When I'm talking about starting a Change Journey I think a lot of people think about it as an external journey, and it's really more about an internal journey, a journey within yourself, to discover the things that you want to change and self-awareness is the biggest part of that.
Because if we aren't aware of who we are and what we think and what our perspectives are then we go through life in this naive state where we are more likely to take on other people's opinions, do what other people want us to do or do things we think we “should” do. So we're not really driving our own destiny, we're being influenced by the outside world.
I was very much like this, living without self-awareness. I was very influenced around what I should do and what I thought was right, I would always agree with what other people said and I never really ever questioned what do I want? That's the essence of The Change Journey… really bringing your self-awareness to who you are and what you can do so that you are happier in your life.
An interesting little point about my lack of self-awareness; when I first did ThetaHealing, I sat there as I learned the modality and thought to myself “I could help this person fix that about them, or I could help this person fix that about them”. I was so externally focused on other people and it wasn't until about halfway through the course when they said, “You can't change anybody else, or heal anybody else unless they want you to. But if you work on yourself, you'll realise that other people change around you, based on your changes”. I was really deflated at the time yet that is a seriously what has happened in my life. As I have changed myself, changed my old subconscious beliefs, changed my perspectives and my opinions and really started to work towards what made me happy… the people around me also started to change. And those that didn’t and could see my journey was improving my quality of life have drifted off and are no longer in my world.
That’s the beautiful little ripple effect of energy… that other people shift because you're shifting. It's a bit like when you walk into a room full of angry, cranky people and your mood goes right down. But if you walk into a room full of really happy people, your mood increases, that’s energy.
So if you're in your life and you're owning your life and you've got this amazing self-awareness and you choosing things that bring you joy, then you bring other people up around you and people will change because you change.
The thing that we need to do to enhance this self-awareness is do a bit of a stocktake of our lives; you do this by having a deep-dive look at your life and being really honest with yourself as you ask the questions:
What are the things in your life that are working?
What are the things in your life that aren't working?
What are some patterns that are repeating that maybe you're not really happy with?
What are the situations that arise where you don't feel comfortable?
What are people doing or saying or being around you that doesn’t make you comfortable?
Who are you?
How do you feel?
What parts of your life light you up?
What parts of your life don't light you up?
Just allow this process to take place. It can take an hour or it can take 10 days. It’s really just up to you and it's your own personal journey, so allow it to flow. So before you even start on a Change Journey it’s important to do this stocktake of your life and really decide where it is that you currently are, what you love about it and what you don't love about it. Then those things that you don't love about it, they're the things that we're going to start working on and changing.
And it can be really simple little things like “I hate that I bite my nails” or “I hate that I can't exercise when I want to”, or “I don't have the motivation to exercise” or it could be “this pattern of rejection that keeps repeating itself”.
My story was all about leaving a marriage and it doesn't have to be this massive thing that you're going to change, it's really just about looking at all the elements of your life where you think “this isn't really sitting right with me, it's not where I feel comfortable”, and then deciding that you’re going to change that.
So once you've done the stocktake, that's when you can bring in Inspired Isabel.
Inspired Isabel is all about your goals and your dreams and what you want to do in your life… both the big stuff and the little stuff.
Maybe it's that just you don't want to bite your nails anymore or maybe it's you want to go on world trips or you want to change careers or you want to buy a car or whatever it is that's going to really make your life this unbelievably happy place.
In essence, all you've got to do is take your stocktake list, and go through all the things that aren't working in your life, and then flip them to the positives, because that will be the thing that you want. So for instance, if it was about your nails. Your Inspired Isabel would be:
I want to have a long beautiful nails
I want to go and have manicures
I want to enjoy spending some time pampering myself having a manicure
As you are writing out your dreams and goals, it’s important to really let go of “how” things will come to you. For instance if your dream is to live somewhere on the beach in a mansion but you are thinking “how am I ever going to get that?” or “that is impossible for me”. That's not where you are to go at the moment.
You're Inspired Isabel is about being completely inspired and getting excited about what it is that you really want to bring into your life. Trusting that you can have everything you desire, you just need to open yourself up to the possibilities of having them.
Inspired Isabel's flower, the Bottle Brush, means “possibility” and when you look at a Bottle Brush, it looks like one of those round hair brushes, and it has all the filaments coming out of it. So what I love about the Bottle Brush meaning “possibilities” is that all those 1000’s of filaments in the Bottle Brush resemble the 1000’s of possibilities that you have in your life to be happy. All you need to do is grab your journal and start writing them down.
Some examples of things that you could look at are:
What do you want around you moving forward?
Who do you want around you moving forward?
What would you love to do for your work or your career?
What would you love to do for your enjoyment, relaxation or sport?
How would you like to act and speak towards yourself (in terms of your self-talk), which for a lot of us is always very negative, so maybe that's something you want to change.
How do you want to act and speak towards others?
Where would you like to live?
What would you like to live in?
What would you like your appearance to be?
What would you like your health to be?
These are just some thought starters but go big and go wide and cover all ends of the spectrum. Go from the, “I don't want to bite my nails anymore” to “the mansion on the beach” whatever is going to light your fire. Bring in your Inspired Isabel and write them down, no matter how silly they seem or how trivial you think they might be, just write it all down and get it all out.
Now the trick about this is when people are doing this Inspired Isabel exercise they still sit in that un-self-aware state and they start to write things that they think they should want or should have. I've done this with a client and one of her goals was “I want to have a thriving business” and yet when I asked her how does that make you feel, she shrugged and answered “it feels hard and heavy”. When we dug down further, that actually wasn't her dream at all, it was a dream based on other people's opinions of what they thought she should do. In actual fact her Inspired Isabel was, “I don't want to run a business and be tied to it 24/7, I'd rather do something that I really love and get a wage for it without the hassle of running a business”. In her head she was still very much in that “this is what other people are expecting of me so it must be what I want” mode.
So after you’ve written down all your Inspired Isabel dreams and goals, go back and have a really good look at them and ask yourself “are these things that I want, not things that I should do and definitely not things that other people are expecting me to do. Really ensure that everything on your list is something you want, something that’s going to make you happy, bring you joy and really lights you up with excitement. Because if you're not excited about every single thing on your list, then they're not things that are going to motivate you, or keep you moving forward through your Change Journey.
If that end goal, that desire or that possibility that you've come up with is not exciting for you… then it's actually not for you. It's for somebody else and if you're trying to please somebody else, then that's not going to be a goal that you're going to work towards.
So, first of all you're going to dump everything down, you're just going to write every single thing down and then you are going to start going through it with a fine tooth comb. Ask yourself “is this for me, doesn't make me feel excited?” if it doesn't, scrub it off the list. If it's for somebody else, scrub it off the list.
Then you start going deeper and deeper until you have this list of goals, dreams and possibilities to head towards. It can be 10 things, it can be 100 things, it can be 1000 things. Things that you seriously make you think:
This is what I want
This is what I want to head towards
This is my vision
These are my goals
These are my dreams
These are my possibilities
And… I am totally inspired by every single one of these possibilities coming into my life, because that feels amazing.
Then as you move along your Change Journey that list continues to grow and change as you continue to grow and change. What you are creating right now is just your starting list.
My starting list was to leave my marriage and the possibilities that brought were so exciting; I could have my own home, I wouldn't have to worry about the dynamics of the relationship, I could do what I want, I could have weekends free because we'd be sharing the kids, I could have some more ‘me time’ back… these were the positive, inspiring things that I was working towards through my big decision of leaving my marriage.
From there it was things like… I want to find a new man, I want to really experience love etc. etc. and they keep evolving and changing as I evolve and change. But each time I ensured that I had amazing possibilities to head towards. That's what’s kept me going on my journey.
Now that I've moved on and I'm 12 years into my journey my goals have changed yet again and if you've read the book, you’ll know that one of my goals at the moment is to move to the south coast of NSW and buy a small property. I am super excited about that and I always have vision boards and lists and ideas and possibilities of all the different things that come with that. Even in as small a detail as what kind of trees I want and what types of flowers I want in my garden. They're the things that light my fire and keep me motivated to keep going and really bring that change through to me.
A Change Journey is as simple as that… it's just about creating possibilities and working towards them.
So if you're just starting your Change Journey, stocktake where you're at, stocktake the things that you don't want to do, stocktake the things that aren't serving you, or the things that aren't making you happy or the things that aren't bringing you joy, then flip them on their heads, turn them into the positives and start putting it out there and saying this is what I want, and your energy will shift and you'll be excited, and it will flick the switch to start you on your Change Journey.