So this is a video all about how to actually have resilience in the goals that you set in life. I want to share with you a goal that I kind of committed to, where I wanted to swim a 10 kilometre ocean swim.

What have I done?

I was sitting with some friends who are long kind of amazing swimmers, they swim all the time, and they swam from when they were young, and all that stuff. And we were having a few glasses of wine, and they were like, “Yeah, you should come and do this.” And, I’m like, “Yeah, that sounds awesome, let’s totally sign up.” And, I signed up, paid everything, booked myself in, and then the next day I was like, “What have I done? I just committed to this 10 kilometre swim.” And I’d never swam more than 100 metres without gasping for breath.

Every victory was hard won

So I’d throw my hat over the proverbial wall of that challenge, and now I had to figure out how to go and get the hat. And, what I did was, started getting really committed and got a coach. So that was the first thing I did, I got myself a coach, and I worked with this coach to figure out how move from 100 metres where you can’t breathe, to swimming 10 kilometres in a challenge.

And started the training, and every single kind of training session, every victory was hard won. It was hard to get to a kilometre without stopping. It was hard to swim to two, hard to swim to three, hard to swim to four, and so on and so forth. So every victory that I achieved, it was a battle to kind of get there, and I had to put in a lot of work and training to achieve that.

I had a big setback 

And it was painful, but somewhere along the journey, just when I was kind of really getting … kind of cruising at 4.5, five kilometre swims, and feeling kind of good about myself, I had a big setback, and I tore a tendon in my rotator cuff.

And at that point I went to go and see the surgeon, and the doctor, and everyone, and they were like, “You need to pull out. This is irresponsible, you need to stop.” And my parents told me to pull out, and everybody was like, “You need to pull out.”

Because, whenever you set a big goal in life, what tends to happen is people will around you will pull you back, and back down into mediocrity. And they will want your life to be easier, and they don’t want you to get hurt and to have any bad challenges in your life.

So I decided to ignore all that, and I found myself a kind of interesting physiotherapist in London, and I worked with him, and he taught me a really weird swim technique that protects my shoulder. And I started training with him, and working on these new techniques to achieve my goal.

And he did say to me, “Look, you should probably not do the 10 kilometre, you should do the 6, because your rotator cuff is torn. You’ll actually do permanent damage. So it’s better if you drop to the 6k, but 6k’s is still a long swim. You can totally do that with this weird swim technique.” And I practised that, and I achieved my goal.

90% of us by the 22nd of February are going to quit!

So what can we actually learn from that kind of process and lesson? Because there’s a lot to kind of be gotten when you’re setting New Years resolutions, as some of us do, 90% of us by the 22nd of February are going to quit on that New Years resolution.

So how do you get a New Years resolution, or a commitment that you make to stick?

First things first, is you’ve got to remember that … I’m a coach, I coach people, but the most important coach in your life is yourself. And you are being a terrible coach to yourself if you give yourself a hard time when you hit a setback.

So any big goal that you set, you’re going to have setbacks along the way, and you need to be able be chilled and relaxed about those setbacks that you hit, and find creative different solutions to still achieve your goal.

You are being a terrible coach to yourself if you give yourself a hard time when you hit a setback

Next thing is, when you set a big goal like that, you must not be attached to how it will get achieved. They journey, what is the journey that you’re going to go on? I had this beautiful mapped out training plan, and this journey, and it was going to be beautiful, and awesome, and yeah, it totally didn’t work out that way.

I had to change my training

I had to change the nature of it, I had to change my training, I had to figure out how to be resilient and find a different way to still achieve my goal. So you’ve got to be flexible in how you achieve your commitment.

You’ve got to be a good coach to yourself, so that when you get a setback, you are relaxed about it.

So if for example your New Years resolution is to have… to lose some pounds, or to have healthier eating, maybe week one and two you’re absolutely perfect, you’re spot on. You’re achieving your plan.

You will quit on your goal

Week three hits and suddenly you have a blowout on pizza, or on cake. If you are too hard on yourself over what’s just happened, you will quit on your goal. You will be a bad coach to yourself if you have a blowout. You won’t forgive yourself so that you can find a different way to handle your setback.

The next thing is to kind of get, is that whenever you have a setback, every victory that you achieve is your stepping … you’re walking uphill one step at a time, it’s hard won. But when you come down and have a setback, you come down in an elevator.

It can be really fast and hard. So a blowout can happen in one hour. You can trash whatever diet you had for two weeks in one hour. If you then take that too seriously, you will then never get back to achieving your goal.

So in summary…

The tips that I want you to kind of think of, is any commitment that you make that you’re going to achieve something that’s awesome and big, it’s not going to be easy to achieve that.

You need to understand that every step is going to be hard won, and you need to celebrate those successes along the way.

Be a good coach to yourself

The next thing to think about, is be a good coach to yourself, so that if you do have a comedown in the elevator really, really fast and hard, you’ve got to be chilled about it, so that you can get back on track.

And the same applies for all kinds of goal setting in our lives!

It’s heartbreaking, it’s sore, it’s sad, it’s hard for that person. But day after day… winning those victories one step at a time

One of the programmes that I run, I help people kind of leave an affair. So how to kind of get themselves out of an affair addiction that they have.

And every single day that they’re not in contact with their affair partner, is hard won.

It’s heartbreaking, it’s sore, it’s sad, it’s hard for that person. But day after day, they are clutching and winning those victories one step at a time. If they then go and contact their affair partner and have another blowout, they come down hard in that elevator.

You can’t then quit because that has happened, you’ve just got to be kind to yourself and say, “Okay, we had a blowout, or we fell off the waggon, or we didn’t kind of stay on course, we had a setback, let’s just get back on track.” So you’ve got to be kind to yourself to just get back on track, so that you can actually achieve that ultimate goal.

And then remembering to be flexible about the journey, how it is that you’re going to achieve it.

Okay. So in summary, what I want you to think about is firstly if you’re going to commit to a big goal, you’ve got to be flexible about how you’re going to get there. And sometimes when you have a setback, remember, every single achievement that you have, you’re going slowly one step at a time towards that achievement.

But when you have a setback you come down fast and hard, like an elevator. So you’ve got to be a good coach to yourself when you have a setback, so that you don’t fall off the waggon completely and you can get back on track quicker.

So I hope those tips help you in kind of having more New Years resolution resilience, and kind of focusing on how to achieve your goals in life.

Do you have tips, or a technique that you’ve used to achieve goals, and aspirations, have you failed to hit your target, have you given up on your commitment because of a set-back? Get-in-contact, we’d love to learn more about your story.

Lot’s of Love!

Adele

Hey, this is Adele from Naked Recovery…

So, I want to thank everybody who gave us so many awesome comments about my first tips video in advance of the webinar, thank you.

Thank you for watching the tips video, and here’s the third one. We wanted to make sure that we really covered some good content prior to the actual webinar itself. So in the previous video, we were looking at all the kind of blockages to achieving a victor mindset, and in today’s video, we’re going to look at what it actually takes to adopt a victor mindset when you’re going through any kind of life turmoil.

Cool stuff

So I’m going to cover some cool stuff that we’ve developed in many of our retreats, I’m going to be referring to some notes, hope you don’t mind I’m going to kind of look down at my notes, come back to you, and so and so forth. But, I wanted to make sure I don’t skip any of the really cool stuff that you need to know. All right, so without further ado let’s look at that.

Victor mindset

In the last tips video, we covered some of the blockages to actually adopting a victor mindset. We looked at the concept of resiliency and what blocks resiliency is a kind of learning resistance and the learning defiance. In this video, we’re going to be looking at this mentality of being a victor.

Now, as I kind of covered a little bit in the last video, when you have a bad thing that has happened to you were you’re just cruising along in your life, something really shocking has happened, the first experience is very normally to have that kind of shock. You’re in a shock experience where maybe you’re in a bit of denial about the thing that has just happened, and you feel like this thing has happened to you.

Healing Journey

Now anytime you feel like something’s happening to you and you’re in that place of being victimised this is such a normal response for people to be there. I was just cruising in my life, this thing happened, and now I feel at the effect of it and therefore victimised. Being victimised is a very normal part of the healing journey, it’s actually the first stage is the victim stage, is that feeling of being victimised.

So, if you find yourself in that stage don’t be hard on yourself about it. It’s not a problem. The problem though is when that stage lasts a really long time, and you can kind of get stuck there, and a little bit bitter. So what we want to do is look at what are some of the techniques and mindset you need to have to move on from the victim stage through the various other stages of healing. So, if you’re in that kind of victim mentality you’re going to be feeling not good enough, this thing has occurred and happened to you.

Poor me

You might be saying things like, “Poor me, how could this have happened?” You’re feeling reluctant, you’re feeling maybe a bit of outrage, you’re sympathy seeking, you’re feeling quite righteous in feeling hurt, entitled to your hurt. Maybe there’s a blame of shame game that you’re having your fault-finding, very, very normal to be in that in the first kind of stage after turmoil.

To move from the victim stage to the next stage of the journey, which is the stage of feeling like the survivor, what you need to focus on is shifting your perspective where you’re kind of in this victim place to the next part where you’re beginning to cope with what has happened.

Analogy

Now an analogy that we sometimes use is if you’re driving along in a vehicle, and you’re driving along in that vehicle and the driver of the vehicle is actually the person that has created the trauma in your life. If you’re feeling like the victim you’re actually the person that has been hit by whatever it is that they’re doing. You’re actually the pedestrian that has been hit by this vehicle and you’re in a place where you’re feeling victimised by the driver of that vehicle.

Now whoever the driver is, maybe it’s a corporation that has fired you, or maybe it’s someone who’s cheated on you, or somebody who is divorcing you, or someone that has created an accident in your life. You’re in that place of feeling like the pedestrian at the effect of what they’re doing.

What we want to do is move you from the place of being the pedestrian to being the passenger within the vehicle. So this is the place where you’re actually witnessing what is occurring and you’re beginning to cope with what has happened rather than feeling at the effect of what has happened. So, you’ve gotta shift your attention from blame seeking to focus on what you can take ownership for, and accountability for. And to have a plan in place for managing all the triggers that are occurring off the back of this thing that has occurred in your life.

Survivor

Now, when you’re in that space of being the survivor the mindset of the survivor is you’re beginning to cope with what has happened, so you’ve got some systems in place to survive this event. So you’re starting to take control of various things. You’re tolerating the pain, you’re taking control, you’re starting to get up in the morning wash the dishes, you’re starting to actually do things, and you’re stopping the incessant feeling of being victimised. You’re actually like, “Okay, I need to get on with this. I need to do what I need to do.”

To get from the place of being a victim to the place where you’re starting to survive the situation you must commit to the survival. You must tell yourself, “Okay, I’ve had enough. I need to get over this now. I need to begin to move on.” And you’ve gotta commit to actually moving on and developing those coping mechanisms. So, that’s the next stage and that’s the mindset you need to have to get to that next stage.

Now that’s not the end, right? To move beyond survivor, ’cause survivor’s also a disempowering place. It’s disempowering because you’re alive but you’re not living. You’re surviving but you’re not thriving, right? You’re not actually loving life, you’re just kind of surviving life. So to move on from survivor the next stage is to be in the learning stage, and that’s where you really decide that there’s gotta be a better way.

Learning

We’ve gotta start learning from what has happened to us so that we can actually begin to incorporate moving forward from what has occurred and what has happened. This is where you’re starting to kind of attend some workshops, attend some seminars, take on your personal development, read some books, experiment, practise, workshop. You’re accepting help, you’re starting to go to therapy, you’re doing counselling. And this is where you’re taking on the concepts that, I need to learn from what has happened, and I need to actually start being proactive in my learning.

Now whenever you want to heal, the first stage of healings is committing to learning from what has happened. And that’s hard when you’re in the victim stage. When you’re in the victim stage the first thing you’ve gotta do is just survive. You’ve gotta start coping with what has happened. But if you want to kind of be more than just coping you’ve gotta commit to learning, that’s the next stage.

So if you commit to learning, you’re starting to kind of learn and integrate things that you’re learning, you’re in that learning stage and that’s the first stage of the next part, which is healing. So you’ve got victim stage, survivor stage, learning stage. If you want to get into the healing stage this is where you need to start actually processing and integrating some of those learnings.

So in the learning stage, you’re just learning as an intellectual concept, it’s a cognitive experience. When you’re in the learning stage you’re kind of just passively interacting with some of the learnings. When you’re in the healing stage you’re actively interacting with those learnings, you’re actually wanting to kind of really integrate those learnings into your lives. This is where you’re starting to have some breakdown and breakthrough moments.

Let go

You’re actually ready to let go of this pain and the punishment, you want to move on. And you’re starting to practise what you’re learning. When you take learning from a cognitive understanding perspective and you start practising what you’re learning that’s when the healing starts to occur.

Now that’s not the end either, because the final stage, the way you really want to get to is the victor stage.

Now the victor stage is not just where you’re learning, it’s not just where you’re healing. It’s where you’ve had a massive breakthrough in your life, and you feel like the experience that you have it becomes a testimonial, an inspiration for your life. You want to share the victory that you’ve had.

You feel like none of the suffering that you’ve been through has been in vain. And you realise that whatever’s happened to you hasn’t made you less, it’s made you more. And you see that what’s happened is an actual blessing for your life, and it was a necessary turning point for you to go through to have this new life. So the victor stage is really what we focus on producing in all of our retreats and programmes, but it’s really for yourself if you want to move from being the victim to the survivor, to the learning, to the healing, to the victor stage, you’ve gotta really focus on integrating all the things that you’ve learned to produce the breakthroughs, to eventually have a place where you feel grateful for what has happened.

When you feel grateful then you’re in the space of being the victor.

So, to develop the mindset just to recap, what you need to do shifting from victim you’ve gotta move into the place where you commit to survive what has happened. You’re like, “I’m done. I’m done with winging about it. I want to survive what has happened.” From that survivor place, you need to then move to the learning phase, and that’s where you commit to learning from what has happened.

Experience

When you actually integrate those learnings into your life and have those breakdown and breakthrough moments then you’re in the healing phase. And when you start having an experience that you can share the victory, and you’re grateful for everything that has happened because you feel like your life is better for the trauma that you’ve been through, that’s when you’re in the victor stage.

So, I hope that’s kind of helped you in terms of what are all the stages you need to go through to develop the victor mentality, but you’ve gotta take it one day at a time. You can’t leapfrog from victim to victor overnight. You’ve gotta really go through the stages of development. So, some other principles to look at is, at the end of the day you’ve gotta take responsibility and ownership for your own healing journey, your own recovery.

Guilt

Don’t take on any kind of unearned guilt or shame from the event. Focus on having compassion for yourself and just moving forward every single day. Don’t compare yourself to other people. Be nice to yourself. Just give up all those destructive emotions, and the parts in the victim stage that keep people stuck, just keep committing and moving forward, and developing all of those steps as you go.

All right, so that’s what I wanted to cover in this tips video. I hope that was useful.

Come and join us on the Overcome Any Life Event online seminar, we’re going to be covering in a lot more detail a very special technique that you can use to really overcome any trauma in your life.

So we look forward to welcoming you on the webinar, till then.

Hey there, this is Adele from Naked Recovery.

In preparation for our webinar next week, I wanted to just put a few tips videos together to cover some of the other tips and techniques around how to overcome any torment that has happened to you in life. 

Now, it doesn’t matter what the torment is, whether you’ve uncovered an affair in your marriage, or you’re going through a divorce, or you lost somebody really important to you, you lost your job, you’re going through a health scare, you’ve been attacked, your child is really ill, or there’s just been some horrible accident or event that has just side wiped your life completely. 

Learning

There’s always something to get out of the thing that has happened. There is always a way to turn what has happened into a victory in some way, shape or form. Now, it’s very difficult to image that when you’re going through that trauma, because the first place that people go to when they’re in that horrible place, where you were just cruising along your life and this thing just came side wiped you, is that feeling of just being victimised by life.

How could this have happened? Why has this happened to me? And that place of feeling victimised is so normal. That’s such a natural stage of development that we go through as we are developing ourself through the journey of overcoming a trauma. But it’s staying stuck there that is the problem.

Stages of trauma

Now the various stages of moving through trauma. The first stage is that place of feeling victimised and feeling like a victim of the situation. The next stage is what I will call, being the survivor. So that’s when you’re starting to develop coping mechanisms to kind of move on and deal with and adapt to the situation that has happened. When you’re in a place where you kind of get that there’s something to be gotten out the thing that has happened, then you’re in the learning stage. 

Learning stage

The learning stage is where you’re actually, not just developing skills to survive what has happened, you’re actually seeing what has happened as an opportunity for growth, for development, for learning.

They should actually re-label healing, learning

And hand in hand with learning is healing. They should actually re-label healing, learning. Because it is kind of the same thing. When you’re learning from something horrible that has happened, healing is a foregone conclusion. And the final stage, which Is really what we attain in all of our retreats and our kind of big programmes, is the stage of being the victor. And the victor is really where you haven’t just learnt, you haven’t’ just healed, you’ve used this trauma as the catalyst for your transformation in your life. 

Self actualize

So whatever it is that you wanted to self actualize in your life has actually become possible out of harnessing all the energy and all the drama out of the trauma that has happened, for the good, for the best, for the better in your life.

Okay, so let’s go right back to the beginning of this stage, and all of us have been there. Something horrible has happened. You’re just cruising along in your life, and suddenly you discover somebody’s had an affair in your marriage, or you discover you’ve just been dumped. Your job has just let you go. A horrible thing has occurred. That first stage of feeling victimised, totally normal, totally natural to be there.

Resistence

What is the very next thing you need to do, to kind of move out of that, and to begin to develop that kind of survivor mindset? First thing is you’ve got to deal with your resistance to learning, and your resistance to kind of moving forward. And that is the process of what we will call resiliency. And resiliency is such a key cornerstone to adopting a victor mindset at the end of the day. And two of the things that really block resiliency is learning resistance, and learning defiance. 

So learning resistance is whenever we are unwilling to accept what has happened. It’s just like no, this has not happened. It’s like total denial. And we’re in total denial where we’re just kind of numb. This thing has occurred, and we’re just carrying on with life as absolutely normal. Our routines are completely normal. And we’re just continuing. We’re just numb, we’re not even thinking about that thing that has occurred.

Or we’re doing some panic or some kind of negotiation to maintain the status quo. But that kind of unwillingness to accept what has happened, it can manifest in many ways. And some of the signs are even retreating, like just getting away. Like you don’t want to talk to people. 

You avoid people completely, you bury your head in the sand. You indulge in what we call short term emotional avoidance tactics. Excessive shopping, excessive drinking, drugs, sex, TV binge watching. Anything to an excess, that is actually quite negative and not good for you. That obsessive rumination, that’s all avoidance tactics. And it’s anything we can do to kind of avoid dealing with the thing.

So learning resistance is our inability to accept that which is. And you’ve really got to, in those moments stare the demons straight in the face. And just get it. It happened. It happened. It’s not great that it happened but we cannot resist reality. Reality is that that horrible thing has happened to you. 

And I’m really sorry that it happened to you. And you beating this and you overcoming this, is a function of embracing the learning from this. That is what you need to do. And the first step of the learning, is to stop the resistance, accept that this thing has happened. Now you’re beginning to develop the muscle of resiliency.

Learning defiance

The next resistance to resiliency is what we call learning defiance. So learning defiance is when we’ve accepted that the thing has happened. We’re completely clear that the thing has happened. But we’re unwilling to adapt. We’re unwilling to grow, or learn, or adapt, or adjust in any way shape or form to the thing that has happened. So here is where we … What I see the most with our clients, they go on a quest for justice. 

Now you might recognise that in yourself. Where it’s like what’s happened isn’t fair, it shouldn’t have happened. I’m not okay that it happened. And now what I’m going to do, is I’m going to seek ultimate justice from the universe. I want vengeance, or I want this to be even, or I want an explanation, or I want to be able to understand this, or I’m not willing to adjust. We begin to have external criteria and conditions for our willingness to adjust to what has happened.

We become rebellious in these phases. And to move on, you need to kind of understand that putting external conditions or demanding justice, running around gossiping about what’s happened, or repeating the same story over, and over again. None of this is actually moving you forward. 

What it does is it just keeps you stuck. And people get stuck in this place for years. I’ve seen people ruminating and asking these questions and being unwilling to adjust to the circumstances in life for years, and years, and years. And it’s just ridiculous.

What you need to get in that moment is have compassion for yourself, but don’t … Suffering is optional. And you don’t need to be in this place forever. 

Become a hero of your own story

What’s ridiculous is accepting that this trauma that has happened is somehow now going to define you. And is going to be your cross that you must bear like a martyr for the rest of your life. Nonsense. Absolute bollocks. What it is, it’s an opportunity for you to get something. It’s an opportunity for you, if you’re willing to adjust from this, and to take the learning from this, to really move through those stages and become a victor.

Not have this thing beat you. And to become a hero of your own story. So drop the quest for justice. Life isn’t fair. There isn’t always coordinated reasons for things occurring. Sometimes really uncoordinated reality is present with us. Random things occur that are horrible, to really, really good people. 

Justice

Trying to get justice for these things, it leaves you in a place where you can become really angry and bitter, and full of outrage. You become the person that is just gossiping about the situation all the time. Or you become the one that is always bad mouthing the situation or always complaining about what has happened. Just stop talking about what has happened. Focus on, what can I do to accept and adjust to what has happened. 

Those are the two important things I want you to understand in this video, so that you can move through those stages. Because once you get that, you begin to survive the situation. You actually begin to have techniques that you can adopt to get out of the place that you’re at. And when you’re beginning to get out of the place that you’re at, and you’re learning, then the learning begins to occur. Then the healing will occur. And then you will become a victor of your own story. And you will use this horrible trauma that has happened to you as a catalyst for your ultimate transformation. 

Next…

Alright so in the next tips video, I’m going to talk about how to develop that mindset of the victor and how to move through the stages of resiliency in a faster way. So I hope this was useful, until next time.

Since then the business has grown and grown, and I’m delighted, and blessed to have been able to touch so many people’s lives as they wrestle with the chaos, despair and trauma of divorce.

The transformations that take place in our programmes are truly stunning. Sometimes I feel like I have been put on this planet to help people through their life traumas.

I really do have the best job in the world –

For example just earlier today one of my Relationship Counselling couples told me that not only was their relationship saved (they were on the brink of divorce just a few months ago), but they have just discovered to their delight that they are pregnant!

There were lot’s of tears of joy.

And when I was told that would never have happened had it not been for me helping them – well let’s just say I was in lot’s of tears too. Like I say, I really do have the best job.

Honestly though, it’s not me, it’s the process.

It just works. Sometimes my clients need me, or our Angels to assist them through the process – but ultimately it’s the process – what can I tell you, it’s the bomb-digidy!

Book Announcement

So I’m delighted to announce today for the first time, the launch of my new book for women (men you’re gonna have to wait a little longer – but it is coming).

This revised, enhanced, updated book builds on the first book I wrote which was an Amazon Best Seller.

Over the years the process has been tweaked, and refined to deliver ever more powerful results – so it was great to get that fine-tuning into this new book, and give it a make-over at the same time.

The new book is called ‘DIVORCED – and shit at it‘. Because we are. We’re taught to ‘get on with things‘, to ‘feel happy‘, to ‘get on with our lives‘, to just ‘get over him‘, that ‘time will heal‘ – well it’s all BS.

Quite frankly most of the advice out there is not only unhelpful – it actually makes things worse.

So no wonder we are ‘Shit’ at getting over divorce – we’re being fed bad info. Friends and family may mean well – but they really don’t have a clue how to help. Ok – rant over.

Launch Offer

We have cunningly decided to launch the book officially on March 8 – International Womens Day!

With the help of my team we’ve put a whole bunch of Bonuses together to help celebrate both International Womens Day – and the launch of ‘DIVORCED’.

I should point-out this launch is for the digital version only – the printed version will be a little later.

For more info on the book, the Special Bonuses that will be made availalbe only on MARCH 8 – click here >>>

http://nakedrecoveryonline.com/product-book-divorced-women-2017-comingsoon/

Extract

You can download an Extract of the book for Free now >>>

Many thanks
Adele

How much time did you waste in your last relationship, just hoping that your partner would change?

And how much time did you waste complaining about the situation – but doing nothing about it?

Perhaps you stayed with your ex for far longer than you should have done, just willing things to get better. Perhaps you’re angry with yourself, now, for the lost years you spent waiting around for the situation to improve.

Perhaps, deep down, you’re still waiting – and it’s stopping you from moving on.

Humans are irrational optimists. We tell ourselves all sorts of fairytales about the future. We desperately want to believe that things will fix themselves.

Take control

We’re really, really bad at realising that the only person we can rely on to make our lives better is ourselves.

And, ultimately, there are only two things we can do we can make a tough situation better.

We can learn to accept those things that we just can’t change – and stop trying to change them.

And we can change the things that are within our control.

Accepting what you can’t change doesn’t mean throwing in the towel and deciding that you’re doomed to a life of misery. It means being realistic about what you can live with, and what you can’t.

Case study

Take Jessica and Steve.

Jessica knows that Steve is the last person in the world to do something spontaneous. Left to his own devices, he’d happily while away every Sunday in the garden with a beer.

Jessica can’t understand it – when she makes plans on their behalf, he might grumble a bit, but they always have a great time. Yet despite her hints (and the fights), he never, ever, makes the effort to suggest something himself.

Frustrated and hurt, Jessica has decided to force him to change by not making plans and waiting around until he cracks and takes matters into his own hands. In the meantime, she bitterly complains to her friends, non-stop. All she wants him to do is to start taking the initiative. Why can’t he just try?

But of course, Steve is not going to change. He’s a passive guy. He probably won’t even notice what she’s doing and, if he does, he won’t respond in the way she hopes. It’s against his nature. She’ll wind up more and more bitter, and both of them will be miserable.

So what can Jessica do?

First, she has to admit to herself that Steve won’t change. She has to accept that this is who he is. If she wants to spend her weekends doing fun things together, she’ll have to organise them. Or she can leave him to his own device and spend her weekends with fun, spontaneous friends.If she can live with that, great: if she’s genuinely willing to end her struggle against the situation and stop complaining about it, she can start to feel content with how things are.

But what if this isn’t good enough for Jessica?

Unlike Steve’s personality, Jessica’s situation is within her control. She can end the relationship and try to find someone more spontaneous. She can end the relationship so she can be more spontaneous without a partner.

I know what you’re thinking: as if it just that easy.

Of course it’s not easy. It’s the hardest thing in the world. That’s why we ignore the problem and cling to the hope that our partner will magically become the person we want them to be, even though they are the one factor that we absolutely can’t change.

A partner who loves routine will never become adventurous. A partner who is a risk-taker will never become cautious. A partner who is cruel will never be kind.

And if we don’t come to terms with that, it haunts us even after we break up. It keeps us in the agonising purgatory of wondering: what if?

It keeps us going back to people who are wrong for us. It stops us moving on. It stops us healing.

And it means that, next time we find ourselves in the same situation, we repeat our mistakes over and over again.

I can’t tell you whether you should accept a relationship with unchangeable flaws, or change a situation that’s become unacceptable to you. But I can tell you: for your own sake, you have to choose.

Click Here for More Great Info

Shock

Losing a job, for whatever reason, can come as a shock – even if you knew it was coming. It’s a massive change and as human beings, we don’t take changes very well. Yes, there are opportunities which arise out of the change but first you need to process the feelings of rejection, grief, anxiety, panic, worry, loss of self esteem (as sometimes the rejection experienced in redundancy is taken personally) and loss of ‘self’ as you probably linked your self-worth to your job.

Support

In this blog, I am not going to handle redundancy from the point of view of the person being made redundant but from the point of view of the person who is supporting a partner or loved one through a redundancy.

It may be that your partner, parent or close family friend has just been made redundant and you are watching them spiral slightly out of control.

Feelings

Many feelings will arise including moodiness, upsetness, depression, anxiety, panic and insomnia. It is very hard to know how best to support someone through the roller coaster of emotions and if they are your close partner, you will almost feel like you are on the roller coaster with them.

It’s tempting to want to make them happy, distract them or tell them to stop being gloomy and feel different/ look on the bright side of life. A common human trait is to try to intellectualise the emotion:

“think of the opportunities”

“you never liked your job anyway”

“don’t be sad, this is a chance to really examine everything from a fresh perspective”

Although all these statements are probably true – it’s ALL about timing. Delivering these messages in the first few weeks is not going to go down well.

In the first few weeks, it’s critical for the ‘redundee’ to just feel their emotions. Emotions, when fully experienced, naturally evolve along the path of healing but its often the people supporting the person being made redundant that interrupt this healing pattern.

The Redundancy grieving cycle

1. Denial stage: Trying to avoid the inevitable.
2. Anger and betrayal stage: Frustrated outpouring of bottled-up emotion.
3. Panic and negotiation stage: Seeking a way out. Making deals with your company, trying to make deals with others in avoiding the inevitable.
4. Humiliation, fear of failure or looking bad stage: Gradually sinking into a spiral, feeling embarrassed and avoiding seeing people.
5. Despair stage: Realization that something awful is coming your way and you’re strapped into the roller coaster and helpless.
6. Loss, grief and depression stage: Final realization of the inevitable, surrendering to the grief.
7. Space and nothingness stage: Once you have grieved and grieved, experiencing loss and pain, you’re left with a feeling of nothingness. It’s different to numbness because you feel very present and can notice things around you. Your senses are heightened. You may also find that you cannot cry anymore. You experience an emotional vacuum.
8. Acceptance stage: Seeking realistic solutions and finally finding the way forward. It’s not a feeling of resignation. It’s a feeling of profound understanding of the way things are and the way things are not.
9. Responsibility and forgiveness stage: Taking responsibility for what happened and examining if there was anything you did which may have contributed to it happening. Forgiveness is key at this stage and is a critical part of true and real healing.
10. Gratitude stage: Transformational experience. Learning from your redundancy and seeing positives and negatives from the experience. This stage completes the healing.

Who are you helping?

What you don’t realise, in offering intellectual platitudes is that you are only doing this so YOU can feel happy again. It’s your own discomfort with their emotional state being so linked to your own emotional state that upsets you.  If you resist their emotional state, it will persist because it has no avenue to be expressed.

So to survive and be happy in the first few weeks of supporting your partner, it helps to stop linking your happiness to the happiness of this person – move to your own orbit and allow them to simply ‘BE’ where they are. Break your dependence on them and instead of fretting, go play tennis, go for a walk on your own or go shopping and allow them to be.

Here are a few tips of what to do and what not to do in supporting someone through this change.

Don’ts

1. Don’t give pep talks. Its not your job to pump them up and ensure they are happy again. Understand their need to express their emotions and use the BUCKET exercise below to give them an avenue to express these emotions Don’t intellectualise their emotions or offer any ‘sage’ advice – telling them to look on the bright side of life or telling them that ‘everything happens for a reason’ just invalidates the pit of despair they are looking into. Allow THEM to come to this conclusion on their own – this way, they will own the conclusion on a deeper level Don’t orbit around them or link your own happiness to their happiness – they are entitled to their process and way of dealing with things.
2. Don’t tell them to snap out of it
3. Don’t tell them they are being ridiculous, self indulgent or dramatic – use the BUCKET exercise to hear them – sometimes people just need to vent their emotions – its not necessarily about you.
4. They will want to indulge in what I call STEATs (short term emotion avoidance tactics) so they can feel better and run from their emotions. They will want to avoid dealing with their emotions by focusing on decorating, shopping, partying, drinking or being super ‘busy’ with something or other. Rather than rejoice in these activities with them, encourage them to stop and feel their emotions. Validate their right to their emotions. If they engage in STEATs for too Long, they may end up depressed due to repressing their emotions

S.T.E.A.T.S explained

One thing to guard against is that your partner does not avoiding dealing with their emotions by burying themselves in things which either numb the pain or distract them. Don’t get me wrong, in the early days of redundancy, the S.T.E.A.T.s are probably the things which help your partner feel better in each moment. BUT the thing to be aware of is that it’s not feeling better for real – it’s a false sense of security – a false feeling of recovering. It fits into the false healing category.

Short Term Emotion Avoidance Tactics include but are not limited to:

• Excessive eating
• Alcohol and drugs
• Excessive anger towards others
• Excessive socialising
• Over-exercising
• Fantasy or escapism activities (books, TV, movies)
• Isolation
• Random sexual encounters
• Shopping/retail therapy
• Spending countless hours with your children under the guise of being a good parent but the actual agenda is using your children to help you feel better

The problem with Short Term Emotion Avoidance Tactics is that they are short term. They do not last, and they do not deal with the true emotional issue. S.T.E.A.T.s are distractions that either damage or delay the recovery process.

Do’s

1. Have compassion. Allow them their feelings and validate their need to process things in their own way
2. Do reassure them that you love them as they are, that they are amazing, that you are here for them whatever happens
3. Do show them the redundancy emotional cycle and reassure them that they have a right to their emotions and there will be an end to the journey and that you have full faith in them
4. Listen to them
5. Give them lots of hugs.
6. If they look sad – just give them a big bear hug
7. Whilst they look for new work, discuss everything with them positively, reassuring them
8. Get them to read the following books which are really supportive: Brand You: Turn Your Unique Talents into a Winning Formula by John Purkiss and David Royston-Lee, Become A Key Person Of Influence by Daniel Priestley, Rebuilding Your Life After Redundancy: The New Life Network Handbook by Janet Davies and Overcoming Redundancy: 52 Inspiring Ideas to Help You Bounce Back From Losing Your Job by Gordon Adams
9. Give practical advice about how their skills and competencies can be utilised in different industries – The book BRAND YOU is excellent at focusing on skills and how they can be applied in different situations
10. Buy some books on writing an amazing CV (but only after reading and working through BRAND YOU) like You’re Hired! CV: How to write a brilliant CV by Corinne Mills and The CV Book: Your Definitive Guide to Writing the Perfect CV by James Innes
11. Encourage them to bucket and do this daily for 21 days (see below)
12. Once 45 days have passed, if they are still moping around – get them to see someone to process their feelings so that they can move on

Bucket your frustrations

Go fetch a bucket (a real one) and sit together with no TV or chaos in the background with the bucket between you both You start by encouraging your partner to express their frustrations, feelings and emotions into the bucket – you not allowed to respond except to acknowledge that you hear what they are saying and ask if there is anything else to go into the bucket – encourage your partner to ‘put all their frustrations into the bucket’ and vent everything that is pissing them off about life and how life should be the job is – JUST LISTEN.

Keep asking if there is anything else and keep going until the bucket is full and they can think of nothing else When done, you both pick up the bucket and throw out these frustrations out of the window or door Now it’s your turn It’s good to say how you feel but I recommend not sharing your worries about the redundancy – focus on other things that annoy you or frustrate you — this way, your partner will feel they are not alone in being frustrated but they will feel that you are not pressuring them to snap out of their emotions. When done, you both pick up the bucket and throw out these frustrations out of the window or door

Gratitude

Now you both take turns to say what you are grateful for about your life. Your lives are actually very rich and amazing BUT because you dont focus on that, you dont see this. I want you both to come up with at least 5 things you are grateful for

Create tomorrow

Now you both take turns to say what you will accomplish tomorrow. This is important because at the moment, life is happening to both of you – neither of you say how you want your life to go or feel like you have any control over your lives.

So, I hope that helps a bit. It is very challenging to go through a redundancy, but even more challenging if you are the partner of someone in that situation.

Click Here for More Great Info

Till next time!
Adele