Rebecca Kingston

It is becoming more frequent for me in my

coaching practice to have conversations with clients about their deep desire to be understood. We long to be understood.

Ellen Degeneres says, “It is wonderful to be loved, but it is profound to be understood.” However, in a world where no two people are the same, this is an almost impossible quest. Yet we have a strong yearning to know and to be known. I hear from people in my work, “My family doesn’t get me!” or “My husband doesn’t understand me!” or “My friends just don’t seem to know me anymore!” And we wish they did because that would bring so much comfort to us in our situation. But when we get real about this for a moment, of course they don’t understand us how we would like. They have never seen life from behind our eyes, nor walked a day in our shoes, thought for a minute with our mind or felt for a second with our heart. It makes sense that, so few really get us.

This also works the other way where we struggle to understand everyone else...

I used to think that I could control everything

around me and that everything was within my control. Not only did these thoughts serve me up plenty of stress and worry but also continuous feelings of failure and frustration. How much are you trying to control in your life? Is it your partner? Your children? Your colleagues? What people think of you? The way other react to you? The outcome of each and every situation you find yourself in? All aspects of your work? The way the dishwasher is stacked and how the clothes are folded? Our control is actually our fear of how things might go if we are not in control.

Whatever gave us the idea that we had to control the entire world around us? All it really set us up to experience is a lot of let downs and disappointments. The desire to always be in control can honestly ruin people’s lives, especially the lives of those around them. Nobody wants to be controlled.

Ask yourself, ‘Do you want to be in control or do you want to be happy?’

So I have some...

Each year I notice how people's mood and

energy seem to become lower as winter progresses. For some, the gloom of the winter weather can make them quite miserable and create a dark cloud that follows them around a bit like Eeyore.

Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) can impact many, to various extents, through being exposed to less daylight hours and the fact that long weekends are few and far between. Unlike the festive season and New Year’s where many make plans for social gatherings, holidays, getting active and having fun; in winter many just hunker down and hope to make it through without falling ill too often. However we can take back control of our moods by getting excited about life over the colder months. 

Firstly, moving our bodies releases endorphins and increases blood flow, so it is important not to let your exercise regime fall away over winter. I often hear from clients that it is just too cold, too dark or too wet to exercise. But I say toughen up, wear clothing that protec...

As many of you know, my kids leaving to their dads for the week brings me to my knees on a Sunday evening. I sink. I walk around like a zombie. I feel empty. I feel lost. I feel alone. And I put myself through this every fortnight. Ain't that crazy for four years...every two weeks my body, mind and soul drops a hundred degrees and dives into what could be labelled as depression. So that is 26 times a year. Over one hundred times in the last four years. And totally would be classified as depression on some of those occasions. I say that because it sometimes went for days and weeks. It sometimes felt like a deep dark stuck-ness. Like a feeling of emptiness where nobody will meet me in there. 

But now it is not depression. It is more like a drop down a steep slide at the  park. Or a drop in temperature at 4pm in the winter. Or a feeling of numbness in my legs. But then I go down the slide and stand up at the bottom. I turn on the heat pump once I feel the temperature drop. I jump up a...

This last week has been one we will never forget as New Zealanders. One where a darkness swept over our nation in the blink of an eye last Friday afternoon.  Our hearts break for the victims and their families and we mourn their huge loss. We look to each other for love and support and we look to our leaders for guidance and direction.

Our Prime Minister has led us with the most powerful and humbling presence and the feminine energy she has brought to has been commended world wide. Often as women we hide our femininity due to the meaning of weakness and powerless especially in leadership positions and even in general life. But the natural feminine energy is anything but these. It is nurturing and understanding, tenderness and kindness, sensitivity and allowing. These are powerful feminine behaviours and ones that we have witnessed with such grace in recent days. These are behaviours that feel authentic to so many of us but in a world where traditional masculine traits are...

The more I do life and the more I work with people, the more I see how strong the human need is to be understood by others. That feeling that somebody really gets us and knows us is so comforting. However in this day, people make less of an effort to understand others and deeply connect. And it really breaks the human heart when this happens to us. Recently I was in a situation where I felt really alone in my perspective and opinion. I ended up feeling frustrated and annoyed which meant I could not articulate myself well and as effectively as I really had hoped.

I got muddled and confused and broke down. I left feeling miserable. Then my 

self-doubt kicked in and I really questioned whether I was processing things like the others in that situation and if I was hearing things right. I felt weak and useless and that I had let myself down. This was until later on when someone came to see me and the first thing they said was I felt exactly like you. And this changed everything. This per...

I know that I can have very high expectations of myself and many of you do too. And when I set a goal and I do not achieve it, I used to beat myself up a lot. I have set goals in the past in finances, in health, in relationship and I have failed miserably. When this happened it would almost debilitate me for the rest of the week, month even or possibly longer. It would take a long time to get over the failure and build the desire to start again.

Over time with my training, I have certainly created a much more powerful way of going about things for myself. But I absolutely still experience failure and yes in some big areas of my life. But what I have realized is that, THIS IS MY LIFE!!! I get to make up the rules. It is up to me whether I am deflated or inspired. I get to choose what to do next. And the first thing that I do is press the RESET button on my life. Pressing the reset button gives me a fresh slate to start again. It gives me renewed energy. It gives me perspective about why...

First up my apologies for this less than warm and fuzzy post and for the curse words used.

I am all about surrounding yourself with a tribe that lifts you up. A tribe that you need to stand on your tippy toes to keep up with.  This is important face to face. Finding people who are in alignment with who you are and who you are becoming. For me this is soul centered people. People who truly care. People who want you both to grow and develop. People who are filled with integrity and see things through. People who are the same privately, publicly and personally. People who are authentic. People who are better than me. People who deepen me.

Therefore there is nothing more cutting to me than someone who does not practice what they preach, who say or promote one thing and then do another. Whether it be in their work, or their relationship, or their health or how they raise their kids or the lifestyle they lead. I remember a nutrition expert I met a few years ago who told me she w...

Anxiety is ruining my life!

I need to always be in control of everything!

I feel uneasy about everything!

I feel like I should have it all figured out by yesterday!

I get nervous about everything and I don't even know why!

Some nights I used to just lie in bed replaying the entire day over and over. My heart racing. Asking a million questions. Having a billion doubts and a gazillion ways of how I could have done things differently. I could wonder if anyone actually cared. If I was succeeding or failing. If they liked me or not. Whether I made a difference or not. If I was good enough. Some nights the frustration heightened tenfold as I couldn't fall asleep. All that I could lay with was myself and the dark space within.

Years ago anxiety appeared in the form of rage. I would feel out of control with my health or more often than not my finances and feel so upset with myself that I would go into fits of anger towards myself and end up sitting in the closet un...

Have you ever noticed how adults apologize if they come to tears in front of you or other people? Have you noticed how embarrassed and ashamed people can be about the act of crying? Or how taboo the tears seem to be that the adult crying will show such disapproval of themselves and the tears and openly criticize their emotional behavior by condemning and putting themselves down.

"I am so stupid. Why am I crying? This is so silly. I am sorry sorry for being such an idiot."

I hear these statements all too often. Even in situations where we are sharing and discussing intimate things about ourselves or hurtful events from out past or something that they have never said out loud before... people will refuse to accept this as a natural part of life.

Sometimes tears are almost 100% necessary and expected and yet adults will automatically go into a state of internal judgement and disgust for themselves and do anything they can to shut down the crying process. 

But these tears need to fal...