From Surviving to Thriving

I was talking with a journalist about what happened at Glastonbury this year, about the Scottish singer Lewis Capaldi. On stage his voice began to go, and instead of hiding it, he called it out. He was honest, curious, and he asked the crowd for help. A hundred thousand people sang his song back to him at the top of their voices, telling him, without saying it, we have got you, you do not have to do this alone. How often do we wish we could have done that?

Normalising What We Feel

What moved me was how it normalised speaking about mental health, about anxiety, about the emotions that have been holding us back, sometimes so much that the body will not even let us sing. We set aside one day a year to make it acceptable to talk about these things. Imagine if it were simply ordinary. Awareness is the first step towards self-love. Once we become aware of what is holding us back from living in the most scrumptious, most alive way, we can meet it. So often there is shame wrapped around it, a stigma, a sense that we should be perfect.

Lewis Capaldi does not look or act like the polished idea of a rock star, and that is exactly why people love him. He wears his T-shirts, he is authentically himself, and it shows his humanness and his approachability. Is that not what we are all looking for? Someone who has us feel, oh, me too, I understand you. That is the beauty of empathy.

Shame Festers in the Dark

Brené Brown talks about how doubt, insecurity, and the sense of not belonging fester when they are left alone in the dark. When you do not shine a light on them, when you never share them, they grow. Yet when you are in a community of people you trust and you can be vulnerable enough to say, "I need help, I struggle with this, can you hold space for me," most people around you say, "me too, and I see your brilliance." The light gets shone on it and the shadow disappears. The biggest fear we carry as humans is that we are alone, the only one who is this strange or this unlovable. To be seen is to discover we never were.

The Subconscious Runs the Fear

I had a client, a highly intelligent man, who was terrified of flying. He knew logically that a car was far more dangerous than a plane, and his subconscious kept him in the fear loop all the same. More than eighty percent of our everyday actions are governed by the subconscious. We do not consciously manage our breathing, tracking oxygen into every cell. The subconscious runs that pattern, and it can just as easily run a pattern of terror, the sweating palms, the shaking, the racing mind. In that state the thinking part of the brain goes offline and we are left in fight, flight, or freeze.

People often say they do not believe in hypnotherapy, and we live in trance most of our lives. Think of driving a familiar route on automatic pilot, barely recalling the journey. We remember the significant moments, where we were when we heard certain news, and the ordinary ones pass in a kind of trance. So we can use that same capacity on purpose. By training the subconscious with a new thought pattern, listening over roughly twenty-one to thirty days, we rewire and recode a new belief into a new pathway.

With this man we had a few sessions. I spoke to his subconscious, which is always trying to keep him safe, and asked if it was willing to find a new way, and his little finger moved to answer. We coded in exactly what he wanted to feel: relaxed, at ease, his breath calm when he thinks of flying. He began at a nine out of ten. By the end he was around two, and when he felt into his body, the tightness and the grip were simply not there. He listened to a recording between sessions, we reinforced that he is safe, and the fear lost its hold.

Coming Back to Choice

Our thoughts govern our actions, and our actions govern our life. Move the thought, the image, the body sensation, and you re-pattern the whole thing. We are meaning-making machines. A tightness arrives in the chest and we rush to name it anxiety. Slow down instead and become the detective: what is the sensation, the image, the thought, the emotion? Often it is not anxiety at all, only curiosity waiting to be felt. Move through the curiosity and it lifts, and you arrive at choice. That man could now get on a plane or not, because it no longer ran him. That is how we move from survival to a life that thrives, that feels delicious and alive, by feeling fully every sensation and everything that comes up. The only way out is through.

"How can we move from survival instinct to a life that is thriving, that is scrumptious, energy moving through, that feels delicious and pleasurable?"