Earlier this year, in a training I’m taking on Compassionate Inquiry, I first heard Gabor Maté discuss the literal why it is so hard to be authentic.  

Why Because when we are so very young, we have two primary needs: 

• the natural need to be authentic 
• the natural need for attachment (to be connected, loved, and cared for) with our parents/caregivers.  

These two needs aren’t always in competition.  Occasionally they exist parallel.  

But they DO repeatedly end up in competition, and when a child has to choose (consciously or subconsciously) authenticity or attachment, they will naturally, biologically, choose attachment every single time.  

Ultimately our drive to be connected and loved is more innate and stronger than our drive to be authentic.  

This gets repeated and wired into our way of being as young ones, and developmentally, as adults, we have the opportunity to consider (and learn the skills of) NOT disconnecting from ourselves to maintain a faulty attachment by only allowing ourselves the most narrow and constrained expressions.   

Judgment.  Shame.  Rejection.  Isolation.   These hook into our subconscious programming and drive so many of our behaviors and ways of being. These are our coping skills – some obvious and some subtle.  For a long time, they serve us.  They keep us safe and connected until they don’t.   Stepping out of these patterns can be liberating, yes, but can also be excruciatingly uncomfortable.  To our subconscious minds and muscle memories, comfort is safe.  Even if that comfort is miserable.  

Stepping out of these subconscious patterns and building the mental, physical, and emotional skills of self-connection and internal safety take more than a mindset shift; they take experimentation, discomfort, practice, practice, practice, regressions, and more practice, and are certainly helped way more with both self-compassion and community-compassion than the common community “air” of shame, ridicule, comparison, and rejection.

We’ve been taught to turn away, and now it’s time to turn toward your own innocent heart and build the skills of self-connection, self-presence, and, ultimately, self-trust.  

This is the work I teach and coach, and practice.  My coaching communities, podcast, book, and teachings hold the energy and intention of this compassion for your authenticity and for your humanness.  My work can give you a space to build these skills and new muscle memories of self-trust for a better life and better work – for wholeness in your whole heart and being. 

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Is it possible to be thankful for coming undone For the unraveling and losing my shit over and over in the past year?

“There, there, Terror and Fear, I see you. I will not leave you. I am here for you.”

Allison

 

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Here’s what I know. In thousands and thousands and thousands of coaching calls- almost every single client taps into a sense of insecurity and not-enoughness. And what I’ve seen is that the SPIRIT within is begging for her (or his) too-muchness to be set free.

You ARE too much. 
Too loud. Too quiet. Too straight. Too wild. Too shy. Too skinny. Too fat. Too confident. Too insecure. Too smart. Too dumb. Too emotional. Too Expressive. Too aggressive. Too sexual. Too demure. Too safe. Too risky. Too conservative. Too woo-woo. Too crazy. Too talkative. Too insane. Too much.

I don’t think we just doubt our worth and enoughness. I think we doubt our too-muchness.

TOO MUCH WOMAN – I celebrate you. I ask you to be your TOO Much-self. What if you embraced and loved all of your too muchness What if you allowed her to be expressed and embodied in every moment?

You don’t have to shrink to control people’s opinions of you. The antidote is living into all of your too muchness – there in that space, you will find the love and acceptance you craved all along. – all there inside your own heart. 
? allison.

How are you TOO MUCH— Comment below and let’s celebrate!

Ps. This is the theme of Camp Star Heart 2018.

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I’m not a rule breaker, really, I’m a rule maker.

Last weekend I spent time with 40 other stellar coaches.   Each of us gave a talk to share a message or our gifts with the world.  

If you haven’t seen it…I want to share it with you, not because I strip down to my skivvies…(I do)…

but because I want YOU to hear the message and be inspired to be more fully YOU! 

The post I Risked It All & Got Naked appeared first on Allison Crow.

I’ve been coaching for 8 years. And all 8 years – frankly, I’ve kicked ass at it – with heart and financially. I’ve only had 1 year under 6 figures and it was the first year after I left kw and went from 47 clients to 1. And that was still an 80k year (gross if I’m gonna be totally honest). Today there are 2 new client inquiries in my inbox. It just works for me…it is my soul work – that thing that I can’t not do. 

People wanna know– WHAT DID I DO HOW DID I DO IT? – There are only really two core answers (both things that my coach Rich Litvin and my powerful colleague Amir talk about on a regular basis:

1. I DO IT MY WAY – Even when I was at KW – I was so good- by being me (combo of awesome + deeply committed to extreme learning and skills) I made then tons of $$$ so they tolerated MY WAY– I was scolded like a child at every turn because I broke the mold. I’m a bit crass, have a mouth like a sailor, heart of gold, and a passion that won’t quit. I like to stand tall and speak my truth and I have a relentless belief in my clients and the people I serve. When I left and started my solo practice – It took me a few more years to shed off all the “shoulds” of coaching. To refine MY WAY even more. And to this day, as I change, MY WAY continues to evolve. I continue to experiment and follow my feel good in my life, and in my coaching practice. I DO IT MY WAY – in full color, with fairy wings, and rainbows and art, and energy practices, naps, and all the other things that make my practice and my work uniquely me.

2. PLAY FULL OUT. I have had a coach that “I couldn’t afford” every single day since September 19th, 2003. I do not need a coach. I choose to hire the best so that I can become the best. I do not believe or buy into what my coaches say. I am my own Guru. I learn, experiment, I test, and I am continually making my own personal tincture of what works for me. I trust my gut – and my gut says GO FOR IT FULL OUT.
I read, I learn, and I take inspired action. I give it a go. I have given so many proposals that have just been returned with a blank stare or non response – and I keep connecting, loving, coaching, and proposing deep coaching relationships. I hold nothing back in life, on Facebook (clearly  ). I go to my edge almost every day, and I take my clients to their edge. We get naked. We go THERE – and then we take what we learn out in to the world – FULL OUT. And lives change. Glorious amazing shit happens.

So if you wanna become great – you get to PLAY THE LONG GAME (another Litvin lesson) – where for the rest of your life you are committed to discovering and doing it YOUR WAY, and to PLAYING FULL OUT.

What does that look like in your life I’d truly love to know – I see your power. Let me know — STAND TALL IN YOUR POWER with the same calm and resolved power with which this message was written. What is possible if you were to TRULY DO IT YOUR WAY, and if you were to decide today, TO PLAY FULL OUT?

Loving you – Allison

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How did you get over the divorce, how did you not have children of your own, how did you leave KW and all those clients, how did you create your life with joy, and art, and romance, and adventure and wild abundance and prosperity. How are you able to consider leaving your hometown for a new adventure?? How do you get away with it How do you let go of the pain and frustration and the bitterness How do you heal How have you prospered as a coach How How How How do you do it???

My spiritual mentor Rafael Bejarano just said it to me on the phone……..

“All of this…. has been created…by allowing yourself to say YES to YOU!” —

Now YOUR turn, Loves….how will you say YES to YOU today?

There will be risk, some people will laugh, and ridicule, condemn and even shame you.

You may lose relationship, money for a while ~in fact, there will most likely be a bump “back” for a bit. But every step on the current path where you are not being you–fully alive and authentically you- you are dying. Killing your cells and your soul. The bump back is NOTHING compared to the death and regret. So STOP not being you.

Find ONE tiny way to BE FULLY you. Say what you want to say, wear the clothes you want to wear, allow the emotions to flow instead of “containing” them, create, express, break the rules, say FUCK, or don’t say fuck….be woo woo, be crazy, be gay, be broken, be addicted, be loud or soft, be imperfect, throw out the high heels, or go buy your first pair. JUST BE YOU in one tiny way.

THAT is the magic that makes this life worth living.

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