Author: Iwona King, Ambassador of the World Healthy Living Foundation

“Your thoughts and feelings are the conversation between your mind and your soul, which become the ignition for your actions. Managing them well manifests results in life.” /Iwona King/

I am not a worldwide known coach yet, but through my life experiences, my personal development journey and a lot of studying, I have developed the ability to see positive opportunity in almost every circumstance of life. I inspire and motivate the people around me to do the same. But through my life I have pushed myself physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually to come out of the comfort zone, take some risk but avoid falling into the danger zone.

At first I didn’t want to take the responsibility for the circumstances that I was in. It was a habit to be in a familiar environment. The mental, emotional and at some points, physical abusive relationships that I had in my life were taking over.

I was told from a young age that I was not good enough. Right from my early school days, growing up and then by the closest person in my life who was supposed to believe in me, love me and value me. All of these lies that were spoken to me, conditioned me to believe them. I allowed my conscious mind to filter the information into my subconscious mind, which then formed and created a negative thought pattern and habit which became normal life. Having said this, from a young age I had a spirit of a fighter and I wanted to prove people wrong. With a lack of self-belief and no knowledge of how to train my mind to be more positive, I failed more than I succeeded. The truth is that there are no real failures, only progress.

When you are allowing a situation, person or thought to control you it can make you feel paralyzed, and make you think negatively, as well as saying yes to things that you wanted say no

In my relationships, I often felt depressed for years. I had very low self-esteem and no confidence. Looking back, feeling trapped like that made me lose myself and I did not know who I was, what I liked, what’s my ambitions were and what my purpose in life was? Cutting a long story short, I managed to pluck up the courage and leave the relationship.

Becoming a single parent, I felt ashamed, like a failure, absolutely petrified of the future. But still I started to feel like an animal that had been caged up for so many years who had finally been given their freedom. The cage was wide open with the a beautiful world waiting for me. I had no idea what to do with my freedom. At first, I prayed and hoped to just survive each day. Having a young child was my biggest “WHY”, a reason to start surviving day by day, sometimes hour by hour. I didn’t want to just exist! I wanted to enjoy the remarkable gift that life is, achieve my dreams and goals. Not knowing who I was I continued making further mistakes, failures, allow the wrong people and circumstances into my life.

After making a conscious decision to work on myself, things started going wrong again. First, soon after my divorce, my dad had a massive heart attack. I found him in the car, which was a dreadful episode. Soon after that he was diagnosed with cancer, which has gone to an advanced level. I then had a breast cancer scare, thinking that I couldn’t take any more, I was getting more stressed and depressed, and I couldn’t see a way out. Life was pushing me on every level to my limits.

Luckily my breast cancer scare turned into a positive outcome, but soon after that I suffered a stroke. This was the scariest experience of my life. Feeling lonely and with lots of responsibility to face, such as looking after my little girl and having a mortgage to pay, I also underwent a cardiac procedure to prevent further strokes. I was again feeling low in my self-confidence, esteem and had a very poor self-image. Hearing from the doctors that I had two holes in my heart and the way my stroke took place. I should have been dead but somehow, I am alive with minimal physical effects of the stroke.

This made me think…. the only way was UP!

Count your blessings!

I started feeling grateful for what I have, and thankful for my second chance in life. It was my break through! It wasn’t easy. Some days the depression crept in, often worse then before, so I started reading books by people like Bob Proctor, Tony Robbins, Ophrah Winfrey, Jim Rohn and Napoleon Hill. By exploring their habits and behaviour I started to see how I could form new habits, explore new beliefs, and create a mindset focussed on results rather than the challenges around me.

This was my turning point. I decided that I wanted to change and invest in my personal growth. The formula that I created for myself was easy:

• Have clarity of a goal
• Visualise
• Develop a burning passion for life
• Decide
• Commit
• Succeed
• Repeat

I have realised that by making conscious decisions and undertaking actions, the results will start showing. I took ownership of my life and circumstance rather than life and circumstances having power over me.