Tread lighter on your Human Journey

We’ve all been through them — tough, troubling or even traumatic experiences, and will face more of those moments in the next years of our lives. These experiences are somehow an integral and (mostly) unavoidable part of our human journey.

Sometimes small and inconspicuous, seemingly insignificant, sometimes profound and formative. Some disappear from our conscious memory, while others are very present in our mind and we can replay the movie (and in our minds we often do that, over and over again).

It may have been an accident, a disease, a loss, something we’ve experienced directly or witnessed in the life of someone else. It may have been just a few words spoken to us that were somehow deeply imprinted in us.

In my work as a Transformational Coach, I have conversations about playing for a dream (in life, career or business), refusing or accepting calls to adventure, facing challenges and crossing thresholds.

A lot of these things we try to do, accomplish and overcome in the outer world require inner work.

In recent years I have been intensively working on the effects of traumatic experiences on our lives. Especially through my coaching training at CoachVille — with the modules Play Life, Inner Freedom and Transformational Coaching — I was able to delve further into this subject.

In addition, I have immersed myself in the work of Gabor Maté and Bessel van der Kolk, who impressively describe how unprocessed experiences shape our feelings and behavior today. How we experience trauma in the present moment due to unprocessed traumatic experiences.

Many of these experiences still affect our daily lives, more than we realize, mostly non-conscious.

During the “100 day Writing Challenge” by Tim Clare (episodes 54–57 on SoundCloud), the work of James Pennebaker was brought to my attention. He shows how expressive writing can help process traumatic experiences.

If you feel called to tread on your human journey with a greater sense of freedom, without the weight you may be non-consciously carrying with you, this is an invitation.

Make room for yourself to write — ideally on four consecutive days, 15–20 minutes each.

Each day covers 1 of 4 steps as you can see in the attached visual. Select an event, the inciting incident, that you know/feel/believe still influences and impacts your daily life. It may have happened long ago, recently, just yesterday or even today.

Be gentle with yourself, take your time, don’t force it.

You can do the process by yourself, in solitude, or in the presence of someone you trust. Someone who can be there for you with their presence.

At the end of the 4 days, you decide what to do with your writing. You can keep the notes for yourself, speak about them with a confidant or destroy them.

There is no right or wrong way here.

Important note:

I am not a therapist. I am only sharing an approach that I have personally found valuable. If you feel the need to talk to someone while writing or if you notice old emotions coming up, seek (professional) support. I can’t know what your experiences have been or how far your own processing has evolved.

If you think this material can be valuable for someone you know, you are welcome to share this material.

TheHumanJourney

InnerFreedom

LiberateHumanitysPotential