Discovering my meta-skills (read: unboxing what I had boxed up and hidden) allowed me to do something totally unexpected in my work: both be fun and have fun! And lots of it. All while facilitating healing at the soul level.
I know. Wild, huh? How can trauma therapy or deep soul transformation be fun? Let alone wildly irreverent in a completely helpful way?
Because fun and irreverence are 2 of my soul’s meta-skills.
You have soul meta-skills too!
I’ve been working with people individually and in groups for more than 20 years, and often a lot of the work that I do is very deep and transformational.
We may be unfolding, healing or transforming trauma, or finding ways to connect with deeper purpose, and healing the psychological wounds that we all carry in different ways so we can fulfill that purpose.
It is intricate, highly reverent, delicate and powerful life-changing work.
When I was doing my psychological training and trauma therapy, no one told me that I could have fun doing it, or that it could sometimes be fun for the people I serve on their path to transforming pain.
Or that the energy could even be joyous at times during the transformational process of healing wounds, injuries and trauma, and connecting with ourselves in the deepest possible way.
I found that in my education as a therapist and a healer, it was an intensely serious business.
The therapists that I did my own therapeutic work with in the early days, they weren’t having fun either. They were doing meaningful work. Healing work. I was healing and growing. But it was very, very sombre. And it felt hard to break out of that serious mood and atmosphere.
My teachers were wonderful, and I adore and appreciate them. But we didn’t have a lot of fun in the trainings either. More serious business.
And so, in the training process I started to marginalise my own soul nature and lightness. To put it in a box, think it was inappropriate and become solely, deeply focused, dedicated and very serious.
Sure, I am deep, serious and I love swimming in the most powerful currents of the soul. It is my passion.
But I am other things, too. I have more magic than was conventionally allowed, and this view of therapy was putting the vaster potential of my work firmly in a rigid box.
And this got me thinking about what was missing.
I started to notice that there were parts of me that I was leaving out in my work as a teacher, leader, therapist and healer.
I am a joyous person, and I have a lot of playfulness and lightness. But these traits are not commonly nurtured in the therapist space, so I put those core parts of myself in a box to the side because I had this idea that I was trained with. That therapy is serious business. That leadership and teaching are serious business.
So, there was no room for these qualities of mine. I banned them to be a “good” therapist.
But then I took a chance. I saw an elder teacher I admired for being joyous, and it inspired me to take my own risks and see what happened. So, I slowly started allowing that rigid box to open, for my true nature to have a place at the table.Maybe I could be less rigid, too.
What happened when I started to unbox my meta-skills was life-changing — for myself and my clients.
We can have all these amazing skills to be a cook, to give financial advice, to write a book, to teach a class, to be a parent. We can have life skills and tools to do anything, and they are essential.
Meta-skills are the way you do something.
It’s the styles that you use to cook your food with — maybe with calm, careful attention. Or maybe you’re more like me — a wild cook who chops furiously and throws it in the pot and lets that be the magic.
When I brought these questions and explorations to my understanding of the sacred work I was doing in the world, I realized that I was leaving big parts of myself out of the picture.
I started deliberately dreaming in and connecting to my meta-skills, my deeper ways of doing things, which are really coming from my soul and the expressions of my deepest nature and gifts.
When I connected to these meta-skills, I realized that they needed to be expressing through the work that I was doing in the world. Because they were going to make my work more meaningful, more transformative, and reach more people.
Also, if I was using my meta-skills, I was going to transmit way more of my wisdom, healing and energy out into the world. I could touch more people and allow my teaching to be more effective and successful.
So, I dreamed in and connected to a lot of meta-skills. The ones I connected to, most importantly, were an uprising joy, a fun and a playfulness. And importantly, a kind of Irish irreverence that I got from my ancestors.
So, in my work today, and you may even feel that you have experienced it with me, I love to bring in, with intuitive, appropriate and aligned ways, qualities of joy, lightness, delight and fun. And definitely a reverence to the deep soul work and trauma work, teaching these powerful tools that I share with people all around the world and the leadership that I undertake.
If you listen to anyone talk about me, they will probably say, “It’s really fun when she guides like that!”
The beautiful thing about bringing these qualities that are “me” into my work, and the way that I do them is particularly with mental health, is that it breaks people out of that very small box.
The box that we get put into or we think we need to be in when there’s something that needs healing or transformation in our mental health journey, in our own evolution, in our own awakening and in the pursuit of our goals and dreams.
I find these little touches of irreverence, fun and lightness bring this unfolding, aligned sunshine, and this wider expansiveness into the space that I’m holding.
People tend to blossom way more in this space. They also get to feel who I am as an authentic person.
It opens up the idea, maybe even the permission that they can also bring some more of their own joy, playfulness, lightness and humour to their healing journey. And that’s very transformative. And liberating!
None of us needs to be only in the serious box when we are transforming our personal history, becoming who we came here to be and unleashing our personal magic.
I would love you to connect to your own meta-skills. To be able to light up the work that you’re doing in the world, that you’re called to offer through your gifts. And to shine the way you came here to shine — with your meta-skills leading the way.
If you’re curious about how you could add more diversity, more fullness, more brightness, light, depth, whatever your skills are to your practice, to your teaching, to your leading, to your parenting, to your chopping vegetables…
Come and join me in my pinnacle program, which I only teach once per year.
