To what degree can we create our reality? - Inspiring Case Studies
WISH TOKENS AT A TEMPLE IN KYOTO, JAPAN, 2023
It's an open-ended question we seem to carry around in life - to what degree can we truly create our reality?
The concept of “wanting what we have” encourages us to work with what's available in each moment to co-create our next step. This idea embodies the essence of Zen teachings on presence and acceptance of what is happening right now, rather than being mentally stuck in the past or a future that hasn't arrived yet.
This mindset shift is powerful because it frees us from the trap of constantly striving for what we desire and instead empowers us to surf the wave of the present moment. This approach doesn't mean giving up on aspirations, but rather aligning our actions most efficiently with present options.
Inspiring stories can encourage us not to bring old expectations to new situations, letting go of what we thought we knew for certain. We can even view our sense of self as something that constantly evolves. By embracing being wrong as a sign of growth, we open ourselves to surprising discoveries and the adventure of continuous personal development.
Holistic Creative Coaching fosters expansion:
Enhanced Self-Awareness: Fostering clarity in decision-making and actions.
Self-Generated Solutions: Discovering that solutions lie within you.
Unlocking Creative Potential: Embracing the unknown for limitless possibilities.
Resilience and Adaptability: Bouncing back from challenges with greater ease.
Deeper Sense of Fulfillment and Purpose: Aligning with your most natural strengths and talents.
For a deeper dive check out the article ”Why Consider Holistic Creative Coaching?”
The following transformative journeys show how individuals chose to:
Reflect on their experiences to deepen self-awareness
Restructure their mindsets and actions to align with their callings
Revise limiting beliefs, outdated patterns, actions, and possessions
Expand their possibilities, catalyzing profound positive change
Unleashing creative potential: A journey of self-discovery
In one of my design teams at a global corporation, Ana was struggling to find her place. Initially in design work, we made space in her schedule to reflect regularly, helping her recognize that her current daily work wasn't her true calling. While she liked the sound of the job and felt she needed to follow a path that her degrees pointed towards, the reality didn't feel appealing.
We implemented for Ana to restructure her days, shifting to a holistic mindset beyond her career. She redirected her skills, ultimately becoming a sought-after yoga teacher, including within our company. Like this she contributed to the team's success from a different vantage point, using her natural talent for instruction.
Ultimately, the fear of not trying what she felt drawn to beyond her limiting views of a predefined path became stronger than the fear of failure. It was the courageous revise of an expected trajectory that led to Ana reclaiming her autonomy and discovering a vocation resonating with her soul.
Inspired by her teachings and the integration of exercise into our high-pressure environment, her process naturally led us to expand into launching a yoga garment collection.This collection benefited from firsthand input from all actively involved in her training. The setup permeated into a clear design language for a sought-after product.
Ana's Transformative Process:
Recognizing misalignment with her current path
Embracing a holistic mindset beyond career definitions
Uncovering natural talents for instruction and sharing passion
Expanding possibilities by overcoming fears of safety
Inspiring a yoga garment collection integrating her teachings
Ana's journey exemplifies listening to one's authentic path, allowing natural strengths and talents to flourish. By honoring her inner voice, she catalyzed positive ripples impacting our entire team's well-being, materializing as training and the yoga garment collection, which was tailored from firsthand experience and tested in action.
Charting a new course: When passion meets reinvention
Rachel and Cirain, an energetic couple, were struggling to balance two low-paid full-time jobs as a developer and sales person with a swimwear producer. To supplement their income, they ran their home on the coast of Ireland as a bed and breakfast, leaving barely any time for their passion of sailing an impressive boat that Cirain kept in great shape by blowing off steam with physical labor.
As we implemented exercises to reflect upon the possibilities within the overload of what they felt paralyzed by, a picture emerged that created a unique path to combine the three factors into a service that took the joy of having a bed and breakfast to the water.
Setting sail on a new adventure
They courageously started to restructure the elements making up their life one by one, quitting their jobs to focus on their passion for serving guests. Then they took the plunge to sell their house and invest in their boat, taking their life to the water.
It was a revise of many socially acclaimed comforts – a solid job, house, and place to be settled in. Yet they dared to follow an inner drive that was calling them to sea, bringing their dream of sailing around the world from a distant future aspiration into the present, as they are currently successfully hosting guests on their boat.
Their path naturally continues to expand as their travels test new waters, quite literally and beyond. Currently, they are bringing to life a blog on living lightly and launching a simplistic range of swimwear they test daily, closing the circle of reinventing their original professional path.
The transformative journey of Rachel and Cirain:
Recognizing misalignment between their reality and deepest desires
Restructuring their lives to integrate their key passions
Overcoming fears by leaving societal comforts behind
Embracing a lifestyle of adventure and minimalism at sea
Continuously reinventing themselves through new creative outlets
Rachel and Cirain's story exemplifies the power of listening to one's inner callings and bravely restructuring life to align with them. By combining reflection with bold action, they designed a reality where their loves for hospitality, sailing, and simplicity can harmoniously thrive as they challenge the conventions they were limiting themselves by.
The mindset transformation: Reclaiming the director's chair
S. is married to a high-ranking military official, resulting in a life of constant representative obligations with service personnel driving her life. As she started to reflect on her current situation, she found herself left with a sensation of being a passenger on a journey full of privileges that she was not enjoying.
She didn't want to change her life circumstances but rather find a different way to process her life story, giving her the chance to feel in charge by co-creating with the situation as it was.
Restructuring life from the inside out
S. implemented a plan to restructure her days with small daily steps and habits to constantly come back to herself, creating capsules of freedom to decide on her own terms. She set her mind to revise the immediate comforts she had used so far to soothe her pain of overwhelm, aiming for a bigger picture of self-confidently driving her life.
As her perspective shifted, the world around her responded. Her husband, family, social circle, and staff began approaching her with newfound respect. This transformation taught her that she could expand beyond the boxes she'd been placed in—boxes that were not only externally defined but largely self-imposed.
Her inner changes naturally flowed into her outward presentation. With growing confidence, she shed the weight of compensatory eating and shopping sprees, curating a sophisticated wardrobe that truly reflected her evolving self.
This fresh approach extended to her role as a hostess. The constant events tied to her husband's career, once more of a burden, became opportunities for creativity. Their receptions gained a reputation for being inspiring exceptions in a sea of sterile official gatherings.
S. reclaimed her sense of autonomy and directorship by:
Implementing daily rituals to stay grounded in herself
Prioritizing long-term fulfillment over temporary comforts
Inspiring respect from others through self-respect
Expanding her world by challenging self-imposed limitations
What makes the transformation of S. remarkable is, that the circumstances of her life haven't changed—it's her approach that has shifted. She demonstrates that even within a world of uniformed power defined by strict protocols and societal norms, one can find freedom and self-expression by changing one's relationship with them.