Being ALL of you.

April 27, 2020

This week’s podcast is an interview with my life coaching mentor when I was studying at the Life Coaching Academy – Jane Taylor.

Jane spent her formative years progressing up the ranks of professional tennis, overcoming viral meningitis and multiple injuries along the way to become one of the top-ranked women's players in Australia.

After an injury at the 1997 US Open ended her tennis career, it was time to re-imagine her own life beyond elite sport. As a passionate life learner, she studied a double degree in education and taught a few years in schools before becoming the regional director of MIND MATTERS - a national education initiative in mental health and wellbeing.

This interview started out as a conversation about being a positive voice in these challenging times. Having lived through her own share of adversity, Jane always has an uplifting quote to offer in dark days. But it became an interview about celebrating your humanity. The complexity, the multifaceted nature of who we are.

We are so much more than what we do.

This conversation goes deep, in a different way, to examine what does it mean to live life to the full – being ALL of who you are...

Here's the highlights:

[7:58] Jane’s Three Spaces of Work: With educators, coaches, and athletes. Discovering from these spaces the depth of healing and challenges-- healing within one’s world to hold a stable ground for other people.
[10:10] Honoring being a complex human being meant rising from being known as an elite athlete to being more than that athlete.
[11:50] Finding Happiness is in learning and supporting people while satisfying the essential needs. The gift of mindfulness and self-compassion is having to know and realize what life should be about from a deep place.
[13:43] Recognize that awareness is the first gift of change. Struggling is okay because none of us is perfect. “To know and to not yet do is to not yet know” (Lao Tzu). We may know intellectually but we must embrace and embody it.
[16:10] Stop and take deep breaths. Observe and proceed when you’re ready. Acknowledge thoughts and feelings but don’t get fused into them. Always be a student of mindfulness and self-compassion.
[20:12] Sit with your repressed emotions in order for it to heal. Stop holding back. Be the fully-expressed YOU by gathering the courage and reconnecting to your heart and body.
[25:20] However you want to do it, being ALL of you needs the awareness of all the different pieces in you. Learn to love and respect all of these paths because there’s wisdom in each of them.

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