Podcast
Finding Your Passion And Purpose: A People-Pleaser’s Journey Through Personal Development With Cathy Fyffe
Finding your passion and purpose can be a long and difficult journey, and not all of us find end up finding it. Personal development can help you reach that goal and transform you into a better version of you. In this episode, Janet Hogan talks about self-transformation with women’s coach and mentor, Cathy Fyffe. Cathy shares her journey from being a people-pleaser to self-discovery, how marital issues spurred her towards finding her purpose, and how you can do that too. Tune in and listen for more on personal development in this episode.
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Finding Your Passion And Purpose: A People-Pleaser’s Journey Through Personal Development With Cathy Fyffe
Have you ever experienced that moment where you wake up one day, take a look at the fellow lying in bed next to you and think to yourself, “The person who was the love of my life feels more like my roommate?” You find yourself asking, “What happened to the passion, the sparks that once flew between us? It’s like I’m living on autopilot. I’ve lost my partner and lover. It even feels like I’ve lost myself.” If you’re a mother, wife or daughter and you can relate to this, then perhaps you too have got caught up on the treadmill of people-pleasing where you put everyone else’s interests ahead of your own.
If that’s the case, you’re going to love hearing from our next guest who has walked in the same shoes. Instead of saying, “Stuck, misunderstood and unhappy,” she put herself through the emotional wringer to try and figure out who she was and why she felt so empty. I’ll take great pleasure in introducing Cathy Fyffe, who speaks to us, not as a wife, mother and people pleaser but as a much-respected women’s coaching mentor. Cathy, welcome to the show.
Thank you, Janet. It’s an absolute pleasure to be here.
It’s lovely to welcome you onboard. I’d like to start with a bit of a rewind. Let’s go back to your life before you had that wake the F up moment. You were working as a consultant. Give us a snapshot of what was going on for you back then.
Back then, I was the mother of two of my children, who were 8 and 6 at the time. I’m running my own consulting practice and being a stepmother to my stepson, who didn’t ever accept me as part of his life. We had created a space in our home where we had him every weekend but it was very challenging. He was the first person in my life that didn’t like me. I struggled with that but we were okay. My husband was a man who didn’t love babies and nurturing didn’t come naturally to him. My son was a very difficult baby.
That set up this dynamic in our household where I was the primary person looking after the kids even though I was running a consulting business. I’d done that because I’d worked in government at that executive management level but wanted to be at home for my children. I then created a practice that would allow me to work at home, support my kids but keep me engaged, interested in life and still be my own person.
What I get from that is that virtually, overnight, you were cast in the stepmother role. You had your own children but then suddenly you’re a stepmother to this little boy.
In fact, my stepson was already there before we had children. When we then had our kids, for the first year of my daughter’s life, he refused to even look at her because his mother had said to him, “When they have children, they won’t want anything to do with you.” Every weekend when we had my stepson, there was a lot of time spent trying to reconnect with him and help him feel that we did want him around. It was this constant undoing the damage that had been done during the week and being cast as the wicked stepmother by his mother. It was a difficult space to operate in. My husband found it very difficult because he wanted to support his son and me but he didn’t do anything.
You described your husband that cast himself as Switzerland. Can you tell me about that? What did you mean by that?
What happened was because my husband wanted to support his son, which I get because that’s his child, he did want to support me but he didn’t want to be seen to support me to Liam. He didn’t want Liam to see him supporting me. In order to not be upset by either of us, he became Switzerland. We had this triangle going where the three of us were all incredibly unhappy.
By the time Liam was a teenager, tell us what was happening there and what was going on in your life.
Those teenage years were difficult. He was ten when my daughter was born. When he was 15, 16, 17, our kids were still very little. I’m trying to do anything. A family with such big age differences was very difficult. Liam was a kid that doesn’t do small talk. You weren’t allowed to say, “Hi, Liam. How are you going?” He didn’t want to have anything to do with me. There was no glue. There was no social intercourse because I couldn’t say, “How are you going,” because that wasn’t allowed, so then we had nothing.
For me, every weekend felt like my home turned into this toxic environment where I was hiding out in my bedroom as much as possible because the air in the home felt bad. The rules for Liam were different from our children’s because he was only there on the weekend and his father didn’t want to take a stand with him. I felt powerless and the anger could potentially explode at any time. It was this through that time. I did have a few outbursts and that damaged the relationship further with Liam. It was a tough time.
It sounds like a terrible situation where you’re a prisoner in your own home but not allowed to or didn’t feel that you could speak up. This wasn’t a sustainable situation, Cathy. What happened?
This is where the crux came in the sense that up until then, we had Liam every weekend, then it came a time for him to go to uni. We live in Melbourne and his mother had moved him away to Regional Victoria for his high school years. He got into Melbourne Uni and needed to return to Melbourne to study. My husband wanted him to live with us, given that it’s his child. Whilst, I didn’t want that. I also knew that was a reasonable thing. I tried to say to my husband, “If Liam is going to live with us full-time, it can’t be on the same terms and conditions that he lived with us during the week because I will not cope.”
That was completely unacknowledged. Liam moved in by stealth in the sense that it’s like, “He’ll come for the first week or two and we’ll see what happens.” He came but he stayed. There was never any conversation about, “He’s here permanently. Let’s talk about that.” It’s that feeling of being a prisoner. There was no escape because he was there all the time. It was having this toxic energy in my home where I felt misunderstood and unsupported by my husband but I know Liam felt the same. I know my husband felt caught between the three of us. I got to the point where I thought, “This is unsustainable for me. I don’t want to live like this.” It created a big disconnect with my husband and me.
What happened? You did something that broke this triangle apart. Can you tell us about that?
At that stage, I was facing that dilemma, which I’m sure a lot of women face. Do I stay or do I go? The thing was, I still loved my husband even though we had all of this stuff and the space between us. I didn’t want to break up our marriage but he wasn’t on board getting any help. He was saying the issues are mine. At that point, I’m like, “What can I do?” I thought nothing was going to change unless I did something different. That’s when I rediscovered personal development because I had been very interested in it through my early twenties. When I met my husband because he was so suspicious and anti-anything that he considered woo-woo, I’d given all that up in order to keep him happy.
I went back to that space and went on that journey of rediscovery of who I was as an adult woman with significant work experience, with a partner, a stepchild and children. I reconnected to the woman that I used to be but the mature version of her. I got clear about my values and the beliefs that I hold in. In particular, that core destructive belief that you talked about, Janet. In my case, that belief was, I don’t matter. I was 1 of the 8th child of a family of 11 children.
You can possibly appreciate how I took on that belief as a child but it wasn’t until I was 45 that I got present to what that meant, the impact that it had in my life, the role that belief played in the emotional landscape of our relationship and why. When Nigel, from my end, seems to take Liam’s side, I made that mean that I didn’t matter.
I went on that journey and started to understand myself, what made me tick, why I would react to things the way that I didn’t and where that deep hurt was coming from. That’s when I started to be able to make some shifts. It was that point of taking personal responsibility for what I created in my life. Most importantly, stop blaming my husband for everything that wasn’t working.
That’s a great point to come to because it’s so easy. They’re the ones who are the first in the line of fire, the significant other. It’s interesting you share that core destructive belief of I don’t matter. Clearly, that could have been the negative narrative coming out of a family of eight people. It’s interesting how we then make the narrative seem true by going into a relationship where you don’t matter, where you lose your voice and where it’s all about pleasing the other person. On the face of it, at least, is making very unreasonable demands but when you’re driven by that story, that’s operating beneath the surface. We’re not even aware of what’s driving us.
We’re following some pre-programmed instructions, almost like a patch that we’ve made at a subconscious level with a different part of ourselves with maybe the fearful part. I can see that the moment we start poking around in these areas, that’s potentially very scary for the partner. Tell us how he responded to this inner work that you were doing.
The first thing I did was go on a one-day event. I loved everything that person shared with the room. During the event, she was talking about a ten-day retreat that she was running in Thailand. I was like, “I’m going to that.” I signed up on the spot and went, “How am I going to tell my husband about this?” It was four months away and I didn’t mention it for two months. I thought, “I’m going to have to tell him because we’ve got two school-aged children.” When I told him, he was incredibly angry like, “Why are you doing that?” I was very fearful. Right up until the day that I left to go to the retreat, he still could barely look at me. It was so hostile.
I went and communicated with them while I was away. They were quite loving when I was away. Through those ten days, I went on a massive transformation and did a lot of digging into who I was, what I wanted and needed, how I showed up and all of those things. When I came back, I was full of hope about how we could transform our relationship. I could rebuild things but he was still so angry that he completely shut me down. Every time I tried to talk about it, he wouldn’t have a bar of it.
I hear this a lot and I’ve even experienced it personally, particularly in the beginning. Women tend to be more open to exploring emotional areas but for men, that can be terrifying territory. In the beginning, when I started exploring this inner self, I would have to be very careful how I couched the whole program that I was going to do, justify the cost of it and all of that. After a while, it became clear that it was good for our relationship. How did you navigate that terrain? I imagine you would have come back from that trip thinking, “My problems are solved.” What happened then?
He completely shut me down, so I was like, “What do I do? What’s my next step?” At that point, my support was all back in Thailand. I then started to look for some other coaches and mentors. I stopped trying to communicate about what I was doing and did the work myself. It was head down, bum up for a while and stopped trying to change things. I kept the relationship going, continued to mother my children, kept working but things weren’t great. We struggled on for a year and a half. For me, I got to the point where I had gained so much from this myself that I wanted to make the same impact in other women’s lives.
I approached my mentor at the time to see if she would take me on in her business, which she did. That freaked my husband out because he was like, “Why would you do that? Isn’t it enough that you’re already playing in this space for yourself? Why would you give up your consulting work?” I’m very fearful that I would grow away from him. His coffee was that I would leave him.
What happened?
I had to keep reassuring him that, “No, that wasn’t the intention. The intention was from my end to rebuild the connection. Wanting to follow that path was about me coming back to my own truth.” The fact that I had given up so much of the things that I was interested in throughout my life in order to keep him happy and that I could no longer do that.
This did become a bit of a deal-breaker for us or a line in the sand where I said to him, “In the same way that I love and accept all of the things about you that I don’t like but I do because of who you are, I need you to give some of that back to me. You may not want me to do this but it’s important to me and I’m going to do it.” At that point, part of me was like, “If he walks, so be it.” I could not keep putting myself second to him.
I still remember we had the conversation out in the backyard. He said, “This is a potential deal-breaker. For me, I didn’t sign up for that.” He left. I remember coming back inside thinking, “If he leaves, so be it.” I wasn’t sure if I wanted him to go or stay. I don’t know which would be a better outcome here because it was not great where we were right then.
He came back and very ungraciously said, “If I go, I’ll go and live in Darwin. I’ll never have anything to do with any of you. I’d have to put up with it.” That started a series of year-long conversations about what it would look like and mean. I was constantly trying to reassure him that the fundamentals about marriage were intact and I had no intention of leaving him, that this was what I wanted to do and where I wanted to put my energy in the future.
He stopped putting up objections but he wasn’t a supporter. What that meant for me was the first time I got on stage when I was co-presenting an event with my mentor. I couldn’t come home and share what that was like. For my first coaching clients and getting results for people, he wasn’t interested. It was something he was tolerating. He wasn’t actively objecting but he wasn’t in my cheer squad. This went on for a number of years. I got on with my life and we were still a little bit parallel. We had come a long way but it still wasn’t awesome. I was so much clearer and able to stand in my own truth. I know what was important to me, where my boundaries were, how to better parent my children but also how to communicate with him in a way.
I stopped making him wrong because I felt like that’s what he was doing to me. I needed to not keep doing that to him but there was still that piece missing. As a result, I started to develop an autoimmune condition, which was all brought on by emotional stress. One day, I said to him how heartbreaking it was for me that he wasn’t supportive. He said, “I won’t stop you from doing anything.” I said, “I know you don’t but you’re not on my cheer squad. When you roll your eyes when I told you about something, that breaks my heart and it stops me from sharing what’s important to you.”
That conversation was life-changing for us because he finally got that it wasn’t enough to not object. I needed him to support me. From that day forward, he’s done a complete turnaround. When I left my mentor’s business in mid-2019, I then created my own program because I wanted to work with women whose stories most resonated with mine and where I felt that I could have the biggest impact. Whilst, he was like, “Do you want to do that? Why don’t you stick with the consulting? It’s so much easier.” I was like, “Yes, it is but it doesn’t fulfill me in the way that my coaching work does.” He was like, “If that’s what you want, I’m with you.”
The difference is he celebrates my success. This necklace that I’m wearing says, “You are beautiful inside and out.” He gave me that when I ran my first solo. He’s open to hearing the stories that I talk about my clients and the things that they’re achieving. We’re closely connected. Years ago, I would not believe that it was possible for us to communicate the way we do now. I know his love language.
I know how to speak what I call into his listening because I know his values and his version of the core destructive belief. I know all of those things about him that allow me to connect and honor him in a way that has him feeling loved, seen and heard for the truth of who he is in the same way that I want to be. It’s been a life-changing experience. Not without the pain but for me, it is a happy ending.
Thank you so much for sharing that. That’s of such great value I’m sure to many people reading this. Normally what happens when a relationship hits that area of stuckness, we don’t know how to take it forward. That’s when you might think about couples’ therapy but how often does that work? You’re dragging your partner along. He doesn’t want to be there and it almost makes things worse. What I heard from you, Cathy, are two pivotal things that made all the difference. That moment when you put yourself first, in other words, if he wasn’t going to come along, you would do this anyway because you had to, for yourself.
The second time when you said that you needed him, it was an invitation to partner up but at a whole new level. That was very inclusive. It wasn’t like, “This relationship sucks. We’ve got to do something about it. I’m implying that it’s all your fault.” It wasn’t that at all. You made yourself vulnerable and I can see why he came across. It’s helpful to hear that and also the amount of time that it requires. It wasn’t overnight. We’re talking years. It was a slow evolution.
My mentor used to say, “My husband is changing but at a snail’s pace.” It was very slow. A lot of people can do it a lot quicker. That’s what it took for us.
An important lesson I get from hearing your story is that the worst mistake we can make is try and change our partner. We can only change the thing that we have control over and that is ourselves. What’s interesting is when you did that and you occupied that heartfelt space of talking to him from your heart saying, “I need you to support me. It’s not good enough,” it was an invitation for him to step up. In other words, he did change and grow as a result of the work that you put on yourself. I find that tends to be what happens. If one partner decides to go out on a self-development journey, it’s very scary for the other one who’s left behind.
Usually, the ratio of women to men who do in work, mostly women, is about 80%. Chances are it’s going to be the male partner who’s left behind. In my experience, what I see is when the woman goes out front, takes that if you like emotional leadership role and does the work, it only ever has a positive effect on the relationship unless there’s an irreconcilable difference but the tendency is that it’s beneficial for both. It’s only that one person that had to take the lead on it.
Thank you so much for sharing that. It speaks to a lot of us who get to that point where we go, “Is this all my life is about?” It doesn’t get any better from this point. Something is saying to us, “That’s not good enough. Where do we go?” It’s the scariest place of all because there’s so much resistance. Well done for persevering. Tell us a little bit about what you’re doing, Cathy. Where did all of this work lead you to do?
I discovered that when I did the work, so my relationship was able to recalibrate even if he wasn’t onboarding the same way that I was or wanted him to. I knew a lot of the women in the work I’d been doing with my mentor were in that space, that midlife 40 to 60, where the patterns that we thought served us well for those early years, the focus of parenting and all of that. Our kids get a bit older and suddenly, we’ve got a tiny bit more time. We start to go, “Who am I? Where did I go? Who is that person that’s occupying the other half of the bed in the house?” I start to question what their life’s about and will a relationship survive.
They were the people that I wanted to help because I’d walked that path. I knew that what I had learned and honed over the years of working in my mentor’s business, as well as my formal qualifications, would allow me to create something that addressed those needs. I’ve created a program that I call Create a Life to Love. It’s all about taking women on that journey of personal transformation but in a way that’s permanent and long-lasting. It’s not a quick fix. It’s not, “Come away from the retreat and have a wonderful time on the weekend. Bye-bye and good luck once you get home.” It’s taken us many years to create the patterns and beliefs in our systems. We don’t change overnight.
My program is about supporting and guiding women as they embody the changes that they want to make. I take them through all of those stages of taking personal responsibility, knowing what their own personal big why is and what their beliefs are. Not only the core destructive belief but what did they believe about being a wife, mother, worker and woman of a certain age, money and all of those things that drive the way we show up in the world.
What are their highest values? Why is that important in creating that life that you want to live? We look at their emotions the fact that our emotions are our body’s way of communicating with us. If we don’t listen and tune in, then our body reacts. We have to turn, listen and allow our bodies to feel those emotions.
Possibly, it’s one of the only people in this space that also then includes a lot of work around communication. We’re talking personal growth that I layer in the communication and the relationship stuff because that’s what so many of us are dealing with. We talk about how to have that successful conversation. What are the barriers to conversation? How to have difficult conversations that if we don’t have the stuff doesn’t go away? We know it stays in the space between us.
We talk about how to frame those up and all of the things that allow couples to reconnect but also in any relationship, friendships and siblings. We look at boundaries because we teach people how to treat us. If we’re going on that growth journey, often the way we’ve let people treat us in the past is no longer going to work for us.
It’s learning how to create those new boundaries and bringing the rest of our family along for the ride. How to create more fun and joy in our life? One step before that was that understanding why so many of us are perpetual people pleasers. Why we talk to ourselves the way we do? Why we struggle to ask for help? All of that nitty-gritty stuff that drives the way, so many of us women show up every day.
It’s about how do we take that step forward or that vision for our life based on that deep knowledge we have about ourselves. Knowing what’s happening and why. What are those core limiting beliefs? What are our values? How do I show up in arguments? How do I want to show up? What’s the stuff that lights me up? How do I bring more of that in so that I then have the tools to create the life and the relationship that I want to live? I try and take them on that whole journey.
You’ve walked the path yourself, so you can take them on that journey but it doesn’t have to take as long. It’s a compressed journey, although it’s not overnight. Sometimes we think we have to be on the verge of separation or divorce to take action but we don’t. I live for the day when this kind of work that you do becomes commonplace. It’s what you do rather than the exception to the rule because nothing bad seems to come of it unless the relationship wasn’t meant to be in the first place.
One of the businesses we used to run was a wedding business. I was talking to a psychologist about the divorce rate because it was sad seeing couples invest all this money in the wedding day but not so much in life after that day. He maintained that about 85% of divorce was unnecessary. In other words, the problem could have been solved if the couple that had only known how to do that will be guided in some way.
What you’re sharing here is a good example of that. It would have been so easy for you to take the path if all of the stuff was not working. What we know is that those same behavior patterns that got you to that place will keep playing out. It doesn’t matter who the partner is. We experienced the same issues over again.
Thank you for sharing that. You’ve raised some important points. One of the things I love doing on these interviews is showing a little bit of processing work in action. You realize that it doesn’t have to be that uncomfortable or painful either. Sometimes you can get realizations relatively easy and that can shine a whole new life.
It’s not only about solving problems but it’s also opening up a future potential that maybe we don’t see. If you’re reading, I got Cathy to complete the magic triangle exercise. The idea of this exercise is to go through a whole bunch of potential needs, things that would make a big difference to your life and bring it down to your top three.
Cathy, the top three needs that you came up with were freedom, expansion and peace. With peace as the number one. What I’d like to do is explore what each of those means. We can extrapolate from that. What does that say about your past going forward? We’ll see what the triangle has to reveal to you, Cathy. Let’s go with freedom first because freedom is such a loaded word. There are so many different ways to interpret that but, in your case, Cathy, what does freedom mean for you? Freedom from what?
Freedom, to me, is multilayered. One of the fundamental or foundational aspects of freedom to me is financial freedom because it’s only when I feel that security when my financial needs are met. I then have the freedom to explore life and live the way I want. It’s one of the reasons why I run my own business so that I get to choose when, where, how and how often I work when I get up. Having that freedom and flexibility every day is hugely important to me. It’s also freedom of expression and to be all of who you are and to walk your own truth. It is quite multifaceted.
I imagine all our freedom within a relationship. That all expression, the ball and chain and all of that rather than feeling a prisoner within a relationship. That’s about finding freedom within that relationship.
Yes, particularly in our relationship. My husband and I are wildly different people. We’ve got to that place like so many couples think, where we have to do everything together, socialize together or that our partner needs to meet all of our needs. We are very much operators to individuals that come together at various points of connection but we’re quite independent. He is in a place where he trusts and accepts that I’m not going to leave him, the relationship is a massive party and I want to be with him, so I’m able to explore my freedom.
In aside, I’ll go off on a road trip, regularly go away with girlfriends or experience things that I want and I’m interested in but that he’s not necessarily. That’s okay. We get to have our views. With the situation in the world at the moment, he and I have vastly different views and that’s okay. I don’t have to think what he thinks and he doesn’t have to think what I think. We’re allowed to be free and sovereign within our own.
The next core need was interesting, which is expansion. Speak to me about that one, Cathy. What does expansion mean for you?
That’s becoming more important as I go on more of that inner journey and that connection to spirit for me. It’s about recognizing and opening up to the abundance and the wonders of the universe. That expansion of our own hearts, energy, our mind or my mind, my feelings and thoughts are interwoven with growth.
You’re tapping into the spiritual side. Pre-COVID, I wonder if we could have even used the word spirituality with someone saying, “We should go and join a hippy commune up in Bali where I’m recording this.” The fact that the word spirituality is more finding itself in common parlance that we’re talking about, this extra dimension that previously was rarely spoken about. I understand that. The final need, the one that sits at the top of your triangle, like the star on the Christmas tree, is peace. Tell us about peace. What does that mean to you?
For me, peace is about feeling at peace in my own heart. It’s within and without. If I refer back to those years that we spoke about, the emotional turmoil and that constant uncertainty and gut-churning, “Do I stay? Do I go? What do I do? How do I navigate this?” That constant grind was very difficult to navigate. All I wanted was to feel calm and at peace in myself.
I have that but I also know for me it’s peace of mind. If my kids are fighting, it’s not that my kids are fighting and it upsets me. It upsets my sense of peace. It’s why I’ve worked from home for years but I never have the TV or radio on during the day. I like the quiet. It’s why I’m drawn to nature. I like peace and the broader meaning of peace in terms of peace in the world. Peace in everybody’s heart is where that comes from.
You’ve defined those three needs, so let’s look at what that describes as your journey following those three things. To explain how the needs work, a need comes from experiencing the opposite of it. As a basic example, we crave a long hot summer if we’ve known a very long dark winter. It’s the opposite of what we need that causes pain in our life. If we look at peace, for instance, being your core need, you shared with us a lot about the lack of peace, that discord that you were feeling, the discord between different values or feeling something and not being able to speak it, that misalignment. Not being able to show up as yourself creates inner turmoil or chaos.
One thing to understand is that a need comes about for a very good reason that relates back to our past. That’s why we feel so passionate about it. It informs our work going forward because the greatest passion is born from pain. It’s funny because, as a society, we run away from pain. It’s ironic and yet, it’s the greatest gift. Imagine, Cathy, if you’d never had those moments of discord or those moments of suffering and misery, would you be doing the work that you’re doing? No. This is why this exercise is powerful because it comes directly from your pain. Your pain articulates the journey. You’ve got to find your why and the question but what does that even mean?
In very simple terms, your why is whatever you need most to do that will give you what you most need creating by the pain of the past. Here, it’s very simple. It’s peace. Your why becomes peace. It’s all about the pursuit of peace for you because you’ve known painfully the opposite of that. The elements at the base of the triangle are what will guide you to that piece.
Why do you do your work? Why do you get out of bed? It’s to bring peace to others because in bringing peace to others, who too might be going through disruptive relationships, teenagers who aren’t speaking to them or feelings of inner turmoil because how they’re showing up in the world doesn’t align with who they are, that’s your gift because it’s the most precious thing for you in your life.
That’s what you have to give to others. That’s your why. What gets you out of bed in the morning? It’s the thought that you might be able to deliver the peace that someone else that you had it delivered to you. Your what is freedom. What you bring to people is the freedom as you articulated to be themselves, be free within a relationship, not have to compromise and be able to show up as you are.
Interestingly also, it means to speak to the freedom to do work that you love because that’s what you’re doing. You have freedom of hours, financial freedom, freedom to make the money that you need to make and the importance of that. Understanding that you can’t just go out and start doing work that’s a hobby. It needs to bring money in as well. That’s what. That’s the content, if you like, on what you deliver.
The how is interesting, which is expansion. How you do that is you start to bring people in connection with their spiritual self. That’s the key. The way you deliver the freedom to satisfy the core need of peace is to open them up to that unspoken territory that we rarely delve into, which is that intuitive aspect to us. That is without boundaries, limitations and opening people up to that expansive aspect of who we are that we normally don’t even touch on. Perhaps, we’re not even ready to engage in those conversations until we reach a particular age. Does that resonate for you, Cathy?
In my work, we call it your big why. My big why is peace. It’s interesting that it came out as the way you said and you’re very much resonated with what you were saying there.
What rise up as needs, ultimately, if you follow them, say that’s like your North Star, become your highest values. Your highest value is peace. The way you deliver peace is through your 2nd and 3rd highest values of freedom and expansion. They articulate your journey. You can trust it because it comes from you. Your intuitive self has chosen that. The thing that we have to be aware of is whatever can threaten those three things and to be conscious of that. Knowing that these needs were created by an experience of the lack of those. You’ve known lack of freedom and expansion where you felt you haven’t been able to grow and your status that constricted itself. You know the pain of that.
Let’s look at the most important need, which is peace. It’s a bit counterintuitive but the way to anchor that is to face the very thing that can threaten it. That always comes from fear, in the same way that your husband was responding in a fear-driven way to you doing this work because it represented so much threat and change. We have an aspect in ourselves that does the same. It responds like an inner husband that’s saying, “No, don’t change. Stay the way you are.” We know that self, even if it might not be the ideal self.
Let’s address that so that we are aware of that. In my five-door model, I call this doorway one, the worst-case scenario. We have a tendency as humans to run away from it. In fact, we have to be powerful, counterintuitive and face it. What I’m going to ask you to do, Cathy, is imagine that peace as your highest value is sitting to the right side of you.
You can even start to imagine that bright future where peace does reign. It sounds like it’s already doing that and featuring your life through your work. As Victor say, “That’s the star I follow.” To protect that star, we have to know what the dark cloud is that could obscure it. Imagine that you’re flipping 180 degrees to your left and you see the opposite of peace. If you were to describe that in a word, what would the opposite of peace be for you?
Conflict.
Are there times in your life where you’ve known conflict beyond what you’ve shared earlier in your life where you knew conflict?
Yes. Being 1 of 11 kids, I had 1 particular brother that he and I clashed quite a bit. We were both quite strong-willed. He was five years older than me and thought that because he was older, he should have more rights and his needs were more important than mine. I used to drive him crazy because I was very articulate and I could mount as good as he is. We had conflict there. It’s the day-to-day sibling stuff. I then didn’t have a lot of conflict until my relationship.
Thank you for sharing that just so everyone understands how this works. It’s interesting because every one of us has a cool fear. Say it’s the fear of conflict. You’ve got an older brother who’s five years old but for a child, that is seriously dangerous. There’s a risk that you can get physically hurt. The behaviors in our adult life tend to mirror their reflection and exaggeration of the behavior patterns in our early life.
If we reverse engineer this and go, “The opposite to peace is conflict. Fear of conflict is what is motivating my behavior.” In other words, if the fear of conflict is triggered by a belief of say, I don’t matter, then while you imagine I don’t matter, it’s less likely that you’re going to get into fights with your older brother or anyone else. You go like, “I’m not going to say anything or speak up. I’ll sit with it. I’ll let him be right,” rather than engaging in conflict because conflict represents danger.
It’s the story of that core destructive belief that creates the fear. It’s such a debilitating belief, I don’t matter. It’s the opposite to the life of foaming and creates a sense of shame around that. What happens is part of us wants to prove that wrong. That’s where we’ll go out and say, “Whatever the opposite of I do matter and try and be significant.”
That’s what we call overcompensating health. That’s where we might show up in a way that feels like we’re doing the right thing but it’s to prove something to others that you’re not necessarily coming from Asheville and that’s where we can find ourselves in a crazy pain pendulum vacillating between, I don’t matter. “I’m here to conquer the world. Neither of them is sustainable.”
Thank you for sharing that. Once you bring this stuff to the surface, then you can start to deal with it. As they say, when you’re in it, you can’t see it, when you can see it. You’re no longer in it. Thank you for being willing to go through that exercise so that we can start to understand what makes us tick. It doesn’t have to necessarily take a long time to unravel what it is that might not be working for us.
Once we create that awareness, we then have the choice. When we don’t have any awareness, we don’t know how else, how to move forward or change anything.
Cathy, have you ever worked with anyone who’s done the inner work and didn’t like who they saw themselves to be? Has that ever happened for you?
What happens for some people is they are very anxious about taking the Band-Aid off things that they’ve had hidden. There can be fear around experiences they may have suppressed and that makes them nervous. My experience shows that it’s not that they don’t like what they see. It’s that there are unhealed wounds and more stories of shame that the process then invites them to learn, love, accept all of who they are and embrace.
We all have stuff that we don’t like about ourselves but it’s the stepping into the embracing, forgiving and self-compassion that allows us to heal some of that stuff. For most people that start this work, it is because there are aspects of themselves they’re not happy with. It’s not what they find out that makes them unhappy.
I had an inner fear of doing any kind of work into myself, anything that was self-reflective because I thought, “What if I don’t find anyone there? What if it’s empty?” I’ve never found anyone to not appreciate more fully who they are once they strip the stories away because the stories are that. It’s why we suffer because there’s a dissonance between who we intuitively know ourselves to be and how we’re showing up, how we feel we’re being treated or the lot that life is dealing us.
When we can reconnect those two so that they’re in alignment, that’s where you find peace. That’s what you’re talking about. Would you say it’s worth it, Cathy? When you look back on the time that you invested and all of that, would you ever have gone the other way and go, “No, it would have been not opening up this Pandora’s box?”
No, because if I hadn’t have done that, I would have left my children. They wouldn’t have grown up with their father in their life. I don’t know where my life would have led but my life is infinitely richer for the work I do, as are all of my relationships, friendships, relationships with my siblings and the connections I have with strangers because I know and understand myself. I bring a new level of understanding to interactions with other people. I’m able to make those connections at quite a deep level quickly because you recognize that there’s no point keeping the mask on. Who’s that for? The richness lives in the truth.
One last question, what would you say to someone who would say, “Doing all this inner work is inherently selfish. It’s even narcissistic?”
It couldn’t be further from the truth. It’s the biggest gift you can give not only to yourself but to the people around you. When you do that work to know and understand yourself and let yourself be seen deeply, it automatically helps you to understand others in a way that you wouldn’t have before. It’s the key to building genuine relationships instead of hiding in the distance or the unwillingness to be vulnerable and share anything of yourself. That perception probably comes more from fear than anything. It’s not self-indulgent at all. It’s life-affirming and life-changing.
Thank you, Cathy. I see that. I love the fact that you’re willing to share your story so that others can see that you’ve walked the path yourself and the great reward that comes at the end of it. If people want to work with you, Cathy, what’s the best way? How can they reach out to you?
There’s a couple of ways, Janet. For those that go, “Cathy, yes. I understand what you’re saying. I want to go on that journey,” I do have the opportunity. I run what I call Love your Life Consultation, where it’s a 45-minute chat. We can talk about what is the next right step for you and at least help people take one step further on their journey as well as talking about what is that step-by-step to permanent transformation if people are interested in doing it.
The other thing that people can do is I have a free 45-minute Masterclass, which is all about how to rediscover you, rebuild your relationship and create a life to love. That’s full of very practical and implementable steps that people can use without necessarily having a one-on-one chat. Both of those are available.
A masterclass is great because you get to tell whether someone resonates with you or not and how they are in front of a group. It’s a great idea and you always learn something. Cathy, thank you so much. I appreciate your openness, being open to share the most painful moments and go back to that territory with such grace and ease.
It was my pleasure and honor to be here with you. Thank you for creating an opportunity. I hope that our conversation has opened some doors for people around what’s possible for them.
If it helps one person wake the F up, it’s been a worthy exercise. Thank you, Cathy.
Important Links:
- Cathy Fyffe
- Create a Life to Love
- Love your Life Consultation – Free 45-minute Consultation with Cathy Fyffe
- How to Rediscover You, Regain Your Spark and Zest for Life and Create a Life You Love – Free Masterclass with Cathy Fyffe
- Facebook.com/Createalife2love
- Instagram.com/createalifetolove
- LinkedIn.com/in/CathyFyffe
About Cathy Fyffe
Cathy Fyffe is a women’s coach and mentor supporting women who feel like they have lost themselves, their spark for life, and their relationship. Through the Create a Life to Love program Cathy guides women on a deep journey to rediscover who they are now after years of being a wife and mother. She has the secret to creating a life and relationship they love – permanently…putting women back in the driver’s seat of their life.
Having been through this experience herself and understanding the emotional heartache of a relationship that leaves you feeling alone, unsupported, and taken for granted, Cathy is well placed to lead other women through their personal transformation. Her warm and caring approach combined with her humour and practicality allows her to hold a safe, non-judgemental space.
Cathy loves working with women who want to deepen their understanding of themselves, so they can be the best version of themselves. Cathy has the ability to gently guide people to get to the heart of whatever is holding them back in life, so they can create a life they love.
Cathy believes that all any of us really wants is to love and be loved and to be known, loved, and understood for the truth of who we are.
Cathy and her husband live in Melbourne and have an adult stepson, two young adult children still living at home. They love to travel and experience all that life has to offer.
