How I Became A Life Coach ‒ Coincidence Or Guidance? Is Coaching All About “Healing”?
- May 30, 2022
- 6 min read
Written by: Dr. Jackie Lau, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
Our experience of life can be complicated until it can be not. It can be one with millions of decisions leading to another decision at any point in time, or one with millions of decisions leading to the letting go of resistance to guided intuitions.
Get curious with the gift of your sense of resistance, it offers more wisdom and cosmic comfort than all perceived conveniences combined.
It was 4:00 in the morning. I was still sitting at McDonald’s hogging a quiet spot next to a plug socket, determined to aimlessly watch stand-up comedy specials on my laptop till my next flight in three hours.
After all it was finally the Christmas season, I could not be more ready to take a break and see my folks after a week-long conference in Germany and plentiful sleep deprivation halfway through grad school.
“The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you. Don't go back to sleep. You must ask for what you really want. Don't go back to sleep. People are going back and forth across the doorsill where the two worlds touch. The door is round and open. Don't go back to sleep.” ‒ Rumi
Just as I was simultaneously dozing off and vigilantly noticing how freakishly quiet the familiar Kuala Lumpur International Airport was, considering it was the festive season.
“Excuse me?” A woman in her 50s with black frame glasses asked politely. “Where can I find an adaptor for charging my phone?” Her accent gave her away from that she’s a fellow Aussie.
“Don’t think you can find anything in the wee hours. Happy to be your savior with the collection of charging cables I’ve got.” I put on a cheeky smile, gesturing for her to sit next to me ‒ at this point I would enjoy any company.
We spent the next three hours sharing wonders.
With her beautiful child-like spirit and kind eyes, I wasn’t surprised yet felt incredibly delighted to learn that she was the founder at Wellspring Initiative Cambodia – an organization founded in 2013, working on the streets with the “invisible” community of homeless children and their families, some were found begging at the traffic lights, to bring God's love and transformation in Phnom Penh Cambodia.
It was a seemingly simple encounter that spoke to and touched my heart on many levels, particularly at a stage of my felt existential and identity crisis. Despite having the fortune to have never experienced any of the four mental breakdowns on average per doctorate degree that others speak of, I was inevitably going through waves of overwhelm as a young neuroscientist – the futility of the academic publishing machine, the unforeseeable translatability of medical research to meaningful health practices, the incessant search for fulfilment through an external identity and a functional role.
“May I offer you a prayer?” She placed her hand on my forehead with a beatific smile, interrupting my deep thoughts with an inexplicable sense of knowingness that “This has to be the long-waited profound experience that opens me to myself.”
“I can see the shadow of you on a mountaintop, in front of a herd of sheep...” She opened her eyes and realized it was time to run for her connecting flight to Melbourne.
I was left spellbound and deeply humbled, with an intense realization of the unmistakable and auspicious sign of a powerful shift within me, one that is revealed many years later to serve as a beacon for my journey to alignment, expansion and service.
Is it truly helpful to focus on “healing”?
In my previous articles, I mentioned that, “along the path of transcendence into self-realization, one theme that we always wind up with no matter the challenge, from trauma to relationships to business building, is “self-love”.”
Self-love does not depend on the others, nor the seeming otherness of the seeming others.
Much attention has been placed on the theme of “healing” in the self-“help” communities. Is it actually helpful to focus on “healing”?
There is everyday healing from mental and emotional loads, to cleanse our mind and body from external and internal stimuli, thought forms and reactionary cravings. It is wonderful to bring awareness to
“unloading”.
On the other side, there is to heal “from an experience” or “from the past”, presupposing there is a place of significance in the past, where originated the gap between the “less-than-whole” and the “whole” Self.
In this sense, the concept of healing is affixed to the idea of the past combined with the identification with an "at effect" mental position with past events. To “heal” then presupposes us to first come from a place of “lack”, and through the process of healing, return to wholeness ― some form of destination or endpoint to get to eventually.
What if there is nothing missing inside of you?
All forms of true healing are rooted in acceptance, accepting the totality of life, recognizing the seemingly undesirable life situations are all part of a non-dualistic cosmic dance, part of who we are. Therefore, less-than-ness can only be created through perceived “shouldn’t be”s, discrepancies derived from comparing the meanings we give to “what is” versus “what I think would be favorable to my manifested forms”.
To let go of suffering and the barrier against Self-love is to let go of the need to be identified with the consequences we associate with certain events that life entails, and the reiterated past stories thereof, to let go of our egoic need for victimhood, to recognize the possibility of an expiry date to what we no longer need to re-activate in our vibrations.
If we go beyond the illusory sense of “self” identified through past conditioning and events, and just be present ― there is nothing to do, nowhere to be, no destination to get to or achieve. There is nothing to overcome to get to the other side to resume our wholeness ― it is an uncaused default state of Being.
If you listen to silence, you will hear a peaceful presence where infinite creativity lives.
Awaken your inner potential, live in authentic Self-love, one that is rooted in inclusion rather than exclusion, inward focus rather than outward focus.
Allow connection to the profound knowingness of our infinite, all-encompassing present Being, then just learn and grow, from and be in the here and now.
Dr. Jackie Lau, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Dr. Jackie Lau is a neuroscientist and an experienced international life coach, who is fascinated with human behaviors and the mechanisms underlying our mental and emotional states. With a deep appreciation for the integrative approach of modern psychology, neuroscience and spirituality, Jackie is a top life coach in Australia and has co-created with people all over the world to radically transform into more self-awareness, sense of purpose and inner freedom.
Jackie is trained as a strategic interventionist and breakthrough specialist with Robbins-Madanes Training directed by Tony Robbins, which combines effective techniques evolved from neurolinguistic, psychological, and therapeutic inter-disciplines. As a curious researcher, Jackie completed her Ph.D. in neuroscience at the Garvan Institute of Medical Research, Sydney Australia, studying the neural circuits governing motivation and reward. She is currently researching on neurodegenerative diseases, with a focus on Alzheimer’s disease, investigating the molecular basis relating neuroplasticity to cognition.
Leveraging her diverse cultural background, Jackie is profoundly devoted to studying Eastern and Western philosophy and literatures, learning transformative wisdom from influential life strategists and spiritual teachers. In the fervency of her gratitude, for over a decade, she earnestly empowers people from all walks of life to live our authentic virtuous Self and commit to becoming love. Through ingenious modalities including mindset transformation and meditation, Jackie is inspired to cultivate our connection to a deeper world, one that nourishes our spiritual heart rather than feeds our time-bound predicament of patterns, one that channels our fear of pain into lasting pull to joy, appreciation, and peaceful presence.
Jackie loves the art of music and dance. She is trained as a classical violinist from a young age, later on discovered her passion in classical guitar, and has also been a dedicated hip-hop dancer and instructor since her college years. Her creative journey has never ceased to open doors for the extraordinary in the ordinariness of life.
Jackie’s vision is to co-create with the human family, as part of nature, to tune in consciously and align with our thoughts, emotions, actions, to live passionately and playfully with full presence.
