Tag: Coaching

Why Pursuing Our Passion is Crucial for Our Children

On By IreneIn Celebration, Commitment, Courage, Creativity, Dreams, Faith, Grace, Healing, Homemaker, Homeschooling, Hope, Journey, JumpStart, Kingdom Lifestyle, Motherhood, Season of Life, WorthLeave a comment

What legacy do you want leave? How would you like your children to remember you? These are questions that I asked myself often. I aspire to be a mother who inspires my children to rise higher and that involves some sacrifice from me. In my current triple-H reality of Homemaking, Homeschooling and Health Healing, wanting to rise higher myself can feel like an impossible task. Parenting is energy intensive and it can drain us at the end of the day. Some days I feel like I don’t even like my child due to the drained energy. And those are the days that I easily fell into the trap of blaming her for not being able to live my life fully. By the grace of God, I am aware this is not to be. My child is my reason to rise higher not my stumbling block.

After days and months and years of reflection and evaluation, I came to see some light. I want to pursue my passion and dreams as my means of living fully. That in turn will fill my tank and that tank overflows to my child. But I also need to be realistic; what works and what does not. How do I move in the ever changing rhythm? What becomes important in this journey? I am going to share practicals in three areas that would hopefully help us to move forward in our journey of pursuing our dreams.

Stress Management
This is an inevitable part of our modern life. Stress is also a nasty cause of diseases, hence it is so important to possess the skills to manage our stress. In my current reality, my days are pretty full as I am the kitchen ministry, cleaning ministry, children ministry, health ministry, purchasing officer etc. I cook most of our meals at home due to our health condition. My child is involved in cleaning, cooking and housework as this is part of homeschooling. This does not make my task faster but it does make our lives more pleasant and fun. Living with Myasthenia Gravis has limited me in a big way and to add that on, being a supporting wife of a struggling entrepreneur added a good amount of stress in my life.

So what works best when life gets overwhelming? Before the downward spiral spins out of control; STOP, PAUSE and BE PRESENT. This helps with emotion regulation. Simply by noticing your breathing or any one sense at a time helps us to relax. Just doing it for 5 minutes can free our body from the grip of stress. Once we are calm, we can acknowledge what happened in a neutral way and then let the grip go. This is helpful on a daily basis and when practiced intentionally, we trained ourselves to relax and let go of stress whenever we need to.

Staying Focused on Your Dreams
What are your passions and dreams? What makes you alive? Are you working on it? These are questions that would give us a clue where we are at with our dreams. If you can name your dreams, write them down and have it in a prominent place. Take encouragement from this scripture;

This serves as a good reminder of what is in your heart and what you are working towards. If you are unsure of your passions and dreams, I’d like to invite you to connect with us at JumpStart. JumpStart is a programme that will help you to discover what’s in your heart and you’ll also receive the tools to plan towards them. Engaging with a coach or someone to accompany you in your journey of the pursuit of your dreams and passions is a good idea regardless of where you are at.

Incorporating Your Dreams in Your Daily Life
Pursuing our dreams as parents is a delicate balancing act. First thing to evaluate is our daily and weekly rhythm. What does your typical day look like? What time do you wake up and then what follows? Are there time in my day that I wasted? I surely have that, I sometime waste my time on the internet doing things like scrolling videos that did not help me to further my dreams. Including time wasting activities in our evaluation will help us to clearly make a decision of what work best for us.

Making pursuing our dreams part of our lifestyle IS going to cost us. Be prepared to make sacrifices for our children and also be gracious towards ourselves from time to time. I am a typical go getter hyper achiever type of person. When I am focused on something, it is not easy to slack that off. So for me, growth is to be able to slow down, enjoy the learning from parenthood, soaked in the love of the Father in my season and be gracious to myself when I did not achieve what I aimed to do. It will take longer for me to pursue my dreams but what’s important is that I am on the track.

These practicals becomes easier when it is lived with great intention. I highly encourage having someone to journey alongside you as you pursue your dreams. Our children are precious and they deserve to have great role models in us, their parents. May you find great fulfillment as you pursue your dreams precisely because of your children.

With lots of love,
Irene

Healthy Mindset Makes Healing a Great Journey

On By IreneIn Celebration, Coaching, Faith, Grace, Hope, Journey, Kingdom Lifestyle, Myasthenia Gravis Healing JourneyLeave a comment

A very important but seldom talked about element when it comes to bodily healing is mental health. We are a whole being, therefore mental health is vital for any healing journey. It was clear to me one of the biggest aggravator of Myasthenia Gravis (MG) in me was chronic unmanaged stress. Hence managing stress and regulating my emotions became a primary goal. I learnt to let go of a lot of unnecessary worries, grudges and heaps of things not in my control. I began to set better priorities and strengthen my boundaries all the while learning to live with MG as well as learning to mother.

What helped me to stay on the course was an overall healthy mindset. I am determined to beat MG and thrive in my life. I know well the reality may be difficult at times, not denying it in a bit. It was tempting to get into a pity party when symptoms hit hard. In all honesty, symptoms are discouraging and hard to live with. I felt like I want to get over and done with it fast whenever it hit me. However, there’s a hard reality that my body needed the time and conducive environment to heal. So, bouncing between “yes, I got this” to “I just want to give up” were common occurance especially in the beginning. I am so blessed to be surrounded by people who support me in this journey, constantly reminding me who I truly am.

Those reminders were fuel for me. Every time I felt beaten, I face the giant instead of running away from it. I allow myself to acknowledge how I felt and also decide not to stay in that low state for too long. How do I rise above the feeling of defeat? – that has been a question I asked myself over and over again. Friends, this is where it is so important to have someone (or a few people) you trust that you can share your life with. I have a few people that I share deeply with; just being able to talk to someone who love you for who you are, is healing. It would be extra awesome if the one you share with is able to just listen and ask you meaningful question. Effective questioning practiced by coaches has power to unlock certain perspectives that would otherwise be blind to us.

In our fast paced world, so many of us lack the time to even be present to ourselves. Some of us due to childhood trauma may not even know how to regulate our emotions. When I was on the peak of taking steroid as a means of MG disease control, my emotions were so messed up. I cried for small matters and it was hard to even regulate my emotions properly. Thank God my husband was really understanding and supported me through those tough times. This is where having some tools in hand would be helpful. When we feel a certain uneasy emotion, it is important to take a pause. A simple way that I practice is to first name the emotion, then ask Jesus how would I like Him to minister to me at that moment?. These kind of pauses helped me to calm down. With a calm mind, then I can tackle the source of those uneasy emotions. From then praise will rise. In the same way, I think it is also good to take a pause when good emotion arises – just taking time to thank God for the blessings and share that moment with Him. I am pretty sure God loves celebrating with us.

Whatever journey we are on, the path would sometimes be smooth and sometimes there are potholes on the road. Whether it be a nicely paved road or some bits where we are met with holes, always remember to look up – I bet the view is beautiful. Dear friends, I wish you a great adventure in your journey. If you find it particularly hard at this moment of your journey, reach out to someone – a family member, a true friend, a coach or a counsellor. Please share your life in all sincerity because it is normal to want to be known by someone. Indeed it is very good for our mental and overall health if we are able to allow ourselves to be truly seen and heard. I leave you with this quote and pray that you are blessed in your journey.

With lots of love,
Irene

From Fear to Fullness of Life

On By IreneIn Coaching, Courage, Faith, Grace, Hope, Journey, Kingdom Lifestyle, Myasthenia Gravis Healing Journey, Season of LifeLeave a comment
Teal is the color representing Myasthenia Gravis

June is the month dedicated to the awareness of Myasthenia Gravis (MG) and it has become really close to my heart being on my journey of healing from Myasthenia Gravis. Yes I know the general consensus said that the condition has no cure but I choose to trust in my body’s ability to heal. MG thrivers are sometimes called snowflake warriors for the fact that every case is unique. That pose a challenge of its own as there is no certainty or a good pattern as reference. I have taken the path of looking at my unique condition as an opportunity to experience fullness of life in ways I would not have explored otherwise.

When I was given the diagnosis in Feb 2020, my world was an utter chaos. There were so many things that I needed to consider and to take care of, all at the same time giving myself the best chance to beat this. Not only my world was chaotic, the world around me turned into a real chaos with the lockdown and restrictions started to affect our lives shortly after I was discharged from the hospital. The looming fear at that point of time was intense and I can feel it in the atmosphere. If anything you need to know about autoimmunity, extreme stress is very bad for any autoimmune condition. Mine was triggered by a prolonged period of unmanaged stress plus sudden change of environment. It is also known that people who are immunosuppressed like myself are categorized as being high risk of viral infection. So it was natural of me of being fearful.

I was just beginning to navigate life with a chronic condition and then this virus chaos came about. Fear was all over the place and I was not spared from it. Fear causes stress that worsen my condition and it’s very easy to see how bad it affect me. So I made a conscious decision since being out of the hospital to manage my stress well. This fear business took a toll on me as almost everyone around me were fear filled about the virus. I reached the tipping point real quickly and decided that fear is no way of living. It was sucking life out of me and I did not like it. In my desperation for life literally, I called upon the name of Jesus and asked Him; what should I do? How do I live?

“Let your faith be bigger than your fear!”

That was all I heard and that was enough to propel me forward. The first strategy of winning a battle is to know the enemy and that’s where I started – naming my fear. It was not hard to name them as the first and biggest one that came out was the fear of death. I feared death after escaping death not too long ago. I feared that an infection may kill me because at that point of time I was swallowing 20 tablets daily; a majority of which were immunosuppressive drugs. That would made me really vulnerable. Nailing this fear to the cross and charging forward in life with faith was my experience of saving grace. I have confidence and courage that I will live and thrive. Proper precaution taken, the rest is trust and choosing to live in joy. After all, my health is my responsibility, I personally think it is unfair to put my health risk as a burden for the rest of the society. Praise be to God for His protection; all through this year of healing I have regained strength and is rarely sick.

Putting fear in perspective is an important element in moving forward. The way to do that is to seek the truth about the specific situation. We know that the truth will set us free although it is likely to be uncomfortable. Let’s look at some comparison: if you catch a cold, you know that the chance of you recovering and healing is more than 99%. With that knowledge, fear is by logic small in comparison. The inconvenience of being unable to function optimally for a few days that may bother you more than the fear of death. In my situation with MG, nothing was certain. When I was administered with the rescue medication, there was no guarantee that it will work on me, we hope I respond which I did (with no side effects). Same with the maintenance medication, we can only hope I respond, which I also did until we adjusted the dose. When I asked if a remission is possible, the answer I got was “I can’t tell you for sure because MG is so variable. Some patients get into remission and it came back again, some get into permanent remission and some never get into remission”.

With such variability and uncertainty, it was very easy to despair and let fear grip over my life. But I knew this very clearly, fear perpetuate stress and stress worsen the symptoms. Given the situation, although saddened, I made the choice to live in hope. If some people get into a permanent remission, I shall be one of them. The choice I made to live in the fullness of hope and life carved my way forward. I took actions that would give me the best chance to get to the remission. A massive change in lifestyle was required – diet, habits, routine etc. It was a sharp learning curve to be in tuned with my body again. I realized how brainwashed I was! And that was uncomfortable! One great thing coming out of this healing journey is the deepening of my empathy towards myself as well as to others especially those who could not see a way forward in a fear saturated world.

Being able to face my fears with the truth and knowledge in hand and then move forward in faith has been a great blessing. I live in freedom precisely because I never allow the disease to define who I am. I admit it is not the easiest of journey and fear does creep in from time to time. I allow my self to process the fear and then to formulate the way forward with my Saviour. All this is possible thanks to my years as a coach and also those years in ministering to people as well as support from my inner circle.

Fear is a constant companion whether we like it or not. Some are necessary like in the case of meeting a tiger, you better let your fear propel you run for your life. I would say most fear we face today are opportunities if we allow them to. Dear friends, if you are having difficulty in navigating fear and are feeling stuck, do feel free to reach out to me. I run my own coaching practice and I can also recommend other coaches or counsellors to you. Know that it is my prayer for you to be well. Fear does not have the final say and it is possible to live victoriously. May you be blessed!

With lots of love,
Irene