Jaclyn Beckerman Coaching

So I apologize I didn’t post last week.  I got caught up in some busyness.

Ok, that’s a lie.  To be honest, my body was taken over by “I don’t feel like it”.

I notice that “I don’t feel like it” sometimes does a hostile takeover and runs the show.  I guess it’s to be expected since I’ve definitely stubbornly lived life from that place in the past.  So it can’t be very happy that I’ve started to disengage from it and pay it less attention.  Yet although I’ve had huge breakthroughs around it in the past year (in fact, especially in the past 6 or 7 months), that doesn’t mean it goes away.

That’s the thing with our “stuff” .  Even when you transform it in a huge way and completely alter your relationship to it, that doesn’t mean it’s forever gone.  It just means that you’re more adept at recognizing it and not allowing it to take the wheel and control you. (Even though that may still happen sometimes – it will happen less and less the more practiced you are at acknowledging it and not choosing it.)

It’s funny because there are definitely plenty of times when I feel like I don’t have anything particular, useful or inspiring to write about.  Which compels me to put it off.  Yet I notice that when I just sit down and start writing about whatever is actually going on, it often turns out to be some pretty insightful stuff.

You’re like this too.  If you actually jump into the thing you’re avoiding, often times, it winds up being incredibly easier than you expected.

We can’t help that resistance shows up, we’re human.  We resist the way things are, don’t want to admit to or share it, and then get caught up in the drama of it without a lifeline.  Yet all it really takes is authenticity, recognition of ‘what is’, and ownership of it being that way to completely change the experience.

The point is that we ARE human.  Things aren’t always going to be rainbows and butterflies.  There are ups and downs to life.  But if you’re willing to ‘be with’ whatever your experience is and take responsibility for it, you can choose or create something else that’s more empowering or powerful.  The ‘ups’ suddenly start being more of the norm and the length of time you hang out in ‘downs’ gets shorter and shorter.

So, start noticing where you’re resisting whatever is going on in your life.  You have no power around it until you can fully own that YOU see things the way you do and have things going the way they are.  No one else created your experience for you (no matter what they said or did to you), YOU created it.  If you truly take full responsibility for how you think, feel and respond, then you can choose to have it go differently.  You can choose to be more compassionate, more loving and more understanding with both yourself and with others (and also with Spirit!).  Imagine what would shift in your life living from there.

“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?

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.

Well, almost 3 actually.

Spending time with my niece Audrey always fills my heart with love and joy. She is a brilliant, vivacious little girl who floods you with love every time you see her.

We went to her indoor open play group on Saturday and it was so much fun watching her run around trying anything and everything. She was most enamored with the trampoline which she’d been relentlessly trying to learn to bounce to her butt and straight back up to her feet.  She was so close but couldn’t get her feet underneath her fast enough.  After numerous attempts (this not being her first day trying to learn this) I asked her if she wanted help.  She said yes so helped her by holding her hands up while she jumped.  After successfully doing it this way a handful of times I let her get back to spontaneous play.  When she came back to the trampoline a little later she was able to repeatedly do it all by herself!

It’s just amazing watching children play and explore.  They have such a curiosity and sense of wonder about life.  Even if they do the same routine and a regular basis, they always approach that thing as if it’s just as new and exciting as the first time they discovered it.  Always looking to keep learning and growing and expanding their capabilities.

I realize there are many areas where I do not do that.  Once I’ve been doing something for awhile I tend to get bored of it and disenchanted by the process.  Often I end up walking away from that thing on to new and more exciting prospects.  I want everything to be fun and joyful and exciting all the time yet I don’t choose to see or experience it that way.  Instead I often choose boredom or frustration or resignation.  It seems like making that choice should be so obvious and simple yet if I’m going on auto-pilot with something I’ve done for awhile, joy and fun are not likely to be the automatic thing to pop up.

I need to start looking at the same old thing, the same task or event or project or even person with new eyes every time I engage with it.  To experience it with all the curiosity and wonder that, for me, naturally exists in anything new.  I have a feeling that that will be the access to joy fun and inspiration.

It really is incredible the immensity of knowledge we can gain from children if we allow them to teach us.

People HATE change.

I was having this conversation with a friend the other day.  Without going into details, she’s really unhappy in her job yet is likely going to look for and end up in a similar position.  Sound familiar?  I bet.  This seems to be a common story among folks today.

People are so scared of change that they’ll do just about anything to keep things the same.  To remain comfortable with whatever seems stable.

Unfortunately though, if things aren’t the way you want them to be and you’re not totally happy, the ONLY way to have them go differently and have life be the way you want it to is to invite change in with an open heart.

It’s not the easy path to take.  No one ever said it was.  But it’s the only path to take if you’re looking to live a life of love, joy and satisfaction.  That is unless everything in your life is already absolutely amazing and you wouldn’t even think about changing a single thing in it.  If that’s you, kudos, you’re one of few.  If it’s not, consider that although change is the scarier way to go, everything you want is available to you on the other side of it.

I can honestly say that I’m am 100% a different person than I was a year and a half ago before becoming a coach and getting involved in transformative work.  I am also 100% happier, more fulfilled, more confident and more secure in the knowledge that I can create whatever I want.  All of this was possible ONLY because I took on and embraced change in a really big way.  I took on transforming my life in service of all the results I wanted.

It may have been scary at times, and I may not have always wanted to, but I’ll be damned if it was worth every second.

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!

My sister (God bless her) nudged me that I hadn’t yet written a post today and needed to get on it. (Said in much kinder, gentler terms, but absolutely needed and appreciated).

If I haven’t mentioned this already, I graduated from, and now lead, one of the best coach training programs in the country.  My apologies if I have and I’m boring you to death with my emphatic endorsement of this company (Accomplishment Coaching).  It meets once a month, Saturday and Sunday, 10am-6pm for the participants, 8am-8pm for us, the leaders.  As such, these weekends are inevitably incredibly intense and rigorous, calling forth your highest and greatest self and blatantly reflecting your survival strategies for getting by.  This is one of those weekends.

I found out today that what I was relating to as my breakthrough in leadership was really just a breakthrough in managing whatever is thrown my way.  You may have already deduced that. You may have not. I for one was thrilled enough with my job managing things that this was most definitely not what I wanted or expected to hear.

Again, leadership takes a lot of willingness to ‘work on it’.

I have NO idea what leadership looks like from a place other than ‘the rules’, ‘managing’, or ‘how’, or even what the hell to do with this idea.  But I do know that it’s the next step for me to have a breakthrough in (and develop) my leadership.

What was reflected to me is that I manage things and follow the rules/instructions (really well) rather than make up my own rules and creatively (and spontaneously) create.  Which, of course, is then what I was invited to practice. So this is what I’m now taking on.

On a somewhat separate (or not) note, I had a breakthrough in my relationship to connecting with others(!).  I realized that I’ve held on (against?) people that in order to prove their friendship to and connect with me, they should succumb to or accept my invitation to be a part of my life via getting together when I propose plans or supporting me in some way or another.  The breakthrough was in realizing exactly how much others are going through in their own lives.  That they don’t (always, or maybe even usually?) have it all together and are juggling a lot of balls in the air.  When I really got present to this, all that I could see or recognize was my complete and utter compassion and love for them.  I suddenly understood that being wrapped up in my own experience, I’d made it all about me.  I wanted THEM to do something WITH or FOR me to prove they loved me.  The ‘kerplunk’ moment was realizing, ‘Oh my God, what can I do FOR THEM?!?!?‘  And actually asking them for what they needed and how I could support them in their lives.

See, what I realized was, that in the bigger sense, all I wanted was connection.  And that I was making connection all about me.  When I was able to get ‘responsible’, or ‘at cause’, for creating connection by connecting TO THEM, instead of waiting for them to connect to me, my mind was blown. I realized I can get the same outcome I’ve been searching for through my own actions, rather than waiting for someone else to ‘get it right’ or ‘figure it out’.  And it’s infinitely more powerful, more connected and more loving.

Talk about a life altering realization… I’m sure my friends will be thrilled.

True.

But it’s also incredibly rewarding.

When you’re part of a team, everyone still has their own stuff going on and lets be honest, most people avoid responsibility like the plague.

Therefore, taking on a leadership position of any sort requires you to really step up and enroll your team in creating something amazing together (whether it’s something that seems large or small).  That’s the magic fairy dust.  What I’ve learned is that a truly great leader does not do everything by themselves!  They create structure, support and enrollment from their team (or the people in their lives) in order to achieve the best results they possibly can.

This opportunity is frequently thrust upon me as a mentor coach in the Accomplishment Coaching coach training program.

When I first took on this position I would consistently hold back from making requests for support. I was incredibly confronted by the idea of relying on others to support me, assuming that I either wouldn’t receive it or that it was my responsibility alone to complete whatever task I took on.

Over six months later, although I’m still constantly learning, I’m actually finding myself making requests easily and being a leader within my team.  Trying out new ways to communicate effectively and achieve common goals by taking action and creating results together.  Trust me, this isn’t always easy.  My automatic response is generally to ask everyone to pitch in a few times, after minimal response give up and just take things on all by myself, handle them, and then be resentful of the fact that no one helped me.  (Talk about being victimized by my team and my assignment).

NOW, I’m finding myself instead choosing to create breakthroughs for myself in leadership and in partnership.  Getting more intentional and creative with structures sufficient to everyone’s resistance.

For example, after various (and mostly fruitless) attempts at getting folks to do some reconnaissance phone calls to identify something we’re looking for for a future weekend, I was close to giving up and doing it all myself (can you hear the small violin playing in the background?). I’d also like to be clear here that I’m not blaming them.  I can take responsibility for that I wasn’t being an effective leader – they didn’t do anything outside of what would be expected of any human beings asked to take on yet another task among the many they already have.

Just short of taking it on myself I stopped myself, realizing that this was not the point of me taking on this task.  The point was to produce the result AND enroll and inspire my team to work together.  After all, I took on this position in order to develop my leadership, not to simply manage whatever was thrown my way.  So, I came up with the idea to have a power hour (pretty much what it sounds like) to make all the phone calls we needed to to spec out some information for a future weekend.  I got everyone aligned with either the same hour or a time they could do it on their own (and be held accountable to me), and poof!, like magic, all the calls were made within the same week and the task is on track to being complete!

I seriously couldn’t be prouder of myself for sticking it out and producing the result with them instead of once again doing it all by myself.  I got to experience myself as an effective leader AND team member at the same time.  Pretty cool stuff…

What are some of your experiences with taking on leadership positions or tasks?  What’s your automatic thing to do when put in this position?  Also what are some things you’ve done or ideas you have for creating enrollment and partnership when working with others??

I’d love to learn from your wins and I’m sure others would too!

Well, turns out it’s just being put in to a trance state. Which is what you’re automatically in when you go to sleep and when you wake up, when you’re driving a car or watching TV or a movie.

I went to the NYC chapter International Coaching Federation monthly meeting tonight where Debra Berndt, a well trained hypnosis coach, presented. She told us all about how hypnosis works and taught us some basics for how to use it on ourselves as well as our clients. She took us through a grounding meditation as well as an amazing short hypnosis. We went into a really deep trance and were to repeat new suggestions we had created to reverse our old negative thought patterns and visualize having these new things in the future.. To put it mildly, this was fantastic.

So to further explain the point of hypnosis, you have your conscious mind and your subconscious mind. If what you want is not what you have – it’s because of some negative core belief you hold in your subconscious (usually made up before the age of 9) and the subconscious belief is not changeable at the conscious level. In hypnosis, you go beyond the conscious mind directly to the subconscious where a difference can be made. The actual act of being hypnotized really just involves you going within into (often extreme) relaxation. This allows your subconscious to emerge – from here you can find your true blocks and suggest new beliefs.

Naturally, I’ve subsequently determined that I’m tremendously interested in further learning how to do this and adding hypnosis to my practice as a service I offer. What can I say? I love this stuff.

And yet again, as has been consistently showing up in my world, she also told us how being with those of a higher consciousness or who have what you want will carry you up to their level by the force of a community and bring you those things as well. Sounds like my friend and goose stories, no?

Anyway, I bought one of her hypnosis CD’s on success and will be listening to it. That and have promised to follow up with her about possibly doing an individual session. (She also does past life regressions by the way).

Have you ever been hypnotized before? What was your experience with it?