What’s On Guide for SOS Brighton 28 March 2010

Download here the full What’s On Guide to speakers and workshops at Starting Over Show Brighton on 28 March 2010 at the Hilton Brighton Metropole:  What’s On-The days events at SOS web

who do I talk to first?

Breaking up or divorcing?  Who you need to talk to in order to move your life forwards….

dowload pdf version here: I’m breaking up – who do I talk to first 17 March 2010

Interactive Zone

A brand new idea for SOS Brighton!

An area of the main exhibition hall where you can watch an example of a ‘letting go’ ceremony (and even join in if you want?), feng shui your workspace, create your own vision board and take part in a letting go and starting over process involving a giant balloon!

11.20  &  14.30

Secret of starting over successfully

Following on from their short workshop in the SPICE London Zone at SOS Brighton, Rhythm of Life interfaith ministers (as seen on GMTV!) will provide and example of a ‘letting go ceremony’.

Thinking and strategies that will help you let go of any unhelpful limiting thoughts and feelings, enable you to focus on yourself and what you want in life and move forward energised and more confident.  And how to let go of what (or who) may be holding you back…..

Run by: Estelle Williams and Lucy Wintle

Interfaith Ministers and specialists in Workshop Leadership, Fulfilment Strategies, Life Navigation, Values and Spirituality.

These short  demonstrations take place in the Interactive Zone at 11.20 (following the short letting go workshop in the Spice Zone) and again at 14.30.

14.45 and 16.00

A UNIQUE CEREMONY

FOR ALL VISITORS to join in

A letting go and starting over ceremony – a shared experience

Separation, divorce, losing job and bereavement are some of the most stressful things we will all have to face in our lives.

We cannot change events and we cannot change the other person involved; how they think or feel or what they do necessarily.  But we can change the way we think, feel and act.

We can alter the focus of our attention away from the other person, the person we feel has hurt us; and stop putting our energies into what we don’t want.

Instead we can start focusing on ourselves; putting our energies into what we do want for ourselves.

Find out more about this unique ceremony here……

The ceremony will begin at 14.45 and again at 16.00 in the Interactive Zone, and last for about 10 minutes, and involves a giant balloon!

Feng Shui your workspace – essential when working from home!

Want to know how to set up your new space or reinvent your current set up at home or work to maximise on comfort and opportunity?

Try some tried and tested Feng Shui tips to enhance your life and move on.  Easy to do and sustain . Powerful ways to weave a bit of magic into your life.

Rosa d’Morgan provides 15 minute talks sharing her know-how, for free, at SOS London & Brighton.  She shows how to give you the edge in creating a workspace that will make you more productive – so you can make more money!  Find out more about Rosa here……

See information board next to the Interactive Zone (in the main exhibition hall) on the day for times.

Throughout the day…..

The Interactive Zone will have the basic materials you need to make your own ‘vision board’ – have a go – it’s great fun!

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From Frustration, Anger and Divorce to Authenticity, Love and Acceptance

Hi, I’m Andy Nicholson, relationship and authenticity coach and personal development trainer.

I’m living the life of my choosing, I have learned to love and accept myself, I have learned to love and accept others (although I’m not always as wonderful at this as I might like!! – I am still a work in progress).

It was not always like this…. Five years ago after redundancy and divorce, I was mainly angry and frustrated – I was not in control of my life or my emotions. I was stuck, disempowered.

Then I came to realise that I could become very empowered. I was in fact at a crossroads in my life. Before me was a blank sheet of paper, on which I could design the life that I wanted…

But what did I want? What was possible for me?

I did not know. All I knew was what I did not want. The truth is that I was proud of knowing what I did not want. I felt that it gave me direction, helped me to make choices. I even gave myself kudos for this strategy in life. In my 20s it seemed to work, I seemed to be happier than some of my peers who perhaps did know what they wanted (or thought that they did) and were angry, fearful or depressed for not achieving their desired outcomes. Some even looked up to me for doing what I did.

Then, in my 30s, after my entrepreneurial businesses had ‘failed’ I knuckled down into a career, got a mortgage, a pension, got married… I did all the ‘normal’ stuff. I felt that I did not have enough fun and took life too seriously – but I believed I ‘had’ to, I was conditioned to think like this – the good old protestant work ethic…. So I made attempts to be more fun, more outgoing, I even chose a wife who was very much a fun, party animal, extroverted, the life and soul, needed at least three expensive holidays per year…. She warned me against marrying her, as she felt that she may be too much (for me, for many men) – her statement “I’m a nightmare, don’t marry me” fell on deaf ears. I felt that I was a match for her concerns. Boy, was I deluding myself! Now don’t get me wrong, my ex-wife is a wonderful woman, we just had different expectations, a different pace, differing priorities, values and beliefs. The truth is that her life works for her. Mine was not working for me and in many ways, I unwittingly tried to use her to fix me.

So there I was, 39, uninspired by my job, divorced, directionless. At this point, I bumped into an old friend of mine. After listening to my tale of woe (I poured my heart out – dumped all my frustration onto him), he suggested that I go along to a monthly meeting. No, it was not religious, it was about personal development (PD). I’d actually come across a few ‘PD’ and self-help books in previous years, and whilst interesting and inspiring, like most people, once read, I just carried on as normal, deluding myself that I did not need to change me – I just needed the world to change and give me a break!

I enjoyed the personal development get-togethers. Some great speakers started to challenge my mind-set and my beliefs and gradually open me up to new possibilities. I also enjoyed being around people who were more positive. Of course, I believed that some of the speakers, who had achieved great things, had some special talents that I did not possess and could not possess, so I did not intend to try to emulate them. It was safer and easier that way.

Then, after 10 months of attending the PD meetings, two relationship coaches gave a talk that would cause me to change my life. I’d been separated for nearly a year. My divorce had come through, yet the feelings were still raw. I felt like the marriage had been a waste of time, effort and a lot of money. I had yet to be able to take anything positive from the experience, especially any learnings. I felt like I was likely to make the same mistakes all over again (and I was).

I had been going out on lots of dates, courtesy of match.com and Dating Direct. Initially, this was just to get me out of the marital house and have some fun – living under the same roof for 10 months whilst separated was not much fun. I quickly found that I was able to feel more like my old self when out flirting. Yet after a while, there I was again, seeking the answers and my happiness outside of me, from others – seeking recognition and affirmation.

The 2 ½ hour talk by the relationship coaches, who were married, blew me away. It challenged so many of my beliefs about relationships and challenged my very identity and behaviour as a man. I had to know more. I signed up for their four day retreat at their base in Austria. Three months later, I had the most enjoyable and eye-opening four days of my life. I loved their teachings, it all seemed to make so much sense and yet was so contrary to how I ran my life. I recognised for the first time that I possessed an awesome set of values, and a lousy set of beliefs. I was living my life according to my beliefs, out of alignment with my values – hence I was unfulfilled and frustrated.

While in Austria, I also started to recognise that only I could take responsibility for my life and achieving better outcomes and more happiness. No one could do it for me. It sounds obvious now, yet how many of us are kidding ourselves…? On the Sunday, over breakfast, whilst discussing the meaning of life… I had an epiphany! The work of the Retreat was completely in alignment with my values. I found the Retreat owners to be inspiring and I felt passionate about their purpose in life. I wanted to help them to help others like me. Plus, I had all these business, marketing and IT skills, which their ‘cottage industry’ could benefit from – I could help them to spread the word.

So to cut a long story short, 6 months later I moved to Austria, lived and worked at the retreat for 20 months, and almost by osmosis (and by attending over 30 days of training that they offered), my outlook on life transformed. While in Austria, I still liked female attention. I dated a couple of girls and flirted with a couple of others. While I was gradually awakening to myself, I was still in some denial. I was denying my potential. Although I felt that I now had my ideal vocation, I still would not face up to what I wanted in an ideal relationship. I underestimated and under-valued myself.

After 12 months in Austria, I decided that it was time to stop playing games. It was time to claim what was rightfully mine – the life of my dreams, a life and a journey that I wanted to share with my soul-mate (whoever she was). My role in Austria was not stretching me enough and I did not feel that the opportunity to grow at the same pace would remain open to me. I also put out my intention to meet my soul-mate and I trusted that I would find her when the time was right. This was in April 2007.

Around the same time that I went to Austria, I enrolled to train in NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming), a branch of psychology and personal development that is based around how the brain works and how we think and behave. NLP introduced me to the concept that we all a have wildly different values and beliefs. Along with our innate talents and learned skills, this is what makes us unique – who we are and how we behave.

Andy’s Values
2006	2008
Love Happiness Integrity Connection Growth Health Humour Passion Affection Creativity Family Freedom Abundance	Happiness Pleasure Zest for life Balance Connection Health Purpose Freedom Direction Contribution Congruence Growth Creativity

Having identified my values, I started to want to be more congruent with them and to act with integrity. This lead to two things: firstly, a desire to go back to the UK in order to create my life how I wanted it, living my purpose rather than supporting someone else’s and secondly the desire to find my soul-mate.

You can see in the table opposite how my values changed over two years. I discovered more purpose, energy and enthusiasm, placed myself my purpose and my freedom above the need to please others and seek approval. This shift in values reflected what I had learned from my mentors in Austria about ‘turning up my masculinity dial’.

Being a kind, empathetic and supportive person, I’ve never had too much trouble getting in touch with my feminine side. We all have masculine and feminine aspects to our character. Many would say that to be a balanced and whole person we have to embrace and integrate both these energies, i.e. the yin and yang.

At the end of a 10 day relationship coaching training course in Austria with 12 other people, we were each rated (by the group) on our behaviour and how we outwardly expressed ourselves in terms of masculine vs. feminine energy. This was a fascinating and nerve wracking experience!! My score came out as 59 masculine and 44 feminine. Both scores are out of 100, the theory being that we will typically spend 70-80% of our time displaying the core energy of our gender, i.e. I would typically be 70-80% in my masculine and 20-30% in my feminine. As I said, a fascinating and not un-controversial subject! Again, to cut a long story short, I reckon my energy is now more like 75-80% masculine and 30-35% feminine. This shift has definitely helped me to become more authentically myself.

This is another great example of how I have transformed my experience of life. From all of my study and learnings, I have created what I call my model of Authentic Transformation. This is not a process of re-inventing yourself, or swapping one false self, for a slightly better false self. This process of true personal and spiritual (with a small ‘s’) development is about identifying who you really are and learning the tools that allow you to be authentically you, in all situations and roles. Whilst what I learned and how I turned up my masculinity certainly helped me a lot as a single man, when it came to putting this into practise within relationships, it was not without major challenges…

Towards the end of my stay in Austria, in July 2007, I received an e-mail from one of the dating sites that I had been on a few months earlier. A lady in America had read my profile and sent me an email. I’d not been on the site for several months and my membership had lapsed. I had no desire to start a transatlantic relationship. Whilst online, I looked at who else was also online – there were only a handful of people. I immediately resonated with one of the profiles, a lady from the Highlands of Scotland. We connected and clicked straight away. I happened to be back in the UK the very next week, for the first time in a year. I cheekily invited her to fly down and meet me. She did, and the rest is history… I’d been looking for my soul-mate and I’d found her. Six months later, I moved back to the UK and Diane left her life in Scotland to come and live and work together with me. We had only spent three weeks together in those six months. The fact that we had both done a lot of work on ourselves, and were able to be ourselves without any egos, masks game playing, without the need to try to impress, made all the difference. Our story is featured in other articles.

By loving ourselves 10 out of 10, we were able to accept ourselves and speak our truth to each other without any neediness and falseness. Some people may thing that loving yourself at a ‘10’ is arrogant, egotistical, selfish or even narcissistic! It is not. In fact it is the most self-less thing that you can do. For when you are full of love, you only have love to give others – you lose the need to blame, criticise, judge, hate…

Now it may seem like I am painting a very idyllic picture and everything has been plain sailing. That is definitely not the case. Intimate relationships are one of life’s most challenging things. Not only do you have to master your own behaviour, you have to learn to do so in close proximity to another, very different being. Diane and I are very different. We seemed to accept each other in principle, there were still aspects of each other’s behaviour that we each found challenging. Whilst we share many values, beliefs and our purpose in life, our personality styles are very different. This caused us some challenges, especially living and working together 24/7. Throughout, we have remained convinced that we are soul-mates or ‘twin flames’ and we have experienced amazing connection, synergy and love. We have had to learn new tools and insights to enable our love to flourish and achieve its true potential.

Ten months into our relationship we enrolled on a training course about the Enneagram personality ‘typing’ system. I had been aware of a variety of such systems; whilst interesting, they all seemed rather complex, confusing and hardly earth-shattering. The Enneagram was different, it dealt with the whole person, you could really identify with it. For us, it was like the missing piece of the jigsaw. It finally explained why Di and I were so different and it allowed us to understand, accept and embrace those differences. We now use the Enneagram with many of our clients.

The other missing piece of the jigsaw for most people is their fears, underpinned by limiting beliefs. Whilst working in the PD industry, I noticed ‘pareto’ at work; only 20% of people seemed to take what they had been taught and use it to transform their lives and achieve the results that they wanted. They other 80% did not – they unwittingly seemed to treat the process as an intellectual exercise, ticking boxes, perhaps becoming ‘course junkies’. When I met Diane, she was Susan Jeffers first and only ‘Feel The Fear And Do It Anyway®’ tutor. I now teach this incredible workshop, based on the best selling book, with Di. It is the most powerful agent of change. It is also the first step that most people need to take in their journey; a step once taken that enables anyone to play full out in all aspects of life, taking and applying the most from any other training that they do.

With these tools and experiences, we believe that we have created a framework that can enable anyone to turn their lives around, overcoming fear, limiting beliefs and unhelpful models of the world; connecting with their values, personality style, emotionality, purpose, personal responsibility and accountability. It is an holistic approach – one that can deliver both immediate benefits and a transformation that takes months rather than years and hundreds rather than thousands of £s.

So in summary, growing up and learning to take responsibility for your life is a process of:

SELF AWARENESS to SELF-ACCEPTANCE to SELF-ACTUALISATION

Self-actualisation is a term used by the famous psychologist Abraham Maslow, who created the wonderful model ‘the hierarchy of human needs’ – this is another powerful tool of self-discovery that we use. For me, self-actualisation means being the best that I can be. During this process of authentic transformation, you also learn to accept and value others and their differences. This journey can also be thought of as evolving from:

DEPENDENCE to INDEPENENCE to INTER-DEPENDENCE

When life goes according to plan, most of us learn to move successfully from dependence to independence. When life gets hard, we may become fiercely independent, not letting others in, or we may relapse back into co-dependency seemingly unable or unwilling to take responsibility for ourselves. Inter-dependence is being able to accept, cooperate and collaborate with others, learning to give unconditionally and also to be able to ask for help and to willingly receive.

Some of the key learnings from my own journey include:

• I am way more than my fears, beliefs and alter-ego
• No one else can do it for me; they can help me to see more clearly and find ‘my way’
• The answers are not outside of me
• The answer is not to seek an intimate relationship to fill me up or fill the gaps in my life
• Be open to new learnings, new perspectives and to challenge my beliefs – constantly
• To become free of ego, opinion and judgement
• To accept and embrace that we are all different
• Real love is free of fear
• Unhelpful behaviour and unresourceful emotions are largely habitual
• More empowering behaviour and emotions can be learned
• We are all innately good inside. We all have a ‘higher self’

Much has been written in recent years about the importance of ‘emotional intelligence’, yet there is little practical help out there to achieve it. Everything that Di and I have learned and developed in our coaching and training business is about helping people to become emotionally intelligence, to be able to live and love with others in inter-dependence, and to live the self-actualised life of your dreams.

We are giving at talk at the ‘Starting Over Show’ in London on Sunday March 7^th and Brighton on 28th March 2010, where we will also have a stand. Do come and see us.

Andy & Di x www.executive-relationship-coaching.co.uk www.dimacdowall-lifecoaching.co.uk

‘Feel The Fear And Do It Anyway®’ is a registered trademark of Susan Jeffers, PhD and is being used with her express permission.

Copyright © Andrew Nicholson 2010

TV relationship coach Francine Kaye returns to SOS Brighton

Francine Kaye – Channel 5′s relationship coach

TV’s Relationship Coach, Francine Kaye is set to deliver one of the most popular workshops at The Dateline Platinum-sponsored Starting Over Show in Brighton, in the SPICE London workshop room.

‘Ex-Communication’ is designed specifically to let people know “How to speak so your ex will listen, and listen so your ex will speak”.

Francine features regularly on GMTV, The Wright Stuff and on national radio as well as making the front page for  Woman and Home, Red and the national press, giving expert advice on divorce and relationships. Francine is a huge supporter of the Starting Over Show.

As one of the most experienced relationship coaches in the UK, Francine is the relationship expert for the Channel 5 programme The Wright Stuff appears on The Trisha show, GMTV and is featured in and writes for national magazines, the press and is a guest on national radio. She is invited for her expertise on CNN, Nick Ferrari, Vanessa Feltz, Jumoke Fashola, Paul Ross, Lowrie Turner, Jeremy Vine and many others. Francine is also the author of Time to Live published by Hodder and is an expert workshop leader and trainer. Her experience as a Counsellor, Relationship Coach, Parent Effectiveness Trainer, and Family Mediator qualifies her to help men and women find and sustain fulfilling relationships, help couples rebuild and redesign rocky relationships and in cases where divorce is the only prognosis, she gives her clients the skills and strategies to do what it takes to divorce with dignity and heal their hearts and their lives. Francine’s new book The Divorce Doctor published by Hay House in May 2009 is available at Waterstones and on Amazon.

Divorced 14 years ago with two small children, Francine has experienced the challenges of an uncertain future as single parent. She has overcome financial adversity and in the past 14 years has transformed her life to become one of the UK’s most successful relationship coaches. Francine says “As a direct result of accepting my new life instead of resisting it, I have regained my identity, healed my heart and emerged positively in every area of my life. My work is about showing my clients how to do the same”.

Francine will be doing a free workshop sponsored by SPICE London, for visitors to SOS – make sure you put your name down on arrival at the SPICE London space at the show, or even better, reserve your place now and call Spice on 01784 497070.

Francine is also offering a limited number of 1-1 sessions at no charge  in the Dateline Platinum surgery.  You need to book direct with Dateline Platinum - see their relationship surgery page here…….

Financial advice from BNH

Straight Thinking: NLP & hypnotherapy

Introducing the Heart Zone

Inspiration

Welcome to the Heart Zone at SOS – free 10 minute sessions of yoga, meditation, Dadshouse cooking recipes and feng shui throughout the day:  Click here to see more…..

Letting Go and Starting Over: join us for an amazing shared experience at the end of both events (5.30pm)

Are you ready to meet someone looking for a serious relationship, but have fun searching?  Then come to the party!

letting go & starting over ceremony for all to share

A UNIQUE CEREMONY

FOR ALL VISITORS to join in

A letting go and starting over ceremony – a shared experience

Separation, divorce, losing job and bereavement are some of the most stressful things we will all have to face in our lives.

With separation and divorce comes a maelstrom of feelings and emotions including anger, hurt, judgement, remorse and guilt. Often we feel the victim; things have been done to us, outcomes and events are not as we would have wished or expected.  We feel bad; regardless of whether the separation or divorce is amicable or contentious.

We cannot change events and we cannot change the other person involved; how they think or feel or what they do necessarily.  But we can change the way we think, feel and act.

We can alter the focus of our attention away from the other person, the person we feel has hurt us; and stop putting our energies into what we don’t want.

Instead we can start focusing on ourselves; putting our energies into what we do want for ourselves.

Ceremony outline – What will happen?

1) Invitation to let go of unhelpful, negative thoughts, feelings and ways of being.

2) Acknowledgment of the space that letting go creates; and the value and importance of this space in providing us with an opportunity to focus and clarify what we do want for ourselves in the future – our personal future intentions

3) Invitation to new ways of being ; enabling us to focus on ourselves and what we do want in our lives, with new supportive thoughts, feelings and intentions that help us move forward with confidence

The ceremony will be interactive and involve visual representations for letting go and the invitation to the new.  You don’t have to be with a partner – you can do it alone or even with a friend.

The ceremony will begin at 14.30 and again at 16.30 in the Interactive Zone, and last for about 10 minutes.

SOS is grateful to the exhibitors who have put in their time and effort to make this shared experience possible:

Rhythm of Life

Julia Armstrong

Jeanette Mercer

Scott Collier

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