Aligning with Values on the Environmental Level

Paula Kawal | Blog, Managing Relationships, Building Awareness, Life Coaching, Energy, Experiences, Techniques, Theory | Thursday, March 13th, 2008

As a coach, I spend a lot of time working with the value systems of my clients. In fact, it is one of the areas that I will first search for incongruencies that leak and dilute their personal power and prevent them from showing up fully in their lives.

Many clients have ideas about what they want in life and can’t figure out why they are not creating it.

What a client creates can be looked at as a reflection of the connection or lack of connection that they are currently experiencing with their values system. Within the dance of this system is a call to deeply and truly connect with and honor themselves.

For this reason, we have to get honest with ourselves about what is really important to us, and honor it, in order to get what we want in life. When we get clear about ourselves internally, we are ready to shift our external experience.

honesty
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What Do You Value?

In order to find out what my clients value I have them do an exercise with index cards. I ask them to think about what is really really, important to them, and why it’s important. I then have them write these things on the front of the cards.

On the back of the cards I have them list all of the ways that they support these things with their time, money and energy.

Because much of what we do is unconscious, most people will find that there are areas in life that are really important to them that are not supported by their actions. I like to think of this in terms of voting.

Determining How You Vote

Because time and money equal energy, writing down how you support your values is a really clear way to see what level of alignment you currently have with the forces that drive you in life and where to make shifts that can bring you closer.

For example let’s say that you live in an artsy town and you just love the fact that you are surrounded by creative people because one of your values is to experience unique and beautiful things because this helps you be present to life.

If every time you buy something for your home, you find yourself in Ikea instead of the beautiful little artisan shops in your town, then you probably aren’t voting very consciously toward this value :)

At this point you can examine the energy behind the thoughts and impulses that led you to put your time and money into Ikea.

The Nature of the Thoughts Surrounding the Activity

In the above scenario we could imagine a thought of going to look for a few items for one’s living room, which then triggers an unconscious reaction which results with the idea of Ikea popping into your head and off you go without further examination. What happened to the value? Why did it never come into play?

Values take conscious awareness to implement and align with. In the above example, I used a value that is often brow-beaten by our unconscious alignment with our societies thought pattern of getting the best possible deal.

When I examine my own thought processes of getting a great deal, I notice a huge undertone of lack. Personally, that’s not the energy I want to put out in the world. This kind of unconscious motivation puts an invisible wall up between me and what I want to experience.

Using Body Wisdom to Determine What’s Most Important to Experience

For many people values are vague concepts floating around in their heads in a way that is disconnected from their experience. Often times they are not yet living their values because they haven’t learned to bring them into their bodies and therefore into their physical experience.

When you place your values inside of your body, you can access them environmentally, in this way you can feel where you are voting with your time and energy and whether or not you are honoring yourself with your actions.

When I place the energy of getting a good deal in my body as my primary motivation, I feel a bit sick in my stomach. When I place the energy of choosing to work with companies with an eye out for the whole as well as themselves, I feel a deep sense of rooted power.

My body will tell me which is the correct action for me. Now to clarify, I’m not saying to completely ignore price, I am only saying to examine the order in which you structure what is important, in other words, to determine which should come first.

Aligning Your Business with Your Values

When I first became aware of some of the unconscious processes that ran automatically in the background when I would search for products and services for my business, I was literally startled by what I found. I instantly made the decision to restructure my business to honor my values and I thought perhaps you might like to join me.

Here is what is on my list to do:

  1. Find a hosting company that runs on solar energy
  2. Use a credit card processor that gives 10% of their proceeds back to the environment
  3. Produce business products, recordings and books on post consumer recycled paper and pop bottles
  4. Use a financial institution who works with small companies that want to positively impact the world

Putting it in Action

When the main thrust of my energy enters the world from within my values, it makes a huge difference in how I honor myself and others.

If you would like to experiment similarly, and are searching for an easy way to find conscious businesses with which to partner, I suggest looking in the Co-Op America’s National Green Pages for the services you need.

The Future of Medicine

Paula Kawal | Blog, Building Awareness, Health, Movies, Energy, Experiences | Wednesday, February 20th, 2008


Andrea Hess, of Empowered Soul drew my attention to project that is the work of one of her clients called, “The Future of Medicine” and asked if I would be interested in highlighting it on this blog.

The movie explores various forms of alternative healing modalities which are based on the idea that the body is capable of healing itself. One of my favorite books on this subject if you’re in for further exploration, is the Biology of Belief, by Bruce Lipton.

The Body Can Heal Itself

The idea that the body can heal itself, makes perfect sense. Our bodies heal themselves all of the time so what causes the conditions of illness? What allows for this healing mechanism to be interrupted?

In my experience we become sick due to imbalances between our physical, emotional & spiritual bodies. When all of these things are in alignment we operate perfectly, and truth be told, we are operating perfectly even when they are not.

An NLP Perspective

NLP is based on a principle that change happens fast, not slow and that lasting change occurs below the levels of the environment because there is an aspect of ourselves in operation that is outside of our conscious awareness. This applies across the board to things like physical symptoms and illness, emotion difficulties, reactions or any behavior that we don’t want to be doing.

For example, one of the most powerful healings I received from NLP solved a physical problem that first surfaced when I was fourteen years old, eczema. In class, we were experimenting with a process called 6-Step Reframe. I decided to see if it would work on my eczema as I was tired of having cracked and bleeding hands.

Once in the process I got the chance to speak to the part of myself that was causing the reaction, get to it’s positive purpose for doing so and have it come on board for finding alternative ways to express itself to me.

Traditional medicine couldn’t really do much. They advised gloves and steroid creams which worked only temporarily if at all. This is not surprising since prescribing creams and such is attacking the problem on the environmental level without ever actually getting at the cause. Since using the NLP process, I no longer have eczema.

The Mind/Body/Spirit Connection

Speaking to the body requires us to use a language most of us are unfamiliar with and this is where alternative healing modalities can help. These methods allow us to communicate with these parts, guide us to tap into them and help us to understand their needs and having them in turn, understand ours.

Because modern humans spend a lot of time living mostly in our heads, we have no idea, just how powerful we really are. Once we re-connect the mind with body and spirit, we have our full system up and running and available to us.

A Lightworker’s Journey Inward…

Paula Kawal | Blog, Overcoming Fear, Life Coaching, Experiences, Announcements | Thursday, December 20th, 2007

Patricia Singleton (the recipient of the free coaching session given away on the site to celebrate it’s launch) has written about her experience on her blog, Spiritual Journey of a Lightworker.

Yesterday at 1:00 p.m. CST, I was blessed with a free session with Paula Kawal which I won by leaving a comment on her article Celebrate the Wellspring and Win a Free Coaching Session found on her website paulakawal.com . If you aren’t aware or haven’t visited in awhile, visit Paula at her site. You will be glad that you did. The writing and the coaching sessions that she does are fantastic.

Patricia blogs in great detail about her amazing results and what her session was like…so if you’ve been curious about coaching and want to hear someone’s first-hand account, then head on over to her site and share her experience by reading her Journey Within Coaching Session with Paula Kawal post :) .

For a really good comparison of what she was experiencing before our session also read, Cry When You Need To and Feelings.

Changing the State of Confusion

Paula Kawal | Blog, Life Coaching, Experiences, Techniques | Sunday, November 11th, 2007

San Francisco

I’m back in San Francisco in an NLP Practitioner training. I am still amazed and somewhat surprised at how the universe opened up and manifested the way for me to be here. This course is broken out over several months, one intense weekend each month. Our day starts on Friday afternoon and pretty much ends on Sunday evening. For me it has been a reunion of friends as several people I knew from my coaching course are here. It is a large group that is very enjoyable.

The Assignment

Yesterday, we worked on a process called Change Personal History. In this process you are to find an unresourceful state, trace it back to your earliest memory of experiencing it, determine what resource would have been needed to turn it into a resourceful state and then jump back through your memories, pulling the resource up through time noticing and experiencing how differently you behave.

Confusion

I’ve challenged myself to really get out of my comfort zone during this training. Part of that is to work on areas that really are soft spots for me, the other part is to be more of an experiencer than an observer.

So I was the first to be guided through the process. I chose the subject of confusion because I have often experienced what seems like an over reaction to it, something inside of me yelling out that it is not o.k. to be confused and demanding that I resolve the situation immediately. Realizing not everyone has this same experience, I decided to explore this phenomena and see what was really going on.

The Memories

The memories that I traveled through were varied. The most recent in history being when I decided to step away from the music industry (promoting the voice of others) and move toward discovering my own voice…who I am and why I’m here in this life.

The next memory was when I was fourteen, a freshman in high school. A new town, new school and new chapter of life was upon me and I was absolutely clueless on how to integrate all of these changes.

The third memory was perhaps the most powerful and was what I would soon discover to be the root of my reaction toward confusion. I was about seven years old. I saw myself awaken in a car parked in a busy shopping mall lot. I had fallen asleep and was left there by myself as no one had wanted to wake me up. I awoke on my own in a panic, all alone.

I could not decide what to do. I was very confused. Part of me wanted to stay in the car, the other part shouted at me to go find my family. I couldn’t move. I was paralyzed with fear. Tears streamed down my face as the internal war raged on. Before I got the chance to make a decision, my family returned.

The memory caused me to distrust myself when feeling confused and that the experience of it was not safe. These reactions and feelings had become the meaning of confusion for me…henceforth my automatic response to it was to become extremely uncomfortable and to panic.

Pulling in the Resource

I chose a few resources to give to my seven-year old self. The first was patience, the second was love, and the third was safety. Accessing them all within myself I showered her with them, sending them all out of myself with a great intensity that flowed out of me like a wave. Stepping into her, I received them and experienced the situation very differently.

I awoke within the car to discover that I had a cord of light running from my body down deep into the surface of the earth. I knew in that moment I was connected with all of the nurturing forces of the universe, a mother of great power.

Energy washed over me, I was embraced by it. I felt calm, at peace, safe, loved and knew that I only had to sit and wait. My family would be back soon, I had nothing to worry about. I saw the seven-year old me relax, enjoying this connection, knowing that no matter what, she was never alone.

I pulled this connection up through all the other memories as well, and paced it out into the future circumstances in which I might experience confusion. Confusion for me now has a different image attached to it…that of a peaceful, grounded little girl, bathing in the light of the nurturing forces of the love :)

Coaching Highlight: Reorganizing a Learning Disorder

Paula Kawal | Blog, Building Awareness, Overcoming Fear, Health, Stories and Parables, Life Coaching, Experiences | Saturday, November 3rd, 2007

The Map is Not the Territory

Thinking is the way we make an internal representation to ourselves of the world we live in. We take our experiences and our sensory input and with it we create a map of the world in which we live. This map comes equipped with a navigational system whose primary function is to sort our experiences into two categories: the kind we’d like to have or the kind we’d like to avoid.

We use this navigational system like a compass, in conjunction with the map to get where we want to go. Some areas of the map are new territory for us…others have been lived in for so long that we are no longer consciously aware of them…like a hardwired program running in the background of our lives.

This way of internally representing our world is a big piece of how we learn to survive. Developing hardwired programs is an efficient method of providing ourselves with a source of nourishment and sustenance. These survival strategies help us hold and maintain a place in our families, our communities and beyond.

Most of us experience this system unconsciously, in the form of behavior patterns (knee-jerk reactions to certain stimulus or situations we encounter in life). Sometimes we become aware of ourselves executing a behavior that is less than flattering and we beat up on ourselves over it. Thinking about it like this is not helpful to our overall goal of change. We need to know why the behavior is in place and what purpose it serves in order for us to be able to make a different choice. Trying to accomplish this level of change without understanding how the behavior is of service to us…is very difficult.

So what happens when we can consciously observe our patterns, understand how they benefit us and choose a new more life complimentary behavior to meet our needs? What happens when we decide to change the map?

Discovering the Positive Intent

Whenever we are experiencing something like a disorder, disease, anxiety or other physical symptom that arises within our world, it is helpful to take the point of view of wondering how this symptom is actually of benefit to us.

The on the surface, mind generated response is always that it doesn’t serve us at all…but we wouldn’t have it in our lives if it was absolutely of no use to us…so when we are completely honest and dig deep into our unconscious minds we will often discover something entirely different.

That is why whenever we are sick or experiencing some other signal from our bodies, we can get to the bottom of things much more quickly if we look upon the experience like a kind of message from another part of us.

Unlocking and decoding those messages can change the course of our experience. When we understand how something that is not our ideal circumstance serves us…we can find another way to fill that need and let go of the less healthy behavior.

Coaching a Reading Disorder

Not too long ago I coached a woman who had developed a reading disorder in the second grade. She did not feel it was possible for her to read and came to me to try to understand why this disorder appeared in her life at the time that it did.

A child born into abuse will create what they need in order to survive their family situation. When we explored her reading disorder we discovered that it was helpful to her in many ways…

It discounted her ability to be fully responsible for all of what she did as a child. Coming from a family of seven kids who had to endure evening watches all alone with their alcoholic father, this became more than a coping strategy…it was survival. If she wasn’t as noticeable, if she was discountable and not easily seen, then she might avoid being yelled at, beat or some other form of punishment…providing her with a chance to experience some form of happiness at home.

On another level, it garnered her a great deal of consideration from her mother, who spent a lot of time trying to teach her to read well enough to pass her classes. In a family system this large, there is stiff competition for a working mother’s love and attention. The reading disorder ensured that she received more of this attention than she would have otherwise. It also provided her with the opportunity to bond with her mother and please her by reading the words she was taught correctly.

In the end, my client realized that the disorder had been extremely useful to her during her childhood, and that it had, in actuality, been the avenue that she used to acquire what little happiness was available to her within her family.

Now, 47 years later, the disorder had long outlived it’s purpose and she realized she had many other paths to happiness and fulfillment. She was able to honor the needs of the child and of the grown woman by choosing a new way to nurture herself.

The Dream

A few days after our coaching session she called me with an absolute beam in her voice to say that she had experienced a significant dream. She saw herself in an office setting, where people were coming to her with memos and documents. For the first time in her life, she had the experience of looking over papers and reading them with ease before handing them back to her dream employees with written instructions attached.

As we talked she said, “I don’t see myself as someone who can’t read anymore…I see myself as someone who is learning how.”

At 55 years of age she has entered a new place in life… she has reinvented her identity as a woman who can read, and life looks quite a bit different from the vantage point of this new, previously unexplored and inaccessible territory of her map :)