Jaclyn Beckerman Coaching

Because you can’t.  You can only change yourself and your relationship to other people.  You can’t actually change them. There’s nothing wrong with them anyway.  They are however they are.  Where the power and magic to transform a relationship exists is completely within shifting your own interpretations and reactions to whatever it is they do and whoever they ‘be’.

Consider that YOU are the source of ALL of your grief, anxiety and frustration, yet you assume it is caused by another person (or circumstance, or event, etc).  All that angst is a derivative of your own beliefs and thought processes about how people or things should or shouldn’t be.  What would life be like for you if you could live outside of all the ‘should’ and ‘should nots’?  Outside of defending, justifying or blaming?  What possibility do you see that would create space for?  Who could you BE then?

I was journaling yesterday on how Spirit could guide me to focus more attentively on my relationship with myself and with others as well as various areas of life where I’m up to things (business, relationship, friendships, fitness, travel, writing).  I got two main things out of it.  One was to follow my intuition with conviction and do whatever feels right.  To move in the direction of my passions and let the universe work out the details.  The other, more relevant to this particular topic, was to accept people as they are.  I mean, REALLY accept people as they are.  To completely and totally love them for all they are and all they are not and to not wish, hope or try to change them.  After all, wishing they would change is just as destructive as trying to change them.

I also got that as a coach, bringing unconditional acceptance ‘as is’ to my stand for my clients doesn’t mean I don’t support and partner with them in creating their transformation.  After all, they’re hiring me to create the life of their dreams and get results.  It just means that they are perfectly fine wherever they are and there’s absolutely nothing wrong.  Ever.  There are just things that they want in their life that they currently don’t have, obstacles to remove from the path, and breakthroughs to create to get there.  I have always understood this, especially at the intellectual level, but this time seemed to have permeated me even more deeply than in the past, to a level that touched my soul and shifted my perspective.

Now back to you, I’m not saying that you must or should keep everyone in your life and just ‘rise above it’.  Use your own intuition.  You may find that there are some things you are unwilling to settle for which may be an indication that it is no longer serving you to keep someone in your life.  On the other hand, you may find that you’ve been being a jerk or have been instigating tension or disconnect and choose to change the way you relate to them.  Look at what is most in line with what you are committed to in your life.  Regardless of what you choose, and it is most definitely a choice, when you get present to accepting them as they are, you then are responsible for empowering your decision to continue the relationship or not and how it goes from that point on.

So look at the relationships in your life.  Really look on your side of the street at what has them going the way they are.  From a place of accepting those people completely, what is there to take on?  Apology? Forgiveness? Support? Completion? The ability to create relationships that nourish you exists within in your heart.  Let it speak to you.

“Success is moving from failure to failure without the loss of enthusiasm.” – Winston Churchill

I so frequently stop or get stagnant when the stench of failure wafts into my life so as to avoid being enmeshed by it at all costs.  In actuality, this is a surefire way to avoid ever being successful.

You HAVE to fail over and over again in order to learn how to create success for yourself.  Failures provide learning and growth.  They simply reflect something that did not work and point you in the direction of what will.

Yet most of us consider them to be these big, scary, horrible experiences.  We spend so much time and energy avoiding having to deal with failure that we never even get the chance to show how naturally creative and powerful we are.

The cosmic joke is that we’re meant to develop and evolve; to expand our capacity for love, compassion, patience and generosity.  But we want all that juicy end stuff without any of the work it takes to get there.  Yet it takes work.  And that work involves lots and lots of ‘failures’.

What I see for myself is that if I truly start welcoming failures, it would diffuse some of the anxiety and significance I’ve created around the expectation I currently have of what the experience has to be.  Places where I’ve feared hearing answers I don’t want to hear, or fear that I won’t actually make a difference, will no longer be so confronting because I wouldn’t be pre-planning the lashing I’d give myself if things don’t go smoothly.  Because as I’ve mentioned before, I’m highly skilled at beating myself up.  I think if I go from failure to failure enthusiastically, it will be life-giving.  I will be able to step into absolutely anything without judgment or predisposed conceptions of how it has to go.  From that place, success is inevitable.

What would be in it for you to take on failing masterfully?  What space do you see might open up for you if your view shifted from failure as disastrous to failure as delightful?

I saw this weekend that I have a lot of charge/energy around the concept of being a “shitty coach” and “not being as good as others”.  If something triggers me to feel like either of those, I immediately shut down and start beating myself up for it. It goes back to a very young conversation that I’m just not good enough and don’t fit in.

I realized it’s not that any of that is at all true, or that anyone else believes that it’s true, but rather that I spend so much time trying to be NOT that, that I can’t actually get outside of it.  There’s some part of me deep down that must believe it could be true because there’s significant fear of being just that.

What I saw, with the help of a couple friends/colleagues, is that if I create it as a neutral place, I can then build, grow and learn from there.  For example, “Ok, so I’m a shitty coach.  Now what?” or “Ok, others are better than me. Now what?”.  At first I couldn’t even be with that concept.  But the reason I couldn’t be with it is because I think I shouldn’t be a shitty coach or inferior, and I am masterful at beating myself up about things I think ‘shouldn’t be’.

However, I realized that if I stopped beating myself up all the time, I would have infinite more space to be with people and to make a difference with my clients.  To really open my heart to others and allow it all.

What do you see for yourselves?

What are some hot buttons that trigger you to get angry or upset with yourself, that you just have a really hard time being with?

Often it’s the things that are the most charged for us that cause us to do everything in our power to not be that thing we fear.  Yet then we’re imprisoned by the belief that at our core we are in fact that thing.

It’s often easier to see in other people.  You almost inevitably know lots of people who beat themselves up for everything and anything possible.  They believe they’re not a good enough leader, they’re not attractive enough, cool enough, smart enough, strong enough, funny enough, etc.  So they do everything they can to compensate for what they imagined is wrong with them rather than be with that fear and create an opportunity to grow.

Well, you too.

What consequences do you see of living your life based on some kind of imaginary fear?

From there, what new way of being would you like to create instead?  Because that is what’s possible from taking ownership of your interpretations and actions.  That is where you can make a difference.

The soul doesn’t talk in language, it talks in feeling; in intuition, pulling or knowing towards something.

How often are we in conflict about things because what our head says isn’t what our heart wants?  The answers to your purpose and the path you’re meant to take in this life don’t reside in fear, judgment, or self-loathing.  They lie in going within, to that deep part within you that knows your higher truth and the vast array of abundance that is completely available to you.

Not everyone is willing to take this path though.  Lets be honest, it’s not the ‘easy’ path to take.  It’s so much easier to remain stagnant and stew in the comfort of our incompletions and dissatisfaction than it is to actually break free of those patterns and be responsible for how our life occurs for us.

Personally I stewed for SO long.  For most of my life in fact.  It’s definitely coaching, transformational and spiritual work that has pulled me out of my shitty little box of what was possible for me.  Actually, I always saw the bigger picture and the the possibility of life, I think I just didn’t really believe true happiness and fulfillment was possible for me in my heart.  I knew it was possible for everyone else but some core part of me didn’t believe that I deserved it too.

It’s mind-boggling for me to realize how far I’ve come from that place.  I may have understood intellectually before but didn’t truly get in my heart that love truly is all around you and within.  You don’t need something outside of yourself to tell you you’re worthwhile and lovable.  You, without even trying, just are.  Just like I am.  There are treasures and wisdom and riches within.  Yet I kept looking for things outside of me to justify my worth.  (Look for yourself here too – where are you doing that?)  The ironic thing is that if you know me, you’ve probably always known that I’m valuable and lovable, while not truly believing it about yourself.  Or at least having some form of ‘I’m not good enough’ persistently hanging out in your head.

Funny how we all think we’re so different, but we’re actually not.  We all have fears and insecurities.  We all go through breakdowns and think that ours are so unique… and no one has it as bad as we do… and it’s not fair… and why can’t we just be like everyone else who has it together?!

The big joke is that no one has it all together.  We’re all working out or own stuff and in the process of generating our lives.  We may be at different stages in the process or dealing with different kinds of problems.  (Case and point, Mother Theresa had way bigger problems than I do and was certainly more evolved on her journey of compassion, tender-heartedness and contribution – but I’d put money on that she still dealt with her own fears and ‘problems’ just like everyone else has to. Same with the Ghandi, the Dalai Lama, etc.   We’re human.)

All I’m saying is that when you see, own, and access all the love around and within you, you stop searching for it externally and start owning that you are responsible for and fully capable of creating the life you want.  Rev. Gold said “Once you’ve connected to the inner kingdom, the place from which stuff comes, you now have access to it.  You no longer have to worry about what channel to get it from next.”

So what I’ve taken is is to stop worrying – it’s ALL within.  And wow, are things just happening in my life.  I invite you to do it with me.

I finally realized in my call with my coach today that pressure is simply a context and one that I masterfully create at that.  In fact, mine could be lumped together as a context of pressure and playing victim and rebellion.  This is a major context that I’ve been skirting around with my coach for quite some time because I even felt pressure around the conversation!

I realize that I resist so many things in life because I feel they’re based out of pressure which I want to avoid as much as possible.  Even when I have great things going on in my life, I often get caught up in and tend to focus on the areas that are not working and where I’m not creating the results I want.  I’m pretty sure THIS is where the “I don’t want to”, “I don’t feel like it”, or lazy way of being stems from.  I also get that it’s a completely made up construct that I have created and let take on a life of it’s own.

If there were no pressure, I can see that things would seem more easy and care-free, basically I would be able to exist in a state of freedom. Whatever I do would be because I want to do it, not because I need or have to to satisfy some condition I previously decided needed to be satisfied. I would be able to take action from a place of commitment and creation, rather than fear or obligation.

One of the predominant areas this shows up in is around my coaching practice.  I mean, I can easily imagine that if I were to take action from freedom instead of pressure or a sense of obligation, the results are going to be unbelievably different.

SO, what I’m up to is creating a breakthrough in busting through the pressures.  Life beyond the context of pressure.

I certainly haven’t figured out how yet.  But coaching isn’t about having it all figured out first.  It’s about declaring what you want and then becoming who you need to BE to fulfill on that declaration.

In service of this discovery process, I’d like to ask, how do YOU not create pressure for the things in your life?

Thanks in advance for your contribution and support!

Awhile back, my sister posted this amazing picture on Facebook of the two of us as children.  I exclaimed to one of my cousin’s how I wish I had pictures like that yet didn’t have a single one. Being the youngest of three (6 years younger than my sister and 10 younger than my brother), my parents had fizzled in their obsessive picture taking (and more importantly saving) habit by the time I was born. (Something I’ve vocally chastised them for in subsequent years).  My cousin said she was sure she had some and would dig them up.  I never pursued this though. Months later I received a birthday card from that same cousin with a surprise in it.  It was a piece of paper folded up that turned out to be a collage of pictures from when we were all little! Such an amazing and thoughtful gift.

Recently, my other cousin (the first one’s sister) was over my apartment for the first time and saw the collage.  She pointed to one of the pictures within it where I was maybe about 5 or 6 or so (?) with a huge smile on my face and my arms thrown around my first cousin’s neck.  She exclaimed, “THAT’s exactly how I remember you!”

The significance for me in this was realizing just how far I’d strayed from that little girl who wanted nothing more than to love and be loved.  I was gifted at over-the-top, whole-hearted, give everything love. I think many people just couldn’t be with this much love and couldn’t handle it. Consequently, I was frequently devastated and heart-broken by it not being consistently received or reciprocated.  They would tell me things like I was too much and needed to calm down or ‘OK, that’s enough!’.  What I made that mean was that there was too much life in me and I needed to make myself smaller to make others comfortable.

As a repercussion for the pain and disappointment I felt emotionally, I made a decision at some point when I was young to instead withhold my love. Replacing it with judgment and cynicism veiled by a mask of friendliness and optimism. I withheld my love in order to avoid disappointment and heartbreak, essentially to protect myself from that terrible feeling. Inevitably this made it very difficult for me to accept it as well. I proceeded to do this for most of my life. In fact it’s really only over the past six months that I’ve had a significant breakthrough in being, sharing, and allowing love.

About six months ago one of the head leaders of the coach training program I help lead, Accomplishment Coaching, reflected to me that her experience of ‘Jaclyn on automatic’ was of no intimacy.  This made a huge impression on me.  Six months later, that same leader’s acknowledgment to me was to thank me for being ‘almost embarrassingly intimate’ and a ‘fierce stand for love’.  When I mentioned the reflection she’d given me six months earlier, she said she’d honestly completely forgotten it because that person no longer existed and it was so far from her current experience of me.

THIS is why I do this work.

Ultimately, I now genuinely understand that as a child my capacity for love was just enormous. This is and was my GIFT. It wasn’t those people’s fault that I didn’t feel it was received or returned from them and they weren’t hurting me on purpose.  They didn’t do anything wrong and they loved me to THEIR best or full capacity, whatever that was at the time. But of course I was only a child (and human) and didn’t understand this.  In fact I don’t believe many adults truly understand this.

It’s only because of this journey, becoming a life coach and being committed to this work and sharing it with the world through Accomplishment Coaching and Landmark and this blog and actually taking what I learn into my life and integrating it through action that I’m able to open my heart again and truly experience loving the people in my life fully.

And God, am I so incredibly grateful.

I received a comment on my post “What it’s like to be hypnotized” asking me the question, ‘What do you see the future of this blog being?’.

I really started this blog with the vision and intention of sharing the work I do with the world in a way anyone can afford (free!). Another reason is because I love to write and want to write books one day – so it was a good place to get the ball rolling.

I do a ton of transformational and higher consciousness work and one of the things I’ve learned is that we gain SO much inspiration, courage and insight through the window into others lives we are granted when they generously share their inner processes with us.

Granted, everything I write is of course based on my perspective.  However, I truly do believe that my candid sharing of the work I do, the experiences I have, and the transformative things I learn along the way have the capacity to impact and affect the lives of my readers in a way that makes a real difference for them.

I can’t accurately predict what this could or may be molded into in the future.  But I intend for the purpose to always be in making a difference for others through transformative work.  Currently?  I suspect it will remain a place to share my process and let others take what value they see available to them through an honest look into the introspective work of a life coach and leader of one of the finest coaching programs in the world.

If you enjoy reading it, please share it with your friends and loved ones!  You never know what will be the catalyst for someone to transform their life.  I believe the opportunity and space exists within these posts for folks to step into the possibility of living their lives fully expressed.

Thank you friend for your contribution and curiosity through asking!

In regards to subscribing, if you’re doing so by email, remember to go to actually go to your email to confirm your subscription once you enter it here.  And please keep commenting and asking questions!

We talked about rackets more tonight. Rackets are essentially a complaint you have which come ball & chain with an automatic way of being around it, payoffs for what you get out of maintaining this racket (essentially ways to avoid responsibility) and what it’s costing you to keep this up (your aliveness).

So here’s one of mine that I distinguished tonight.

My racket is “I don’t feel like it” aka “I don’t want to”. (Sound familiar? Wouldn’t surprise me.)

The impact of this is that I don’t do the things I say I will or want to do (or even better, I’m sneaky and don’t declare them at all so that I don’t have to be held accountable to them) and then don’t get the results I want. So, yea, that pretty much sucks.

Who I get to be about this complaint is irritable, bored, annoyed and/or frustrated (to name a few off the top of my head).

I guess the payoff for this is predominantly that I get to avoid domination (of being busy, of change, of having too much responsibility, it seems of doing anything really, huh?).

This is costing me my vitality, self-expression, accomplishment, and joy!! If I had to pick just one thing I’d say it’s costing me satisfaction.

So.. yea, duh, huge cost! I mean, I don’t know about you but all those things are pretty important to me. As juicy as the payoff is of avoiding domination, and oh it is most definitely juicy, it’s certainly not as great as my personal satisfaction with life!

SO, I’m creating the possibility of being UNREASONABLE!

(Before you think I’m crazy, see my post ‘Time for the gym?” http://wp.me/pLnuP-f for what I mean by unreasonable.

Great line from tonight: “A life of possibility and a reasonable life simply do not fit in the same space.”

It’s REALLY time for me to stop living a reasonable life and actually get my butt in gear.

I thought the previous post describing Sacred Center was getting too long so decided to break off my experience of today into a new post.

In part of today’s message Rev. Gold read a bit from David Whyte’s poem, Sweet Darkness, that I found so beautiful and worth sharing.

You must learn one thing.

The world was made to be free in.

Give up all the other worlds

except the one to which you belong.

Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet

confinement of your aloneness

to learn that

anything or anyone

that does not bring you alive

you have made too small for you.

I’m going to focus on the last part of this: “Anyone or anything that doesn’t make you come ALIVE, you’ve made too small for you.” Wow. Talk about inspiring.

Now, at first I though she said ‘IS too small for you’, which is different. I’ve always been one to abandon things that don’t (or no longer) make me feel alive and happy. (And since I love ‘getting things right’, I thought: insert victory dance here). There’s obvious potential danger in that of course because with my self diagnosis of chronic ennui, I’ve got a knack for being pretty masterful at avoiding making commitments. So this partly plays into my automatic way of being (which is nothing to throw a party for). As a side note, I’ve made a ton of progress in this area by making bold commitments in the face of my resistance (ie. leading a coach training program, stepping up as a group leader in my Landmark forum seminar…). AND when I DO make a commitment, I’m always 100% all in. Which is why I like to avoid them so stealthily.

Now, looking at that if something or someone doesn’t make me come alive, I’VE MADE them too small for me. That’s interesting. There are many ways to look at that. It could be that I keep choosing people that don’t treat me right or situations that don’t make me come alive – that I’m constantly settling for less than I could have or manifest (probably because some part of me still doesn’t truly believe I deserve the pot of gold). This certainly feels familiar (albeit a bit uncomfortable) and I can see that I do that often enough – especially with people. It could refer to where I squander the possibility of realizing what I’m capable of and who I’m capable of being by making myself smaller to fit in someone else’s box. It could also mean that in my mind I’m making a situation or person smaller than it really is. I’m only seeing one narrow, small perspective or view of them/it that doesn’t show me the jewel or gift available to me which would help me grow and live a bigger life.

What do you see for yourself?

Rev. Gold spoke of recognizing the breakthrough available in every breakdown. (Talk about a coaching concept..) That we need to raise our consciousness above the ‘problems’ that we’re trying to deal with or fix because from that place nothing new will come. Fixing a problem always eventually leads to another problem that needs to be fixed because nothing new ever occurs – and you could spend your entire life fixing problems. You cannot solve problems at the same level of consciousness at which they were created (Einstein). You have to raise your level of consciousness and see the bigger picture, look through your heart (instead of your head) and find the gold the universe is trying to provide you with. She said prayers are always answered when we realize our part in them, because they are answered through us. Not outside of us. We are the doorway (‘between heaven and earth’). So we have to open our eyes and see what’s in front of us otherwise we miss the gifts life has to offer, that are often staring us in the face.

All very thought-provoking. Very inspiring.

After just returning from a 2 week vacation, I’d say this was a great way to start the week…

Happy Sunday,

Jaclyn

Well.. this is my first post on this blog. So hello cyber world. It’s nice to be here.

I have another blog (blogspot): www.jnbcoaching.blogspot.com. It’s more inspirational pieces I’ve written. It’s fallen flat for awhile as I didn’t really feel like I had anything to write about. Ok lets face it, I’m just a bit lazy sometimes. Ok, a lot lazy. Feel free to check it out anyway.

My intention with this shiny new blog is to just post about my life and the journey that I’m on. I do A LOT of transformational work and it has made a PROFOUND difference in my life. I’m a completely different person than I was just a year and a half ago. It sort of makes me wish I had started this sooner but to be frank I really just wasn’t jumping for joy at the idea of pouring my heart out in a way that exposes me so completely. Besides, it’s par for the course for me to have amazing ideas but to not actually get off my tush and do anything about them for undefined periods of time.

Now, and this one’s a shocker, in the past I’ve had some seriously debilitating fears of exposing my true thoughts and feelings to people because I didn’t believe they would accept me if I shared them. Oh, I’m sorry, you say you feel the same way? Welcome to humanity 101. It took me too long to realize that this is how the entire world feels and people are just as afraid of me as I am of them.

So – here’s the nutshell of my world. I’m an ontological life coach. Ontology is the study of being meaning we’re looking at how you’re ‘being’ in the world that has things going the way they are. I’m 25 years old (at least until May 5). I know, I know. You’re thinking she’s so young to be a life coach! What could she possibly know about life? It’s like a broken record how many times I’ve heard that. WELL, quite a bit if you’re interested. But coaching has nothing to do with life experience or knowledge. It’s predominantly provocative questions that have my clients dig deeper to gain insight about what’s really going on for them, where they’re getting in their own way, pointing to blindspots, helping them get perspective and having them find their own answers outside of how ‘life as usual’ tends to go for them. I graduated from one of the best coach training programs in the country (Accomplishment Coaching) and now help lead the program in NYC coaching & training new coaches. Although leading this program can certainly seem arduous at times, it’s absolutely incredible and is constantly and unwaveringly making my life better.

I also recently completed the Landmark Forum. If you do or don’t know what that is, it’s essentially a transformational education. Ontologically based just like my coach training program. I’ll be taking the advanced course in March which I’m really looking forward to.

Anyway, I won’t go into crazy detail about either in this 1st post of mine because I’m certain you’ll hear tons more about it as I post.

I was raised Jewish but never really bought into any religion’s ideologies. To be fair, I never really understood a good amount of what they were saying – partly because half of it was in hebrew and partly because I just wasn’t interested. But I will say I love the cultural traditions of Judaism. Not to say I wouldn’t love to have a Christmas tree someday either (a secret desire I believe most Jews harbor). I definitely consider myself to be spiritual and I’m sure you’ll get that. I’m a work in progress in this area though. I don’t have a set anything I believe in but I do believe in God and love. I believe we’re all one and that our purpose is to learn from one another in order be our best selves & to have an experience of ourselves AS pure love. I on and off go to Sacred Center in NYC which from what I gather is nyc’s version of LA’s Agape – a non denominational spiritual center (called a church but I’ve yet to find comfort in that word) where they talk about opening your heart to love and the gifts the universe has to give you and stepping into your own personal truth. It’s amazing there and soul feeding. They base their teachings on the Tao Te Ching and The Science of Mind (with principles of the law of attraction thrown in there.) I undoubtably love it there.

I LOVE books like Conversations with God, Power of Now, The Four Agreements, The Celestine Prophecy, The Alchemist. A Return to Love, . I’ve also recently read Ghosts Among Us, Many Lives Many Masters, Embraced by the Light. Currently reading Eat Pray Love (Elizabeth Gilbert) and Dark Side of the Light Chasers (Debbie Ford). I’m like a junkie for this stuff. Though admittedly, I CAN BE a slow reader (depending I suppose on how riveting and/or easy to read the book is) and sometimes put books down half way through for an indeterminite – amount of time.

I’m sure there’s more to say about my spiritual quest but I won’t go into it right now – inevitably it will come up later anyway

ANYWAY, I’m planning to just blog about my life. The process(es) I’m going through. What I’m learning and how I’m growing. The new insights I find out about myself. Based on my experience, chances are you’ll learn things about yourself as well along the way. I mean, we are all one after all.

So I hope you’ll join on this journey with me. I really see that this can be a way, just one way, to help change the world. One inspiration at a time. I hope it serves you dearly as I’m sure it will serve me as well.

Love and light,

Jaclyn