If you’re like me, and a fan of Harry Potter movies, you will resonate with the saying “I will have order” (spoken in that god awful high pitched voice)!! Is this how you feel when you have to catch up with your in-laws? You go into a defensive state driven by the need to control. Do you feel like you’ve entered into a new realm, a bit like leaving London and going to Hogwarts School for Magic? Sometimes interacting with the outlaws can feel like entering a time warp.

Are there times when visiting family, that you experience stress, simply because you are so different to them? Do you react to this new family rather than observe them?? How do these family visits leave you feeling? Do you sometimes feel that this extended family you’ve married into are so different that you feel almost magical and they are muggles?

And before we continue, I don’t consider a muggle to be a derogatory term, I’m using it as a light-hearted reference to someone who doesn’t like change. These people perhaps resonate on the negative side of life. They thrive on putting others down and align themselves to societal stress – When will you find someone? When are you getting married? When are you going to have a baby? When will you have another baby? Why did you put on so much weight? blah blah blah, you see where I’m going now? Notice that none of these questions are actually about how you feel, but rather focused on gossip and on negative bullshit.

With Christmas now over, did you have to have the obligatory family visit? And was is successful or dreaded? Christmas is meant to be a ‘wonderful time of the year‘ but for some of us, we can find ourselves in uncomfortable situations and even worse, awkward conversations.

Reacting to the family we’ve married into only upsets us, and sometimes, based on our stress response, stress extends to our partners too. After all, your partner understands their family because they have genetic coding which aligns them together! That’s not to say that there is acceptance of some old behavioural patterns, but there is understanding, even if it is just unconscious.

Worrying about impending encounters and visits is also counter productive to having a positive interaction with in-laws or dreaded family members. You are simply investing in a negative mental habit of an unresolved emotional upset. You’re also sending a message of intention to the universe of a negative outcome that you are envisaging!

I think we’ve all got, what we feel, to be “special” family members who push our buttons.  I’ve had my own internal battle, and after much soul searching and clearing of my etheric and heart space are convinced that energetically the muggles get a little frightened of my witchypoo-ness and that’s ok. I use the following tricks when dealing with the muggles of my extended family!

One of the best tools I learnt in 2017 was this series of coaching questions, and I share it often with my clinic clients:

1. Am I in control of the situation? Generally, the answer is no, we’re not in control because we’re learning lessons for our journey path.

2. Can I shelf my feelings until later? This buys you a couple of moments to ask yourself, in the heat of the moment, can I shelf my feelings until I get home / can debrief with my partner later?

3. Can I choose to change my perception? Literally the second you choose to change your perception, you swing your energy back into positive. This means that you are disengaging from that sympathetic nervous system response (flight or fight), and resuming your rightful place in your space! This is often enough to buy you ten seconds to take a deep breath and choose how you’d like to respond rather than react.

The worst thing you can do is feed their need for negative attention. You can choose not to mirror negative behaviour or comments. If the comments are truly offensive, then say so. Boundaries are vital for ongoing appropriate behaviour. Stick to your guns when expressing your feelings. Use that ten seconds to focus on your feelings and breath out tension, addressing the person directly. Maintain your message and practice it if necessary.

Once you’re ready to confront the situation, stick to “I statements“. For example I feel angry when you say …”.

The feedback sandwich can come in handy at these times where you start with a positive remark. Then fill the sandwich with the negative (how you’re feeling). Then finish off with a positive.

Here’s an example. I love spending time with family at Christmas time because it makes my partner happy. I’m feeling a little hurt by x comment you just said. I would like for us to be able to get along for the sake of partner and share our life with you. Remember it’s ok if the muggle response is negative or non-responsive – they are choosing not to change. They are choosing not to evolve or get along with you. It’s literally not your stuff!

Or my favourite “no I don’t watch the news, as I choose to focus on the people that I share my home with. The news doesn’t report anything positive, and I can’t control anything the news reports on. In fact, I choose to avoid the news because of how it makes me feel. I focus on the joy and abundance in my life and are grateful. What made you happy today?”

In the past I have often found myself repeatedly saying, “well I guess we have a different way of looking at things, and that’s ok“. This is essential if a topic of conversation is becoming heated or out of control. Everyone is entitled to their opinion. Remember this strategic key – that whatever anybody says about you is none of your business!

I operate my own clinical practice, often working with people who have experienced a varying degree of trauma which hasn’t been resolved.  When dealing with muggles, I keep interaction limited because I don’t want to gossip about other family members. I choose to focus on positive, so I am always armed with good things my family has achieved during the last visit.

I no longer reside on a standardised societal plane. I don’t follow the norm. I walk on the wild side and not from a naughty perspective. I choose to walk my path, and not that of another.

I am on such a different plane that I’ll never be understood by some – and I’m ok with that now. I respect the journey of others is often on a completely different paradigm to mine and I respect this. When dealing with muggles, I literally treat them politely, much like a client. I observe, I use compassion in my dialogue and don’t offer advice!

If you’re struggling with your preparation in dealing with the muggles of your life, consider booking yourself a CHANGE session today!

Click here – www.karenhumphries.net.au/bookings

Just wanting some quasi coaching support, join us in the private Facebook Group called #ChangeTribe.

Click here – https://www.facebook.com/groups/changetribe/?source_id=143133559060778

As we migrate on our journey path, to live the life we want, we need to IDENTIFY aspects which support us in achieving that NYE intention we set. It’s important to know and understand what our core STRENGTHs are so that we can focus on boundaries of success.

Often we jump quickly into goal setting without pausing and reverse engineering the processes of the steps involved to achieve success. You don’t need superpowers to go within and have a good look at where you’re at in life. You just need courage, a journal and a deep breath!

One of the best first steps of assessing whether a goal is achievable. It involves taking a few moments to acknowledge what you’re good at. When you have faith in yourself of the things you can do, you can then focus on building resources to improve your weaknesses.

Strength is something which all people have like talents, positive attitude, patience and confidence. Looking at strength is about opening up new opportunities and focusing on the possibilities rather than the problems. It’s useful to understand your strengths on a conscious level, so that when a challenge or obstacle arises, you instinctively know you can reach into YOUR toolbox and work through to a solution.

Additionally, recognising and understanding strengths provides you more available energy and motivation to jump onto opportunities as they arise! When we understand our strengths, we are generally able to clearly FOCUS on working through the challenge. Our motivation often remains very high because of our belief that we can climb the mountain, overcome the obstacle – because we’ve got evidence in our life that we’ve done it before.

A skill on the other hand, is something that you can do, like riding a bike, reading and writing, holding conversations. The reason strengths and skills are looked at during one of my clinical or coaching sessions, is to demonstrate you have evidence from your past that YOU can improve your quality of life, sense of competency and life satisfaction.

Your weaknesses are the things that appear difficult to learn and/or difficult to do. We all have them! Sicinski states “Your weaknesses are simply areas of your life where you have had very limited experience, given very little attention to, or been misguided in some way. They may include underdeveloped characteristics and skills, poor learned behaviours, limiting beliefs, and inadequate knowledge. Above all others, your limited beliefs are probably the biggest culprits.”

I like to think of a weakness as merely untapped opportunity for change!

There are three main reasons why you have weaknesses:

1. You have limited experience;
2. You have been misguided in some way;
3. You have a set of limiting beliefs which lead to less than optimal habits of thinking.

You have limited experience in certain areas of your life due to one of two things – you have probably shown little interest in these areas, or are too young to have had the experience. When we have interest in a thing, this heightens our receptivity and natural curiosity to be willing to learn new ideas quickly. We are naturally more open to new perspectives and ways of looking at things. The direct result we increase focus and mental resources on the topic of interest more and more.

Weaknesses also manifest from the fact that you were misguided or have misperception in some way. You might, for instance, have certain traits, characteristics, behaviours and limiting habits that you learned and picked up from observing other people. Often this occurs in childhood and what we are exposed to in terms of belief systems and values of adults around us. I see this most frequently manifested in my clinical practice as ‘unconscious fear’.

These patterns of behaviour we observe as a child, in parents, grandparents, extended family, teachers and community leaders etc formulate our belief system – which can be positively or negatively emotionally charged. If your belief is negative based, your weaknesses can for example often stem from the fact that you think about things in less than optimal ways. This may link back to a lack of experience or to the fact that you were misguided or misperceived events in some way in the past. And as a result, you have a set of limiting beliefs in certain areas of your life that negatively influence your behaviours, decisions, thoughts, and actions.

Exploring your weaknesses isn’t a bad thing. This process allows you to gain the necessary support you need in areas where you require the most assistance, support or training. You can therefore turn these weaknesses into strengths by acquiring the necessary knowledge, people or resources you need to accomplish your goal.

When you clearly understand what your strengths and weaknesses, you are likely to receive the following benefits:

• You will easily focus on the things that have the biggest or most positive impact on your life;
• You will save time by drawing your attention and focus on things that will bring you the greatest happiness;
• You increase access to your internal and external resources and therefore make better decisions every single day;
• You can delegate tasks to people with more proficiency, OR undertake training to gain the additional skills;
• You can reduce levels of stress, anxiety, apprehension, overwhelm, or frustration because your confidence in your ability has been acknowledged OR your willingness to try increases;
• You connect positively to your values and belief system, enabling you to contribute more to others and to the world around you; and
• Your levels of self-confidence increases because all of a sudden there is more certainty and clarity in your life.

Being aware of your strengths and skills is a great way to start looking at what tools you already have which can assist in achieving goals associated with living your dream life. In her book, “Believe in Yourself & Do What You Love”, Kate James discusses that people are far more likely to be happy, content and engaged in their life, when you do something you’re naturally good at. And remember, it’s ok to not be good at everything!

So here’s a couple of tips! You may like to get your journal out for this exercise and allow the questions to percolate the answers over a couple of days. After all, you have to allow your subconscious mind to drip feed you the information sometimes!

1. Write down everything you’re good at! It’s not rocket science, but can be a little confrontational because society tells us we’re being egomaniacs when we highlight what we’re good at. Bollicks I say! Let’s focus instead on everything you love doing and why you’re good at it!

Having compiled your list of strengths, take the time now to ask yourself three additional questions (in relation to that dream of the ideal life you have):

1. Which of my strengths would I like to improve upon?
2. Which strengths are most important with accomplishing my goals?
3. What strengths will help me to become the person I seek to be?

2. Write down areas of life you’d like to improve (notice I’m converting negative into positive!) Ask yourself these questions!:

1. In what specific situations are these weaknesses unhelpful?
2. In what situations are these weaknesses potentially helpful?
3. What’s the value of knowing this?

3. Reflective questions are brilliant to steer us back to goal setting in terms of what needs to change in terms of living my dream life?

Ask yourself these questions. You may like to pick one that pushes your buttons or answer them all!

• How could I best overcome my personal limitations?
• Who could potentially assist me in this area of my life?
• What resources and knowledge might I need to acquire?
• What experience might I need to gain?
• How can I potentially use my strengths to overcome my weaknesses?
• What potential opportunities can be found within my weaknesses?
• How could my weaknesses become strengths in a different context?

As you work through these questions it’s important to keep in mind that even though you might have a weakness in a certain area, this doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s an actual “limitation” or that it should stop you in any way.

I’m supporting people’s change process every single day in my clinical practice, utilising Kinesiology and Wellness Coaching to defuse negative emotional charge within values and belief systems. Change is possible for anyone who chooses to be open to possibilities!

Remember that we all have weakness, some of which are an actual limitation (like my ability to sing!) so it’s important to accept this as a fact. Should I choose, I could focus on taking singing lessons and developing strengths and skills to utilise my vocal cords in a way that doesn’t sound like I’m causing a cat pain, but at the end of the day, I’d rather spend my time and energies on other aspects of life. I shall leave the singing for the shower!

4. Therefore in some scenarios you need to assess where you’re better off utilizing other people’s strengths to offset your weaknesses in order to get the outcomes you desire to have in your life.  As such, it might be worthwhile asking yourself three additional questions:

• How have I managed my weaknesses in the past?
• How can I minimize my weaknesses in the present?
• How can I better manage my weaknesses in the future?

The answers to these questions should provide you with the information and ideally solutions you require to gain the most value from your choices and decisions moving forward to live your dream life.

Good luck in going within and exploring self. Remember you can choose to change and bloom from within xx

References: 

James, Kate. (2015) “Believe in Yourself & Do What You Love“, Affirm Press.

Sicinski, Adam. “How to critically assess your greatest strengths and weaknesses“, IQMATRIX