What is this revolutionary approach? It is a a psycho-sensory healing approach called Havening Techniques® and also ‘Resilience bucket’ management.

Havening is a particularly effective psycho-sensory modality which seeks to build emotional resilience and wellbeing through permanently resolving unresolved emotions within us, stemming from a life time of big to little traumatic events.

Negative emotions from traumatic stress have a tendency to accumulate over many years and, when combined with modern life and poor balance and work overload it can weaken our immune system and affect our physical, mental and social health.

Bucket management refers to the total number of toxins our body can take over a day and a lifetime before it rejects those toxins causing side effects ie stress related ill-health which accounts for around 90% of all ill-health.

Let me explain. Have you heard about the idea which Dr Tom often often talks about, the idea that the total of environmental toxins we are exposed every day is ‘overwhelming our immune system and it is this that is the primary spark in developing auto-immune disease’. He goes onto to say that ‘there is absolutely no question to this fact. The accumulation of environmental toxins eventually overwhelms our immune systems and the primary result is the development of autoimmune mechanisms’. To some extent this topic isn’t new. It’s why many of us are eating ‘organic’ food. It’s partly why some people go vegan. It’s why some people choose to go with alternative medicines. It’s why we’re trying to reduce pollution in our cities and changing to electric and water fuelled cars. But is there anything else we can do?

There is an increasing body of evidence that unresolved emotions cause an excess of unhelpful chemicals within us which can be considered to be toxic over time — toxic to our minds and bodies and toxic to our lives as a whole. Unresolved emotions accumulate during the course of our lives through the collection of small to large traumas endured in childhood and through adulthood. The largest organ in our body is our liver. Its purpose is to remove toxins from our blood so that it can continue to rejuvenate our body as it circulates through us at a tremendous rate. But as Dr Tom says when we have so many environmental toxins there’s only so much our livers can process, which leaves toxins circulating in our blood and round our bodies.

Basically put our own internal environment can add to the mix of such toxins. Our own unresolved traumas are adding to mix of toxins. Imagine for a moment that your liver is a like a bucket within you, when it’s full with toxins or is unwell it can only take so much before it starts overflowing. Your body doesn’t like the overspill. It tells you by giving you biofeedback through autoimmune symptoms or other ill-health symptoms. We typically take medication to alleviate such symptoms. Be careful not to cover over symptoms for too long as you’ll miss the opportunity to listen to the bodies message. Listen to them as it’s the body trying to tell you that somethings wrong. A life time of ignoring the messages can cause serious defects in the organic machine that we call human. You wouldn’t ignore the oil light on the dashboard of your car, why?, because you’ll know theres a risk of it breaking down very soon.

If we do nothing to let go of our accumulated unresolved emotions our buckets will already be part full with toxins. Leaving less space in the bucket for environmental toxins. Not to mention if we are already predisposed to it. Our buckets will fill up quicker causing toxins to overflow leaving us vulnerable to auto-immune symptoms or other ill-health symptoms. I’m not saying that ‘all’ ill-health is caused by this process. I’m saying that we increase our vulnerability to autoimmune and other ill health symptoms by allowing unresolved emotions to sit within us.

As I say i have had the objective for a while now to bring my psoriasis/auto-immune conditions back into controlled levels and ideally removing them completely; so that I no longer require the concoction of prescribed medication. Ongoing medication can only serve to mess up the gut flora over time causing other health concerns.

The results? So far I would say my symptoms have reduced by 80–90%. I have achieved this through a reduction in gluten and dairy plus Havening Techniques®. The latter helps us to let go of unresolved often unconscious toxic emotions. To weed them out. To create space for new positive emotions to grow and thrive in the neuro-garden of the mind. To enable our body to get into a place when it can heal and bounce back itself, simple tools deliberate used to build resilience and wellbeing from the inside out.

You can find out more about Havening Techniques® and how it works by visiting https://www.turnoveranewleaf.co.uk/havening-techniques.

Author Jan Carpenter

Founder of Turn Over A New LEAF

www.turnoveranewleaf.co.uk

Why do New Years resolutions so often fail and what to do about it!

The new year is finally here and hopeful it will be very different to 2020! But we’re not out of the woods yet…

Given the current climate one key focus for all of us is undoubtedly reducing toxic stress levels and building our resilience and wellbeing.

This article is authored by Turn Over a New LEAF and provides access to a powerful goal actualisation process using LEAF that you can use to improve your resilience and wellbeing. It’s comprehensive and will take time to create but it will be worth it.

Use if for your New Years resolutions with gusto. Although I believe that when the hype on the other side of new years resolutions passes, we’ve actually got many times in the year to reset our resolutions. There are 12 other opportunities at the beginning of every new month, 52 at the beginning of every new week and 365 at the beginning of every new day. Open your mind to this!

When you’ve had a go at the LEAF goal actualisation process below please let me know how useful it was for you by way of commenting and liking my page.

So what is resilience and wellbeing?

Resilience is having the ability to bounce back and having hope, optimism and self-efficacy in any given situation. Wellbeing is about having positive mental, physical and social health. And there’s a further concept of wellbeing called ‘flourishing’ which is all the above aswell as an underbelly of authentic happiness, good close relationships, a sense of meaning and purpose, good character/habits and virtues, and experiencing a life full of accomplishments.

Resilience and wellbeing is much more than just about health as it connects to all aspects of our life including attitude and state of mind within work, business, health, relationships, family, financial situation.

Take some time for yourself and make a list of the most important things you’d like to address, progress and accomplish in 2021.

We all know that this time of year is traditionally the time of year we start planning the year ahead, kick started by New Years resolutions.

While many people set New Years resolutions, nearly all will drop them within 1–2 weeks? In fact there’s a trend of not even bothering because of this. Why is this? There’s clearly more to it than just setting a goal.

In reality setting a goal is just the beginning. It takes much more than that to make it happen. Here is a 4 step plan:

1. Set a goal
2. For each goal make a detailed plan
3. Stay focused and execute your plan daily
4. track your progress and make adjustments when necessary.

Sounds simple, right? Why then do so many people not follow through?

The truth is our past tends to influence our ability to attain our goals more than we realise. Indeed 90% of our present day and our future is influenced by our past unconscious habits of mind (emotions, feelings, thoughts), behaviours and memory of events. Think about that for a moment, 90%! And certain types of actions/events that were traumatic for us can have more of a potent impact on our current and future resilience and wellbeing than others.

So we’re trying to change our future whilst being chained to our past. Turn Over A New LEAF is about empowering people to break free from disempowering chains of the past in order to strive forward to a more resilient future self.

We know that in reality we are creatures of comfort and for some it can be uncomfortable to change. To others it can be near on impossible to break free of that comfort zone, no matter how unhealthy or unwanted that comfort zone is. Put another way our good intentions can be thwarted due to being too attached to our unconscious memory of past events.

We know that our brain kind of operates like the search function on google. If we put in a question with a #word we get an answer and a stream of focused information relating to that.

If we consciously ask ourselves … What if I act from the #best-version-of-myself every day this year? How can I show more #courage today? what if I just took one bite sized chunk at a time on this project? How can I exceed expectations?

The more we ask such positive questions the more we train our mind and focus to get outcomes in line with those #empoweringwords. The more we are leaning in and deliberately using and influencing the 90% positively. This isn’t about just thinking positively, that might work for some, but a deeper approach may well be required.

We may not realise it at the time but underneath our attempts to think positively we may have another stream of less than helpful #self-limiting-words and questions driven by our unconscious mind. Like what if i fail? What if I’m not confident enough? What if I’m not courageous enough? What if i don’t manage to pull it off?

So our brain operates on 2 levels. Our conscious mind, we’re more in control of, and our unconscious mind tends to have a hidden negative influence on the outcomes we get. Think of the conscious mind as like the desk top screen on your computer and your unconscious mind as your operating system. You can easily change the look of your desktop screen and the operating system can be reprogrammed, but by delving deeper.

In the beginning of setting your goals your motivation may be high and your deliberate attempts to focus and have a positive mental attitude are easier and more prominent in the mind. As the initial novelty wears off, life gets busy or stress steps in and your motivation can start to drop. This is when your default unconscious stream of #self-limiting-words and questions start to pop up again. Driving derailment.

It’s at this time you need self-awareness, effective techniques in the palm of hands and drive to keep you going, to train your brain to let go of those #self-limiting-words and to refocus your mind back on the #empowering-words. Hence why it’s so important to be aware of your #words if you want to make real progress in your life in 2021.

The ideal is that our unconscious and conscious mind work seamlessly together to generate #empowering-words and questions aligned to our goals. This way our internal tides are going in the same direction. Making goal achievement easier. Remember If you can conceive the goal in your mind this is a good start. Converting that into self belief in both your conscious and unconscious mind is the next step. This will help you to actualise your goals.

To this end I recommend you update the 4 step process above to the following 6 step goal actualising process:

1. Start writing a JOURNAL (invest in a nice one or just use a notepad or app if you want to get going quickly)

2. EXPLORATION – write down what you want and what you don’t want anymore. And write down upto 5 areas in your life you want to build resilience in and have a greater sense of wellbeing in. Mood, career, business, money, relationships, mental and physical health. In 1 years time, in 5 years and in 10 years. Write down what you want to achieve, learn and enjoy. Rate them in order of priority to you 0/10 is zero priority through to 10/10 highest priority.

To work out which are your key stone goals, these are the goals that connect most to the other goals. So if you’re working on a business or busy job, you should want to optimise you’re autonomic nervous system by keeping fit, eating well and sleeping well to support homeostasis (a state of balance) across the neuronal system (gut, heart, brain) to optimise your resilience and you might want to schedule personal relationship time to prevent relationship breakdown, all of which would enable you to focus more time on the business.

3. Ask yourself 1–3 things that you deeply want to happen or accomplish in your life in 2021 and beyond … take each one and write down your deepest why 7+ times (ask for the deepest why tool)

4. Set 1–3 key stone resilience building goals and upto 4 stepping stone goals for each one – write each goal using CREATE BELEAF goal actualisation process:

Concise

What is it that you want from each goal area, if you could wave a magic wand and it would be exactly as you would prefer it to be? What would you see happening, hearing and feeling?

Write a future focused goal statement on what you want to happen what else needs to happen to make that happen … note down your key stone goal and stepping stone goals you need, to achieve that a.

Realistic

To what extent does the goal in question fit with all of the other higher priorities in my life

Ecological

You and who else benefits? Individuals/ community/country/world? and who’s supporting you?

Attainable

To what extent do you have the ability or skill or talent or even the discipline to achieve that goal. Explain how this would be stretching you out of your comfort zone, yet remains within your circle of control and expanding circle of influence.

Time specific

Set a date for overall completion and working from the end in mind back along the timeline to set milestone reviews.

Evidence procedure

What exactly will be different in order to measure progress?

Build a sense of necessity

Note down your deepest why this must happen.

End Step

How will you celebrate, at end and each milestone?

Let-go

Clear statement about your weaknesses, what you don’t want to happen any more and what future inner and external obstacles you expect and need to overcome including #self-limiting-words Detail what’s going to happen to address these if they arise so you’re prepared, to avoid losing motivation. E.g. Use Havening Techniques®, to let-go of those #limiting-words

Empower

What strengths, opportunities and options do you have (voice choice exit), what purposeful questions might you have and whilst Havening®* what #empowering-words might you bring to life.

Action

What 4 stepping goals will you need to set and specifically will you will need to do

Flourish

Note down what outcome you hope this goal will achieve in relation to the following a. Happiness b. Mental and physical health c. Meaning and purpose d. Identity, character and virtue e. relationships

5. Stay focused and execute the plan daily – use mobile apps to keep you on track, Like reminder apps and apps with inspiring information to keep you interested in Project YOU!

6. Track your progress, ‘measure the gain’ and make adjustments

Observe and track progress in your journal every day

make sure to measure what gains you have made whilst also noticing what could better and how you can improve your

Make adjustments as the need arises e.g. plan on how to to address any external obstacle that arise or let go of any inner tension or obstacles using Havening Techniques® and re-envision the progress and outcome going really well agai

Tackling inner blocks

Our unconscious mind processes unresolved events at night creating recurring stories with mythical and imagination which serve to play out unresolved emotions over time. And over time this is meant to serve us as an onboard therapeutic assistant.

The problem is that this therapy can be very slow and along the way it can serve to go against creating change in our lives.

We are pattern matching beings so what ever our unconscious mind is play out at night might also an invisible influencing factor by day. What our mind is attuned to we tend to get in our life and if we are playing out negative events in our dreams every night we are tuning our instrument to play the tune we no longer want to play. Our unconscious radar is persistently seeking out ways to maintain our comfort zone, to maintain our survival in a dangerous world.

Our comfort zone represents the habits that are ensuring our survival. Which is why we tend to defend our actions whether they’re helpful or not. We tend to distort, delete and generalise interpretations of reality in order to ensure our survival. To reinforce the comfort zone.

Changing for the better, although attractive, may also be perceived as dangerous by the unconscious mind which constantly seeks homeostasis, whether good or bad it has not been made from a void. They are a reflection of your past. Bad habits or unhelpful habits you find difficult to stop tend to be related to negative past events of some kind. Hence the need for a comfort blanket, which if removed can make us feel less than comfortable, perhaps even unsafe.

It’s not a surprise then that so many New Years resolutions fail and why so many people find goal achievement so hard.

Despite becoming a coach in 2007, the pursuit of my own goals has not been easy for me … At times I’ve been put off doing them altogether. But one thing has been persistent, I do keep coming back to them. And persistence is key!

At times I liken it to carving a sculpture made out of stone. Our identity/character/habits, career, mental and physical health, moods, relationship make up one large stone or lots of little stepping stones.

Stones are shapable at a slow pace or at a fast pace depending on the tools one employs. If we use a blunt or wooden instrument it may take up a lot of our time and many years to shape. If we use sharp and stronger precision instruments, aswell as heat, we find the stone much more mailable, shapable, saving us time and leaving us with a lot more lifetime on the other side with a much more rewarding stone sculpture/s to enjoy.

Turn Over a New LEAF is about helping people, like you to carve your own stone sculptures using precision tools to make them shapable. To carve out the little to big magnificent story that will be, one day, written onto, or into your tombstone. The humble or magnificent legacy you leave behind, the story you want to be remembered by.

It is our responsibility, your responsibility, as no one else can do this, to identify your key stone goals (we can of course support you through the process). Goals which are so deeply connected within us that we must achieve. Without progress on them we are less than our full selves, we feel incomplete, parts or all of our life play out in less than satisfactory ways. Such goals that are played out in real life make us feel a greater sense of life satisfaction towards the person we’re becoming.

There are 3 parts to who we are. Our past selves. Our present day selves. Our future selves. So many of us don’t realise that by not taking deliberate action to become our future more resilient best version self we are defaulting to our past selves, which has created the present day reality we are trying to improve. This is the slow way to improve our life.

To move forward faster towards our goals, the inner success driver afflicted within in each and every one of us has to be heard first. Which means we have to stop and listen to what our heart, mind and gut is saying. It means we have to first drop the habits that serve to wrap us up in cotton wool, made of stone, to protect us from being hurt again. For this is like being addicted to fools gold.

The real gold is on the other side. That can take time and effort but with the right kind of stone carving instruments you’ll get there much quicker than you can ever imagine.

And remember. If at first you don’t succeed try try again! We can start our resolutions at anytime of the year, and if it’s new beginnings that inspire you we have at 12 opportunities to set resolutions at the beginning of everything month.

If you’d like help with the 5 step process please feel free to drop me a line via info@turnoveranewleaf.co.uk

Also we have free workshops coming up about Havening Techniques and the science of letting-go that may be of interest to you. So please feel free to find out more here www.turnoveranewleaf.co.uk/workshops-overview

Author: Jan Carpenter

Founder of Turn Over A New LEAF©

www.turnoveranewleaf.co.uk