REGAIN YOUR PERSONAL POWER
Calgary Workshop
What an incredible
workshop! Thank you to all the people that attended and created a safe
space for some amazing healing. The
following is a review of some of the workshop highlights.
We had a great turnout
for the Thursday night seminar. Kelly
introduced the concepts around personal power and then interacted with
some of the audience. Some
of the themes that were discussed included:
Competition:
- a participant was finding herself in competition with a colleague that
she felt was micro-managing her. Kelly helped her to see how when we are
truly confident in our power it is hard for us to be threatened by
others – so this helped her see that the issue was something deeper
than the “surface issue”. Through
dialogue Kelly helped her to understand that this was a reflection of
the competition she engaged in to prove worth to her father.
Differentiation:
Another participant was struggling with keeping his identity and
power within a primary relationship and also in his work with large
organizations. He felt
these situations brought up feelings of inadequacy as more expectations
were put on him. Kelly
reminded us that when we are able to connect with intuition we are able
to make better decisions and feel supported as we make them. Even when
we are not in a relationship we can connect to intuition to help us heal
areas within ourselves that are holding us back.
On Friday we created a
container of safety for the group by reviewing the workshop guidelines,
getting group agreement, and creating small “home groups”. One of
Kelly’s techniques is to get the group to focus on specific
“Challenge” and “Way Through” cards over the weekend.
Each participant randomly picks a card from a small selection of
cards. Amazingly nobody the
group picked the card on Accountability
– an important tool in accessing our personal power and moving out
of the Victim/Victimizer
roles. Kelly spent some
time talking about how we flip between feeling as a victim and feeling
like others have power over us and then becoming a victimizer by holding
power over others. Our
ideal state is somewhere in the middle where we are accountable for our
part in all situations and yet choose (rather than react) on how we want
to interact with others.
Saturday started off
with a deep process around Grieving
and Shame. The
focus person was dealing with the grief she felt for being unable to
protect her children. Kelly explained that we could use Self-Punishment
as a distraction to avoid feeling the grief.
Only when we can sit with the grief and feel through it can we
move to a feeling of relief and a return to our sense of power. This process affected many people and a lot of emotion was
expressed and some beautiful healing occurred in the group.
The next exercise
focused on Approval Addiction. We
spent some time journaling on patterns where we either seek approval
from others or rebel against the desire for approval from others.
We then took this information back to our small home groups and
discussed our challenges and asked our group for feedback. Understanding
which approval addictions drive us unconsciously helped us to reclaim
our power – reminding us of our choice and the openhearted boundaries
we can choose to set up.
The final process on
Saturday focused on Self Esteem. The focus person was feeling that they had not achieved
success and that all the efforts to change the world had not outweighed
the effects of mistakes made. The
group then took turns giving Appreciations
helping the focus person to own their gifts and acknowledge their
contributions.
Sunday morning’s
process blew the roof off the building!
The focus person talked about their Victim
Story around the pain of their childhood and the feelings of a
legacy of “failure” in their family.
Kelly explained that these old stories could control our lives if
we let them – in a way we become “wedded” to them and our identity
becomes tied to the victim story. This
led to a team member realizing that they no longer wanted to be
“wedded” to their old victim story, so they decided to “divorce”
themselves from the old story and reclaim a new life.
Kelly cautioned that as we divorce the old stories we want to do
it with gentleness and respect for our past.
We don’t want angry divorces – rather the divorce should be
respectful and honoring of the gifts received from the past and then a
gentle letting go. The
group then created a cradle for the focus person and this led to another
amazing emotional release and deep connection for the group.
We finished the
workshop by working with our small groups to Ground
the Lessons Learned from the weekend and clarifying how we would
take action in our lives from what we had learned.
The small groups closed with appreciations of each other.
Our final group circle was full of laughter and tenderness and
the group felt the closeness of the bonds made through the shared
journey.
