Andrea Pennington's Blog, page 2
June 1, 2020
The Power of Sharing Your Personal Story | Conscious Evolution
While vulnerability is all the rage, some people think they would be oversharing if they divulged details about their past experiences. But for coaches, healers, Lightworkers and even therapists, there is a transformation that occurs when you are brave enough to share a bit about your own journey of wellness and resilience.
In the old model of branding, we used to position ourselves as the authorities in our niche by presenting a polished, expert appearance. But in today’s world, we know better. We understand that humans are wired to connect with other humans, and so the best way to reach our tribe is to share our authentic selves, and always be human first.
I experienced the power of this first hand when I gave my first TEDx, and my most recent TEDx talk where I sang live! I was genuinely surprised by the effect of opening up about my past experience with depression and anxiety. Far from making me look weak, it showed great courage and strength to be vulnerable and honest.
Over the years my clients and patients tell me that it was the ONE THING that made them feel comfortable to open up and share even more candidly about their fears, challenges and desires.
This is the power of sharing your personal story with your audience.
Ready to try it yourself? Here are 5 simple tips to get you started sharing your personal story…
#1 Share your whole truth
Your personal story, especially the not-so-pretty parts, allows people to recognize themselves in you. When people can identify with you, they will follow you.
#2 Connect on a human level
From a neurological point of view, humans are wired to connect with each other. Let go of trying to appear perfect online – being human is way more appealing.
#3 Teach with compassion
If you preach from an elevated position you will seem untouchable. But teaching with compassion and sharing your own struggles allows others to open up.
#4 Build trust AND trust the process
Trust that sharing your flaws and not-so-pretty parts of your story will build that connection with your audience. It can feel a little exposing at first, but that openness will bring the right people to you.
#5 Feel that freedom
Apart from making you relatable as a coach, there is a huge personal benefit to sharing your story – it’s so freeing! Step into your authenticity and enjoy the feeling.
When all is said and done, it’s always best to walk your talk. So if you are a coach who encourages others to be themselves, then they need to see you doing that first. Once you start showing up as your authentic self, your tribe will start to find you, and you will feel supported by their presence. This gives you a new confidence that can only help you keep working on your visibility and growth.
** This was originally published at MakeYourMarkGlobal.com
The post The Power of Sharing Your Personal Story | Conscious Evolution appeared first on Resilience + Self-Love + Holistic Healing of Trauma & Adverse Childhood Experiences.
May 3, 2020
March 28, 2020
A Guided Meditation to boost immunity, reduce anxiety & protect you from PTSD in 2020
It’s important to protect your long term health as well as your current risk due to the new coronavirus with resilience building strategies.
Mindfulness activities like meditation have been proven to boost immune function and decrease negative psychological symptoms such as anxiety and depression. If your emotions are running high and patience is running low, watch this replay of a live discussion on EMOTIONAL TRIGGERS and EASING ANXIETY. This is critical now as we are seeing cases of addiction and eating disorders spike, and we will soon see many stress-related health conditions flare up, along with suicide.
In the short term, this stressful event increases production of proteins that provoke inflammation. Over the long term, chronic elevation of the inflammatory proteins decrease our ability to heal and fight infection, and even increases our risk of osteoporosis and diabetes.
You were born #RESILIENT. So meditate with me today to strengthen some of your resilience muscles.
March 17, 2020
NEW PODCASTS COMING! Conscious Evolution & From My Heart to Yours by Dr Andrea Pennington
Lately I’ve been inspired to share with you, beautiful soul, in a simple way, from my heart. ❣️ So I’m launching a 2 new podcasts! The first is an unscripted sharing of the messages from my heart and downloads from the Divine called “From My Heart to Yours.”
After seeing my TEDx “Become Who You Are” and “Music Saved My Life: My Journey from Depression to Real Self Love,” many people around the world shared that you have found comfort in knowing that you are not alone in the pursuit of your life purpose. And many have asked what happened after my spiritual awakening in my near death experience. Questions came in about how I overcame my subconscious programming based on my childhood. Curiosity about whether I regret going to medical school and how I got the courage to leave a big media career and move to France. Well, I have wanted to answer the hundreds of emails and direct messages, but I couldn’t keep up! But still my heart was touched by the need that I felt to offer comfort, inspiration and support.
And so, here I am now sharing From My Heart to Yours, an unscripted podcast that allows me to open up to you, with no agenda. Just love beamed across cyberspace to you.
And my previous show, Liberate Your Authentic Self is being revamped as the Conscious Evolution Podcast. 
Tune in for insight & inspiration on your journey of healing, awakening & soulful success.
If you’re dying to know what it takes to liberate, love and live as your authentic self, this podcast with me will explore the cross section of neuroscience, positive psychology, and practical spirituality. We’re going deep in conversations on how to build resilience, embrace real self-love and architect an epic life
STAY TUNED!!!
From My Heart to Yours (Podcast) My mom’s influence on my career and life path of no regrets living (FMH_Ep1)
Lately I’ve been inspired to share with you, beautiful soul, in a simple way, from my heart. ❣️
So I’m launching a new podcast! It’s an unscripted sharing of the messages from my heart and downloads from the Divine called “From My Heart to Yours.”
After seeing my TEDx “Become Who You Are” and “Music Saved My Life: My Journey from Depression to Real Self Love,” many people around the world shared that you have found comfort in knowing that you are not alone in the pursuit of your life purpose.
And many have asked what happened after my spiritual awakening in my near death experience. Questions came in about how I overcame my subconscious programming based on my childhood.
Curiosity about whether I regret going to medical school and how I got the courage to leave a big media career and move to France.
Well, I have wanted to answer the hundreds of emails and direct messages, but I couldn’t keep up!
But still my heart was touched by the need that I felt to offer comfort, inspiration and support. And so, here I am now sharing From My Heart to Yours, an unscripted podcast that allows me to open up to you, with no agenda. Just love beamed across cyberspace to you.
You can leave comments and ask questions and I’ll answer as often as I can.
Please let me know what you think of this new format and if you like this, share it with someone else, and please leave a review on your favorite podcast platform to help others find it.
February 25, 2020
Sometimes depression isn’t due to a chemical imbalance
Back in my med student days, my peers and I were easily clocking up 100+ hour weeks. That left little time for other activities. Of course, this lifestyle was pretty much what we had expected — we all knew it would be tough going in.
If something is your true passion, your soul’s desire, then for a finite period of time at least, a person can keep going and going. Illness and major acts of God aside, we can be pretty unstoppable when on a mission, like most med students are.
However, I want to talk to you from the perspective of someone who wasn’t totally following their true soul’s desire. I hadn’t quite found the calling that I have today — but I did have other passions, and those are still around today too.
I’m a creative person who always loved the stage. Throughout my school years I acted, sang, and played the piano. After my parents divorced, phone calls with my dad were my best opportunity to impress him, remind him I was a good daughter, and to make sure he still loved and approved of me.
One of my clearest memories to this day is how he responded to my sharing about my performances with acting and singing in school plays. He told me that the creative arts were a nice hobby, but not a career path that I could rely on.
The messages we absorb about the world as young, impressionable kids and teens really do inform a lot of our choices; sometimes consciously and sometimes subconsciously.
I kind of always knew I was doing what I was doing to win approval from my father, but even being conscious of that didn’t stop me from pursuing the apparently ‘sensible’ option over my ideals.
It’s funny though, what we deem sensible. Considering what happens to many of us who went down the wrong path later in life… Perhaps if we knew the existential pain that was coming, we would think again.
Where we get lost
It didn’t take long at medical school, with those crazy hours, for my burnout, existential crisis, or whatever name works best for you, to emerge. For others it takes longer. If your life is reasonably comfortable, despite that existential pain of not following your dreams, then you may well hold off from your inevitable crumbling until much later in life.
That’s something that I hear about often from clients and fellow authors and speakers. They spend a good chunk of their adult years in a career that never lit them up. Sometimes it’s not until their children have grown up and flown the nest that they give themselves the permission to change career and pursue a lifelong dream. Sometimes they don’t hit rock bottom until really late in life.
While it’s commendable that people ‘keep going’, I don’t want to reinforce that wartime mantra of “keep calm and carry on”, or “be happy with your lot in life.”
It’s this belief in stoicism over daring to dream that kills so many souls where they stand. This is how you get lost in the first place.
So I don’t want you to keep calm. I want you to be brave, shake things up and step out of your comfortable uncomfortable place of semi-numbness. I want you to stop self-medicating and pressing on down the wrong path. I want you to realize your real, Authentic Self, and listen to your inner voice.
No, not the echoes of your parents and peers, telling you what you ‘should do’ — but that gentle, persistent whisper from your soul.
My first diagnosis
Of course, the professionals I sought help from in my med student years didn’t diagnose me with existential pain caused by an occluded soul — if only that was an actual diagnosis! I wonder if that would be more helpful for a lot of us.
They diagnosed me within the confines of the western medical model, and their conclusion was functional depression.
Now I want to be very clear here that I’m not suggesting that all depression is about being in on the wrong path in life. I’m a medical doctor myself, and I fully understand the neuroscience of chemical imbalances and off kilter firing in the brain. Depression is a very real medical problem for many, and you should always follow the advice of your own physician.
With that said, my own personal journey with my diagnosis was a long and winding one. But ultimately, through much therapy and soul searching (culminating in a very visceral vision of the big picture — but that’s another story), I reached the understanding that my own depression was less about neurotransmitters and brain waves, and more about not living my purpose.
With thanks to John Davies PhotographyThe dark, depressing box of conformity
When I gave my third TEDx not so long ago, I talked about this problem being common in our world today, and I referred to what I call ‘the dark, depressing box of conformity‘. From the feedback I received, it seems that this description resonated with a lot of people. Maybe you can relate too?
I feel like conforming to what the influencers in our lives want us to be is essentially putting ourselves in a box. We could be so much more, if only we allowed ourselves to try.
Of course, we all understand the pattern that’s playing out here. Humans are wired to be social creatures and seek out community. We strive to please others to keep ourselves safe from rejection. It’s a familiar story — yet one we have not yet risen above as a collective. We are waking up to it slowly, but are still somewhat trapped in our own little ‘Matrix style’ net of conformity.
So what will it take to level up collectively? Personally I’m raising a strong-minded teenager, and encouraging her to explore her passions. I don’t want to sway her into one career or another, and above all, I want her to know she has my unconditional love and approval, whatever life path she chooses for herself.
Mirror mirror, on the wall
If you saw my TEDx then you heard me sing my song, I Love You, Me. I really want as many of us to wake up from denying ourselves our purpose, and to be able to look in the mirror and fully acknowledge who we truly are at soul level.
I know it feels really hard when all you’ve known is conformity and approval-seeking. But please believe me when I say that there is even more happiness on the other side — and it’s better than all the external approval in the world! Internal approval, self love and acceptance — those are the best rewards.
If you’d like to join a free and welcoming Facebook Community Group of like-minded souls on a mission, head HERE and say hi. Let’s support each other on the journey.
The post Sometimes depression isn’t due to a chemical imbalance appeared first on Resilience + Self-Love + Holistic Healing of Trauma & Adverse Childhood Experiences.
November 29, 2019
Why are we so mean to ourselves? | Self love, laughter & our inner critic
If you’ve been through any kind of spiritual awakening or self love breakthrough yourself, then you know the importance of a sense of humour. When we start to really feel into life, we feel the rough with the smooth, and you need a good laugh sometimes to get you through! Am I right?
Recently I’ve had the pleasure of spending some time with comedian Mia Lux. A few weeks back I met up with her in New York. She joined me for the first episode of the second season of my podcast, Liberate Your Authentic Self, where we talked about comedy as a medium for awakening.
Then I had the pleasure of joining her for an episode of her new venture, The Conscious-ish Show, which was so much fun to record. In an intimate studio setting, we got to talk all things self-love and resilience, including where that inner critic voice we all have comes from.
Mia asked me why we are so mean to ourselves, and if the negative self-talk is there from early childhood.
The latter has a clear answer – and that’s a no. But the reasons why the negative self-talk begins in the first place… well that’s a longer story!
It often begins with the things that we pick up from the world around us while we are young, impressionable, and forming our beliefs about the world. If as a child you were criticized, about anything at all, never mind how innocent that may have seemed to your critic – your young mind may have taken that on board as something to remember.
It all comes down to survival. Humans are wired to live in communities – there is safety in numbers, and the ultimate threat to our ‘caveman brain’ is for us to be left out in the cold with no members of out tribe to have our backs. So of course, as our brain is also a threat-detection device, it is always looking to keep us from being excluded by our tribe.
We worry about whether our peers like us, if our family approves of us, and if we are worthy enough to stay safely in our community. So when a member of our tribe criticizes us, we give that common more weight that it often deserves. The inner critic voice in our head is an echo of these concerns – “If you do ‘x’ then ‘person y’ won’t like you anymore.”
As an adult, we can begin to recognize when our inner critic is trying to run the show, and we can step in with a reality check and some positive self-talk. This is actually one of the Top 10 Traits of Highly Resilient People – lot’s more on that coming up including a book, a challenge, and in 2020, a documentary film too!
For now, please do enjoy my episode of The Conscious-ish Show. I hope Mia and I give you some laughs, as laughter is also really good for your wellbeing and vitality.
The post Why are we so mean to ourselves? | Self love, laughter & our inner critic appeared first on Resilience + Self-Love + Holistic Healing of Trauma & Adverse Childhood Experiences.
November 18, 2019
Can comedy cause awakening? | Podcast with Mia Lux | Liberate Your Authentic Self
In our second season of Liberate Your Authentic Self, I have guests joining me to talk about #RealSelfLove, awakening, health, optimal living and walking their own path, from all over the globe.
Welcome to Season 2!
There is more than one way to learn, and more than one way to spread those important lessons that really matter.
But had you ever considered comedy as a way to talk about awakening?
Mia Lux is an amazingly authentic woman after my own heart. A multi-potentialite at heart; a teacher, a former lawyer, a comedian and now the host of The Conscious-Ish Show, Mia is showing up everywhere.
Lately she is using her platform as a comedian to open minds and hearts to the process of awakening. Comedy is certainly a good way to disarm people and talk openly – so I’m really excited to see just how many minds and hearts Mia can touch with her approach.
The Conscious-Ish Show has just launched this month here, and you can already watch episode 1, The Depressi-demic with Marissa Peer! There is an amazing line up to come, including Mia’s husband, the wonderful Dr. Mark Hyman, who you may know from The Doctor’s Farmacy podcast (among many other things) where I was lucky enough to be invited recently.
Well, I’m delighted to share that I’m coming up soon on Mia’s show too, and my episode will be out very shortly – watch this space!
In the meantime, Mia is my first guest for Season 2 of Liberate Your Authentic Self. Of course, we are talking about comedy and awakening! I would love to hear your thoughts on this topic, so head over to YouTube to watch the episode, and do leave any questions or thoughts you have about it in the comments.
The post Can comedy cause awakening? | Podcast with Mia Lux | Liberate Your Authentic Self appeared first on Resilience + Self-Love + Holistic Healing of Trauma & Adverse Childhood Experiences.
September 2, 2019
How creativity can lead to healing and improved resilience
What’s your favorite way to be creative?
If you saw my last TEDx, then you already know how important music has been to me. Back in the early days of my medical career, when the 100+ hour working weeks were burning me out, it was the simple act of making a little window of time each week to play piano that kept me afloat.
You may already know that the wonderful Bruce Cryer (Founder of Renaissance Human and former CEO of HeartMath) is one of the co-authors of my next group book, The Top Ten Traits of Resilient People, as well as a guest speaker and performer at GLÆ.
Well, back by popular demand, I invited Bruce to join me on Facebook live again. Bruce has so much wisdom to share, and this time he joined me to talk about how creativity can lead to healing and improved wellbeing.
If you take a holistic view of health, just as I do, then you already know how your happiness influences you physically as well as mentally.
We are born to do so much more than just work and pay bills! We all need our creative outlets too.
Watch the video above to see the replay of my conversation with Bruce – or the video below to see my most recent TEDx talk, where I talk about music saving my life.
The post How creativity can lead to healing and improved resilience appeared first on Resilience + Self-Love + Holistic Healing of Trauma & Adverse Childhood Experiences.
