I write a lot for social media but seldom do I sit down and write a “proper” blog. But every now and again the words just want to spill out of me in more than 2200 characters and 30 hashtags. And then a blog is born.
I am under the impression that most people don’t take the time to read very much any more. So I’d like to just warn you in advance that this is going to be a long one. So if you find yourself feeling a little bit nosey about what I have to share make yourself comfy. And when you are ready, lets go…
Taking Time To Reflect
I never used to be very good at taking the time to step back and recognise my achievements. In fact, I was often so busy looking ahead for the dopamine hit of the next goal achieved or box ticked, that this behaviour became a little bit of an addiction (and possibly also a recipe for disaster).
It was at the end of 2017 that I started to recognise this pattern inside of me and in 2018 that I began the process of unravelling it.
Consequently, 2018 has been an amazing year, also with it’s fair share of challenge and learning.
2017 ended with the feeling that everything was crashing down. It was not a pleasant experience at the time but now with hindsight I can see that everything was happening for me to create the next big opportunity for growth.
I felt like I had put some much time, money and energy into growing my business. Yet nothing felt like it was working or gaining traction. The funds in my bank account were dwindling as stress, anxiety, fatigue and burnout were sky-rocketing.
It was a situation which forced my hand to begin to think and do differently – you cannot keep on doing the same thing and expect a different result.
Time For Change
Through a series of events, which I won’t go into in much detail, I woke up to the fact that over the course of building my little bit of online real estate over the past 4 years, I had grown, developed and changed. Anna who did her first webinar in November 2013 was not the same Anna that was here today.
Yet Anna who was here today was still trying to do things like the old Anna who started Ladies that Lift in 2014. There was a mis-match or mis-alignment between who I was, what I was doing, how I was doing it and who I was trying to do that with.
The penny dropped and a rebrand was in order.
It was time to look at who I was. What were the core values of my business? Who did my business best serve and most importantly, what did I most enjoy to do and what clients did I best enjoy working with?
For a long time I had sat in the weight loss space. It is an easy space to occupy because it is so big!
What I realised was that as I was growing and evolving to be less focussed on the physical aspects and weigh (excuse the pun!) more importance on the mental, emotional and spiritual. I was less interested in all the “diet culture” that was happening around me.
People arguing on social media about “calories in vs calories out”or “carbs vs keto” started to make me cringe. Diet culture like “being good” “back on the wagon” “back on track” etc. gave me the heebie jeebies! And not to say that this is wrong or bad. It is a place where I perhaps once was and needed to be to get to where I am now. I was ready to leave that behind now and work on a higher level.
Asking For More
I was ready to really connect and work with women who bought into the idea that what is showing up externally is a manifestation of what was happening internally. Women who were ready to face their darkness and use the cracks as an opportunity to access their light. Women who understood that your physical health challenges are there to help you grow internally, to teach you the lessons which ultimately allow you to deepen the connection and love you have for yourself and access a purpose which is bigger than you.
And when I asked the universe for this, they came (thank you – you know who you are, all of you!).
The Grounded Goddesses
In refining who I was best placed to serve I realised I was most excited about working with clients who were experiencing similar challenges that I had faced. The challenge for me has never been lack of discipline and willpower, in fact the opposite, too much. Pushing things to the extremes and not knowing how to stop, step back and be enough. Creating so many rules which ultimately took me outside of myself, left me disconnected, imbalanced (hormones, gut and energy) and burnt out. I’ve had to learn, (am still learning!) to slow down, listen to my body and tune in to my intuition. Trust, has been massive lesson.
So in March 2018 I opened up my Grounded Goddess Community.
I chose the words Grounded Goddess for two reasons.
“Grounded” is associated with the root chakra in the yogic chakra system. This energy centre is an important foundation for mental, physical and emotional wellbeing. The tallest trees have the deepest roots and therefore we can only grow and develop to the extent we can root ourselves into the ground and nourish ourselves with the nutrients of the earth.
To feel grounded is to feel safe, stable and secure. It is the opposite of being stressed, overwhelmed or feeling insecure. The root chakra is also associated with the our self worth and from what I have learnt on this journey, self worth is EVERYTHING!
The root chakra has both elements of masculine and feminine. The masculine of penetrating into the earth and the feminine of nurturing by drawing up nutrients and water through the roots.
For a very long time I was able to achieve by relying on my masculine energy – pushing, forcing, using discipline and will-power. That got me far, but there came a point where I couldn’t sustain just relying on it alone.
I was being called to rebalance by stepping into more of my feminine energy. To nurture myself, to trust my intuition, to unleash my ability to create and be in flow. This is also why I chose the word Goddess, to symbolise the feminine (it also helped that I could create alliteration with the two “G’s”).
In the Grounded Goddess Community I ran my first challenge and later launched the first round of my Grounded Goddess Group Program.
All were a great success.
Surprise and Delight – Stepping More Into My Heart
It was in this time that I made the decision to do my 200 HR YTT and I’m not even quite sure how it happened.
I was regularly going to a local yoga class taught my a good friend of mine and all I can remember is lying on the floor in savasana each week and “it” kept speaking to me.
Eventually in one of these savasana’s I had somehow come to the conclusion that I could maybe make it work and that December or January would be a good time. I also decided that I would quite like to do it in Sri Lanka or Bali.
One Saturday, when I wasn’t feeling very well (more on this later), I was bored, lying in bed and browsing on my phone. I decided to check a website which I had liked previously but none of the dates had worked for me. They had added dates to the website, one of which was 7th January 2019.
I filled out the application there and then and decided if I got accepted, it was a done deal! 😊 (then emailed them lunch time on the Monday to ask if they had received it because “I hadn’t heard back yet” – patience is not really my thing)
I was accepted and paid my deposit and the real work began.
- I needed to pay for it
- I needed to think about how I would work things in my business to allow me to take the time out
It was the epitome of jumping and building a parachute on the way down.
And everything fell into place.
I always say, to achieve something you have never achieved before, you must become someone you have never been. And on reflection I feel that I have been stepping into someone else.
There is a magical transaction that happens between you and the universe the moment that you make a commitment and invest in yourself, whether that be your time, money or energy.
The transformation happened the moment I paid my deposit.
New ways of thinking and new ways of doing things began to unfold as I prepared to step into a new version of my higher self (something I teach as a foundation for change within my 1-2-1 and group coaching).
The biggest shift that I can explain is that before I used to do the same thing for fear of what may happen if I did things differently.
My attitude started to change from one of fear to one of “let’s create some chaos and marvel in delight at where everything lands”.
The mind loves certainty, but the heart loves surprise and delight. Ultimately, I stepped more into my heart and the biggest lesson to learn was trust.
Trusting that everything would be taken care of and happen as it should.
I’ve never been a big one for mantra or affirmations but clearly in this instance I found one that really resonated. There were countless times I walked on the beach, not knowing where the money would come from saying: everything will be taken care of, everything will be taken care of.
And it was.
The biggest challenge for me was taking on enough new 1-2-1 clients that I would have enough time to work with and serve to completion before I went. I have no idea where they came from, but they came. And even when I got let down a few times, more showed up to take their place.
The other challenge was filling my Grounded Goddess Group Program for the second time. The first time was easy because I could ride off the excitement of it’s newness. The second time was hard at first and there were many times when I didn’t think I could do it. But it all worked out perfectly and even though re-enrolling was incredible challenging and knocked my health, it was incredibly rewarding to run this second round and work with the beautiful souls that joined.
(just a note if you are a 1-2-1 or Grounded Goddess client of mine – thank you! – Thank you for trusting me enough with your growth, for showing up for yourself and investing in me. Your commitment and investment in yourself has enable me to commit to and invest in me, which means I can show up better for others. When you gave to yourself and invested in me, you gave to me, and also everyone else I will touch – thank you, thank you, thank you!)
Health Challenges
It seems ironic that the year I decide to slow down and flow more, was the year I have felt the worst physically. But they say that until you learn the lesson the problem will keep showing up… and it did.
For about 2 years now I have been experiencing periods of fatigue, foggy brain and body pain. Reflecting back on this now, initially when it started I think I was partially in denial (I wasn’t ready to learn the lesson yet) and also partially too disconnected from myself to acknowledge the extent of how I was feeling.
So I kept on doing things the way that I was doing them, going through ups and downs and highs and lows. Enjoying the moments when I felt good and just battling through the moments when I didn’t.
I’m sure many people who have perhaps felt this way can identify. You just learn to work around it and get on with things and it becomes your new norm. Until it gets worse…
I slowly started to peel away the layers but there was always something else (you can read here about the work I did on my gut). After the second round of Grounded Goddess I took a 10 day break in France with my husband. It took the first 2 to 3 days to start to feel human again and I was hoping the holiday would “fix” me.When it didn’t I decided what isn’t measured cannot be managed and I decided to do some testing.
Best. Investment. Ever.
In 2017 when I invested in a stool test this revealed some really important information that I was able to act on. This test was no different.
Time To Process Baby!
My testosterone levels were low and this was probably an underlying cause of my low energy and low mood (and dry skin!). Additionally, my adrenal glands were struggling. This meant every time I pushed a little but too much – in the gym or with my working hours or a combination of the two- I would be floored and have to take 5 steps backwards and a week to recover.
I LOVE to workout. Going to the gym is my happy place. I love to lift heavy, sweat, use my strength and improve my performance. One of the hardest things in this whole process has been separating myself from this identity to allow space to self-heal.
I also have a genetic polymorphism which means that I don’t process my stress neurotransmitters very well. This means that I am perhaps a little more susceptible to feeling the effects of stress compared to someone else.
I moved to the UK in 2008 and for a very long time I felt like I was fighting to survive. Moving from flat share to flat share, doing my best to earn a living, constantly worrying about money and providing for my future, studying, pushing my body hard in the gym and more recently lots of international travel and jet lag.
It all adds up over time and I really feel like I had been constantly “ON” for more than a decade.
Over the past few months I feel like I have literally been processing a lot of what was swept under the carpet at the time.
When we don’t have the tools to process events that happen in our lives, we push them down into the body and hold them there. My feelings are that everything has always been so busy and so frantic that I never gave myself time to process.
As I have slowed down and created more space in my personal life and my business delivery, a lot of what was pushed down is not rising to the surface so that it can be cleared. This explains why, when I have had more tools, self awareness, spaceousness and connection that I have ever had, I have felt the worse that I have ever felt – and with this processing, there is space for more change.
Personal Changes
Apart from taking a huge amount of supplements to address some of these issues I have had to take the foot of the gas and get used to an (even) slower pace.
Pacing and spaceousness are two of the key-words that come to mind. In 2017 when I met Reiki Master and Distance Healer, Colleen Van Heerden, she kept trying to tell me to slow down. “Pace yourself” I can still hear her saying in my head.
It wasn’t as simple as; sure, okay. Job done. 2018 has been a process of refinement. This has come through refining my business and refining my personal practises. Over the past year I have chipped away at this block and I am now reaping the rewards.
Planning is essential but what this ultimately comes down to is working out what is important and what isn’t and letting go of anything on which I am wasting my time and energy. This time an energy can therefore be redirected on to healing, nourishing and loving me.
I’ve deepened my yoga practise and with that I have settled into myself more. As my love and connection for myself has deepened I am more grounded. I trust more. This has enable me to continuously let go of alot of the “stuff” that I was holding on to for external love, connection and significance – specifically people pleasing, over-giving, carrying others and trying to “fix” people and situations when it is not my place.
I feel more. I process more. There is much less mental chatter. I connect better with my inner voice and I have a formula for balance (which mostly looks like good sleep, good food, connection with nature and yoga) which enables me to find my way back into myself when life’s inevitability pulls me outside of myself.
There are still challenges.
The challenge of “doing less” is still there, especially when it comes to going to the gym because this has been such a strong part of my identity for such a long time – which isn’t a bad thing, it’s just a thing that isn’t serving me right now. I have had to change how I approach exercise, to learn to workout to feel good, not to break myself – but in doing so I feel like I am “in” my body more and really feeling it instead of flogging it!
I have felt for a long time that my relationship with food is pretty good. In the past I have loved calorie and macro tracking for performance and body comp and I have dipped in and out of it from time to time. I decide to let that go completely for the time being to allow me the opportunity to connect more with how I am feeling. The process of doing so has also offered more opportunities for growth.
Being honest there has been a little bit of body dysmorphia creeping in – am I losing all my muscles now that I am no longer weight lifting as intensely!? – the answer is no. Sitting with these thoughts and feelings and letting them pass has been incredibly empowering thing to do.
As a whole these physical challenges have guided me to further deepen my inner connections, to calm my mind/ego and build on this never ending journey of self love.
What Will 2019 Bring?
To be incredibly honest, I have no idea. For so long I have been looking toward my YTT as a bench mark that I failed to look beyond it.
Here is what I know for sure:
- I will return on the 4th of February and start picking up with work from the 11th of Feb
- Grounded Goddess 3.0 will start of April 1st and this time places will be offered via application. My vision is to create a smaller, more intimate group of incredible souls who can take this 16 week transformative journey together. If you want in, you can apply when you are ready and I will be in touch on a first come, first serve basis in Feb.
- Same goes for my 1-2-1 work. This will pick up again in February and I am so excited to invite like-minded, whole-hearted, high vibe souls into this intimate and transformative process. If this is calling you, you can apply here and I will be in touch.
- I will continue to grow, learn and deepen the work that I do with those I get to serve.
- I will continue to work on spaciousness, boundaries and pacing to allow my body the rest it needs for the demands that I place on it.
- I would love to do my Master Neurostratgist with Strategic Brain in November 2019
- I have ear marked a yoga nidra training course as I would love to be able to offer this powerful tool to my 1-2-1 clients and goddesses.
Phew! So that’s it.
I’m not sure how much of this was written for you, the reader, or how much of this was written for me. But even if this resonates with one person, it was worth it, because I have loved writing this.
I wish you a very happy New Year full of growth, challenges, pacing, spaciousness and self love.
xxxx
