Week 14 | A bizar week of working in LA | flow-riding | being triggered

Developing, organizing and facilitating two radical workshops, three interviews about love and a business coaching session in one week was maybe a little bit too much. For the first time in my life I felt I couldn’t do it all and re-scheduled some appointments and didn’t answer to people who were waiting. Doing this forced me to REALLY choose for myself and to stop taking care of ‘the better good’ instead of myself. I dropped tasks and not myself. Wow, that felt so wrong and good at the same time. 

Friday – Total flow with flow creators

Put together three experts on the topic of self-love, give them a good shake and see what happens. Jillian, Charmaine and I worked together the entire afternoon on developing an event about self-love ‘Radical Self Love’. Our collaboration went easily. We started the afternoon with getting to know each other by using the ‘finger exercise’. If you’re curious about this exercise, check this clip of me explaining it on a stage for a hundred people. (The clip is in dutch) To me experiencing flow and synergy is crucial. So no no-sayers and only flowcreators. This is exactly what I experienced today.

I was really looking forward to working on the program with these two people and was curious to how the process would be. I’m so happy to be part of this collaboration.

Saturday – Gratefull

Finally I really enjoyed my weekend. Hours I spend in bed and didn’t come out until late in the afternoon. It was smoldering hot and we decided on going to the beach. So bikini and dress on and go. We first filled our stomaches with food and than we drove to a quiet beach to relax in the sun. It didn’t really go according to plan. We ended up on a filmfestival where they were just about to start a movie about self-love. Crazy how we accidentally got here. After the movie I got to interview the creator for my documentary and episodes ‘Expedition Self Love’. After 30 years of studying the subject, reading books and watching many documentaries she formed a special vision and approach.

She defined self-love with seven A’s. It just slipped my mind what they exactly were. If you’re interested in this I can check this with her. Her vision and experience in love you’ll be able to see in the interview I did. Many hours later and an experience richer we arrived on the beach to enjoy our planned beach time and the sunset.

Sunday – Synchronicity all around

Yesterday was a magical day. Today the universe decided to up his game even more! During the day I worked and in the evening went to a ‘drum circle’ on Venice Beach. Every sunday hundreds of people gather to make music and dance until the sun sets. This was one of the most magical moments of my trip. The energy was energetic and calming at the same time. The people who were there were from different cultures. Some were dressed in extraordinary ways. They were all wearing what they felt like wearing and weren’t bothered by what other might think of them. One man was dressed in all white and was even wearing a white cape. I approached him for a interview and he said yes. The interview was great, the talk after crazy. I felt I was on an episode of ‘bewitched on steroids’. This man has to be brilliant or crazy! One thing was sure to me: This wasn’t all happening for nothing and nothing is coincidence. Everything comes to us! All those beautiful moments I’ve experienced since arriving in the USA.

Coming home we talked with the housemate and friend about relationships and love. The conversation was deep, intense and really funny. I noticed how people in the USA have a different perspective on the role of the man. I never had so many compassionate looks about my relationships status. In the Netherlands people are maybe more open minded. It’s always difficult for me when somebody labels me, especially when it’s a pity label.

Monday – Triggered

Every morning I wake up at five, six or seven here. I try to fall back to sleep and get out of bed around nine, ten and eleven. This sounds late but when you’re not in your bed before two or three in the morning it isn’t too bad.

Around eleven my two new ‘soul sisters’ were arriving to work on the Radical Self Love workshop. The last time we gathered we had fun and it flowed. This time was different. It was difficult to mix our own different ‘colors’. Last time I took the lead to get to a beautiful result in a short period of time and I felt that now I was ‘punished’ for this because of some of the comments.

It took a while to focus on creating a beautiful program for the participants. In the end I was happy with the result and enjoyed the manifestation exercise we did with the three of us. Despite the good results I felt bad afterwards. The confrontation with clashing visions triggered my feelings. I felt to be blamed for things that was unnecessary because we alle formed the decision and content. It was unsettling to feel this but I want to learn from this experience and grow.

Tuesday – No co-creation but alchemy or even magic! 

Today was THE day. For the very first time I was facilitating a completely new workshop. The subject: radical honesty in dating and relationships. With great care I made a first draft and gave 100%. I’m extremely driven in putting together effective and inspiring programs with big impact. I was proud with what I put together and the additions of my co-faciltator made me more happy. Brilliant! If you are interested in participating or putting together this workshop, let us know. This workshop was the first of many workshops and (weekend)retreats we want to facilitate on this subject. We’re also writing a book together which we’ll bring out this year.

Every Wednesday at nine my business yoga coach & business partner have our weekly meeting. So also today. But nine in the morning is midnight in LA. Talking with Jasper is always calming. He has a way to comfort me when I need it and I’ve never matched with somebody so much about our knowledge. When we focus our attention on a subject or activity it feels like we’re two alchemists who manage to turn metal in gold in no time. This evening this happened again. Together we worked on the nine steps to enlightened working and connected them to the three elements we focus on: happines, impact and more income. It was a perfect fit. I’m so looking forward to make this more concrete and put this on a flyer. Most of the information is on our website. If you’re curious how to work more enlightened take the test here of look at the Enlightened Working site (both are in dutch). 

Wednesday – Peaks and valleys everywhere

After a very short night I already woke up at six. An hour of trying to sleep later I got out and get to work. I dropped some balls this weeks and I feel bad about this. It never happened to me that I took on so much that I couldn’t deal with it anymore. It was too much for me to work fast paced in the USA, keep the projects in the Netherland running and fine tuning with potential clients.  To be honest I never dropped a ball in my life, I tend to drop myself. Which is not good of course.

Luckily I managed to respond to one of the biggest newspapers in the Netherlands who wanted to write about me and my work and to a national magazine to write about my destructive relationship with a narcissist and sex addict. You can take a look at the interview I gave here.

After the interview I got into a big fight with the friend I was staying with. I triggered him and he triggered me. It was a harsh fight where both of us couldn’t control our tears where we were speaking and I even had to leave the house. A good thing is that we are both experienced in radical honesty and we managed to get through it. To learn and keep our relationship and love for each other and strengthen this!

It was a intense morning before I was facilitating my second workshop in the USA with my two amazing ‘soul sisters’. The workshop ‘Radical Self Love’ went well and the participants loved it! Facilitating the workshop wasn’t that extraordinary for me since I’ve given more than a thousand successful workshops and the subject wasn’t new to me either. What was really special about this workshop was that for the first time in my life I led the other facilitators take the lead. Of course I did deliver a contribution but my role was smaller and more humble than normally.

Thursday – Most magical journey ever

Whooop whooooop this week I developed and facilitated two workshops, did a business coaching session on the beach and interviewed my last person in the USA. I worked really harder in this last week and need a more mellow pace or at least more normal. Since 1999 I’m challenging people to think big. To form and realize their vision, dreams, life mission and ambitions. At the moment I’m living the life of my dreams: more than half the year I travel the world, work on international projects, work with amazing team members & LightWorks entrepreneurs, I make money with coaching on transformation and training other coaches to excel in their expertise and lastly I work on different passion projects that I get to work on every week. In short: I live a life of ‘purpose & service’. Something that I worked hard for to realize and that I wish everybody else experiences as well.

During this journey I wondered again how I would work and what I would do if money and expectations of others wouldn’t matter. I wrote down my dream in small details and decided that I no longer will compromis on this and I’m going to realize my life visions for 100%! One of the thing that I’ll do to realize this is speak with an American entrepreneur who is interested in investing in my six Happy & Healthy Centers around the world. I also will organize and facilitate more retreats and workshops in co-creation with like minded people as part of the annual Happy & Healthy program like I did this week in the USA! To see what this program holds go to the website.

My final night in the USA I celebrated by getting ice cream in my favorite shop and walk on my favorite beach; Venice Beach. After we went for dinner in a restaurant which felt like we were in a magical garden. Breathtakingly beautiful and fun.

In my life I followed a lot of trainings and did a five year study but I never learned more than in this ‘workation’. And while doing this I was also having fun! What it is I exactly learned I’ll share with you in another blog. You can read what I learned during my last workation in Bali in the blog I wrote about this. If you’re interested in coming on a workation with me in Morocco, Suriname or Bali, please send me a message.