Sign up for an Inspirational Advent Calendar!
If you’d like a dose of inspiration in your inbox every day, to help you reconnect with yourself and your own energy, this is for you.
Hey lovely person reading this! Thank you for coming. I wanted to let you know about something I’m offering in the run up to Christmas. It’s full of hope and heart and I think you or someone you know will love it.
It’s a daily advent email, from me to you, full of inspiration to help you get a fresh perspective on yourself and your life as we go through December. Inside you’ll receive:
A power word for the day
A quote to make you think
Some reflections from me on the topic of the day
An exercise to help you connect with yourself and the topic
A journal prompt
And something silly
It’s £50, is environmentally extremely friendly, good for your mental health, and running until the 26th of December is less than £2 a day - which is less than a takeaway coffee (significantly if you live in London).
If you are interested, please dm me on social channels or email me here at felicitymorsecoaching@gmail.com so I can sign you up! I accept bank transfers and paypal (at the same email).
And because I would like to know what I would be paying for, if I was in your shoes, here is a sample of what the content might look like…
Your power word for the day is PRESENCE
Your inspirational quote for today is: ‘This day will never come again’ (Thomas Merton)
From my heart to yours: what presence means to me:
I didn’t really ‘get’ what presence was for a really long time. I sort of understood what people meant when they said a powerful person had ‘presence’. For me that meant that I could really feel that person in the room. They were captivating in some way. But I had no real way of translating that into something I could have or be, or even what that quality was. The idea that it might be healing in some way didn’t resonate with me.
It was only when I was going through a break up and in immense amounts of pain that I thought I would give this other kind of presence a try. The type talked about in self help books and by mindfulness teachers. Being present in the moment as a way of dealing with your troubles. I was desperate really. All I wanted was a window of pain-relief, to stop the terrible cracking ache in my chest, the hideous sense of something being missing. Perhaps if I could be present in the now, rather than trapped in what was lost, I could catch a breather.
There’s a tip from Susan Anderson’s book ‘The Journey from Abandonment to Healing’ where she offers a way of being present on the go. She advises to simply stop and listen for the furthest sound. So puffy-eyed in bed, I did that. I put the book down and listened. I heard the radiators, construction noises. The footsteps of the upstairs neigbhours. Some traffic in the background. I even heard some birds. My heartbeat slowed.
And then I took it a step further and listened to the space the sounds were happening in. The squashy nothingness that no one notices is a thing in and of itself. It’s like if we are asked to describe things in a room, we never list space. And yet space is the only reason there is a room.
As I sensed and listened, just for ten seconds there, the pain stopped. Which, as anyone who has ever been in intense pain will know, is a long time. I was clear and alert and could breathe without choking on my own sobs. I actually felt a bit of space. It wasn’t just my pain rehashing itself, releasing itself, my thoughts tormenting me. There were other things too.
And so this now is what I call presence. It’s a feeling, and a sense of attentiveness to what is. It’s spacious and encompassing. It notices. There’s fewer thoughts. And it’s not unlike the thing I thought of as presence at the beginning. The thing about people who have presence is that they are really *there*. They aren’t daydreaming, or distracted by what to do next. They are captivating for your attention, because all their attention is here. Attention recognises itself. Presence calls to presence everywhere. And so because they are really here, we become captivated by that too.
It’s a hard practise, especially on one’s own because what is here sometimes is not that comfortable or pleasant. So it’s a practise for me not to shut it down, but to make space for it. For me, presence is tuning into the space, and knowing it's within me and without me.
Your challenge for today, should you choose to accept it is:
Take a moment to just listen for the furthest sound. And notice how that feels in your body. Try not to judge what arises but let it be.
Journal prompts!
Some prompts for writing on this subject are:
“What does presence mean to me?”
“What emotions do I struggle to stay present with? That I judge or fight or might want to run away from? Either in myself or others?”
And because you made it this far:
I found this cat on the internet. I think he displays powerful presence. I for one would make him my CEO.
Sending you all the best wishes, and hope to hear from you soon,
Felicity