Always Looking For The Next Learning

One of my five values is learning and I have for as long as I remember pre-selected formal learning opportunities sometimes years in advance.  Investing in my development and growth is something I don’t question and I know with certainty that this approach served me well.

These days, I am fortunate in that the benefits of everything I learn expand far beyond my professional realm. While this year I am enrolled in two courses, I have been for a while considering learning more about trauma and its overlap with my coaching practice, my leadership role and my own life story.  And this brings me to the incredible work of Dr. Gabor Mate.  Well known author and physician, I read his books, listened to podcasts and overall have been attracted to his approach for a long time. 

On February 3, I participated in the Compassionate Inquiry Experience, an event open to those who wanted to learn more about the approach he developed in collaboration with others and which is being taught in a number of different formats in more formal models.  This was a bit of a taste.  More information can be found here.

Here are three things I learned:

Embodied Awareness: Understanding Your Body's Response

For every experience you have, ask: how is my body responding to this; what is the interpretation I give this experience; what meaning do I give this interpretation?

Emotional Intelligence: Naming and Honouring Feelings

Emotion is something that you feel (anger, sadness, fear, gratitude, excitement).  It is a  felt experience accompanied by particular body sensations.   We want to recognize where those sensations are in the body and then name the emotion.  If that emotion could speak, what would it say?  That is giving voice to something that has been suppressed for a long time.  That is authenticity.

Perception and Belief: Unraveling Core Beliefs for Personal Growth

Perception is the interpretation of that emotion.  Sometimes it can be accurate or it might not be accurate.  Then we can explore the belief about that perception.  When you perceived that, what was going on for you?  What did you believe about?  Then we have a core belief about self.  Those core beliefs can be “I'm not good enough, I am unlovable, I am invisible, I am not important”.  The core belief has to be about you. The work is then to change the core beliefs, and then you can change your life.

A beautiful quote that was shared during the session:

“Your conflicts, all the difficult things, the problematic situations in your life are not chance or haphazard. They are actually yours. They are specifically yours, designed specifically for you by a part of you that loves you more than anything else. The part of you that loves you more than anything else has created roadblocks to lead you to yourself. You are not going in the right direction unless there is something pricking you in the side, telling you, “Look here! This way!” That part of you loves you so much that it doesn’t want you to lose the chance. It will go to extreme measures to wake you up, it will make you suffer greatly if you don’t listen. What else can it do? That is its purpose.” ― A.H. Almaas

I leave you with one question I learned during this experience:  next time you try to understand why you did something, instead of asking "why" with judgement, ask instead “I wonder why I did that?”.  By bringing curiosity, you can now open up and see what might be there.

And I also leave you knowing that taking a Compassionate Inquiry course is on my wish list for 2025 in hopes of expanding my consciousness and bringing that into my practice so that more lives can be positively impacted.