Reading Time: 6 minutesBy Sarah
We may be called Weight In Mind, however, we could have quite easily named our business Health In Mind, Success In Mind, Relationships in Mind, Body in Mind… and the list could go on.
The journey of our lives up to today has enabled Faye and I to discover success criteria that can be applied to any part or area of our lives, not only our weight. As we have ridden the highs and lows of life, worked with clients, delivered coaching sessions, studied more, watched our friends and families grow over the years, the one thing that seems to play the most important role on whether we as individuals feel we are succeeding, achieving what we want, moving forward is the power and state of our mind.
To pull this into the open and into daily life, I would like to share with you all a very personal journey of mine that is a great example of how mindset can either take you closer to what you want or further away from it. I’m not talking simply positive thinking or reciting mantras, I am talking about truly understanding the power of your mind so that you can create change in your life, and bring yourself closer to what you want every day.
Over the last 5 years, my husband and I have been trying for a baby. It’s been a long, emotional, frustrating and painful journey, yet an educational one that I’m grateful for as I can share it with you today. Five years ago when we decided we were ‘ready’ to create a family, if I’m honest, I’m not sure that ready was the right word, but it felt like ‘the normal’ thing to do, I was in my early thirties, all our friends were having families, we felt that we could relax on the anti-pregnancy protection front, and leave nature to take its course. Two years passed, and nature’s course was not lending itself to ‘family creation’. They say if one year has passed with no peep of pregnancy then it’s a good idea to seek professional advice for a little support and investigation to see what may be holding you back. So we did, we had all the normal tests, and everything came back as ‘normal’. My doctor at the time said let’s have a little peek inside your womb and ovaries just to make sure there is nothing there that we can’t see from the outside, I underwent the small surgery, I was in and out within a jiffy. They had found small amounts of endometriosis which they removed during the procedure. My doctor was happy and satisfied that I was in tip-top shape to conceive, all my bloods came back normal, his words were “you’re in perfect health to have a baby”. But 4 years into trying to have a baby, there was no sign. On a medical front, this is where things ramped up, I started to receive hormones to stimulate ovulation, and produce larger eggs, I had monthly ovary flushing to ensure they were clear and healthy (very painful), but still nothing. Months went by…
As all this was happening, I was able to go through a coaching technique with Faye called The Layers of Change. This technique can be found in Course 1 – Think Your Way to Health where we provide you with a full demonstration of this technique.
Amazingly what the technique allowed me to do was understand where I was in relation to my goal of having a baby, and highlighted to me what I needed to change in order to move me closer. As I was ‘medically sound’, this gave me the feeling of empowerment that I had something else to try, something that was in my power.
Creating A Pregnancy Mindset
The exercise helped me discover the following things:
My Beliefs about my situation were…..
- How do women have it all? It seems impossible to have a career, a life, and a family. It’s always women who have to sacrifice the things they like to have a family.
- Perhaps I won’t be a good mother, and so that’s why I’m not having a baby
- I don’t want to be an ‘old’ mum
- What if I can’t connect to my baby? I don’t want to feel lonely
- It’s my fault, my body doesn’t work how it should
- If I push the doctor for more, I’ll eventually get there
My Behaviours were..
- Get up earlier to go to work earlier, work through my lunch break and stay late to complete all my work and more.
- Go to the gym at least 5 times a week
- Study 8 hours per week to complete my degree
- Work on new business with Faye
My Identity was…
- I am my job. My position and success at my job is a reflection of my worth.
- I’m an independent woman and can do everything on my own.
- I must earn my own money and not rely on my husband to provide for me.
By identifying my beliefs, behaviours, and identity, I was then able to create new ones that were supportive of my goal.
Belief change – I created these new beliefs
- Working hard doesn’t have to mean long, hard hours
- There are plenty of successful hardworking women who have children
- I’m healthy and I have plenty of time to have a baby. I feel great at 35
Behaviours I changed
- Reduced work hours
- Went on holiday and didn’t once look at the computer
- Set specific nights and days to study, rather than staying up late every night
- Went to the gym when I could, without stressing about it
Identity change
- I needed to let go of my main job, and learn to accept that I’m not my job, I’m Sarah and much more than that.
- I identified who I wanted to be: a mummy, a purposeful business owner, happy, a good wife and friend
Having worked through this exercise I had some direction, some actions I knew I needed to take. It became clear to me that I needed to create space in my mind and my life to have a family. Which meant I needed to prioritise and learn to let go of some things. Sometimes having or doing it all is not having it all! It was actually costing me what I wanted – so I needed to change my perspective on how I was viewing life.
At the time I was working full time as Director of Marketing for a large technology company, plus I was working hard with Faye to launch our dream business, studying for my BioNeuroEmotion postgraduate degree and attempting to have a social life and enjoy life with my husband.
What I realised was my beliefs about money, my independence, how I viewed myself in my position at work were holding me back, they were keeping me there trying to do everything. As we teach in Think Your Way To Health, to have goals, and to achieve what you want in life, sometimes you need to be willing to let go of other things – and it’s ok to do so. You just need to determine what’s more important to you, and identify what choices lend themselves to you achieving what you want or to holding you back. Then you go forth and take action.
My action was – I went from full time to part-time in my marketing job which sounds easy but it wasn’t. I spoke to my husband, my boss, my team and explained what I wanted to do. Of course, there were challenging conversations, but I honestly felt they were the right conversations to have. The universe came together and made it happen! As of April 1st, 2019 I started my two days a week! That April we returned to the fertility office for another helping hand to achieving our dream of creating a family. This time I decided to just go with the flow, not panic about it, not overthink it, just focus on the actions of dropping down my main job to give me space to create Weight In Mind with Faye.
And you guessed it – this time we had success! I was pregnant! And I’m happy to say we now have our beautiful baby girl – Seren. As I write this I’m feeling very tired and exhausted, but blessed and happy to have her in my life – I wouldn’t change it for the world.
You may be reading this blog thinking, well it was the fertility treatment that made it happen – from my perspective it was a multitude of elements that came together in the appropriate manner. We had struggled for so long, and as soon as I identified what I needed to do and took action, I fell pregnant. When I’ve applied the same process to other areas of my life – success has been repeated. Sometimes you just need to learn how to get out of your own way.
This getting out of your own way is what we teach in our flagship course Think Your Way To Health. It’s our flagship course because we believe from our own personal experience, our clinical experience and from our research, that mindset is key to making change happen. If you want to have a baby, change your job, get fit, improve your health, improve your sporting performance, change your relationships, or be slim then you need the mindset to make it happen. If you’ve been trying for a while to achieve something and it hasn’t come true yet, then I can almost guarantee that you’re not utilising the power of your mind. I don’t believe in luck, I believe in the human spirit, and releasing the potential we all have inside.
To experience the layers of change exercise and identify what’s holding you back from reaching your goals, we are offering a 25% discount on our Transformational Coaching Package (3 sessions in 3 weeks) between now and February 29th. Use this discount code at the checkout -> Achieve2020
