Five weeks ago I attended the gorgeous Regents University in London for Questival – a biennial get-together of graduates from The Quest Institute.

Well, I say get-together.  It’s a lot more than that really.  It’s primarily a learning experience consisting of three seminars throughout the day, delivered by both Trevor Silvester and a keynote speaker.  Each seminar is designed to expand our knowledge and inspire us to become more confident and competent Cognitive Hypnotherapists.

But Quest is pretty much one big family, so everyone knows that the real reason for us all attending is to soak up the atmosphere of love that saturates the room.  It’s a chance to catch up with friends and colleagues that you haven’t seen for ages, plus meet new people who you might have spoken to in the phone or via Skype but have never met in person.  Basically, it’s not to be missed.

This year’s event was nothing short of incredible…

It would be extremely difficult to give a full summary of the day in one blog post, so instead I’m going to share with you my main learnings – the key points that I got from being there that have stayed with me and that I’m integrating into both my therapy practice and my personal life.  (And yes, it has taken me over a month to sit down and process everything that I learnt on the day – that’s how jam-packed full of fascinating and useful stuff it was!)

Re-write your story

Each of us tells ourselves a story about who we are, the things we are good at (and not-so-good at), the things we enjoy etc… As well as telling that story to ourselves, we also tell that story to the rest of the world – through our language patterns, our actions, and our way of being.  People around us begin to believe that story, and then we feel trapped inside those behaviours and feelings that we actually created for ourselves in the first place.  What if I told you that it doesn’t have to be that way?  What if I suggested that you could re-write your story?  How many times have you told yourself that you can’t give up smoking for example?  Or that you hate exercise?  And how many times have you believed yourself and then fulfilled that belief by lighting up another cigarette or skipping another gym session?  What if you began telling yourself that you can be a non-smoker, or that you enjoy working out?  How much more motivated would you be?  How would your behaviour change to fit that person that you are telling yourself you are becoming?  You don’t have to stick to the same old story, no matter how many times you’ve told it.  Change it.  Re-write it.  Become who you want to be.

Ready? Fire! Then aim…

I’m pretty sure that most of you will be familiar with the term ‘ready, aim, fire’.  It makes sense, doesn’t it?  Get yourself ready for something, aim yourself in it’s direction, then launch yourself towards it, because then you know you’ll hit your target.  It doesn’t always work though.  What if you hit the target and then realise that its not actually what you want?  This is where ready, fire, aim comes in.  Be less specific.  Get yourself ready to make a change or to start a project, then take action – start it! – in whatever way you can.  Begin your journey, even if you’re not sure yet precisely what direction you are heading in or exactly where you want to go.  You can readjust your position once you’re on your way.

Work the Problem

Sometimes in life, stuff doesn’t go as planned.  We screw up.  We make mistakes.  We ‘fail’ spectacularly.  It can feel pretty rubbish when that happens can’t it?  It puts you off trying again, makes you go into protection mode so you don’t make a fool of yourself again, or get hurt again, or feel stupid again.  How about, instead of moving immediately and directly into protection you choose to step into growth by ‘working the problem’?  Something I tell my girls time and time again is that it doesn’t matter if you make a mistake.  It doesn’t matter if you get something wrong, or if you can’t do something.  You learn from it and you try again.  And if you mess up again, you learn from it and try again.  That’s what working the problem is: you fail, you learn from it, you forgive yourself for making the mistake, and then you reset yourself so you can start again.  Fail, learn, forgive, reset.  Fail, learn, forgive, reset.

Live your life wholeheartedly

This probably sounds fairly obvious.  Why wouldn’t you live your life wholeheartedly?  You’d be surprised by the number of people who don’t (including me, though I’m working on it).  As I understand it, living wholeheartedly is about being willing and open to experience anything and everything you want to experience.  That’s important – do it because you WANT to, not because you think you SHOULD do.  If it only happens to be a fleeting interest, that’s ok – give it your all, get what you want and need from it, and then move on to the next thing that takes your interest.  Life is far to short to settle for anything less than having the most fun you can.  Fill your life with the things that make you feel good.  Don’t let yourself get too comfortable – comfort kills ambition.  Keep challenging yourself.  One interesting fact that I learnt about living wholeheartedly is that happiness is the only emotion that fills your whole body – quite literally from your head to your toes.  Look at this diagram that shows heat mapping of different emotions:

Even love doesn’t fill you up as completely as happiness does.  Bursting with happiness is actually a thing.  Who knew?!

Keep Your Promises

Make a promise to yourself that you don’t know you can reach.  Promise yourself that you’ll run a marathon.  Or raise £100,000 for charity.  Or skateboard across Australia (more about that in a minute).  Don’t live within the confines of what you think you could do – why limit yourself?  Promise yourself something that seems unattainable…and watch yourself grow as you stretch to achieve it.  Promise cards are good for this sort of thing.  I’ve got my own set that I’ll be using with clients in the not-too-distant future, and I’ll also be making a couple of my own too.  I’ll be blogging about it here too, so you can all hold me accountable.

And finally…

Say Yes More

I have no idea how many times a day I say the word ‘no’.  I know it’s a lot!  I’m not just talking about saying it out loud to my girls when they ask me if they can do painting at 6.30am, or if they can have cake for breakfast either.  I say it to myself a lot too.  No, you can’t go for a swim, you’ve got the housework to do.  No, you can’t read your book, you’ve got emails to answer.  No, no, no, no, NO!  All the time.  It wasn’t until one of my girls asked me for something and then answered her own question before I even opened my mouth with “oh, you’re going to say no anyway aren’t you Mummy because you ALWAYS say no to EVERYTHING”.   She then calmly turned around and exited the kitchen while I stood there with my jaw dropped and tears in my eyes.  ‘Do I really say no that often?’ I thought to myself.  Honestly?  Yes, I probably do.  Since hearing Dave Cornthwaite, keynote speaker and adventurer, talk about making life memorable, I’ve made it my mission to #sayyesmore.

My favourite ‘yes moment’ so far has been watching the sunrise one chilly weekday morning, just me and my girls while the rest of the world was still sleeping.  It was absolutely magical.

There’s a lot there.  I hope some of it has been helpful for you.  I’m intentionally incorporating all of these ideas into my everyday life and I’m noticing a difference.  As challenging as this last month has been, both personally and professionally, I know that the things I learnt at Questival have helped me through.

If you were at Questival, I’d love to find out what message really stood out for you and how you’re using it in your lives.  And if you are a non-Questie blog-reader, I’d be curious to find out your thoughts and feelings about the ideas in this post.  Is there one in particular that really strikes a chord with you?  One that you think will really make a difference in how you live your life?

If so, please do leave a comment below – it would be great to hear from you.

Roll on Questival 2016… 🙂