This is where we start…if you don’t know who you are, why you are here or your reason for being then how do you know what you want or what you want to change.

Everyone lives according to a set of priorities or values, things that are most to least important to us and sometimes we are not even aware that these very values determine how we perceive the world, how we decide in the world and how we act and behave in the world. It’s how we prioritise things, know what has meaning for us and how we stay engaged and inspired in our lives.

We’re not talking about qualities like being kind or generous, these values are who you are and determine your reality and destiny. Each set of values are unique like a finger print, no two people have the same set of values. 

If you’re not living your highest values, the things you perceive that are the most important to you then you will feel frustrated, have a sense of low self worth, not be very confident or a feeling of unfulfillment maybe even feel disconnected and disengaged with your life. Overtime you may find yourself with symptoms of depression and anxiety.

If you are a people pleaser then you may be trying to live in their values, living how you think you should be living to please them.  The grow edge approach will help you to discover your values and you will find out who you are and why. Knowing who you are makes it possible to know what you want or what you want to change.

Would you love to discover your values and reconnect to who you are? Click here to contact Sue.

“How can I know who I am when all I know is who I am not?”

Matt Hudson

How do you communicate with yourself and with others?

Did you know that according to some research ( Mehrabian & Wiener, 1967) verbal words count for 7% of how we consciously communicate with ourselves and with others and so that means 93% of our communication is unconscious made up of body langauge and tone of voice.

There is a model of communication within NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming) called Meta-Programs also known as filters. It’s like putting on a pair of glasses and you see the world through the filtered lens and there are many different lenses that influence how we perceive the world and the way that we see the world drives our behaviour, our unconscious behaviour.

Behaviour is taking action from a decision we have made that was based on a thought and a thought is made up of a picture and words and remember…we are conscious of only 7% of our communication, the rest we are not conscious of. So just how much of our behaviour is unconscious to us – we’re not aware of how we are behaving or reacting in a certain way or why.

Having self awareness is one of the first steps to changing,  transforming or shifting something you no longer want to have in your life and to bring into your life what you really want.

When you learn about your filters, which glasses you are wearing when you are talking to yourself or with someone else then you will discover how and why you are behaving or reacting in the way you do. Some behaviours keep you stuck or locked down in a particular way of thinking and being and you feel that it is so difficult to change.

This approach helps you to make those changes…you can not not communicate.

“You don’t see the world as it is, you see it as you are”. 

Tanya Cross

A stressed brain does not learn. Stress can be caused by fear, shame or guilt and activates a stress response of flight, fight or freeze. This then has an impact on our nervous system.

Click here for an explanation of fight, flight and freeze.

A healthy nervous system has a wide window of resource. When we are aroused or triggered our sympathetic (flight or fight) nervous system is activated (it immobilises us to take action) and then we soon settle ourselves activating the parasympathetic (rest and digest)  nervous system (we become calm and resourceful once again). This dynamic of our nervous system happens when we are resourced so we have time to think and choose how we act rather than react.

If we are triggered and do not have the resources to resolve the trigger in a healthy way then our flight or fight response goes into overdrive and we find ourselves in a hyper-aroused state. What this means is that we feel we are out of control, anxious and overwhelemed. We maybe experiencing panic attacks, being hype-vigiliant or hyper-active, feeling anger and rage and our bodies unable to relax, in chronic pain and unable to sleep.

Click here for a diagram explaining hypo-arousal and hyper-arousal.

This is not something we are choosing, these reactions just take over to protect us, keep us safe and alive.

We have another stress response if we are triggered and do not have the resources to resolve the trigger in a healthy way and this is our freeze response and we find ourselves in a hypo-aroused state. What this means is that we feel spaced or zoned out, dumb, frozen and totally disconnected from our body and our life. Our body just wants to shut down. We maybe experiencing lethargy, depression and exhaustion to the point of chronic fatigue feeling disorientated and disconnected with low blood prssure and poor digestion.

This is not something we are choosing, these reactions just take over to protect us, keep us safe and alive.

This is your body responding in a ‘normal’ way when you have been triggered and feel overwhelmed. It’s not something you are choosing, its your system keeping you safe, protected and alive.

You may find that you oscilliate between a hyper-aroused state and a hypo-aroused state several times in the day…this is exhausting, unbearable and unenduarble.

If you have been beating yourself up, punishing yourself for not trying harder or sorting this out then please know this, your body is doing exactly what it needs to do to keep you safe. This is a beautiful feedback system to let you know you are out of balance with yourself, out of rapport, no longer at ease but in dis-ease with yourself. Fear, emotional pain and medication can sometimes hide the messages your body wants you to know but your body is persistent because if you are not able to hear and feel the messages then overtime being in dis-ease with yourself becomes disease and chronic illness.

Your body is your best Doctor!

The environment where we are and when we are is especially significant when working with trauma. We first create and hold a safe space for self expression and conversation by being fully present with you: undivided in our attention, observation, listening, noticing and sensing. It is in this space where you feel safe and trusted to begin the work, exploring and being curious about your experiences of yourself and others.

When this rapport and working relationship has been established then we have a more resourced brain, engaged and ready for learning.

For me, at school most of my learning took place in the classroom and exams took place in the great halls, two very different environments and to recall information when learnt in a different environment can sometimes be challenging.

Learnt behaviour in childhood is specific to an environment, where and when, and so to unlearn the behaviour to then relearn a new behaviour we work with the original event in the original environment and then take that new learning through your life to the present and beyond. We are upgrading an episodic memory….we unlearn to learn the whole story, the good, the bad, the beautiful and the ugly to relearn how we want to behave now.

“The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.”

Alvin Toffler

The grow edge approach is a personal and professional growth model. We are here to learn and grow, to find meaning and purpose in our lives, living and loving our fulfilled life contributing to the world and the people in it, however large or small.

Did you know that our maximum personal growth and learning  occurs at the border of both challenge and support. What that means is when we experience both support and challenge in our lives we maximise our potential for personal development. So when we are living our highest values or living what’s most important to us, we will pursue challenges to inspire us to learn and grow. We will consciously and proactively look for the problems to resolve to bring even more learning and growth into our lives.  

If we are overly supported by someone then we become more dependent on them and less dependent on our selves. If we stay in this behaviour, living with less responsibility and accountability then we need other people to do things for us. Other people begin to live our lives and we stay the same, stuck, small and not moving forward dependent on someone else. This is where depression can live as our reality is not meeting with how we want our life to be.

If we are overly challenged, setting unrealistic goals and targets for our selves or someone else is setting these unrealistic goals for us to achieve then we become stressed, anxious and eventually burnt out and we zone out, disconnecting and disengaging from our lives. This is where chronic fatigue and pain can live as our systems are spent.

Learning how and why we do the things we do to ourselves and to other people is eye opening, sometimes humbling and inevitably empowering. You are learning the skills and tools to change your behaviour, to know what it is to be human and to be able to see the world as other people see it.

You have more resilience, adaptability and flexibility in any given situation with whoever you are interacting with and that includes yourself. You are your best teacher so is it time for an upgrade?

Knowing and understanding that our behaviour is mostly unconscious to us, we are unaware of our habits, beliefs and perceptions, how we give meanings to things and how we decide and act (and sometimes react) upon those very meanings can be liberating and empowering. Realising that we have been doing the best we can do with what we know helps us to be less harsh with ourselves, to stop beating ourselves up, to stop the self harm and self punishments…and there is another way.

You will learn that you always have choice, you always had, you just weren’t aware of the other choices available to you until now.

The grow edge approach teaches you how to be masterful in the art of being YOU.

We have language for the past, present and future, we are time travellers able to travel through time to past events and future events resolving any fears, traumas, anxieties, guilt or shame.

We have language that can be useful, supportive and helpful in what we want to achieve and we can have language that is unhelpful and creates limiting situations and beliefs even chronic illness.

Question for you…are you living the life you think you should be or have to rather than living the life you want to and love? How many times can you notice yourself using the words ‘should to’, ‘got to’  ‘or need to’?

Willem Lammers fouder of Logosynthesis says ‘there are no ‘shoulds’ in this life. If you are using the word should then you are injecting someone else’s belief or value into your life. When you notice yourself saying the word ‘should’, pause and ask yourself 

“What do I  really want?”