History of the Therapist turned Trainer turned Coach

Therapy.

It was a major period of my life.

I discovered it when I was 8, after listening to my ex POW dad enough to notice he wasn’t telling the same old story over and over again anymore.  I had discovered narrative discourse therapy and decided to keep listening so I could heal him.

I discovered Gestalt when I was 15 and used processes from books with my family and friends.

I underwent Primal Therapy when I was 18 and started training to be a primal therapist when I was 22.

One of the teacher therapists who I admired greatly, returned from a trip to the States, promoting a workshop that all of us at the primal therapy centre enrolled in.

We all discovered together in this workshop, that we could spend the rest of our lives in therapy, or, we could choose how we wanted to live.  We all discovered the power to choose powerfully.

The result?

The whole centre fell apart.  We all chose to live exciting, fulfilling and rewarding lives.  We moved on from working through our issues and simply chose the lives we wanted to live and took our attention off our issues.

My life became full of joy and possibility.  My life was challenging and things still stopped me or slowed me down, but I no longer had my attention on my issues, agonising when I would ever be able to transcend them.

I stopped trying to be a therapist.

I started and sold three businesses.  I left a toxic relationship.  I faced my dad and brother’s cancers and deaths.  I learned to meditate.  I travelled and taught overseas.  I became a trainer.  I took a punt on a relationship and committed to a marriage.

My life was about creating a future instead of looking back to my past.

When I worked as a therapist, I was helping people work through their issues. When I worked as a trainer, I was working to transform people’s lives so that they had more possibilities and quality to their life.

Then I started to train as a coach.

Coaching was all about creating clarity and focus in people’s lives.

All through my career as a trainer and a coach, I’ve used my therapy tools and have never been afraid of helping people through emotional states.  But if someone needs therapy – I refer them straight away to the people who are committed and talented in this methodology.

I value my joy and vitality in my life and know what results I want to help others create. 

My work is about helping create futures of joy, empowerment, fulfilment and choice.  I help people clarify what’s important and focus on doing the important, significant things.

A therapist looks back and beyond and within.

A coach looks  forward, within and about doing the things that will get you to where you want to go.

I’m a coach and a trainer, not a therapist.  

Thank God!

This is only the beginning. Get to know clarity. Email me, Mike Kennedy...

My Epiphany at Church on Sunday!

This is scary for me.

So scary, it's taken me four days to post this blog.

I'm not sure why I'm scared, because it's all about what's happened to me and I know that it's true.

But also because what I write about in this blog is ideas, information and inspiration to benefit and add value to you.

Today I'm writing about me in the hope that that will benefit you in some way. It's a long shot, but let's give it a go!

I also know that my fear comes from that I care about what you think of me. - Silly me! - That's what was making this hard!

I'm about to tell you what happened to me in Church on Sunday.

So, if this sort of stuff offends you or contradicts your beliefs, it's time for you to click away from here. Don't say I didn't warn you!

We went to church on Sunday.

It's not something we normally do and it was probably because Rose recently had her own epiphany in a church service associated with a conference she has recently returned from. She said she'd like to go to church on Sunday.

It might have also been that we had gone to this particular church's fair a couple of weeks ago. After the event Rose noted that all the people from that church were high energy and motivated people and that she liked them all.

That in itself was pretty remarkable in our sleepy community where high energy and motivation stand out from the norm. Only Kiwis will know what I'm saying!

So, last Sunday, we woke up 15 minutes before Church started, got showered and dressed in record time. I was left standing in Rose's dust outside the church, tying up my shoelaces while Rose had ran into the church ahead of me. Exciting stuff, even if it was a bit embarrassing! Still, I thought, at least we were here.

There was a procession of parish notices, readings, songs, a sermon, some in jokes and then came communion.

I've never been scared to go to church. I grew up in a humanist household and we were encouraged to explore and come to our own conclusions in the areas of faith and spirituality. All these things were up for discussion in our home. By the way - thanks for that Mum & Dad!

So I'm always excited going to church. I had searched for my Christian experience in my early to late teens and never found any meaningful enlightenment or answers. So I left Christianity behind and explored other faiths and found my epiphanies and enlightenment in many of those.

Whenever I visit a Christian Church, I feel like an undercover anthropologist observing a different culture. This extraordinary breakaway Jewish sect that allows Gentiles a taste of the Jewish religious experience. I'm exploring different belief systems and researching other people's experience and demonstrations of their faith. It's fascinating for me, even though my experiences with God have been mostly outside of Churches and temples.

So I'm sitting next to Rose in the Church and the reading and the sermon somehow unlocked something in myself. I'm not even sure what was said, but it sounded to me like "How is God working through your life?" What I heard was myself answering: "I am doing God's work!"

As soon as I heard this, I felt absolutely peaceful. The truth of the statement was self evident. I couldn't do and say the things that I do and say in my coaching sessions by myself. I surrender myself to a higher power and a higher purpose when I coach. The human of my client is the Identity and the Being is the spirit. The end result of my coaching is integration and communication of the human and the being.

Not only that, It is obvious to me that my relationship with Rose is full of spiritual love and God is definitely alive and working in our marriage.

But wait, there is more! I realised the compassion and love I feel for my clients is profound and that that comes through the spiritual nature of the work I do. How amazing is that!

I've never believed that God belongs to one religion or another - the "God's Own Brand"

And yet here I was, in a Christian church, having an epiphany - unique, memorable, alive and invigoratingly, my own.

Communion came. For years I resisted taking communion, but now there was nothing more to resist. I'd admitted that I was an agent of God, that I am actively doing God's work and that doing that work gives me the greatest source of joy, fulfillment and awe of anything I've ever done.

I took communion in a state of peace and grace. My natural state is surrender.

We sang a couple more songs, heard a couple more messages and then someone showed a video of the church float being used in different cities for their Christmas parades. Then everyone went out and had a cuppa tea and it all was as normal as can be.

Go figure. Life is absolutely profound and amazing in this casing of normality!

Thanks for reading this. I've had a breakthrough and you have heard about it.

Email Mike...