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S.E.L.F – L – Life

What does life mean to you?

The dictionary definition is “The existence of an individual human being or animal”.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to just exist, I want to live my life with vigour and energy, to enjoy being in existence and to live my life to the full.

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How can we all do that?  We can do that by choosing our thoughts, as they affect how we feel and in fact affect our whole body. How, you may well ask?

Well, the smallest unit of life is called an organism.  Organisms are composed of cells.  And our bodies are made up of millions of cells, each and every one of them attuned to what we are thinking, feeling, saying, hearing etc.

In fact, when we are thinking that we are feeling weak, all our cells in our bodies respond by being weak.  However, when we are thinking that we are feeling strong, all our cells in our bodies respond by being strong. Likewise, when we are feeling tired, full of energy, miserable, happy or any other feelings you can imagine, our cells are responding in the same way.

So the state of our lives is dependent upon making sure that every one of our cells in our bodies is working to our benefit and that is where feeling positive, confident and happy with our lives makes such a difference to our whole being, from the inside out. Be aware of what you are thinking and feeling, it makes a huge difference.

 In September I am presenting a FREE workshop and life is one of the topics included.  Click here to book your ticket today and learn more about the secret of SELF.

 

Maggie Currie

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Epilogue – Australia Trip

Sadly, my good friend Heather Williams passed away today.  I was told by her daughter-in-law Sonia that all her family were with her and holding her hand and that she is now at peace.

I was also told that my short visit to see Heather had made her week, and she was thrilled that I had taken the time to visit her.

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Heather Williams 1959-2014

I shall remember Heather as looking well, chatting to me in her living room, telling me all about her farm, her hobbies and her plans for the future, the two grandchildren due to be born in the near future.

I am glad that I made the trip, as I know I would have regretted not going to see Heather. I didn’t just want to offer support from a distance, I wanted to be there for her in her time of need.

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I also surprised myself at how upset I was on hearing the news.  This is something I shall have to ponder to discover the depth of my emotions.

Rest in peace Heather. You will definitely be missed.  You are now another star shining down on us from above.

heathers funeral

7th August 2014

Finally, Heather’s two sons, Kristoffer and Rhys, rode Heather’s beloved Harley and BSA behind her hearse to the Crematorium.  I am sure she would have loved that.

Maggie Currie

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Fear of crowds

Fear of crowds is very common for a lot of people whether they are single, married, male, female, high flyers, students, teachers, old or young .

I know how it feels to be alone in a crowd. I often feel totally overwhelmed in a large crowd of people, especially if I don’t know anyone in that crowd. It can feel like I am on the periphery and not allowed into the inner circle, and that, of course, makes the fear even worse. I wonder if the fear is actually of the crowds themselves or is it a fear of feeling lost or being unnoticed amongst a large number of people?

I know when I am in a large crowd of people entirely ‘on my own’ I feel nervous; I have an irrational fear that nobody will even notice that I am there.  I look at the little groups of people who do know each other within that large crowd enjoying themselves and the company of each other and that somehow increases my nervousness and the fear.  Of course they may feel just like I do but when I feel that fear, it certainly looks like they’re having a great time and I’m not. When I am in a large crowd of people and I have my own ‘group of people’ with me I feel safe and secure and know that I am noticed and therefore I don’t have those same feelings as when I am alone in a crowd.

Business people communicating with each other against white

Did you grow up in a house where “children were seen and not heard”? That might be the root of these feelings of nervousness and insecurity as they are for me. I can ultimately relate feeling like this to my childhood when I was constantly told that I should be seen and not heard.  So I would sit in the corner with my toys and only speak when I was spoken to.

Having worked hard on discovering my authentic self, discovering, acknowledging and accepting those unexpressed feelings and emotions of when I was told to be seen and not heard,  I now think and act differently.  I know there is a solution to this fear of crowds.  Based on what I know to be true about fear.  I know that FEAR is:

False

Expectations

Appearing

Real

I have found the solution that works for me and might work for you too:

  • Don’t worry about pleasing anyone else. Just be you.
  • Here’s what I do – I take a deep breath or two and take the plunge.
  • I walk amongst the strangers in the crowd and I expect to be noticed. I’ve decided not to expect to be or feel lost.
  • I make eye contact with people and smile at them.
  • I say hello to people I have never met before and strike up conversations.  They aren’t always long conversations, just long enough to introduce myself and be friendly and to listen to the other people.  Sometimes they are much longer, it depends on the person of course. Once the conversations start to happen, other people start to talk to me and to each other and before long I am part of the ‘crowd’ and not isolated on the periphery.

Even if being you just says it’s ok to not talk to anyone – which is a good friend of mine’s solution for her fear of crowds.  She’s decided to not push herself and just enjoys watching people. Funny thing is, she reports people come and talk to her.

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So I know that I am not alone in feeling alone.  There are other people who are in the same position as me and I make a special effort to speak to them as well and include them in the conversations.  The energy and dynamics of the crowd change visibly and it becomes much more enjoyable.

The most important thing is to find a way to feel comfortable being you whether you decide overcoming the fear by talking to people is your way, or overcoming the fear by giving yourself a break and just allowing others to talk to you is your way. Bottom line, stop pressuring yourself to be like everyone else and just be you.

Contact me to have a free chat on how my coaching can help you find solutions to your problems.

Maggie Currie

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Beliefs

We all have beliefs, most of which have been programmed into us from a very young age and most of  us don’t question them.  There are beliefs that cannot be changed, and that is just the way it is and we have to accept it.  But there are lots of beliefs that we hold that may not be relevant now.
Here is a true story which will illustrate just how easily we are ‘programmed’
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A young couple got married, and when it came to cooking the Sunday roast, the young wife picked up her joint of meat, broke the bone in it and folded it before putting it in the roasting tin.  Her new husband asked her why she had done this.  She replied ‘That’s the way my mother always does it’.
A few weeks later, the young couple were invited to her parents’ house for Sunday lunch, and the young husband was intrigued as he watched his mother-in-law pick up her joint of meat, break the bone and fold it before putting it in the roasting tin.  He asked his mother-in-law why she did this.  She replied ‘That’s the way my mother always does it’.
A month or so later, the young couple went to have Sunday lunch with her Grandmother.  The young husband was still intrigued by the breaking of the bone before putting the joint in the roasting tin, and so he mentioned to his wife’s Grandmother how his wife and his mother-in-law both broke the bone in the joint of meat before putting in the roasting tin, and that his mother-in-law learned it from the Grandmother, and his wife learned it from his mother-in-law.  He asked if she could shed any light on this for him.
The Grandmother replied ‘Do they still do that?  I used to do it because my roasting tin was very small and unless I broke the bone, I couldn’t fit the joint in it’.
That is how simple it is to be ‘programmed’.
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I have a belief that there is good in everybody. This belief comes from parents who told me this many years ago and therefore I have believed it for all this time. I have not had any reason to challenge this belief before and therefore it has just sat there in my mind.

I have challenged this belief, and I now believe that there is good in most people but not everybody. I discovered something about a person I know that was unpleasant, nauseating and which shook me to the core. That belief is now buried forever, and the new belief has replaced it.

10 beliefs I hold:

  • I believe there is a higher being, but I am not sure what or who it is.
  • I believe that working hard reaps great rewards.
  • I believe that honesty is always the best policy.
  • I believe that marriage is an equal partnership and that to be best friends as well is vital.
  • I believe I have masses to offer to other people to help them become the very best version of themselves.
  • I believe I made some huge mistakes whilst bringing up my children.
  • I believe that friends are attracted to me rather than me going out to find them.
  • I believe in general humans think they are superior to other creatures.
  • I believe change can be brought to this planet by drip feeding positive thoughts.
  • I believe in the power of the Universe

I have challenged the belief that there is good in everybody because it has been proved to me that this is just not the case. Therefore this belief is easy to change and will remain changed unless it can be disproved to me that there is good in most people.

I had a belief that my intuition (inner self, spirit, gut instinct) is infallible. It has shown me that it is not. My belief now is that I can trust my intuition up to a limit, but that consideration will have to be made in the future to ensure my gut instinct is not destroyed and continues to protect me.

 What are your beliefs? Are there any that need looking at or adjusting?  Take a look and you might just be surprised.

Contact me today, and we can have a chat on how I can help you. There is so much more information for you to see about my coaching on my website, take a look.

Maggie Currie 

Creedence – Confidence for You

I am helping people to become the very best version of themselves so that they can have more fun, live a better life and enjoy their work.

 

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Time for action!

As a very busy coach I am lucky enough to be in a position where, on a daily basis, the fascinating people I work with tell me all about their big dreams, grand plans and compelling goals.  Dreams, plans and goals that they have possibly never shared with  another living soul.  And I can tell you that there are some amazing potential futures out there for these people!

So what will be the deciding factor as to whether these big dreams remain as dreams or become a wonderful and vibrant reality?  A few words come to mind – clarity, vision, belief, motivation, support – all play a part.  But the deciding factor in every case is – will this person take action?  Will they act upon what they want and work towards making it happen?

teenage depression - teen woman sitting thinking

All too often people don’t realise their ambitions and make their dreams a reality because their aspirations remain as something that they think about, rather than something that they do or create.  Having put all that effort into the thinking, dreaming and planning they find reasons not to do anything about it. And the fail to write them down.  Only when the dreams and aspirations are written down do they become goals.

Interestingly, the most common reason that I hear for inaction is ‘no time’.  How often do you hear people say “If only I had the time”? We all have the same number of hours in a day, it is how we manage those hours that makes the difference.

There is such a time-poor mentality around these days that we often appear to believe we have run out of time, or that there is literally none to spare because it’s already been spent on the other stuff in our lives.  Time is ‘taken up’ by so many things that  when it comes to the big goals and ambitions that require action, we don’t feel we have any left.

Added to that, the nature of some of these wonderful dreams that people have (eg. retraining for a new career) mean that they can take a certain amount of time to come to fruition, and there can be a sense of “but it would just take so long!”.

The thing is though time is passing anyway.  Regardless of whether we take action, use it constructively and make it count, it is going by at the same rate.  The real key to success is to decide to use it in the best way possible for what is most important to us.

We allow so many less important things to drain our time when we could choose at any moment to use it in a better way, in such a way that we make progress and start heading towards where we want to be.  So that in a year or two years time, we’ll be in a different place to the place we’re in now.  Well on our way to one of those compelling potential futures.  Or perhaps by that time it will be our reality?

Is it time for you to take action?

Your life does not resemble anybody else's

Do you have a dream or an ambition in which you’ve invested lots of thinking and planning time, but haven’t taken action on?  If so, keep reading!

Ask yourself:

  • What needs to happen for me to achieve this?  What are all the steps?
  • What is stopping me from taking action?  How long will I allow these things to stop me?
  • What is the one thing I could do in the next 24 hours to know that I have started taking action?
  • Will you do it?

Get in touch today and we can have a free informal chat on how I can help you to take action and achieve your goals.

Maggie Currie 

Creedence – Confidence for You

I am helping people to become the very best version of themselves.

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We each have our own perceptions and beliefs – and so we should!

Whether you realise it or not, you are constantly in the process of creating and changing your reality.
You are not truly aware of what someone else’s reality really looks like, and they are not truly aware of what your reality looks like. You are only aware of your own reality and how it looks to you. 

Don’t believe me?  Take a simple scenario.  A road traffic accident, where nobody is hurt, fortunately, when one car hits another car.  There are three witnesses.  A policeman will ask each witness what he or she saw.  There will be three completely different perceptions of the same incident.

car

 For instance, one person might state that they saw the first car brake suddenly, so the driver of the car behind (being far too close in their perception) braked really hard but the car was going too fast and ran into the car in front with a loud bang. 

The second person saw the second car approaching the car in front too fast and the driver didn’t appear to even see the car in front and ran straight into it without braking. 

The third person witnessed the first car slow down too much so the driver of the car behind (which wasn’t going too fast) couldn’t quite stop in time (though they tried) and hit the car in front really hard.

 Three different perceptions of the same accident – each quite ‘real’ to those witnesses – but significantly dissimilar. 

 How you perceive your life and everything around you will differ dramatically from other people’s perceptions.  Your reality is totally unique to you.

How you think about your life, how you see yourself in the mirror, and what you believe is happening to you at any given moment, will be the reality that exists for you.

 So what are your beliefs?  They are your views, judgements, guiding principles and decisions about yourself, family and friends, communities, organisations, employers and everyone and everything else you come into contact with.

 Your beliefs filter everything you see, hear and feel around you and, as a result, determine the meaning you attach to any event. Your beliefs act as self-fulfilling prophecies.

If you think that you can’t do something and then find it extremely difficult to do and give up trying, you have successfully fulfilled your belief that you can’t do it.  What would have happened if you had believed that you could do it?  Would your reality have been different?

Your beliefs, whether they be limiting or empowering, determine your actions, and your actions in turn verify your beliefs. Over time, as you collect more evidence to prove your beliefs, your beliefs become your reality.

Your beliefs operate in your subconscious mind and influence your conscious mind, they affect your thoughts and behaviour. Whilst you are aware of many of your beliefs, in general, your most influential beliefs are stored away in your subconscious mind.

There are some beliefs you view as absolute truths and never question – that is just the way the world is! A change in your beliefs can have a major impact on how you live your life and the behaviours you manifest.

Once you believe in something, you tend to ignore opposite examples and accept only those events that reinforce that belief.

 flat world

As Henry Ford, industrialist, said: ‘Whether you believe you can or believe you can’t, you are probably right.’ How right he was.

Do you currently have beliefs that keep your reality comfortable and safe and that prevent you from exploring your true potential? 

Do you choose to acknowledge only the reality that is predicted by your limiting beliefs and then use these observations as proof that your current reality is indeed true? 

Is it time to step out of your comfort zone and set sail into the unknown?  To push the boundaries of what you think you know and discover new lands and opportunities – to challenge yourself to create your new reality?

Make a note of the limiting beliefs you are aware of.  Really give this some thought.  You will probably find a lot more than you originally thought if you keep delving deeper into your thoughts.

 I have some availability for coaching clients, we just need to fix some dates if and when you want to get started. Get in touch today.

Maggie Currie 

Creedence – Confidence for You

International Confidence Coach, Motivational Speaker, Author

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Self Awareness

When I was in my teens and even up to my early 40s I had very little self-awareness.  I plodded along doing what I was told to do, manipulated by so many people.  I was so totally not self-aware I didn’t even notice that I was living my life on other people’s terms.

It is only since I have trained to be a life coach that I have really discovered myself and discovered my own self awareness.  I have found that to be able to grow into my own self-awareness I have to understand my feelings and emotions.  This was quite a difficult journey for me, as I have suppressed feelings and emotions for many years.  The reason – I was told by my parents when I was a child that I should be seen and not heard.  I was told that I should not express anger or display any emotion.  And so I learned to repress them.

Having this understanding now after learning so much about my feelings and emotions and rediscovering who I am really am, I know that I can express my feelings and emotions. And this is a huge step for me towards self-awareness.  But what does self-awareness do for me? What are the benefits to me?  Being self-aware has given me the opportunity and freedom to change those things I want to change about myself and create the life that I want.  I now don’t allow others to manipulate me.  I live my life on my terms.  I am seen and heard and I do express my feelings and emotions.

 New for 2013. From confusion to clarity – Becoming ME again

The more clarity I get about who I am and what I want, and of course why I want it, the more I empower myself to consciously make those wants a reality. But, how do I get this clarity? I turn to the expert – ME.  I know more about myself than anyone else, I know I have been manipulated and by whom.  I know I have suppressed my feelings and emotions,  and I know why.  And I have got to know myself even better over the past few years by becoming so much more self-aware.  I am, of course, still learning.

To get the clarity I want I have learned to ask myself questions and expect specific answers. The more specific my answers, the more impact they have on my life and then I have a much clearer picture of  me.  Of course, there are times when my answer is ‘I don’t know’ and I know that is okay too.  I give myself the freedom to take a wild guess and this allows me to carry on.  What I have discovered is that I really do know more than I ever thought I did.

Honesty is vital in my answers to myself.  It will lead to my true self-awareness, but it does take a lot of courage.  It is the courage to face my fears or to face something I find difficult to accept about myself.  For instance, I know that I am impatient and want things to happen now.  I also know that when people are speaking to me I get impatient to hear the end of what they are saying, and I tend to try to finish their sentences for them.  I know this about myself and do my best to bite my tongue and not jump in with the answers.  By being totally honest with myself I take ownership of my actions, thoughts and feelings and find those beliefs that are no longer serving me. Those beliefs can then be discarded, altered or whatever feels right for me.

I find that sometimes I do slip up and give an answer that perhaps I think I should give, rather than what I really know is right.  That means I am giving answers from my head rather than getting in touch with my feelings and getting the answer there. To get out of my head again, I take several deep breaths and start to listen to my body, to notice where it is hurting and breathe into that place.  This helps me to balance myself and to find the answers I need, and they come from inside me rather than from my head.

How do I know I am in a relationship that is bad for me?

I know that whatever I discover about myself I can handle with ease and acceptance.  I trust that whatever I discover about myself will in some way lead to a greater sense of me and increased self-awareness.

I have found that practising listening to my body has enabled me to get to grips with my emotions and feelings in a way that I have never been able to do before.  And of course I am learning every day more and more about myself too.

I have some availability for coaching clients, we just need to fix some dates if and when you want to get started. Get in touch today.

Maggie Currie 

Creedence – Confidence for You

International Confidence Coach, Motivational Speaker, Author

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Unqualified vs Qualified Coaches

There are thousands of ‘coaches’ out there who have never been trained to coach, have never been coached themselves and have absolutely no idea where to begin or indeed where to end.

Equally, there are a similar number of ‘coaches’ out there who are qualified and have never been coached themselves and also have absolutely no idea what they are doing.

I can only speak from my own experience, and I have found that learning how to be a coach is very much different from being a coach. And being a coach means drawing on all learnings and experiences accumulated throughout my life.

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How so you may well ask.  Well I have trained with five different coach training providers since 2004 and all have their own ways of interpreting coaching.

For instance, one said that once I had passed their diploma course I was a trained life coach.  That may well have been true, but the course itself gave very little insight into the myriad of different strategies that can, and are, used in coaching.  On passing the course I was now a qualified life coach.

Another taught me all I needed to know to become corporate coach, but again left me short of knowledge and experience when it came to working with organisations that varied in the ways they operated. On passing their course I was now a qualified corporate coach.

I have learned over the years that my life experiences count just as much as all the coach training.  Listening to my clients and knowing when to ask the right question came from practise.  It is nothing that can be learned from a course or a book, it comes with experience of working with so many different people.

I love being a coach, it doesn’t feel like a job to me.  I find it so rewarding when I see the ‘penny drop’ and my clients get it, take action and change their lives for the better. It is something that I just love getting out of bed for every morning.

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All the training I have undertaken has had its uses, and I always learned something new and worthwhile, and I can honestly say that I am highly qualified and experienced as a coach. 

I enjoy being coached, and in fact work with several coaches where we all coach each other, supervise, teach and learn.  It works very well as each has something different to bring to the table.  The fact that we are spread out over the world in the UK, USA and Australia causes a few time zone headaches, but we usually work it all out between us, and Skype is a fabulous tool.

So who wins in the Unqualified Coach vs Qualified Coach competition? I don’t think there is a definitive answer.  It all depends on the coach and the outcome you want.  If the outcome you get is satisfactory to you, then I am not sure it really matters.  I know there will be lots of you who will disagree, and I would love to hear from you.

My speciality is coaching professional business women who are going through, or have been through, divorce, life trauma, redundancy etc.  The type of woman who has to look perfect on the outside to give her presentation to the board, but who is falling to bits on the inside, and the cracks are beginning to show.  The fantastically successful outcomes my clients have had are just wonderful.

I have some availability for coaching clients, we just need to fix some dates if and when you want to get started. Get in touch today.

Maggie Currie 

Creedence – Confidence for You

International Confidence Coach, Motivational Speaker, Author

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Redirecting your emotions

Intense emotions demand intense methods of expression.  There are many outlets for positive feelings – being creative, enjoying the fresh air, talking with friends, having fun – there are however far fewer methods for coping constructively with negative feelings of anger, frustration, fear, sadness, or stress. Consequently, such feelings can lead us to believe that we are not in control of our emotional state.

When we are backed into a mental corner, we may well lash out at the very first person we encounter.  Most of us will discover very quickly that our misdirected outpouring of fury has done nothing to relieve the pressure of our pain, in fact it has probably exacerbated it.

How do I know I am in a relationship that is bad for me?

Powerful emotions can be likened to the lava in a volcano, just waiting to erupt, temporarily held in check by an ever eroding layer of calm. Within us lies the power to direct that flood of feeling that surges forth by channelling it into productive, artistic or physically tiring activities.

Retaking control of our emotions at their height can often be very difficult.  This is because our already negative feelings can convince us, however wrongly, that others are deserving of our wrath.  But, when we consciously look for alternative ways of expressing what we feel, we will relieve our pain and use the energy of that pain to add even more value to our lives.

Anger or sadness is the inspiration that inspires us to dedicate ourselves to bringing about a change we wish to see in the world.  If we act rather than react, we will become very effective agents of positive transformation. When we channel our frustration or feelings of stress into “outside-the-box thinking” and various proactive exploits, we will discover solutions to the issues that initially left us stuck in this negative state.

And when we view fear as a sign that we need to re-examine our circumstances rather than a sign to flee, we will gain new, and possibly unexpected, insight into our lives.

Channelling your emotions into constructive action will also prevent you from reliving situations, events or even expectations that sparked your feelings in your mind’s eye.  Since you are now focusing on a goal, your pain is no longer being fed by your emotional energy and will ebb away rapidly.  You will not only avoid lashing out at others, but you will also take an active  part in your own healing process while still honestly acknowledging and honouring your feelings.

journal

Journalling helps with getting your emotions under control and will help you get your thoughts in order.  Just the act of writing down your thoughts will help you to realise where your thoughts are directed and where you may need to change some of the thoughts that are no longer serving you.

I have some availability for coaching clients, we just need to fix some dates if and when you want to get started. Get in touch today.

Maggie Currie 

Creedence – Confidence for You

International Confidence Coach, Motivational Speaker, Author

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