Deep Heartfelt Success
Imagine stepping into a next level of success: Deep Heartfelt Success - success that is felt, lived and trusted, not just achieved; success that feels even better on the inside than it looks on the outside. Where you get to feel more of the joy, satisfaction, contentment, peace of mind…all the good stuff you’ve worked so hard for - not just on special occasions when you’ve just achieved something or a problem goes away, but daily.
Welcome! I’m Heidi Marke, The Gentle Rebel Coach, teacher, author and podcaster. I help successful people feel more joy. So if you're a thoughtful, big-hearted, driven professional who has built a life that looks successful on the outside, and now want to fully feel your success and expand into more - more joy, more ease, more success that feels even better on the inside than it looks on the outside - you’re in the right place.
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Deep Heartfelt Success
The Surprising Power of Quitting the Wrong Path
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Discover the surprising power of quitting the wrong path and how walking away can lead to deeper freedom, clarity and true success.
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Listen to my old podcast: Overwhelm is Optional
So I find myself walking along this ridgeway in Tuscany. My feet are weighed down by soggy, slimy, grey clay, there's horizontal rain hitting me from the left and there's pain all down the left side of my left leg. My mind is doing the whole normal doom, fear, shame story and I'm not having much fun. And it tips me into a mini but very intense existential crisis about this podcast, my whole life, everything because I'm failing. I'm failing to walk the Via Frantigena. I've got pain from years ago. Come back. Why does this mean I've broken my promise to look after myself properly? Uh-oh, what is going on? Hello, welcome to the Deep, heartfelt Success podcast, success that feels even better on the inside than it looks on the outside. Hello, I'm Heidi, heidi Mark, transformational Coach for big-hearted, driven professionals who want more, more ease, more joy, more capacity to fully experience and enjoy the success you've worked so hard for, because real success isn't just about achieving more although I'm sure you want more. It's about expanding our capacity to feel confident in it, to really enjoy it. It's time to start feeling the fulfillment, the freedom and the ease you've worked so hard for. This is where traditional success ends and deep, heartfelt success begins. Welcome to the adventure.
Speaker 1:So I flew all the way to Italy, took time off work, packed my business up, recorded episodes of the podcast, scheduled everything so I could have this space really easily, made sure my clients were looked after, did all the things required to carve out time for myself to go and have an adventure in my busy life. And I discovered that what I was seeking I could have had by just sitting in a chair under the apple tree in my garden. Here's what happened. So last year I walked the Camino de Santiago and if you've listened to my old podcast Overwhelm is Optional you'll be familiar with that story, but I'll recap it now. I walked the Camino de Santiago from the Portuguese one, from Porto de Santiago, last year with a really good friend and we decided to do it differently.
Speaker 1:All the stories of the Camino de Santiago seem to involve pain and doom and gloom and hardship, much like life. There's always this thing isn't there that if you want a full life you have to suffer for it, that that life requires struggle and striving? But what if that's not true? What if there's a different way of doing it? And that's what my whole methodology linked to the overwhelm is optional podcast was about the gentle rebellion, gently rebelling against this idea that to have the life we want, to have a full life, you have to push through overwhelm into exhaustion, damaging your health and sanity on the way. There's got to be a better way, and the better way for me was gently rebelling, listening to my heart, listening to the wisdom of my body, moving through my life with my mind supported by the wisdom of my body and the discernment of my heart, which meant looking after myself properly, which is a lesson that took me a very long time to learn and seemed to require me pushing myself to utter exhaustion and insanity and burnout. So here I was, launching the deep, heartfelt success podcast, thinking, yeah, I've gone through that.
Speaker 1:The point was, the Camino de Santiago was a real validation for me that you could do it your own way. We just pootled, we didn't damage ourselves, we had challenge, but we did it in a way that enabled us to look after ourselves properly and it was so good, it created such a sense of satisfaction and joy and freedom, knowing I could do it in a gently, rebellious way, that you didn't have to go through pain and nonsense and struggle and strife to have that joy and satisfaction of completing it. But walking it is not the completion for me. It was the way that we walked it so good and I wanted to do it again. Not the Camino de Santiago, wasn't trying to repeat anything but the idea of walking and having that beautiful sense of freedom where you just wake up in the morning and all you have to do is pack your stuff up and just walk walk to get coffee, walk to get food, walk to accommodation, nothing else to do. There is so much goodness in that for me and that's what I wanted to do.
Speaker 1:So we decided, after much research and thought, that we would walk the Via Francigena, which is another pilgrimage, very old and they're selling it as the Italian Camino. So off we went, packed up life for a few weeks and flew to Pisa, got the train to Siena, and it's such a joy to be in Italy. Siena's beautiful Life is sweet. We visit the cathedral in the morning before setting off. Oh, my goodness, beautiful cathedral, so good to be in Italy. We find the signs to the Via Francigena, we walk through the southern medieval stone huge gate of Siena and there before us is the Tuscany Hills Beautiful, and the Via Francigena is lit up. It's like it's illuminated by classic cypress trees and off we set, and life is so good.
Speaker 1:I'm so happy to be just walking again with one of my favourite people in the world, and we've walked before, so we know we can do it in a way that works for us. We know we're going to get on, everything's good, and we're just going to find our rhythm. And we never find it and everything goes wrong and before you know it we're flying home. So what happened? Oh, my goodness, lots of things happened.
Speaker 1:I'm not going to tell you everything, because this podcast will go on forever, but I want to pull out some of the most important things which I think might be helpful to you. So, first of all, I think it's really helpful for me to compare the two walks. What was so good about the Camino de Santiago that just wasn't so good about the Via Frangigena? Because in comparing those two, maybe I can find out some gold, some treasure that will help you think about how you set things up for your own version of success. So the Camino de Santiago allowed me to do it my way, in my own time, and so we achieve something very difficult by doing it our way.
Speaker 1:So there's some magical thinking going on there, which I'm perfectly aware of, but I find magical thinking very, very helpful. In fact, magical thinking, the belief that you can do something that nobody's done before, or that you can do it differently, the attempting of the impossible, magical thinking, that deep self-belief, that's how everything is invented, isn't it? Electricity, all sorts of stuff, right? So I think magical thinking is a good thing, not not when you're kidding yourself everything's going to be okay, when you're getting signals that things really aren't okay though. And that's the trick, right? It's trying to work out when am I kidding myself and when am I using magical thinking to expand my experience of life, and you can only work that out for yourself by really paying attention and using self-awareness. That's what's really going on here.
Speaker 1:This is about living morefully. This is about finding out how you can best live your life. This isn't about telling you never telling you how to live your life. This is about moving, for me, from primarily mind-based living to the mind supported by the heart and the body, because I found that to be incredibly powerful for myself and my clients. But it takes courage. It takes courage to say I'm going to do it in for myself and my clients, but it takes courage. It takes courage to say I'm going to do in a way that works for me. And what was great about the Camino to Santiago is the structure of it allowed me that freedom. It allowed me to do it. So there's lots of accommodation, there's lots of food available.
Speaker 1:The signs it's interesting because the the way signs aren't, because you know you have a book but it's not like you're using a map and compass. Because it's a pilgrimage, it's very old. It should be well signposted. Interestingly, the via francesca is much better signposted than the camino de santiago. But the camino de santiago feels incredibly welcoming. It's not as beautiful in many places because it goes through dodgy parts of town, sometimes, sometimes next to a road, all sorts of things. The via francesca arguably the short amount that I experienced. In many ways there were parts of it maybe that are more beautiful, although looking at the guidebook, there were also parts where they said I wouldn't walk this bit because it's really, really dangerous. Probably best to get a taxi. So that's interesting. So the Camino de Santiago felt more welcoming. That's not something you can look up and know beforehand. You can't know that until you're there, because what feels welcoming to one person isn't to another. The Via Francigena, apparently, is walked by a lot of local hikers as well. There were also a lot of ultra marathon signs.
Speaker 1:So it kind of felt more like an athletic pursuit than a spiritual or personal one. I didn't like that. That's not what I was after For me personally. I didn't want to be trying to prove my body could do something. That was kind of like a secondary effect. You know, the fitness thing is nice but it's not what I'm doing it for. I'm doing it for the freedom, the freedom of just walking, the beautiful simplicity of that. It's just so nice to let go of achieving, to let go of responsibility, to let go of all of the things that need to be done every day.
Speaker 1:The Camino Santiago allowed me to walk without my traditional way of going through life, of pushing, struggling and striving, overachieving. It allowed me the freedom to just say I'm not doing that. I'm going to do it the opposite way. I'm going to listen to my body and go with what feels best for me. So although sometimes there were days when there wasn't any water or sometimes cafes were shut because it was a secret local holiday, it still felt like I was being looked after. It still worked for me, whereas the Via Francigena, often things were closed and we knew they were going to be closed, and that's different because you're pre-empting. How are we going to get through that part of the day? I found we were having to plan more, which put me back into my more mind-based mode of well, we need to leave at this time to get there by then, and if we don't do this, then we won't be able to get any food. So we better go to a supermarket, but the supermarkets will be closed. So what do we do? There's a lot of problem solving and analyzing of the route that felt very different and not I wasn't able to let go and trust in the same way, so I didn't find a rhythm. Now I didn't do it for long enough, so you could argue that I never found my rhythm, and maybe it's possible to do it. Who cares? I don't care. Overall, what I'm feeling is that the Camino de Santiago allowed me a structure which created an incredible freedom, a really rich freedom of letting go and just walking.
Speaker 1:The Via Frangigena tipped me into survival mode for several reasons. Italy closes for the whole afternoon. They eat late at night. If you're a pilgrim, that doesn't work so well, I knew this from the guidebook, but I assumed we'd figure it out, we'd adjust. I assumed we could find somewhere for lunch and then pick up supermarket food and go without an evening meal and everything would be okay. That should have theoretically been possible, but it didn't work like that because there were huge gaps. So it's not as well set up. There's huge gaps in accommodation.
Speaker 1:On top of the huge gaps in accommodation, what I also found was, unlike in Portugal, where it was easy to get into your accommodation, there was always somebody there or there was a way to get in. Everything worked out. In Italy they were messaging us several times to say what time would we arrive? As soon as you have to think of somebody else and the time of arrival, it changes how you, regardless of how much you try and fight that Well, for me personally, I'm thinking about the person. So that didn't work for me because it tipped me into calculating how fast we were walking, how long it was going to take, and to give them an estimated arrival. It required discussion about when do you think we might arrive? We never had that before when we were walking in Portugal. We just walked.
Speaker 1:That's what I wanted to do. I wanted that letting go, that freedom, that peace, that nothingness, that non-achievement Just couldn't work, couldn't make it work for me. I ended up over walking and I accidentally damaged my knees just from over walking. It actually took them a couple of months to recover properly. So I obviously did something I don't know what. Just it happens. Right, it's very common you hurt your knees from over walking. We thought we could solve it by me resting. It didn't work.
Speaker 1:I was not prepared to do the take drugs, strap your knees out, push on through the take drugs, strap your knees up, push on through. I know that's what most people do. That wasn't for me, so I chose not to do that, which meant we had to come home. That was tough, really tough. I felt I was letting us down, I was letting my friend down, I was letting oh, just, I'd ruined it, I'd failed, which really sent me into this whole. Well, that's not success then. So you're talking about deep, heartfelt success and you've just failed, heidi. So that was a really painful thing to listen to my mind bashing me about judging, lots of judging. Also, what was that?
Speaker 1:I found that the lack of structure that suited me in the via francia journal tended to trigger all of my deep, judgmental criticisms, which meant that I was dealing with the pressure of self-recrimination, fear, doom, all sorts of shame, all the normal suspects, on top of the pain in my knee, and it was very painful, my knees were very painful. I was having to walk backwards down hills there's a lot of hills in Tuscany and it just took the joy away. When you're in that kind of pain, it's very, very difficult to neutrally notice, isn't it? So, on top of this, my own techniques weren't working for me. Not that they're supposed to change your state, but obviously I'm forgetting that, because all I want is to feel better, all I want is to be okay. I'm worried that I'm breaking my promise to myself to look after myself properly, because I feel like I've really hurt myself and I should never hurt myself again. Oh, my goodness, really not much fun, fun.
Speaker 1:What was interesting was what I realized had happened was all the energy and thought processes and memory of my burnout years was piled up in this very intense, probably only about 48 hours, but it felt so long and real and deep at the time, like a. It felt like an existential crisis, like I'd gone backwards in time, like I'd failed not only to walk also failed in my life in some way, because I was going back to old habits. But what? What was actually really good about that was I let it go, I just let it go. It's like it came up to be released. Here's the pain you faced before. So it triggered all those memories of the shame of burnout. And I've just let it go Because by quitting, I chose myself. The quitting was the success. I successfully quit because what I realized was I didn't fail to walk the Via Frantigena. The Via Frantigena failed me. The Via Frantigena did not have the structure and the welcome that allowed me to achieve the freedom that I was after. So, after moving into problem solving phase. So you've got crisis phase, then you've got problem solving phase.
Speaker 1:We tried everything. We tried getting a bus. Man, it's not easy to get a bus in Italy. Is it? Is the ticket? Well, first of all, is the bus stop here or is it? Oh, it's not here. Let's wait another two hours. That wasn't much fun. Can you get a ticket on the bus? Can you do? You need cash to pay for the ticket. Can you pay with your card? Cash to pay for the ticket? Can you pay with your card? Can you pay with your phone? Do you need to go to a hidden tobacco nist somewhere within sight of the bus stop to get a ticket or not? Who knows, who knows? Even with Google, or even asking local people, nobody knows. It's like this whole secret world of underground bus ticket buying. Oh my goodness, that was not fun.
Speaker 1:We eventually decided to get a bus and the bus went straight past us. We then went into the hotel opposite. We thought they'd have this comfortable barn. We could at least look at the Tuscan hills. We end up with a cup of tea sat at a table just outside the toilet. Oh my goodness, I get a message from home and I burst into tears. All the tears come up. So this is crisis mode, moving into problem solving mode. Can we just get a bath and can I rest and recover? Can we then change the route? Can we do this? Can we do that? Oh my goodness, two days of me trying to rest and recover and then trying to think of a different way.
Speaker 1:The next phase was trying to be grateful, trying to see the bright side of it, with the phrase at least you're in Italy. And you know what? At least you're in Italy is a mind trap which is identical, I discovered, to the mind trap of my burnout years of at least you get school holidays or at least you get sick pay oh, my goodness, absolute rubbish. Being in Italy when you're in severe pain and you cannot even walk to a bus stop without hobbling, being in Italy actually makes it worse, not better, but it keeps you stuck there longer because you think, well, we're in Italy, we could hire a car, we go to the Amalfi Coast, we could do this, we could do that. No, you really can't. The only clothes you have on are pretty filthy by this stage, hiking clothes covered in unexpected tuscany clay. Who expected that? Did not see that one coming and I'm in pain. I can't walk.
Speaker 1:When you're in pain, when you don't feel good, the best place is to be at home. I mean, we tried, we even tried this, we, we got a bus to I can't remember where very nice place, didn't see much of it, in too much pain, and we were supposed to have this view overlooking a lake, and then I could rest and at least I could feel like I'm in Italy. Turned out, the photos in the review were of a different apartment. It wasn't the owner's fault it was. Somebody put their wrong photos on their review. There was no view of a lake, oh my goodness. And I couldn't even stagger to the lake. It was just miserable. So I'm stuck on a settee yeah, it's comfortable, but I don't want to be paying money to sit in a apartment in Italy, not seeing Italy. To the lake. It was just miserable. So I'm stuck on a settee yeah, it's comfortable, but I don't want to be paying money to sit in an apartment in Italy, not seeing Italy, oh my goodness. I tried buying bandages. Oh, just a load of rubbish. And then my friend said to me, just floating out there, but we could go home. And so we went home. Best thing ever, although. Can I just point out. What is it about airports? You walk miles, miles and miles and miles Ridiculous, so I'm staggering around an airport.
Speaker 1:Anyway, got home, decided that I was not going to open my laptop, I was not going to do anything. I decided that the reason I went to Italy was to achieve this deep, peaceful, doing nothing freedom, and I was going to have that regardless. So I sat under my apple tree. We had the hottest week of the year so far. So when's this? Early April? It was warmer than Italy. It was so, so beautiful. The apple tree ended up having more blossom than it's ever had. It's a very, very old apple tree and we've kind of I've kind of renovated it over the years, rescued it, and it just it had it had like maybe a hundred times more blossom. I mean, it's not a very big tree, it's just ridiculous. So I'm just surrounded by this abundance of spring. My garden's beautiful, everything's beautiful. I'm so happy I have my zero gravity chair, I can rest my knees.
Speaker 1:I decide I am going to have a week of none achievement, the deliberate practice of none achievement, nothing to do but settle back into this moment. So good. And that's what I did. I achieved nothing, although my partner pointed out to me at the end of the week I'd actually achieved quite a lot. I can't remember probably some. I planted some seeds, all that kind of stuff, but it wasn't. There was no drivenness about it, there was no oughts or shoulds. I just managed to let go, in the same way as what happened on the Camino de Santiago, when I just settled back into that moment of just all you have to do is put one foot in front of the other and then, in the evening when we arrived well afternoon, because we were getting up at like five and walking till the afternoon, and then you're done for the day and suddenly you've got all this time and you can just read or do nothing.
Speaker 1:That's what I wanted, turned out, I could have that in my garden. How cool was that? Now you could argue that, yes, but you only had that because you went to Italy, had a lot of pain and mini existential dramas and came home again yes, okay, so I get that. I achieved that by going to Italy and quitting the Via Frantigena. I'm okay with that. I'm okay with all of it, particularly as I had some of the best food I've ever had.
Speaker 1:My point is this what if you can have it anyway? What if you don't have to struggle and strive? To me, this is the same story. This, this whole anything worth having is worth struggling for. You know, you can only achieve lots by terrible sleepless nights and angst. The whole anything worth having requires sacrifice. This story, to me, is proof that what you want is already here because it's a decision to focus on it. It's already here, and I have other things that since that, because that week, that week taught me that really, really strongly. I'm so grateful for that.
Speaker 1:But then what happened was I assumed I mean I had another week off after that for a family thing, and then it was Easter and my intention had always been to get back into my routine of work after Easter. But what happened instead is I found that I didn't want that routine. Something deep within me had shifted. I had found this secret treasure. What if I don't need to work that hard? Or, to me, it's not about not working as hard, it's, there's something more there. It's to do with the quality of the work, the depth of the work, the satisfaction of the work. What if I could do more in less time or with less effort? What? What if I could? Just, I don't know. There's something I never worked out, by the way.
Speaker 1:In my head I had this idea that by pausing this structure because I'm this is what I'm interested in the the different structures between the camino de santiago and the via francesa genera are what created what I wanted or didn't want. So in my head during May there was or the end of April was, this idea that if I think about it deeply enough, I will come up with the next version of the routine for work that will serve me better. I've never done it, though it didn't work. It doesn't seem to be a mind-based thing. What I actually think it is is it changes all the time, and the awareness of that is what matters.
Speaker 1:For example, I've become really aware that I want to spend less time in front of a laptop in early summer, because in the winter it doesn't seem to matter as much Like I'm really happy to be working inside in the winter. I love working, but there's something about early summer, late winter, spring, summer when I'm just like I just want to be outside. I just want, I'm desperate to be outside. It's now mid-July and I'm not so worried about being outside, because I've been outside a lot and I've loved it, and now I seem to be ready to come in and work really, really hard. So I haven't solved what is the structure I need to support me in my life, but I have tuned into the idea that what I want exists regardless and I need to focus on it more if I want more of it. So, for example, I have experienced so much joy by taking this pause, this pause from not recording this podcast, a deep pause in spending less time I haven't been talking to many people on Zoom as much. I've only been working with clients and talking to a few people. Usually I do a lot more networking. I do podcast interviews. I spend quite a lot of time on Zoom. I've taken a deep pause.
Speaker 1:Quitting the via frantigena and, sitting in that chair under my apple tree, I started to integrate much of the change that has happened to me over the past few years, but especially recently this move into the idea that the next step in the gentle rebellion is to commit to experiencing deep, heartfelt success, which for me is more joy, more ease, more fun, more laughter, more security and more freedom, more satisfactions, just more. More of all the good stuff that I work so hard to create but which often feels fleeting. So I sat under the apple tree and I had to rest. This is now. I have no choice but to rest. My knees just need to rest. They're painful for several weeks after and I find that after trying to problem solve it, the best thing is just to ignore it and expect my body to heal itself, which it has perfectly. Both hilarious and magical, the whole getting out of my head into my body and trusting that my body will heal itself if I just let it so, giving it space to heal, trusting that my knees will be okay and they are so sitting in that apple tree.
Speaker 1:I did a lot of integration, a lot of embodying of deep, heartfelt success, a lot of just letting it be, feeling the joy watching my garden magically grow. Spring in my garden is my favourite season, I've decided. I guess I should have known that before in some way, but it was only that pausing and really noticing it that made me realize it is such a magical time. I love spring. My garden changes so fast in spring that I can walk around it several times in a day and not catch all the changes. It really, truly is magical. There was just an abundance of everything. Everything had more blossom, everything was growing magically. One of the best years of success for seed planting roses blooming, everything Blossom in the fruit trees, everything was just astonishingly bountiful and I allowed myself to really pause and feel everything that I love about my life and to receive that more fully, to embody it, to let myself really experience it. I am successful, I am loved, I am appreciated, I am healthy, I am secure, I am free. I'm so lucky. I have such a great life and in doing so, in focusing on what is already here, I found it has increased.
Speaker 1:And then May, I continued to do this and although I was still working with clients and my community, I haven't, as you can see, recorded any podcasts or YouTube or written any blogs. In fact, I just didn't want to be doing any of that. It really surprised me. I thought I'd have so much momentum from launching the whole deep, heartfelt success concept, but for me it meant the opposite. It meant pausing and embodying and integrating and just absorbing really so much power in pausing and just allowing in what's already here before working to achieve whatever we want next. And this reminds me of that whole thing about daring to rest. I don't know about you, but when I'm busy and I'm tired, sometimes I think, oh, I don't sit down because if I sit down I'll never get up again, I'll lose my momentum. So what I actually did in this spring pause was that I dared to pause, I dared to rest, knowing full well that at some point I'd get itchy, fidgety and want to to start driving my business forward again, and that's exactly what happened.
Speaker 1:So I took May off my birthday's in May. There were lots of lovely things happening in May. I I can't even remember now, but it was just a beautiful month. And then June was super exciting because we have now three birthdays on consecutive dates in my family, because my son and my partner have birthdays. But the new baby, the new grandson, was due. His due date was in between these two birthdays and, unlike the majority of babies apparently only 4% of babies come on their due dates he came on his due dates.
Speaker 1:I'm so excited. Who knew? I had no idea that this joy was just about to appear in my life? So I have Lily, my granddaughter, and now I have a grandson as well, and it's like 10 times as much joy. It's so joyful, just I feel so, so blessed, so, so lucky. I cannot get over. I had no idea that grandparenthood was coming because I don't have daughters, I have sons. So you, just you know there's more, there's more time for them, isn't there than than if you have daughters, when you might have some idea whether they're about to plan a family.
Speaker 1:So suddenly I'm a, I'm a granny, which is just amazing and weird and wonderful, and I've really embraced it to the extent that I've been knitting, which is just hilarious, but also that's brought me huge joy as well, because there's something about knitting which seems to have the right. You know how to get. To get into the state of flow you need the right combination of ease and challenge. Knitting seems to do that for me and it's such a joy to do it with love for these little people in my life, my growing, expanding family. So much joy in grandparenthood because you just get the joyful bits and then you hand them back. It's so good. Oh, my goodness, so much joy in my life. I'm so grateful. I feel fuller and just happier.
Speaker 1:I feel you know what it is. It's contentment, and contentment feels to me really gently rebellious. So much of me has spent my life striving for more happiness or more work, achievement, something more you know, the next house or I don't know, doing more in some way, learning to sing better or dance better. You know like more in doing ways. But this deepening of what is already here just allows this real calm, centered contentment and it feels deliciously rebellious, so nice. It's like there's all these secret, hidden pockets of joy that you can't see and then you focus on them and they come into view. It's effortful in that it's a commitment and it takes courage. But it's not the usual way of efforting, and I'm not saying there's anything wrong with normal way of efforting. But what if you can have both? What if you can deepen what's already here by letting it come into your awareness and really pausing to feel it and leaning into it, accepting it, receiving it, becoming it, and at the same time, you can be driven to do whatever it is you want to do next, which is where I am now.
Speaker 1:So I'm back. I'm back recording the podcast. I've recorded loads of YouTube videos. I'm super excited. The drive suddenly came back. It's like I just rested and enjoyed myself and let go and just went deep into the feeling of deep, heartfelt success, explored it some more and then suddenly I got fidgety and wanted to create more. But I didn't want the old way of being on Zoom a lot or my normal work hours. I just wanted to. So I've just disrupted all my work hours. I've shrunk my calendly availability dramatically. I did all sorts of things just to experiment and honour what I was feeling. And then I looked at my business and I thought, ok, what do I want, how do I want it to be? And I decided I didn't want to produce as much. I wanted to produce less and better. So I thought about you, and what would I want to give you? And do you know what?
Speaker 1:The one thing that always comes up in coaching is neutral noticing, over and over and over again. Neutral noticing, which is my meditation technique, which is embodied, which can be done anywhere. All the time, you're just moving through life with this non-judgmental awareness, which is the point, the end result of mindfulness, meditation. It's a practice that's, we don't meditate to get good at meditating, we meditate in order to live more skillfully. And normal meditation, I realize, really taps into my old insecurities and my old patterns of needing to achieve something, needing to be better, needing to be a good meditator, whereas neutral noticing doesn't For me.
Speaker 1:Neutral noticing, which, yes, I kind of invented it, but it's nothing new, is it? There's nothing new under the sun, it's just my version of tuning out of your head into your body and dropping the judgment. Notice, completely neutrally, in this moment, how you feel is so powerful. So I thought well, it always comes up in coaching, it is, it's there all the time. And what if I could create a course that taught you to do it as a generous, deep but short and sweet one so it doesn't take up too much of your time and just give it to you, because because I can and I want to and that's what I decided, so I've made a new course. The links below.
Speaker 1:I've named it the first step in deep, heartfelt success because it is the first step, because it raises self-awareness. It allows you to connect to your the wisdom of your body and the discernment of your heart and take a break from the busyness of your mind to support your mind, so you can focus on what matters most to you. It does so much but it's so simple. But I could also have called it a deep dive into the one minute mark, because it goes through the one minute mark line by line. I could have called it a neutral, noticing training. I could have called it all sorts of things.
Speaker 1:However, I've called it the first step in deep, heartfelt success because I really believe in this new pathway that I'm exploring and I hope you will come on the adventure with me. I'd love to have you along for the ride. If it calls to you, you can get the course for free. There's a link below in the show notes or if you go to my website, I've put a little banner at the top. Clever me anyway, whatever suits you enjoy.
Speaker 1:Thank you for being here. Thank you for listening. If you want to write any feedback to me, the easiest way is just to email me. Heidi at heidimarkcouk love hearing from you. Have a great week and I'll see you next time.
Speaker 1:Hey, thanks for being here. Thanks for listening, thanks for joining me on my own adventure into what deep, heartfelt success means for me. To explore further, make sure you hit the follow button. It really does help, helps other people to find it. And if you're up for it, scroll right to the bottom of apple, where they've hidden the review section, and leave me an outstandingly wonderful review. It would be just so lovely. It would make my day. And if you're ready to talk about working with me one-to-one to go deeper and explore what it looks like to create your own version of deep, heartfelt success with a powerful coach walking alongside you, I invite you to book a deep, heartfelt success session. There's a link in the show notes below, or you can just go to calendlycom forward slash, heidi, mark. Forward slash heartfelt success. I can't wait to meet you and see what that looks like for you. So exciting. Here's to the next evolution of your success. See you in the next episode. Thank you.