

What you need to know about my style of writing is that sometimes I am short and to the point and other times I ramble.  I will do my best to keep it simple but I’m going to be learning along the way.

Second thing you need to know is  that I am doing this in hopes that I will hear from you.  I write because it gets me thinking and I like it when folks read and share the impact my words have in their world.  I encourage you to agree, disagree – just let me know when I have made an impact.  I anticipate that impact being both positive and negative and highly value both.

The third thing you need to know is that I am dyslexic and messy. I don’t always have someone to edit my work so it might be misspelled, missing words – but hopefully you can get the gist as you read.

Last comment – though I work with Executives, teams and corporations, my passion is people.  I was a therapist but did not really fit in that world.  Coaching is a better fit but still not quite right.  Bottom-line I got my health back through becoming curious about life – all aspects of life and my relationship to the world around me.  These days I know keeping that curiosity engaged and active is a critical key to my aliveness – so I work to stay curious about pretty much everything and everyone.

So the pressure is on! And I am up for the challenge – let the Blog begin!!!

Hi All.

I have decided to start bloggin’ so get ready – listen up and please comment lots!

Susan B Clarke