Excerpts from SHIFT: Ten mindset shifts for the great awakening

“Please help me God.”

I’d never cried out to God before; I wasn’t religious. But I had run out of ideas. I’d broken down crying, I was at home alone sat on our bed and I’d had enough. I don’t know whether I found God in that moment, but when I was completely lost as to what to do next, face to face with my own despair, I called out for him.

I was unhappy, unfulfilled, lost. I was grateful for Clare, my beautiful wife, and for our two boys, Oscar and Oliver, but because I wasn’t happy, I felt I didn’t deserve them. I felt ungrateful and unworthy, because I should have been happy. I had a beautiful family, a good job, I was close to my brothers, I had a few close friends – Many acquaintances, successful career – but it all felt hollow. What was it all about?

I’m not sure what happened after that moment, but I don’t think I ever felt that desperate again. I certainly opened my mind and my heart to God after that, how could I not? Perhaps in that moment I also acknowledged my own weakness. By asking for help, I took the pressure off myself to have all the answers.

The identity trap

I had been playing a character and I was exhausted. Not in a disingenuous sense, as if I was intentionally deceiving people. It was more that I didn’t really know there was another path to follow. I didn’t have to follow the one I had been on for so long.

To continue along the path on which I had found myself, meant maintaining the character I had developed along the way. I didn’t like who I had become, but I also didn’t know how to change.

I was in too deep, but I couldn’t see a way out. I thought that was my lot, I never considered I could change it. It felt terrifying to consider the possibility I don’t really know who I am. Who am I if I’m not this character I’ve become? Welcome to the identity trap.

Is this it?

I’d always felt like I was missing the point somehow, for as early as I can remember at school, I struggled to understand what it all meant. Memorise this information, repeat it back, get a gold star. Is this really it??

Then at work, turn up to your job on time, don’t upset anyone, complete this task, get your pay cheque. For so long I’d been following this path which I thought I was supposed to follow, which I thought was the path of success. Basically measured by job title and salary.

I was a 25-year career employee and I had worked hard to achieve corporate success. At least I’d built the character who played the corporate success game pretty well. I had a varied career path through Finance, Commercial, Sales leadership, Mental Healthcare.

I had climbed the corporate ladder to a point where I held budget responsibility for hundreds of millions of pounds of revenue. When I finally made six figures (which I couldn’t have dreamed of as a teenager who scraped through school with a couple of A-Levels) I was proud for a moment, then I realised it meant very little. I could no longer ignore it, I realised I was going to get to the end of my life, and ask myself;

What if I’d found out what I was really capable of, what if I’d found my purpose, and made an impact?

Looking ahead to the future prospect of looking back with regret, hit so hard that I couldn’t continue. Something had to change but I had no idea what that looked like.?

I finally had to find out. My fear of the unknown, was for the first time ever eclipsed by something greater, that fear of future regret, of never finding out. So I stepped away from my safe career into the void of the complete unknown, determined to find out one way or the other what I had to offer the world, on my own terms.

Human potential

I had long been fascinated by the unlimited scope of human potential, this wondrous idea that we each hold an immense creative power within us, a power that most of us have never really been shown how to access.

Potential by it’s definition is unlimited, since it represents everything that has not yet been realised. By extension then, it seems not unreasonable to suggest that we each have direct access to unlimited creative potential through our own mind.

Everything which exists in the physical world, was first created in someone’s mind. Everything in human history, from architecture to art, from buildings to? was created twice, once on the mental plane, then again on the physical plane. Believing precedes seeing, always. Thought comes first, and anything can be conceived of in the mind.?

If this feels a grandiose claim, try and think of something which cannot be conceived of in your mind. You’ll be there for a while! The mind is such a remarkable tool of infinite creative potential. And we all have it at our disposal right now, just awaiting instruction.

I’d been studying the great teachers of human potential for many years, Neville Goddard, Bob Proctor, Abraham Hicks to name a few. Inspired by their teachings and trusting in my instinct, I decided to qualify as a transformational mindset coach, and help others to unlock their own unique potential.

It’s the greatest decision I ever made. I launched my coaching practice armed with nothing more than the belief that the answers we are seeking, can be found within us, whenever we are ready to ask the questions.

Perhaps we have all fallen into the identity trap to some degree. Falsely limiting our potential by our stories, our memories, our labels, our beliefs, our personal narratives. How many times have you said “I’m not one of those people who…” and what makes it true, other than your insistence on saying it?

As a professional mindset coach writing this today, I have had the privilege to help hundreds of remarkable clients ask the right questions to unlock their own unique potential from within.

Witnessing my clients’ transformative experiences through coaching, has enabled me to write this book in the knowledge that a great many more people who read it can resonate with the shifts contained herein.

Clarity

This book gives a blueprint for clarity. Clarity of self, primarily, which has to come first, since we experience the world through our own personal lens, our own unique paradigm. The outer world we find, is so often the one that we expect to find, the one which we believe exists. Clarity of self, it turns out, is as much realising that you are not who you thought you were, as it is discovering your true nature.

When we find clarity of self then, we open ourselves up to finding clarity of others, since underneath all the quirks, the beliefs, the stories, the hopes, fears, and dreams, we all have the same pure awareness at our core.?

Then comes clarity of purpose. When we understand ourselves, and others, we understand how we can best harness our strengths so that others can benefit. We are all here to share our unique gifts with the world, to bring value to the collective, to make an impact in the way that only we can.

Escaping the identity trap then, brings clarity of your true potential, and with it your true nature. If you are seeking your true nature, dear reader, then you are ready.?

SHIFT:

These ten chapters serve as a framework of ten mindset shifts you can make at any time, they come from three primary sources of inspiration;

1. the aforementioned great teachers on whose shoulders my coaching method was built
2. my own experience of lasting personal transformation,
3. emboldened and reinforced by the transformations of my wonderful coaching clients.

Many of my coaching clients have reached a point of somewhat desperation when we work together. Perhaps my greatest realisation as a coach – where my clients come face to face with their own vulnerabilities so that they can grow from them – is that at our essence, we are all the same.

We all have strikingly similar limiting beliefs holding us back, most of which are the result of us falling for the identity trap. Don’t wait for desperation like I did to make changes. Take action today, you will never regret it, I promise you.

End of prologue.

Next week... Chapter ONE: From Victim to creator

If you can't wait until next week, download the e-book here to continue reading!

tg-coaching.co.uk/book