Leanne McCafferty - From yawns to yes! How I rewired my brain with NLP and took back my life

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Hello and welcome to this week's Choosing Happy Podcast.

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I'm Heather Masters, your host and today I was lucky enough to interview Leanne McCafferty.

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She's an NLP trainer and coach.

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But more than that, she has an amazing story to tell of her triumph over illness and how she uses NLP to create her happiness in in her life.

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Stay tuned for this week's Choosing Happy Podcast.

Speaker A: 00:00:42

Hello, Leanne, and welcome to the Choosing Happy Podcast.

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Can you give us a little bit of information about yourself, who you are, what you do, who you work with, and then a little bit about your story around nlp.

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Okay, firstly, thank you very much for the invite, Heather.

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It is lovely to be here with you today.

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So I'm Leanne McCafferty and I'm an NLP trainer and coach and I work with a variety of people.

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I, I deliver online programs.

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I live here in France.

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I'm originally, you can probably tell from my accent, I'm not from France.

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I'm originally from Northern Ireland and moved here to the beautiful Dordogne in the southwest of France in February this year about eight months ago.

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So I deliver training online and I deliver one to one coaching workshops and bespoke coaching program called the Beacon Pathway.

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So I work with individuals who are wanting to make changes in their life, be that in any area, be that that they want to make changes in their personal life and their careers and how they achieve the things that they want to achieve in life.

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And I'm also, I also deliver training and do consultancy work in the field of health and social care specializing in services for people with intellectual disabilities.

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I worked in that field for over 25 years before I started my NLP journey.

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tarted my NLP journey back in: 2016

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I, I, my background is in psychology and I have always had a very keen interest in the human mind and how we think and how we do what we do.

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And I got into NLP to help myself back then, back then I was experiencing significant health issues.

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I had poor health and I received a diagnosis from my neurologist who had attended for a number of years a functional neurological disorder.

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And back then I didn't understand what that was.

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And when I asked her what it was, she told me it was the name that they gave or a condition like mine where there was significant neurological symptoms that I had, yet there was no structural damage to the brain.

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So FND is all about how there is a miscommunication in the neural pathways within the structure of our brain rather than any significant damage as such.

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So I didn't have a clue.

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I didn't have a clue what to do with that.

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And there was nothing really that the medical professionals could do for me other than continue to take medication and manage the symptoms and hope that that would help things, which it didn't.

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And some of the medication that I was on for nerve pain, muscle spasms, fatigue, all of that, the side effects were almost as debilitating as the condition itself.

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So I wanted a way to help myself and to see if there was something that I could do to change my experience.

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And I'd heard about NLP and how it helps us to look at how well the neural linguistic program and the clue is in the name, how our thinking patterns and how our language, how we talk to ourselves and other people can influence and impact how we show up our habits, our actions.

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So I got curious and I wondered if there was a way that it could help me in managing my symptoms.

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So I signed up for a two day introductory course back home in Northern Ireland.

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And the rest, they say, is history.

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I became fascinated.

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I had a massive realization moment in that first weekend.

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And it got me really curious about what was possible for me.

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So I continued to learn.

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I signed up for a practitioner training, went on to do master practitioner a year later, and then a few years ago signed up for my trainer's training with Sue Knight.

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So you said you had a massive realization.

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What was the realization?

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If that's okay for you to share?

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Yes, absolutely.

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So I remember that first weekend I was.

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It was all people that were new to NLP and we were exploring how we were thinking and our beliefs about different things.

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And our trainer, it was Michael Dunlop of Ward Training Consultancy that I did that with back then.

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And he got us to go into pairs and look at a limiting belief that we might have so that we could explore that and see if we could somehow change that limit and belief.

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So I decided to work with the belief that I had, which was that I had no conscious control over my yawning.

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For me, with my health, fatigue was a real issue.

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I got really, really tired.

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A tiredness that goes beyond what just being tired at the end of a day's work is.

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And as a consequence of that, I find myself yawning uncontrollably many days.

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And it always kind of happened around 3, 4 o' clock in the afternoon.

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And when it happened in work and meetings and things like that, I felt as if it was really rude that I was disinterested in what people were saying, or that perhaps it had a late night the night before, and it frustrated me.

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So I used that for the exercise, and I did not believe that it would make one bit of difference.

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And I was paired up with a lady called Yvette, and we had a sheet of questions that we could choose one of it and ask in relation to that.

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So I announced my limit in belief.

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I have no conscious control over my yawning.

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And Yvette responded by asking me, and how ridiculous is that belief?

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Yes, that question shocked the life out of me.

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And I thought, what an under goodness is she asking me?

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What a ridiculous question to even put to me.

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And I remember thinking, is that on that sheet or did she just make that up?

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And I was actually really peeved off by the question.

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And my internal talk started going, and I started to say, that's an awful question.

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Of course it's not ridiculous.

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It's my experience of things.

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And I can't really remember what happened after that.

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What I do remember is that at the end of that day, I realized I hadn't yawned once.

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And that was a Saturday and Sunday weekend sort of sessions.

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And that was the end of the Saturday.

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And on the Sunday afternoon, I noticed myself yawning.

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And I stopped in the middle of it.

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I became consciously aware of it.

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And I don't know how it's even possible to stop beyond yet.

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I did, and I find it bizarre.

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And the very next day, I was going to a training day with work.

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It was in the Dunsilli Hotel in Antrim, and I was sitting with a friend afterwards for coffee, and I was telling her the story about my yawning.

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And the realization came to me that for the third day in a row, I hadn't had that fit of yawning anymore.

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And I thought, wow, wow.

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How is that even possible?

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How does that work?

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So, yeah, I was fascinated and really, really shocked and thought to myself, well, if that can change, what else can change?

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And that's when I went, continued to study NLP to find out more.

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And what effect did that have on your illness?

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Your feeling unwell, your disability, in effect, in as much as, you know, you struggled with.

Speaker B: 00:10:30

Yes, it shifted my belief, Heather.

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It shifted my belief about what was possible with regards to my health before I thought that I didn't really have any control over my symptoms or what was happening for me.

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And that realization made me think, okay, so there's more that my unconscious knows and can do to make a difference for me.

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So I started to learn more about our beliefs.

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I started to learn more about my own habits and my own patterns, my own ways of thinking and being.

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And I started to change things, started to set myself small daily goals, believe that I could achieve them.

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And that led me on a journey that bit by bit, I was able to take back control of my health.

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And you've turned this into a program.

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Can you explain a little bit about your program?

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Yes, yes, I have.

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Yes.

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It's fascinating.

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Learning about NLP really helped me, as I said, to think about my own patterns and what I wanted in life.

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It really started to get me thinking about focusing on what I wanted rather than on the problem.

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I had been focused on my ill health rather than how I wanted to be.

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And that led me on a real journey of I took back control of my health.

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And then I realized that I wanted to set up my own business, that I was in a job that.

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That no longer really aligned with who I was.

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So I ended up making a number of different changes in my life.

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I left my job, I set up my own business of coaching and consultancy and training, and I left a marriage that I'd been in for 18 years and headed off traveling.

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And I traveled solo across a number of countries.

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France, Italy, Egypt, Thailand, Jordan.

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And then I found myself in India.

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And I was in the south of India, and I was at yoga one morning before attending a training western night, and I slipped and fell and I fractured a bone in my foot and I ended up stuck in India.

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I was supposed to be traveling up the coast to go up, yet I couldn't move.

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Ultimately, I was stuck and I was traveling with a 20 kilogram backpack, so I wasn't going anywhere for a while.

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So I ended up staying there for an extra six weeks.

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A wonderful place to be stuck.

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I was in a beautiful resort, £36 in Cherrib Beach.

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And it was wonderful, yet I was frustrated.

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I needed crutches to get a bite.

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And it took me back to.

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In my mind to the time when my health was poor, because back then I needed a walking stick to get a bite when my health was at its worst.

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So I was wanting to use the time resourcefully to work on stuff for my business.

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Yet each time I went to write and to plan things out, I felt stuck in my mind as well as in my body.

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And the words wouldn't come.

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And I was chatting to sue one night and.

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And I told her that I was stuck and that I wasn't able to move forward.

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And she teased and laughed at me and she says, well, you are stuck looking at my foot.

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But as we talked, she encouraged me to think about writing about where I was right there and then.

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Why not write about being stuck?

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She said, because often for her, writing about where she was at was a great place to start.

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So that's what I did.

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I started to journal and write about being stuck.

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And that took me back to those times in my life, with my health, in my.

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The job I was in, in my marriage, about that feeling, that same feeling of stuckness.

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And I find my mind spiraling.

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And then I remembered my NLP training and said to myself, okay, right, so those things have happened.

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So how did you, you know, you're here now.

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How did you get unstuck?

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How did you do that?

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And I started to think about that.

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And as I did, I realized that each time I was in that situation, I followed the same strategy, I followed the same path, if you will.

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I became aware that I wasn't happy, that there was something wrong and something that I wanted to change.

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And then I got curious about what else was possible for me, what could be different.

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And then I started to allow myself to believe that that change that I wanted was possible and that I could achieve what I wanted.

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So each time then I set small, I comes that I could.

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That I could work towards that to help me move to where I wanted to be.

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I remember with my health, it was set in small, little daily goals for myself of walking and physio was difficult for me, so I had weakness and wasting in the muscles, the small muscles in my hand and physio exercises frustrated me.

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So I thought about, well, what's an enjoyable way of doing that and strengthening my hands?

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And I was really fascinated at the time with magic.

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I bought myself a deck of cards and I started to teach myself to shuffle because that was really quite fun.

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And it was okay to consistently drop the cards because everybody does that.

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So as I, as I set those small daily goals for myself, I was kind to myself as I did them.

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And yes, I realized that I follow that similar way, that similar structure of getting myself to where I wanted to be when it came to my health, setting up my business, traveling the world, leaving my marriage, all of that.

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And I thought, wow, this is, this is, this is interest.

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And this is a way that if I find myself in a position like that again, I know I can do something about it.

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And so I felt that it would be helpful to share that with other people who might find themselves in a similar place to me.

Speaker A: 00:18:39

That's obviously very powerful where we are in the World today is probably with the changes that are happening.

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And I know for myself that at times it's been tough to see beyond what we're kind of being bombarded with, to seeing what I want for myself.

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So I'm interested.

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You said that you allowed yourself to see the possibilities, to have new beliefs and expectations.

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How, allowing.

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What does that mean?

Speaker B: 00:19:24

Great question, Heather.

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What does allowing myself to believe that mean?

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I suppose there was a time that it was like, well, other people could do that, but that's not me.

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Other people can go tall in the world.

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I can't because I've had significant health issues.

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And what if, you know, my health deteriorates as I go along?

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What if I'm not able to carry the backpack?

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What if I get lost?

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What if I miss a flight?

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And those kind of patterns, the what ifs, I realized, aren't helpful.

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So it was about flipping that to, what if I could.

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What if I could do that?

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What would that be like?

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And allow myself to imagine that, to imagine jumping on a plane and jetting off to Egypt and going and seeing those places that I'd always wanted to see in my life.

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Going and seeing the Great Pyramid and traveling to India.

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So it was changing how I was speaking to myself, internally shifting how I was talking about, I can't do that.

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This won't work.

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This isn't for me to.

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As I said, what if I could?

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What would that be?

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And allow myself to believe that I actually could.

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And then it was taken one step at a time in order to make that possible in education.

Speaker A: 00:21:21

And just because this is a podcast where not everyone can see you, can you just explain where you are with your health now?

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With my health.

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My health is great.

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I have never been better.

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I feel energized.

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I traveled for nine months with, as I said, 20 kilogram backpack, which, if you'd have told me that 10 years ago, I would have laughed at you.

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And I'm continuing on that health journey.

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Over the last few months, I've signed up.

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I have myself a fitness coach now, Sam Veller from Armour Veller Training.

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He.

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He's a wonderful man and I. I do strength and mobility training with him, and that's set myself each day.

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Well, six days out of seven, you need a day off at some stage.

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So, yes, it's.

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It's continuing to work on my strengths and my mobility.

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And I'm very fortunate to have a beautiful pool in lovely weather here in France.

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So enjoying swimming and walking in the beautiful forest that surround me here.

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So, yes, my Health is great.

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And your NLP journey, where has that taken you?

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To places I never dreamed possible.

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Yes.

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For me, the shift in my health, in my life, in going after the things that I wanted to experience, travel in the world, to move into Europe, has all been possible through learning nlp.

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It's helped me to really focus on the things that I want in life, focus on what I want rather than what I don't want.

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So that's taken me on a fantastic journey that has led me to meet so many incredible people along the way.

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Yes.

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I came here to France two years ago as part of my training with sue and was assisting Sue Knighton and NLP Intensive here.

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And I fell in love with the place and traveled the world and come back again last year before I headed to Uganda for two months and then chose to live here.

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So my NLP journey, NLP is part of how I live, Heather.

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It's ingrained in what I do.

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And I continue to assist sue on trainings, which is absolutely wonderful.

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I have the opportunity to learn from her and model her.

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And I took that learning out to my time in Uganda where I worked with teachers and children out there.

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I've developed an NLP practice group that supports her community of people.

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And yes, NLP underpins everything I do.

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It's embedded in my coaching and the programs that I offer to people.

Speaker A: 00:25:10

And for those listening who maybe don't know a lot about nlp, or even those who do and have a view that it's a set of tools and techniques.

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I know from my experience and the reason I've stayed with NLP so long is, like you said, it's.

Speaker A: 00:25:29

It's a way to live.

Speaker A: 00:25:31

It's.

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It's the experience and modeling.

Speaker A: 00:25:37

Can you.

Speaker A: 00:25:37

Yeah.

Speaker A: 00:25:38

More about that for you?

Speaker B: 00:25:41

Absolutely.

Speaker B: 00:25:44

Nlp, well, the technical definition is this, the study of the structure of experience.

Speaker B: 00:25:52

Ultimately, it's about modeling excellence, the tools and techniques and that you talk about there.

Speaker B: 00:25:59

What is really the output of nlp.

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The core essence is about exploring how people do things really well.

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And when people do things exceptionally excellent, they're often.

Speaker B: 00:26:17

They often don't know how they do it.

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And if you ask questions, you know, how do you do that?

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It's like, well, I don't know.

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That's just who I am.

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That's what I do.

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So NLP gets to the heart of that and offers you the ability to really get under the surface and ask questions that go to that, you know, that unconscious confidence in how people do what they do.

Speaker B: 00:26:46

So for me, that's Been a real journey of recognizing how I do things well, so exploring my own excellence, the ability to get myself unstuck on all of those occasions.

Speaker B: 00:27:02

And when you.

Speaker B: 00:27:03

When you understand the structure of that, you can apply it to other areas of your life, and then it's about you can model that in other people, too.

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So if someone can do something, anyone can do it.

Speaker B: 00:27:17

And for me, that's been a whole journey of, as I've said before, meeting so many amazing people and thinking about, wow, how did they do that?

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And modeling what they do.

Speaker B: 00:27:35

For me, training with Sue Knight has really embedded that within me and really helped me to really fully appreciate the value of that.

Speaker B: 00:27:51

And I've had the privilege of modeling her and how she shows up, how she works in real time over the last few years and apply that to my own practice.

Speaker B: 00:28:04

So, yeah, it's about getting curious about the world, about people and about what's possible.

Speaker B: 00:28:11

And I found myself doing that as I was on my travels.

Speaker B: 00:28:15

When I went to India, I was really curious about the culture there and the way people lived and find myself modeling and applying that to myself.

Speaker B: 00:28:30

Even in things like in the south of India, they focus Ayurvedic medicine is a big thing for them.

Speaker B: 00:28:39

And when I fractured my foot, I went to see an Ayurvedic doctor, and I got really curious and bite their beliefs around that, their beliefs about eating.

Speaker B: 00:28:51

In India, people eat with their hand, and they hold the belief that eating with your hand aids your digestive system.

Speaker B: 00:29:04

So by taking the food, breaking it up, and putting it in your mouth before you even start to chew, you're already.

Speaker B: 00:29:13

You're already breaking off the food that helps with digestion.

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So that was fascinating.

Speaker B: 00:29:21

And I found myself the whole time I was there eating with my right hand, which was rather strange at the start.

Speaker B: 00:29:28

Yet when I left India, it felt really strange to start eating with a knife and pork again.

Speaker B: 00:29:36

So, yes, modeling helps you to understand other people and to learn from them.

Speaker A: 00:29:43

And that curiosity, especially because my experience of working with Sue Knight as well comes very much from presence, which we, you know, we see in lots of other practices.

Speaker A: 00:29:57

And it's sometimes, in my experience, overlooked in nlp, the amount of presence and awareness that really benefits that understanding of the structure.

Speaker A: 00:30:11

Can you expand on your experience of that?

Speaker B: 00:30:16

Yes, presence is.

Speaker B: 00:30:23

It's really important.

Speaker B: 00:30:24

And I agree it is often overlooked.

Speaker B: 00:30:29

We can tell so much about people simply by being present and being aware and noticing what's happening for them.

Speaker B: 00:30:42

People communicate all the time through their body language, through either moving their Eyes where they're placing their hands.

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And they often show you as much about themselves, what's important to them as they do in what they say.

Speaker B: 00:31:02

So being present allows you to notice that and allows you to pick up on things and, yes, really understand people.

Speaker B: 00:31:17

I have actually been.

Speaker B: 00:31:20

I've been helping a friend of late, a mutual friend, a friend of ours who.

Speaker B: 00:31:27

Who writes wonderful poetry.

Speaker B: 00:31:30

And as you know, it's Sue's training.

Speaker B: 00:31:32

She encourages you not to take notes because when you have your head down in a book, you often miss important information that's right in front of you.

Speaker B: 00:31:45

You know, just by observing people, even and looking at the clothes that they wear, it tells you a lot about who they are as a person and their identity.

Speaker B: 00:31:56

And he gk.

Speaker B: 00:31:59

He, instead of taking notes, actually, after the training sessions, started to write poems.

Speaker B: 00:32:08

And what he has been aware of in writing those poems and the things.

Speaker B: 00:32:12

The structure of the training and what he's learned in it has been remarkable.

Speaker B: 00:32:19

So, yes, that's down to presence of being fully there, fully listening to what people are saying, taken in the environment that they're in.

Speaker B: 00:32:35

That's what makes a difference, if you ask me.

Speaker A: 00:32:39

Excellent.

Speaker A: 00:32:39

And how did you use that in Uganda, if you used it at all when you visited Uganda?

Speaker A: 00:32:45

Tell us more about that.

Speaker B: 00:32:48

I did.

Speaker B: 00:32:50

Yes.

Speaker B: 00:32:51

So for two months, I just was.

Speaker B: 00:32:55

Just over a year ago now, I lived and worked in Uganda.

Speaker B: 00:33:00

For the first two weeks, I went out with a local charity from Northern Ireland, Abana Missionaries, and worked in schools out there, helping to refurbish schools and to work with the kids.

Speaker B: 00:33:15

And for the next six weeks, I went solo to a little school called Wisdom Junior School in Bembe in the Wakizo District.

Speaker B: 00:33:26

And I went out there to help them.

Speaker B: 00:33:30

I had connected with the director of the school prior, and he was explaining to me that the kids out there had what some would call behavioral issues, that they were disruptive, unruly, and that the teachers didn't have resources in order to be able to teach them properly.

Speaker B: 00:33:55

So I went out because of my background in working with people with neurodiversity and behaviors that challenge and my NLP skills, thinking that perhaps I could make a difference and help in some way.

Speaker B: 00:34:13

And when I got there, I realized that by being present, by being aware, by submerging myself in the school, rather than going out with a fixed plan of this is what I can do, this is what I can offer, I submerged myself in the culture.

Speaker B: 00:34:34

For the first two weeks, I ran about the playground and played with the kids, chatted with the teachers and listened, had, you know, talked with people, had coaching sessions with the teachers and just got really curious about what life was like for them.

Speaker B: 00:34:55

I went with the kids in the morning to go and fetch water from the well.

Speaker B: 00:34:59

I learned how to milk a car, would you believe?

Speaker B: 00:35:03

I know.

Speaker B: 00:35:04

And it was fantastic.

Speaker B: 00:35:08

And as I did that and was present to the moment and noticed what was going on for them, I realized that there was real.

Speaker B: 00:35:22

There was real skill and talent there already.

Speaker B: 00:35:27

The teachers had remarkable skills.

Speaker B: 00:35:29

There was people with carpentry skills, hairdressing skills.

Speaker B: 00:35:33

One teacher in particular, Yes, he wanted to be a counselor and had a great rapport with the kids and a great way of being with them.

Speaker B: 00:35:50

Teacher Esther had a great rhyme that when the kids were disruptive in class, she was able to get them to refocus on their work.

Speaker B: 00:36:01

So as I was there, I saw real excellence in the teachers and in the children themselves.

Speaker B: 00:36:10

And by focusing on that, I was able to make that visible, make them aware of that, because it was so common for them.

Speaker B: 00:36:22

They didn't see those things as skills.

Speaker B: 00:36:24

That was just what they did.

Speaker B: 00:36:29

As I observed that and noticed that, I was able to highlight it and get them to teach it to one another.

Speaker B: 00:36:40

Teacher Esther taught that rhyme in assembly to all of the kids, and it was amazing.

Speaker B: 00:36:49

I remember that little rhyme.

Speaker B: 00:36:51

Pay, pay, pay.

Speaker B: 00:36:52

Aha.

Speaker B: 00:36:53

Pay attention.

Speaker B: 00:36:54

Something so simple, Heather, yet so effective.

Speaker B: 00:37:00

And they thought that I was coming out there, that they needed the funding that I was raising for them.

Speaker B: 00:37:06

They needed my skills, and they needed additional resources, yet in focus.

Speaker B: 00:37:11

And.

Speaker B: 00:37:12

And that being present to what was already there helped them to realize that they already had so much of the resources within the school that they needed.

Speaker B: 00:37:28

It was all there.

Speaker B: 00:37:30

And it was about helping them to see that and to share that with one another.

Speaker A: 00:37:36

It's also one of the beliefs of excellence that we have all the resources.

Speaker B: 00:37:41

Absolutely.

Speaker B: 00:37:43

Absolutely, yes.

Speaker B: 00:37:45

And it was a wonderful example of that in action, because it reinforced to me that we so do.

Speaker B: 00:37:54

And they so did.

Speaker B: 00:37:56

They.

Speaker B: 00:37:56

So still do.

Speaker B: 00:37:57

I still support Wisdom Junior school and the teachers and the kids out there, and they're achieving amazing things again.

Speaker B: 00:38:07

We talked earlier about belief.

Speaker B: 00:38:10

A big part of it was helping them to believe in themselves and to recognize their own skills, their own abilities, and just how valuable they are.

Speaker B: 00:38:23

And to see them passing their exams and going into different sporting championships throughout the year with that mindset of believing in themselves.

Speaker B: 00:38:34

It's been incredible to watch what they've been doing with that even since I have come back.

Speaker A: 00:38:41

That's Amazing.

Speaker A: 00:38:42

It's a lovely story.

Speaker A: 00:38:44

And do you intend to go back?

Speaker B: 00:38:46

Yes, absolutely.

Speaker B: 00:38:48

Absolutely.

Speaker B: 00:38:50

I continued to, as I say, work with them.

Speaker B: 00:38:53

And it is my intention in the next year or so to return to the school and to continue my work out there, as well as continuing it online.

Speaker B: 00:39:07

And there's another school that I really want to go and visit, because one of the teachers, it was actually the teacher that taught me how to milk a cow, John Michael.

Speaker B: 00:39:18

He had a real desire when I was there to go back to his own village in a different part of Uganda and to make a difference there.

Speaker B: 00:39:32

Yet I wasn't quite sure how he was going to do that.

Speaker B: 00:39:39

So we continued working together, and not terribly long after I left Uganda last year, he actually went back to his home village and he set up his own school there, which is amazing.

Speaker B: 00:39:54

And he has built it himself, him and his wife.

Speaker B: 00:39:59

And bit by bit, the school is growing, so he has been enrolling children from his local village, which has been amazing.

Speaker B: 00:40:09

The updates that he sends me through are fantastic to see.

Speaker B: 00:40:13

And just a month or so ago, he actually became chairperson of his village.

Speaker B: 00:40:20

So he's achieved the outcome that he wanted and making a difference in the place that he's from.

Speaker B: 00:40:27

So when I go back, I have another area of Uganda that I really love to go and see and see more of the great work that he and his wife are doing there, too.

Speaker A: 00:40:39

Excellent.

Speaker A: 00:40:40

Excellent.

Speaker A: 00:40:41

And the podcast is Choosing Happy.

Speaker A: 00:40:45

And the premise that I started with was.

Speaker A: 00:40:49

Was based on an NLP premise that what we, you know, we have choice in everything, and we can choose what we want for our lives.

Speaker A: 00:40:59

And just listening to you today, I can feel the.

Speaker A: 00:41:05

The positive energy radiating from you as well.

Speaker A: 00:41:09

So has this been a journey of happiness for.

Speaker A: 00:41:12

For you?

Speaker B: 00:41:13

Yes, absolutely.

Speaker B: 00:41:17

That's a.

Speaker B: 00:41:17

That's a beautiful way of.

Speaker B: 00:41:19

Of putting it.

Speaker B: 00:41:24

Yeah.

Speaker B: 00:41:28

Before this journey began, I was living my life in a way that I felt I should.

Speaker B: 00:41:39

And looking back now, I recognize that how I was living was very much, excuse me, about doing what I felt was right for other people and pleasing other people and living my life to suit others.

Speaker B: 00:42:01

And I didn't actually, a lot of the time, I find that we can often know what we don't want.

Speaker B: 00:42:12

Yet sometimes it's harder for people to realize what they do actually want.

Speaker B: 00:42:17

And that was the case for me back then.

Speaker B: 00:42:21

And it was whenever I allowed myself to imagine, allow myself to believe that something different was possible and really ask myself the question, what is it that you want?

Speaker B: 00:42:35

That's when I started making changes in My life.

Speaker B: 00:42:38

And that's whenever I started to live the life that I really wanted to live.

Speaker B: 00:42:43

And I am living the life that I choose to live.

Speaker B: 00:42:48

And that in itself has brought so much happiness.

Speaker B: 00:42:54

So, yes, absolutely.

Speaker B: 00:42:57

It's definitely been a journey of happiness.

Speaker B: 00:43:01

I've got to explore the world, meet so many amazing people, and I do what I love each and every day.

Speaker A: 00:43:13

That's.

Speaker A: 00:43:13

That's really inspiring, I think, and also courageous in my experience from my own life, to move from the old, you have to let go of the old.

Speaker A: 00:43:29

So in.

Speaker A: 00:43:30

In effect, there.

Speaker A: 00:43:31

There's not just a.

Speaker A: 00:43:33

A collapse around the environment and relationships that you have with people.

Speaker A: 00:43:39

For me, it's also.

Speaker A: 00:43:41

It's a shift in identity as well.

Speaker A: 00:43:43

So it's letting go of that old identity.

Speaker A: 00:43:46

Was that what you experienced?

Speaker B: 00:43:50

Yes, absolutely it was.

Speaker B: 00:43:56

And to a degree, it continues to be letting go.

Speaker B: 00:44:01

I made all those changes in my life, what, just over two years ago.

Speaker B: 00:44:07

And as I traveled for those nine months, that was a big process of me letting go, letting go of the past, making pace with the fact that I had chosen patterns and ways of being that.

Speaker B: 00:44:24

That weren't really in alignment with me.

Speaker B: 00:44:27

So there was a letting go and an acceptance of myself within that and then figuring out, okay, so now who do I choose to be who.

Speaker B: 00:44:38

So, yes, it's very much about that identity.

Speaker B: 00:44:41

What do I want for the rest of my life?

Speaker B: 00:44:45

What do I want to experience, what I want to achieve and allow that to continue to unfold?

Speaker B: 00:44:56

Yes.

Speaker B: 00:44:57

Travel and experience in different cultures, going and living in Uganda and experience in a completely different way of life.

Speaker B: 00:45:10

Was.

Speaker B: 00:45:10

Was remarkable.

Speaker B: 00:45:11

I, you know, when I was in Uganda, I. I lived in.

Speaker B: 00:45:16

In humble accommodation.

Speaker B: 00:45:18

I bathed each morning with a flask of hot water rather than a shower.

Speaker B: 00:45:23

I lived in conditions that I never experienced in my life before, and that was one of the happiest times of my life.

Speaker B: 00:45:35

Even though I had so little, I had no decent WI fi, keeping in contact with people back home was virtually impossible at times, and it was class.

Speaker B: 00:45:46

So, yes, All of that experience has helped me to think about who I am and how I choose to show up in life.

Speaker B: 00:45:59

Yeah.

Speaker B: 00:46:01

So.

Speaker B: 00:46:01

Yeah.

Speaker A: 00:46:03

So what would you say to someone who is listening and feeling stuck and might be stuck in a dark place and doesn't know how to move forward and maybe feels frightened, fearful of taking those steps?

Speaker B: 00:46:27

Well, I would say, first of all, it's okay to be where you are right now and the choices that you have made and are making.

Speaker B: 00:46:37

And fear is a normal, natural response and feeling towards change, I think it was.

Speaker B: 00:46:46

JFK said, there's nothing more certain in life than uncertainty and change.

Speaker B: 00:46:51

Change is inevitable, yet at times we fear it, at times we resist it.

Speaker B: 00:47:00

Yet in my experience, change can bring about so much, so much healing, so much worth, so much positive experiences for us.

Speaker B: 00:47:17

So for me, it's about, okay, it starts with awareness.

Speaker B: 00:47:20

It's about being aware of where you are and how you might like things to be different and to just allow yourself to be curious about that and to think about what is possible.

Speaker B: 00:47:35

And, you know, if there is something that you want to do or want to change, find out about how someone else has done that.

Speaker B: 00:47:44

You know, how someone else has achieved that in their life, and get curious about that and learn from that and allow yourself to believe that the change is possible, and then just take one step at a time towards what it is that you want to have instead.

Speaker B: 00:48:07

And be kind to yourself along the way.

Speaker B: 00:48:09

Because this kind of path and change, you know, it's not always a straight line.

Speaker B: 00:48:14

It's not straightforward.

Speaker B: 00:48:16

There's days where we take a step forward and another day we take a step back, and that's okay.

Speaker B: 00:48:23

That's part of the process.

Speaker B: 00:48:26

And it's about being kind to yourself as you embark on that journey of change.

Speaker A: 00:48:34

I think there's one thing that maybe we haven't said clearly and that is taking responsibility for yourselves so that you recognize that it is the choices that you make that determine where you go.

Speaker A: 00:48:53

And I know there are obviously situations in life that we find ourselves in, but taking on the belief that we can change if we take that responsibility, that, you know, my life is my responsibility.

Speaker A: 00:49:09

Yeah.

Speaker A: 00:49:09

I'm the leading person in my life.

Speaker A: 00:49:11

So that.

Speaker A: 00:49:13

That is an empowering belief.

Speaker A: 00:49:15

Rather than being blaming the outside circumstances, that irrespective of that, we can move forward.

Speaker B: 00:49:24

Yes, absolutely.

Speaker B: 00:49:25

100%, Heather.

Speaker B: 00:49:30

Life isn't always easy, and there are things that happen and difficulties that come about.

Speaker B: 00:49:37

And I talked about getting curious about how other people have achieved things.

Speaker B: 00:49:43

One of the people I remember reading the book by Viktor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning, where he talked about his experience in the concentration camps in Auschwitz and in the most difficult of times.

Speaker B: 00:50:03

And that book for me, was a very pivotal moment for me, because in the book, what he's talking about is what he describes as the last of the human freedoms that we, no matter what's going on in our life, no matter what the difficulties are, we have the power to choose our attitude in any given situation.

Speaker B: 00:50:26

So he talked about, you know, Prisoners himself even being treated really badly, yet they had the ability to control their mind and how they were thinking.

Speaker B: 00:50:40

In the time I remember Frankl talking about, they couldn't take the image of his wife's face out of his mind.

Speaker B: 00:50:50

And Stephen Covey sort of summarizes that work of Frankel's perfectly in his book 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, where he talks about between stimulus and response, there is a space.

Speaker B: 00:51:09

And in that space is our power to chase you.

Speaker B: 00:51:14

And in our choice lies our growth and our freedom.

Speaker B: 00:51:20

And that sums it up perfectly.

Speaker B: 00:51:22

Things happen in life and as humans, we're creatures of habit and we can react, we can respond in a habitual way to that almost automatically without thinking about it.

Speaker B: 00:51:36

Yet when we recognize when something happens and we recognize that space before we choose our response, that's where our choice lies.

Speaker B: 00:51:47

That's where we can think.

Speaker B: 00:51:48

Take a moment to think, okay, how do I choose to respond to this?

Speaker B: 00:51:53

We can change the outside world.

Speaker B: 00:51:56

What we can do is change ourselves, how we respond and how we choose to be affected by that.

Speaker A: 00:52:06

Beautifully said,.

Speaker B: 00:52:09

Thank you.

Speaker A: 00:52:10

How do people get in contact with you and who are you looking to work with?

Speaker B: 00:52:18

So I have my website where I share my one to one coaching, my workshops and my program.

Speaker B: 00:52:27

It's liamccafferty.com developed by the fabulous Alex Knight and his wife Bea of Atelier Palomar.

Speaker B: 00:52:40

So you can find all the information about me there and send a contact form.

Speaker B: 00:52:47

You can sign up for my mailing list and get a little insight each day into your inbox for seven days and then newsletters after that.

Speaker B: 00:52:57

So that's a great way.

Speaker B: 00:52:59

And I'm on social media, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and Substack as well, so people can find me there.

Speaker B: 00:53:10

And for me, who am I looking to work with?

Speaker B: 00:53:15

For people who want to make changes in their life, for people who know there's more, there's more out there that they, that they want for themselves and maybe just aren't quite, quite sure of how to go about that and would like some support.

Speaker B: 00:53:34

Yes, I would be happy to support them.

Speaker A: 00:53:40

Well, thank you so much for this conversation.

Speaker A: 00:53:44

It's been fascinating and truly inspiring and thank you for being a lightened world.

Speaker B: 00:53:54

Thank you, Heather.

Speaker B: 00:53:55

It's been an absolute pleasure.

Speaker B: 00:53:57

I really appreciate it.

Speaker B: 00:54:00

It's been lovely to chat with you today and you've just made me giggle.

Speaker B: 00:54:05

Thank you for that feedback about being a light in the world because just last night I was thinking about the podcast and the Beacon pathway and my initials just as a little side note, my maiden name, I've chosen to keep my married name even though I'm no longer married.

Speaker B: 00:54:29

But my maiden name was Penny and my initials are Leanne Alexandra Mary Penning, which is Lump.

Speaker B: 00:54:39

And I find that really interesting that I created a program and chose to call it the Bacon Pathway without even realizing that that that came to my awareness last night and she was quite funny.

Speaker B: 00:54:54

So yes, thank you Heather.

Speaker B: 00:54:56

I really enjoyed chatting with you today.

Speaker A: 00:54:58

Thank you.

Speaker A: 00:54:59

Thank you so much.

Speaker A: 00:55:00

Bye for now.

Speaker B: 00:55:02

Bye bye.

Speaker A: 00:55:03

Thank you so much for taking the time to listen to this week's episode.

Speaker A: 00:55:08

If you enjoyed it or think it would be valuable to others, please do share.

Speaker A: 00:55:12

And if you really enjoyed it, please please leave me a review.

Speaker A: 00:55:15

It really helps the podcast.

Speaker A: 00:55:17

All of the links are in the show notes and I look forward to seeing you next week on the Choosing Happy podcast.