Challenges Exist To Awaken Our Limitless Potential: My Wake-UP! Experience
Every challenge can be one of learning if you let it be. This means having the courage to face your challenges directly, valuing them as opportunities for personal growth and development.
Of course, challenges are not easy because of the pain that may be experienced. The pain we feel can make us create negative beliefs about ourselves, seeking to stop us from discovering our own limitless potential.
Negative beliefs we have about ourselves essentially use up our energy rather then give us energy.
At the heart of Rosemary, I have come to learn that challenges are only overcome once we begin to exercise a positive attitude in our day to day life.
Having a positive attitude means letting go of things that have no significance to my health and wellbeing. It means accepting, not resisting what the present moment is offering. It means engaging in things that bring real joy, fulfilment and purpose to my life.
How did Rosemary reflect this in practical ways during the Wake-Up programme?
Getting To Know Our Own Body
Moving like monkeys, we leap through rocks across the wild side of Barra Da Lagoa. The still ocean stretches into the vast distance and passers by would and look at us in bewilderment.
‘Whether its climbing a tree or leaping across rocks of different shapes and sizes, force and strength is not necessary. Just relax, and allow your body to use the necessary energy required to move fluidly through the environment’ Yotam would say.
The whole point of the exercise was to understand that our body already knows what it needs to do in the most challenging situations. And that when we over-think, or use unnecessary force, we use up valuable energy and complicate the situation further.
Jumping like monkeys through Barra Da Lagoa was not only an activity of adventure, but understanding how we can transform our challenges into playful experiences simply by changing our state of mind.
Breaking Personal Barriers With Natalie Peire
Breaking personal barriers was a workshop based on openly speaking about the fears we find a challenge to overcome.
Things that make us feel uncomfortable, things that we feel hesitant to speak about, because we may be afraid of how others may judge us, how we may judge ourselves.
Natalie gave us all a safe space to express ourselves with openness and vulnerability. What is the significance behind being open and vulnerable?
By practicing openness and vulnerability we have the capacity to express our authentic self and reinforce all the things that make us feel good about ourselves.
In this way, we can begin to develop healthy, strong and meaningful relationships with other people as well as ourselves.
‘Now express with your body what you are feeling inside’ says Natalie.
Standing in front of everyone, people would express in different ways what they felt within, whether it was dance, screaming, or a hug.
The whole purpose of the exercise was to understand that by facing and overcoming our fears directly, we give ourselves full access to experience freedom of expression, which ultimately leads to valuing and respecting our own individuality.
Coaching With Paul; Why We Fail
The goals we desire to reach can seem so far away and overwhelming. We may think we need more time, more money, more of ‘something’ in order to eventually fulfil the goal we desire to reach.
The ‘more’ essentially creates the un-happiness, which can stop us from being in the present moment.
The ‘more’ we focus on the present moment, the ‘more’ will transform into awareness that will then allow us to act appropriately. This will essentially be the gateway to offering new opportunities and create the path that will lead us to our goals.
Below are three powerful steps Paul showed us to gain clarity about our own goals:
‘How far are you in achieving your personal goal? Rate yourself how far you are in reaching that goal from 1–10 and then write down where you would be in life with that goal when its a 9 out of 10’.
‘Now make an emotional attachment to that goal. This is where you will receive the inner power necessary to attain your goal’.
‘Now break down into small steps how you can reach that goal. This will develop your self-confidence and keep you on track to reaching your goal’.
By clearly seeing, written down on paper where I am and where I’d like to be and the steps needed to get there brings the necessary focus required to overcome challenges that can sometimes be fogged by doubt, fear, uncertainty and distractions.
Shocking the Body
3:30am I awoke to Yaniv and Yotam with a candle light beaming in my face ‘Wake up!’
My mind resisting all attempts to wake up. Its too cold, its dark, I’m too tired, what is the point in all of this?
I’m directed upstairs to the communal area with other participants and we’re all told to get in our swimming wear and be bare foot.
We jog some distance onto the beach. Yotam tells us all to jog together, because we are in this together. I’m still half-asleep. We stand aligned, facing Yotam and Yaniv. The wind drifting in fierce and soft movements.
Suddenly we’re told to plunge into the ocean and run back in line.
(Yaniv and Yotam both join us throughout this whole process of plunging in and out of the ocean.)
‘You have all that you want and need in this world right now. You need to realise that there is no good or bad. it is all simply learning and growing!’ says Yotam.
We’re told to run and dip our bodies back into the ocean and run back in line.
‘Everything you’ve told yourself about who you are is just a belief! You are not this one person, you are more, you have unlimited power and potential within you, wake-up!’ says Yaniv.
Yes i’m listening to all of this, I understand and believe it all conceptually, but it’s not going in, I don’t feel it, I thought.
We plunge several times into the ocean and back. My body becoming numb, we’re all shivering’.
‘Your shivering because you let yourself shiver. You have attached your mind to the thought of the cold wind, which is making your body shiver’. If you don’t think its cold, it won’t be cold. It is all a state of mind’.
The shivers would reside in moments. How words have the power to inspire and influence what we think about ourselves. What we say to ourselves influences how we see ourselves.
‘Lie down’! says Yotam.
We’re all lying down, at the shore of the sea. The wind blowing in heavy bouts, thrifting the ocean waves onto our body, moving us in different directions like dead bodies left on the shore.
‘Get up, run back into the ocean and come back in line’ says Yotam.
This whole process was repeated several times.
Shock. The shock my body experienced brought me back to the present moment. I felt awake, awake in a way that made me really understand and feel I am who I say myself to be.
What Was Wake-Up?
Wake up was not just about the different activities, whether its hiking, the coaching and connection workshops or the body shock at 3:30 am in the morning or the nutritious food that we all made together and ate at the table like a family.
Through the diversity of experiences , I was able to realise how grateful I should be whenever I am confronted by a challenge. Yes challenges may be discomforting, and sometimes painful, but they are there to develop our growth, our limitless potential.
How only in a matter of 3 days I developed so much awareness of my own capabilities. How all Ineed to do is listen to the creative and limitless potential within me. Its all a matter of beliefs, what is yours?
Written by Krunal Padhiar
