Our Coaches
Each Month we shine the spotlight on one of our Wonderful Coaches. This month we introduce you to our Head Coach and Founder Neil Gowing.
Neil Gowing our founder was born in Bury, Lancashire, in 1970 and spent forty years searching for his life purpose. He finally found it in Personal Performance Coaching and NLP. His passion in life is to help as many
people as possible be the best they can be, find their purpose and fulfil a truly wonderful life.
Neil says” My favourite movie has always been Frank Capra’s ‘It’s a wonderful life’. I am not really sure why, especially as it always makes me cry. However, despite the tears, it’s a movie that always makes me feel good about life.
If you haven’t seen it, It’s a Wonderful Life tells the story of a man who has everything but is always looking for something else.
In the end, just when he thinks he has lost everything he is shown just how wonderful his life has been. I didn’t think my life was particularly wonderful either. I felt trapped in my job, weighed down by my mortgage and pretty unfulfilled by what I had achieved in my 40 years on this spinning planet.
An ongoing battle with depression kept me firmly on the glass half full side of life and despite a solid career, a fantastic wife and two amazing children I felt my life was far from wonderful. My brother Ady, introduced me to Brian McCready. Brian is a sports psychologist and a remarkably genuine man. Brian introduced me to a whole new way of thinking about my existence.
Through Brian I met Geoff Thompson a truly inspirational human being and just being in the company of these people opened my awareness to a completely different view on life.
Several years of studying and self development has cemented together the psychology, the spirituality and the science that allowed me to create a Wonderful Life.
The Academy brings together a combination of coaching techniques with NLP (Neuro linguistic Programming) and a heavy dose of positive attitude to empower any individual to make the most of the abundant energy all around us. Harnessing this energy will allow you to improve your Well-Being, be the best you can be ”
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At Wonderful Life Academy we encourage everyone to share positive feedback. You can send us feedback via the special contact form on the member's pages and we will include your feedback in every edition of 'Wonderful Times'.
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Latest News
The Gift of a Well-Being.
Tired of the same old boring gifts? Stuck for what to buy that special person in your life? or Do you want the best Secret Santa gift ever? Give them the gift of Well-Being from Wonderful Life academy. For just £9.99 gift that special person Lifetime membership of Wonderful Life Academy and full access to all of our Wonderful tools and techniques to improve their Physical, Mental, Emotional and Spiritual Well-being. Complete the On-line membership at www.wonderfullifeacademy.com/christmas-gift-membership/ and we will email you a unique password and gift certificate for you to present to that special person in your life.
What do you get with the gift of On-Line membership
Joining a local group can benefit everyone regardless of where you are on your own wonderful life journey and regardless of how you feel about your own Well-being. However everyone is different, not everyone is able to attend a group session and not everyone wants to attend a group session. To make sure Wonderful Life Academy is available to everyone and to help us achieve our ambition to help as many people as possible improve their well-being and create their own Wonderful Life we offer an on-line only membership. On-line only membership couldn’t be simpler. Click on the link below, tell us your name and email address and pay a one off fee of just £9.99 and that’s it, you are a member for life. Life time membership gives you unrestricted access to the Academy members area. Here you will find all the activities, energisers and takeaways that our group members get along with helpful tips and tricks for maintaining your well-Being.You will receive our monthly newsletter and regular updates on how to get the most from your membership. If, in the future, you decide to join a local well-being group you won’t need to pay any additional membership fees. Simply contact your local group coach, go along to your FREE introductory session and only pay for the group sessions you choose to attend thereafter.
Motivation Collection
Takeaway
A Mindful Approach to Depressive Thought Patterns
There are certain thoughts that are common to individuals with depression. These negative thoughts can be considered symptoms of depression. For any one individual, there are a host of thoughts that make up their script of negativity.
You may notice that certain thoughts are typical for you when you become depressed. These thoughts form your depressive signature. They represent your symptom pattern just as much as early awakening, loss of appetite, or loss of enjoying activities you previously enjoyed can be part of your particular depressive pattern.
How Mindfulness Helps with Depressive Thoughts
Several components of mindfulness play a particular role in helping to heal depression. First is the mindfulness focus of being in the present moment. When we are focused on the present, we have less bandwidth available to ruminate about past failures or future catastrophes.
Another feature of mindfulness that allows you to cope with depression is decentering. Decentering allows you to gain distance from depressive thoughts and feelings. In order to decenter from depressive thoughts it’s helpful to make a list of the top ten most common thoughts that occur when you are depressed. It may be useful to include on your list thoughts that you tend to believe very strongly when you are depressed, and that you don’t believe as strongly when you’re feeling better. If you can identify these thoughts, you will be able to decenter from them more easily, because you know they are symptoms of your depression rather than immutable facts.
Paradoxically, thoughts that we most firmly believe are often the least likely to be true. For example, many depressed people hold on tightly to beliefs such as “I am defective,” “I am unlovable,” “I will never be successful,” or “The world is doomed to disaster.” These types of thoughts are cognitive symptoms that occur as commonly in depression as a fever occurs as a symptom of an infection.
Although people suffering from depression tend to believe these negative thoughts to be true, these thoughts are just as much part of the phenomenon of depression as bodily symptoms, such as a change of appetite or sleep pattern.
How to Test Whether Your Thoughts are Facts:
One way of testing whether a thought is a fact or a symptom of depression is to do a two-step experiment:
- If you temporarily see that thought as a fact, does it lead to healing and peace or pain and suffering?If you are having a thought that leads to worsened depression, that is a good clue that it is related to the depression itself and is not an actual fact. You do not have to ask anyone else, just yourself, “How do I feel after thinking the thought?”
If you have trouble letting go of the idea that your thought is not in fact true, that is because you are having trouble seeing it as just a thought. Another way to investigate whether a thought is true is to inquire if the thought often repeats. If so, that is another good clue that it is part of a story you’ve constructed. Once you recognize this, it’s amazing how its power diminishes. It tends to lose its hold over you.
Loosening the Grip of Self-Judgement
Depression tends to cause cascades of negative thoughts. Using mindfulness and observing that your mind is generating these thoughts allows you to start changing your relationship to them. For example, when feeling like a failure, you might say, “There’s that failure type of thought again,” and in that way be able to let it go or lessen its grip.
In one instance a woman described feeling depressed after being fired from a job after several years because she was frequently argumentative. In fact, in the mindfulness class she was often argumentative as well. She was encouraged to observe her argumentative thoughts in her meditation and to try letting them go and noticing how she felt. When she did so, she noticed she felt very vulnerable. She realized this perceived vulnerability was related to some past events in her childhood, but she no longer was as helpless as she had been as a child. She gradually was able to loosen up her argumentative style and stay more rooted in the present moment.
MBCT-based programs have been scientifically proven in a National Institute of Health study to bring relief to chronic sufferers of depression by helping them realize that their thoughts are not their reality.
Excerpted from the book When Antidepressants Aren’t Enough. Copyright ©2019 by Stuart Eisendrath. Printed with permission from New World Library.
Next Issue:
- Focus on Our Group Coaches
- Latest News– 2020 Vision
- Takeaway– Meditation
