Liberate your Struggles

by A Journey of Riches

  Transformation requires a healthy dose of commitment and dedication. Healthy eating habits liberated me from symptoms of chronic disease. My journey to clean eating inspired me to take the time to select, prepare, and cook foods that feed my body and soul. I fell in love with cooking for myself and others on my journey of clean eating.

  In my search, I found a profound lesson that there’s a distinction between taking inspired action versus uninspired action. To live a truly authentic, successful life, I needed to start taking inspired action. My struggle in the past stemmed from my inability to discern the difference between inspired and uninspired actions that led me to disease and feeling powerless. Taking inspired action can lead you to a happier, more fulfilled and joyful state of being. In the past, I had failed to take control of my own life. It led to the development of habitual negative coping mechanisms that continued until I hit rock bottom. I had my share of illnesses and decreased quality of life due to my unchecked ambitions. I was an emotional eater, addicted to my ambition. If I hadn’t have hit rock bottom, I would have continued living on autopilot with harmful coping mechanisms. Negative coping mechanisms were undoubtedly adding negative cycles to my daily struggles.

  Today, I have a healthy relationship with food and myself. I learned how to access my personal power to take back my life. I enjoy accessing personal power through passion exercises, which is a fun process that gives me a direct route to my inner source of energy, confidence, and strength. Passion exercises are unique for every person. They are personal and can be identified through a series of trials and errors. I created a list of activities that I love and enjoy, and activities that I’ve not yet tried. I commit to one or two activities from each list per week to fuel my mind, body, and soul. I’ve been able to identify sources of inner power through outdoor activities from my list. I have a new-found love for hiking, paddle-boarding, and cycling. From this list, I’ve also identified that I’m an extrovert. Extrovert individuals tend to be outgoing and feel energized when they are around other people. I am an extrovert that is empowered when I’m in a conversation and working with others. As much as I love to engage with others, it was also important to develop a self-care routine because it serves as my personal relaxation guide during stressful times. I enjoy repeating affirmations, journaling, cooking, and participating in yoga as my self-care routine activities.

  Navigating this time of personal discovery was not always smooth sailing. I was entering a new romantic relationship, job hunting, and was dealing with a traumatic incident of attempted home burglary by a drug addict while I was taking a nap in my bedroom. These events left plenty of space for anxiety, stress, and the unknown. Accessing my personal power through passion exercises transformed me into a powerful, whole, and blissed-out human, capable of overcoming all of the life struggles thrown at me. I repeat the affirmation “I am more powerful than my struggles” when I catch myself focusing my energy on my struggles. Unconsciously, we give away our energy to our unwanted thoughts or circumstances. When I catch myself drifting away, I reaffirm that I am a powerful human being, and I choose to focus on my passion exercises. Optimal health and emotional well-being are sources of vitality, strength, and happiness. Regular exercise and balanced nutrition are key to optimal health. Working out releases dopamine, endorphins, and other neurochemicals for happiness, such as adrenaline, endocannabinoids, serotonin, and gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) for my body.

  My personal journey to good health and positive body image required a lot of trial and error. I found that high-intensity interval and endurance training was most effective for my body. When it comes to nutrition, my body’s inflammatory response is more balanced with a plant-based diet. I’m also incredibly grateful to have met some amazing friends through a company called Isagenix®. Isagenix® helped me gained optimal health in ways that otherwise would’ve taken me a long time to achieve. I was able to resolve issues with my allergies, skin rashes, and weight-gain thanks to living a plant-based lifestyle. Achieving optimal health costs money, time, and dedication, but the rewards are worth the investment.

  When I’m out in the world, I also find joy through giving. Human beings are wired to feel useful in the spirit of service. Giving to the world around us requires one to cultivate our talents and gifts. We use gifts, money, time, words of encouragement, and many other skills for the purpose of empowering others. Giving in the spirit of service is hard-wired into our DNA. I also enjoy mentoring young high school and college students in my community. I serve as a mentor for a local group of women who are interested in pursuing science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). I set aside time every month to connect students interested in STEM to employers and local industries in my community. When I’m not mentoring women in STEM, I’m also passionate about developing programs for health promotion and education at a local state association group. Volunteering my time to a help others gives me so much joy!

  Emotional well-being is equally as important as physical well-being. I incorporate affirmations in my morning meditation which helps frame my subconscious to be ready for all the things that I may experience that day. I repeat “I love myself (inhale), I’m thankful for…[fill in the blank] (exhale).” I set a timer and repeat this meditation exercise for seven minutes. I adopted my meditation exercises from Kamal Ravikant, author of Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends On It. He was the person who introduced me to the “I love myself” affirmation. I’ve modified it to include gratitude with each exhale because life is so magical. Each exhale serves as a token of appreciation for an unlimited supply of oxygen that fills my lungs so that I can thrive in life, despite my struggles. A thankful heart really does help you develop positive emotions that act as a protection shield from pain, anxiety, and fear caused by life’s struggles. A thankful heart supports you on your journey of becoming a whole, healthy human being.

  I’m also very thankful to have strong community support. Communities are built by people who share common ideas. Another part of overcoming your struggles in life is finding your community. To do this, you can list the things you value and even use your passion exercises list as a start. For example, I really love yoga. I connected with my local yoga community and have met so many wonderful people. Connecting with other people who dedicate their time living a passion that is similar to yours is a massive gift. Participate in a community that shares and builds their lives around passions and values that you love. Life is a journey of seeking, finding, enjoying, and letting go. At first, I was very nervous about going out and building new relationships after completing my passion exercises, I thank myself for not staying in my comfort zone. I’m so high on life from the authentic relationships that I’ve built as a direct result.

  What is holding you back from reaching out to others? What are some of the voices in your head that stop you from building that next connection or friendship? I had to confront these questions for myself to eliminate any feelings of doubt, fear, and insecurity. Once you’re connected with a community – friends, colleagues, acquaintances, support groups – don’t be afraid to be open and vulnerable with them. Insecurity was one of the first voices I had to confront in my quest to build new, authentic relationships. Once you’ve identified them, dissect them until they’re no longer an obstacle. Be fearless and creative when developing your own personal guide on how to thrive – not merely survive – as a human being.

  We are not immune to struggles in life. There will be struggles that we are prepared for, and others we are not. It does require time and effort to cultivate authentic inner power, but my hope is that my story will guide you to your own unique, authentic, personal transformation, so you are always ready to face your struggles as a powerful and whole being.

  Allow your cup to runneth over!

  “Once all struggle

  is grasped, miracles

  are possible.”

  ~ Mao Zedong

  CHAPTER NINE

  LIFE IS CHANGE

  By Lillian T
ahuri

  “Holy shit what have I done now!”, I said to myself as I walked out of Kabul International Airport taking in the unfamiliar sights of men in uniforms carrying weapons, and others in all manner of traditional and western clothes. Unusual sights were accompanied by unfamiliar sounds: the noise of a continual stream of large aircraft arriving and departing; military and UN helicopters with their low rhythmical chuf chuf chuf buzzed overhead. Children were waiting to carry my bag for a coin and military personnel tried to give me directions to the pick-up point outside the airport perimeter. They did a great job, their determination prevented me from wandering into restricted areas.

  As I continued the long walk to the pick-up point gripping my long dark canvas bag, I was thinking that it would not have been a good idea to bring my pink, wheeled luggage set, which would have got damaged on the uneven surfaces. More importantly, I knew my self-talk line was the signal that a new adventure had just commenced, a new book without a beginning or an end, and I was confidently walking into it. As planned, the security team were there, ready, efficient and swift.

  Although I had been on many adventures before, this one was different. I was walking out of my old life, having left home with no plans to return. I had resigned from my job of nine years, my young adult children were living their own lives, and the cats went with them.

  Freedom.

  Before my arrival in Afghanistan, I was a single working mother bringing up my children as the primary parent taking care of their everyday needs. As most mothers will tell you, there is no better role in life than raising children, nothing else comes close.

  With family comes responsibility. As a mother, everyone else’s needs come first. I was no exception. I now call this TMS (the mother syndrome) because, as a transformational leader, nearly all mothers I have worked with have put everyone else first, they have not taken care of their own needs, they don’t feel that they can spend money or time on themselves, they even feel guilty thinking about taking personal time. This state of putting everyone else first can go on for years even after their children have left home.

  I was the sole person responsible for my children’s wellbeing and I worried that if I didn’t work hard enough, get better educated and move along a career pathway then my family would suffer and they wouldn’t have the life I envisaged for them. As a consequence, I found myself in a cycle lasting many years, where I worked too hard, completed a university degree while working full time, all the while making sure I never missed any sporting, school or community event.

  I am a Maori, raised in Aotearoa, New Zealand. Maoris are brought up with a set of cultural values that include whanaungatanga (the importance of family and extended family) and manaakitanga (the importance of caring for everyone). These values become a part of who we are and drive our need to take care of everyone. It was my cultural values, commitment and obligation that set me on a 17-year long journey representing our tribe in an historical grievance process that ended in a multi-million-dollar settlement. That was how I became stuck in a comfortable rut. I had reached a point where I was comfortable in my career, I was satisfied with my education, and my little family was doing well. It dawned on me that life was comfortable for everyone around me, but not for myself. I had not taken care of my wishes and desires for my own life.

  You can’t make change in life without doing anything differently, right? I started on a journey of personal development and stumbled across Stephen Covey’s The Seven Habits of Highly Successful People. This book, and the activities contained in it, helped me to prioritise what was important to me, to make plans and to schedule those plans. It assisted me in sorting out and achieving short, medium, and long-term goals. Not only was I smashing my goals each year, I was also resetting them!

  The Seven Habits method was highly successful for me. Not only is it a great prioritising and planning tool, it has an excellent moral compass embedded in its design. I was able to achieve more in a shorter space of time than I had without this method, it was both efficient and effective. I was still caring for my family as a priority, but I was now taking care of myself as well. The only problem was … I took it a little too far, I was constantly exhausted, thinking I needed to do it all and have it all. In other words, I was trying to be superwoman.

  It was at about this time that my sister took me along to a Chris Howard event, which started another journey whereby I became a master NLP practitioner and a master hypnotist. These gave me insights into new tools and techniques to transform my life, and the lives of others, at a far deeper level.

  The underlying core beliefs and patterns of behaviours that have been imprinted in us from the day we are born, through our experiences in this world, and from people in our lives mould us into the people we become. This is the lens through which we see the world and we make decisions from this perspective. Growing up, we were exposed to many cultures and religions with their multitude of gods and demi-gods. This was a world which we moved in and out of freely. As we got older, we realised that many religions espoused themselves as the one and only true religion and saw themselves as superior to all others, and above the indigenous world view. We witnessed the limited point of views of parents as they argued which church or school their children would go to, each vying for their own choice.

  This leads me to how I ended up in Kabul working in a private security company that, as a general rule, only hired former military or police personnel. I fell into neither of these categories. I used NLP tools to change my life at the unconscious level, the place where our core beliefs live and drive our behaviours. The NLP processes helped me eliminate the core beliefs that were holding me back or stopping me from progressing. Then I used these tools to set goals for the future, knowing that they would occur. And this is where I went a little off track.

  I had intended to leave my comfortable rut to live and work in an unfamiliar place with a different culture and language. I wanted to up my game, challenge myself and do something completely different while utilising my past experiences. With all this in mind, I completed a future goal setting process, but without a particular destination in mind. Within weeks of going through this process, I walked into my boss’s office and told her I was resigning with two weeks’ notice, because I needed to be in Dubai for training, tests and then travel to Afghanistan. I promised her I would complete any of my outstanding tasks within that timeframe, leave full handover notes, and delegate different parts of my job to my staff until they could find my replacement.

  My advice when engaging in transformational goal setting processes is this: be specific because you could end up in a country you didn’t plan on, be careful what you wish for because you will get it, and go with the flow no matter what because new experiences can be challenging, and exciting! Life is a journey that should be lived to its full potential and beyond.

  The last two weeks at my job was a learning experience in itself. I observed the full range of emotions that my colleagues experienced as a result of my decision to leave one of the most peaceful and secure countries in the world, to move to a country in conflict and which was notably corrupt. Some genuinely feared for my safety, some were excited about the opportunities I would have, while others perhaps wished it was them as they wondered how they could go about making changes in their own lives. This mirrored some of my old beliefs that had held me back from moving out of my comfortable rut, the old limiting beliefs that I had obliterated and exchanged for new resources to support me in the future.

  By the time I had completed the year-long contract in Afghanistan, I was ready for another challenge. This was my opportunity to start again and reinvent myself, my life was a blank sheet of paper. It was time to revisit my values and align my life to these values. Family is essential to me and is one of my top values and that is why I make the effort to visit my children at least every three months even though they reside in a different country. While placing family at the top of my hierarchy, I also felt a growing desire inside me to as
sist people suffering from trauma.

  Reflecting on my time in Afghanistan, one thing I know for sure and what I would like to share, is that you can change your current situation at any point in your life. You simply decide how you want to live and create that lifestyle. Whether you feel stuck in a job, a life of living other people’s expectations or whether your mindset is keeping you locked into your own expectations built on society’s norms, you can change. We are ultimately responsible for ourselves, our decisions and the consequences of them. There are no rules, yet most of us carry on doing the same thing day after day, year after year.

  Since the desire to work with trauma victims first manifested itself, I have worked with hundreds of men and women using transformation techniques. Initially I started working with men because of my personal experiences, then I focused on women. People came to me through word of mouth, either because I had worked with someone they knew, or, they had heard about me through others. This suited my lifestyle as I was the one person with the time and the passion to help them address their trauma.

  Generally, I have found that people came to see me for a particular reason but more often than not, the underlying issue was something very different than the outward manifestation of their traumatic experience. As we progressed through a session, it took a natural course to the place we needed to be. The transformation techniques create quick and effective change; sometimes, I wondered if the techniques were too good! A young man in his mid-twenties was given my name and I agreed to work with him. He was unable to approach young women for dates and was worried he would waste his youth without meeting anyone. Not long after working with him, he phoned me to say he was now on Tinder, a serial dater, having fun and meeting lots of nice young women. My older-person conservative self-talk reaction was, “Oh no, what have I assisted in creating?”. Then he went on to say, “I’m not sleeping with them. I’m just enjoying talking to women because I’ve never been able to do that”. Whew! Eight months later, he phoned me to say he had found The One.