As I took the call I knew it would be a breaking news story. A sense of excitement grabbed hold of me. This would carry us through the rest of the programme. People loved hearing about bad news, especially in their own area.
My journalist’s head was already planning how to break the news on air to create the biggest impact, knowing we could be about to make another award-winning programme.
Meanwhile my heart was trying to get another message through “What are you doing? This isn’t the real you”
But it’s who I was becoming. A journalist, presenting and producing with the BBC, looking out for the next big story, feeling excited when bad news happened. It was a job many people were envious of – and I was good at it too.
Much as I tried at first to ignore it this was the beginning of my epiphany. My heart was getting louder, taking on my head, as it reminded me that there was something else I needed to be doing. Something of a greater impact than breaking bad news. Something that could make a difference, but for good, in people’s lives.
Looking back it all started a long, long time ago. From my earliest memories I sensed if people were unhappy or in trouble and something deep within me wanted to help them and make it right.
Even as a young child I knew that a man in ‘Little House on The Prairie’ needed a sense of purpose to lift his depression. I remember the relief when that episode gave him the chance to help someone in urgent need and his sun shone once again for him.
But I didn’t see the full impact of my understanding of human nature back then and so I used my ability to get into the heads of others to become an actress, loving fitting into the lives of the characters I played.
I even got my first job playing the lead female in a national children’s TV programme and life was fun.
The story could easily have ended there, as my acting career began to take off. But, although I loved acting, I was hopeless at living the life that it demanded, holding myself back from pushing myself forward.
And as I began to drift away from it I found myself in a variety of careers from a farm girl working the land, helping disgruntled people calling a customer service centre, role-playing, to presenting in front of hundreds of people.
One thing that remained constant throughout my careers though was my fascination with other people’s lives, the spaces they inhabited in their heads and how they had the power to make things better if they only knew how. I always had a stream of people asking for my advice or help and even started to train as a counsellor before feeling it didn’t offer enough solutions to really help.
And then the BBC beckoned me into their arms, creating a fantastic role for me at first where I could brighten listeners’ lives. And maybe I’d still be there now if I hadn’t been ‘developed’ into a serious journalist and become the person I didn’t want to be.
And so when the epiphany happened I listened to my heart and found it was still saying the same as it always had, to somehow enrich and make lives better. “And if not now” it was whispering “then when?”
And even though many people thought I’d lost the plot by thinking of giving up a career in the BBC, this time I was ready for fate and courage when they lent their hands, guiding me to train in solution-focused psychotherapy and hypnotherapy.
Like many others I too had been sceptical about hypnosis, in my ignorance believing it was just about stage shows. But the training I received, and then later myself went on to teach, showed how powerful a tool it is when used in a therapeutic way.
It was like finding the key I’d forgotten I’d been looking for as I began to see fast, incredible changes in the people I helped.
Then I was pulled towards training in NLP, loving the way it fitted so well with hypnotherapy that I went on to train as a Master NLP Practitioner and to coach it.
I believe that all of us can have more beautiful, fulfilled lives and the spaces within those lives more wonderful and enriched.
They may be the spaces in our heads or in our relationships. Maybe it’s the space we see in our children’s hearts, filled with worries, or a space in our minds that’s cluttered up with habits or trauma.
This is how Beautiful Spaces came to be and I am truly honoured to be helping others clear their rubbish out, to reclaim their space and become peaceful and free.
And every time someone walks away from my clinic I thank God that I followed my heart.
Helping people have better spaces in their minds and lives is not just my job, it’s my passion.
As I took the call I knew it would be a breaking news story. A sense of excitement grabbed hold of me. This would carry us through the rest of the programme. People loved hearing about bad news, especially in their own area.
My journalist’s head was already planning how to break the news on air to create the biggest impact, knowing we could be about to make another award-winning programme.
Meanwhile my heart was trying to get another message through “What are you doing? This isn’t the real you”
But it’s who I was becoming. A journalist, presenting and producing with the BBC, looking out for the next big story, feeling excited when bad news happened. It was a job many people were envious of – and I was good at it too.
Much as I tried at first to ignore it this was the beginning of my epiphany. My heart was getting louder, taking on my head, as it reminded me that there was something else I needed to be doing. Something of a greater impact than breaking bad news. Something that could make a difference, but for good, in people’s lives.
Looking back it all started a long, long time ago. From my earliest memories I sensed if people were unhappy or in trouble and something deep within me wanted to help them and make it right.
Even as a young child I knew that a man in ‘Little House on The Prairie’ needed a sense of purpose to lift his depression. I remember the relief when that episode gave him the chance to help someone in urgent need and his sun shone once again for him.
But I didn’t see the full impact of my understanding of human nature back then and so I used my ability to get into the heads of others to become an actress, loving fitting into the lives of the characters I played.
I even got my first job playing the lead female in a national children’s TV programme and life was fun.
The story could easily have ended there, as my acting career began to take off. But, although I loved acting, I was hopeless at living the life that it demanded, holding myself back from pushing myself forward.
And as I began to drift away from it I found myself in a variety of careers from a farm girl working the land, helping disgruntled people calling a customer service centre, role-playing, to presenting in front of hundreds of people.
One thing that remained constant throughout my careers though was my fascination with other people’s lives, the spaces they inhabited in their heads and how they had the power to make things better if they only knew how. I always had a stream of people asking for my advice or help and even started to train as a counsellor before feeling it didn’t offer enough solutions to really help.
And then the BBC beckoned me into their arms, creating a fantastic role for me at first where I could brighten listeners’ lives. And maybe I’d still be there now if I hadn’t been ‘developed’ into a serious journalist and become the person I didn’t want to be.
And so when the epiphany happened I listened to my heart and found it was still saying the same as it always had, to somehow enrich and make lives better. “And if not now” it was whispering “then when?”
And even though many people thought I’d lost the plot by thinking of giving up a career in the BBC, this time I was ready for fate and courage when they lent their hands, guiding me to train in solution-focused psychotherapy and hypnotherapy.
Like many others I too had been sceptical about hypnosis, in my ignorance believing it was just about stage shows. But the training I received, and then later myself went on to teach, showed how powerful a tool it is when used in a therapeutic way.
It was like finding the key I’d forgotten I’d been looking for as I began to see fast, incredible changes in the people I helped.
Then I was pulled towards training in NLP, loving the way it fitted so well with hypnotherapy that I went on to train as a Master NLP Practitioner and to coach it.
I believe that all of us can have more beautiful, fulfilled lives and the spaces within those lives more wonderful and enriched.
They may be the spaces in our heads or in our relationships. Maybe it’s the space we see in our children’s hearts, filled with worries, or a space in our minds that’s cluttered up with habits or trauma.
This is how Beautiful Spaces came to be and I am truly honoured to be helping others clear their rubbish out, to reclaim their space and become peaceful and free.
And every time someone walks away from my clinic I thank God that I followed my heart.
Helping people have better spaces in their minds and lives is not just my job, it’s my passion.