In the last 8 weeks I have been away for more than three of them on a variety of training courses and over the next 12 weeks I am away for another 5 weeks on up to six more courses.
I took my leap of faith seriously when I gave up my job. I realised that I had to Step Up and Stand Out, Push the Pendulum and Stretch my Boundaries. There have been many moments when my faith in this process have been tested.
Some of you may be aware that when I gave up my job, as a trainer, one of the reasons was that my values and integrity were being tested. I was witnessing behaviours in a colleague that to me went against ‘the grain’. I was seeing the Confidence, Self-Esteem and and Self-Worth of other members of staff being knocked, I was watching the light going out in their eyes and the passion for their jobs diminish. This was in a business where our role was to support clients on their journey back into work after having been off due to illness or disability.
At the same time as this my daughter was close to giving birth, my father was ill and I also had a dream to write my book The Emotional Baggage Diet and have it Published (and for it to be a bestseller! – I may as well be honest). Putting all of those ingredients into one pot and my choice was to give up my job. At the same time as leaving my job I chose to send a letter to a manager higher up ‘the food chain’ with my observations as to what was occurring. If I hadn’t I would have felt as though I was just jumping ship and not caring about my colleagues. Sadly there are no apparent signs that steps have been taken to improve the situation. After having read books like Gung-Ho and Fish that have such good practices for looking after staff, who then in turn look after clients, it is …. … … well just sad. Especially with the industry that the work was in.
Faith and Integrity have been my key ingredients over the last few years.
I had to have faith when I left my marriage, faith that I was strong enough not to go back to a situation that was difficult. Some people who know me would say that it was emotionally abusive, at the time I thought it was. Now I look at it from a different perspective. One in which there were two people with different communication styles, that did not match. I look at it as a positive, as without those years of experience I would not be who I am today – and actually I am quite happy with who I am. Also I would not have the knowledge that I have about the fact that life really can change for the better at any stage.
Recently my faith and integrity were tested in a way that I had not expected. I attended a training where we were given a task to complete over a number of nights. Just looking at and letting go of the negative. I struggled – you see it is very rare that anything is a negative to me (Ok I can’t say about anything in the future – but i do know that for the last couple of years my perspective has changed dramatically). I have this ‘annoying’ habit of finding a positive in everything, so even writing something in the negative is difficult as my mind ‘re-frames’ the language I use to create a positive!
Anyway – getting back to my testing time. I had spoken with one of the trainers on the course as I felt I wasn’t doing the task in the right way, yet I could not find the negative! A suggestion was made to me that perhaps I was putting up a mask to hide my reality. Ok – I thought that it may be possible, so I was willing to Play Full Out. I discovered that there was one area that left me feeling a bit ‘uggg’ and that was around the word ‘Judgement’.
‘Judgement’ left me feeling a little hollow. I realised that I did not like feeling judged, nor did I like to ‘judge’ others. My logic was that how could I judge anyone else if I had not had their experiences, if I did not know their life from their perspective, and as i can never know from their perspective how can I judge. The same was true with how I felt about being judged by others.
Suddenly a realisation hit me – bang. Judgement was just a word and I had given it a meaning that was ‘personal’ rather than ‘impersonal’. I had attached emotions to the word and those emotions were associated with the context with which I had learnt the meaning of the word as a child. That context was negative.
With that bang of realisation came a new definition. Judgement was based on seeing either my actions and behaviours, or someone else’s, in a way that was not attached to me or them but to a learning opportunity. In the past if I have ‘judged’ it has never been about the person, but about the action or behaviour, I rarely think about the person again – sorry I don’t mean that harshly, but it is true. Or at least it is true if it was a learning associated with a negative. If it was a positive and some one impressed me then I would remember the person as well.
On the training course we were looking at our values, two of mine were Faith and Integrity. Oh they got pushed again on days 5, 6 & 7. Now for some of you reading this, well you may think I have lost my marbles – That’s ok. One of the things that I used to do when I was part of a meditation circle was write while I meditated. Oh my eyes were open but I had no idea what I had written until I read it back. There was none of this rolling ones eyes back in my head and speaking in strange voices, it was all very normal. I stopped doing that a few years ago as my confidence shifted. That is another story, for another day.
What I have done though on a few occasions is woken up in the early hours of the morning with a need to write to or send an email to an individual – often someone that I barely know. Oh I have tried to fight against it as I would prefer not to put myself in the position where I could be ‘judged’ as crazy!!! So back to where I was on the training – I woke early, with a need to write to an individual! I tried to go back to sleep – unfortunately sleep had gone on holiday and wasn’t sure when it was coming back! I got up and found a card, that I had brought with me to give to my room mate as a Thank you for sharing, and I just wrote and wrote, put it in the envelope, sealed it and addressed it as Private and confidential to its intended recipient. I put it in my bag.
That day I chickened out of handing it over, who on earth was I to just hand it over, add to the fact that I had no idea what I had written (Or should I say very little idea as I had seen a scene, a picture of an outcome if I didn’t hand it over). The next day the course covered our values and what values we wanted to have for the future. There was a process that we all went through and as i have said earlier two of my values were faith and integrity. Ugggggg ….. I just wanted to get out of that room. I felt a fraud, I felt disappointed with myself, I felt gutted and i cried. I got out of that room as quickly as I could. Others were celebrating that positive breakthroughs that they had had and I just felt empty.
I was really lucky that when I left that room a very caring person allowed me to talk and listened. That person will probably never know how grateful I am to them. They provided me with a way to make my decision without any pressure. That person was my lighthouse in my personal storm and over the next 24 hours through just one simple action they enabled me to Step Up and into my Faith and Integrity.
Sometimes in life there just has to be a moment of faith. The letter was taken to be delivered. The contents, well I still don’t know! But I have faith that when they reach their destination they will be the words that are needed in that moment. They may provoke a positive or even a negative reaction, I may never know – but if I have faith then I know they will be what was needed for a shift to be made.
In the past when this has happened to me before, at 4am! I sent an email to a gentleman I didn’t know except for seeing him as a speaker, I did not read it before I pressed send. He replied to me later in the day saying that at the time I connected with him he had just had a terrible coughing fit where he could not catch his breath. When I received his reply I saw that the email had been about having a medical check up. Another time was to someone I knew slightly, again I did not read it before I sent it, later that day she replied to me saying that she had been asking for guidance on just that matter and she could not believe the relevance of the email.
I don’t know where my words come from sometimes, I am not even going to make any claims or suggestions – I just know that at times I have to write, it is who I am – it is all about the words and the intent behind them. Even if they just help one person – well it was worth my while writing them.
In Love and Light ~ Gratitude and Faith
Jaki :)
© Jaki Bent 2008 – 2015