Part of my role as a life coach is to endeavour to create a safe space for people to express and explore what's going on for them. Whilst degrees of comfort are absolutely imperative initially to building rapport, if it's change or growth that is wanted, then expect a level of discomfort at some point. Confidence, courage, change or growth are not found in our comfort zones.
I see improving our emotional and mental fitness NO different to our physical fitness goals. There is an exercise term known as 'plateauing', which means that there will be little or no progression as our muscles become used to the levels of training loads. If progression is no longer a goal, then maintenance and the same workout or similar will be all that's required. However, like in all aspects of our health and well being, if there is still the desire for further improvements then a change to the prescription will be required and an element of 'overload' is needed. This change will initially be uncomfortable and a bit painful as we are challenged with a new regime. From an exercise perspective, joints may protest a little bit, muscles may scream and burn, and muscle soreness will invariably follow. It's unrealistic to expect a different result whilst keeping on doing what we have always done. It's also important to get to know our own limits, in the exercise industry it's known as reaching our 'ceiling' at which point we have to pay particular attention to not pushing past that.

Part of finding any sort of balance in all walks of our lives is knowing when to keep going and when to pull back or even stop, and the only way to attempt this is of course by acting out what we have learned through our own experiences, albeit ones we are conscious of or not. If you're not getting the results you want in any aspects of your health? Then keep seeking, exploring and learning until the right external and internal mix is achieved. It may mean trying and falling and trying again, but there will be a solution out there somewhere, it just needs to be found.

Carla is a Registered Exercise professional and life coach.

Www.carlascoachingforhealth.com

At times life can be tragic, traumatic,cruel and unforgiving. yet at other times miraculous, amazing, enlightning and euphoric. My mental health will always be about context for me, in other words how I will respond to what's happening around me or to me will depend on what that is. It's not something I can fully predict and the only armour I will ever have is my previous experiences to draw on and levels of resilience. I used to be a victim of life, and was convinced that things just simply happened to me and I had no control what so ever. “Poor me”, “I cant help it” “it's others who need to change” and “I will be happy when.......” were constant thoughts in my world. That's until I recognised the power of my own thoughts, of which my mother had reminded me of. I was Anorexic as a teenager and mum reminded me that if I had the strength to think myself thin and starve myself to death ? then I had the mental strength to do anything I put my mind too!..Little did she realise but that hit a chord and became one of the strategies that I used to combat my long bout of depression. At some point, and I can't pin point it, I began to understand that the mind is far more powerful than we give it credit for, and that I had more control over my own destiny than I had previously believed. However I do want to also acknowledge the flip side of how depression can numb the mind so much so that even the most smallest of decisions is just too big to deal with and the thinking process can be very limited. Depression is exhausting, mentally and physically. One small mercy however, was that I was able to start to recognise when there was relief from my mental anguish and once these little windows were identified they become more obvious, and with awareness came more opportunity to create more of what it is I identified I needed for my own well being. Quite often the temporary relief experienced though is just too luxurious to want to leave it and often I would simply wallow and indulge myself in these moments of temporary reprieve with no self reflection or processing of any kind. Bliss!.
Eventually though I started to use these windows of relief as a way through the darkness, and started to identify what it was that created these little moments of clarity. Was it something someone had said? Was it a movie I had just watched? Something I've read? Something I've eaten? Have I just exercised? Etc etc etc.... I had to be curious, and that was something I was exceptionally good at. Once I started doing that, little by little patterns became easier to identify and I could get some traction. Foundations became stronger and stronger and I started to see that the more I focused on the stuff that I identified that mattered to me, revealed the sort of life that I wanted to create for myself. I started seeing that there was things that I was doing that had been counter productive to my mental health and only I could change some of these things. Slowly the pieces of my once shattered spirit started to come together, with the key being that it was me that was putting the pieces back and not someone else telling me what I should do. Im not convinced we can do this totally on our own though, as we live in relationship with our environment and the people in it. Our conversations, interactions, what we observe. read and process all become integral to our mental health. Don't underestimate the environment or the people we have in our lives for a second. It matters who we socialise and hang out with, it matters what we do and how we behave, it matters how we look after our bodies minds and spirits, it matters how we spend our spare time, it matters that we find our sense of belonging and worth. Concentrating on what is wrong and what is the matter will not bring the freedom that can be had by seeking out and prioritising what is it that matters to us. “I am not what happened to me ….I am what I choose to become” Carl Jung




Carla is a life coach. WWW.carlascoachingforhealth.com

Ph: 021 1658 961