Unlimiting my life: 7 days to a more generous, creative and sensual life

Par Nicole Hélène

Unlimiting my personal life, a tale of freedom come is a fisrthand account of the author's journey towards shelf-realization and embracing our endless potentieal both as individuals ans as members of society. It explores the art of pushing our limits and finding true freedom.

• Langue: Français
• Éditeur: Les Éditions de l’Apothéose
• Date de sortie: 24 juil. 2023
• ISBN: 9782897758066

Aperçu du livre

Author’s note

Who am I?

I didn’t know, until I gave of myself. I learned that I am a gifted human being, and so are you. I needed to give to realize how gifted I really am, and to receive to realize how you too are so gifted.

We all have a unique way of expressing our gifts. Mine has to do with being a transformation partner, thus, helping others unwrap the gift that they are. It’s my calling. We all have a calling that is personal to us. If our senses are not tuned in with our heart, we won’t recognize our calling. When my heart told me to give, I found my gifts.

This book will be my fifth published work.  It comes from an essay I wrote about 24 years ago. At that time, not yet sober, I felt stuck within my own inner jail.. I was inspired by Julia Cameron’s suggestions in her book The Artist’s Way, to write 3 pages each morning to unclutter my thoughts. I started writing to free myself

After the publishing of my last books, Unlimiting my personal life and Unlimiting my professional life, I wondered what to write about next. I consulted my good friend and strategy coach Linda Lord. She suggested I write booklets. My inner voice directed me to pick up this essay and turn it into a booklet.  It had helped me so much in removing the blocks that I used to put, and still put at times, in my own way. Revisiting this essay, I realized its power.

Following the method of this book, each vision I had imagined all those years ago came true for me. I am shocked.

We each have a very unique way of giving, creating, and of sensing what is to come out of us, being all blessed with these gifts of generosity, creativity and sensuality. Lately, in the need of deepening my identity, I found that whatever I created in the past, whether it was trends, tools, businesses, books, seminars or stage performances, followed a pattern.

I take ‘what is’ and transform it for ‘what is best’ at the moment. I take what is not wanted and transform it. I take problematic situations, ideas and thoughts to new lights and perspectives, making it very hard to remain stuck in what did not work.

I get hired to transform problems into opportunities. I add options to the table.

I create and wrap gifts, metaphorically. This is what I do best in this life.

What is so special about this? What’s so special about a wrapped-up gift?

We want to open it. It triggers action.

In this booklet, I hope to open your eyes to the beautiful gift that you are.  I hope to teach you to observe your patterns of creativity, or of non-creativity by using your senses to justify the blocks that you create to not create. I want to lead you to find your patterns, may they seem good or bad.  We will need them both.

After I identified a pattern, I looked at what I had created. My first business experience was to participate in the opening of a high school cooperative. It was my first experience of lifestyle entrepreneurship. Before that, I had distributed newspapers, sold products door to door, starting my business career by picking up empty bottles at events and reselling them. Taking the bad to make it good. I picked berries in the summer. I did all this to finance my adventures, a moped, gas, etc. I never worked to work; I worked to gain the freedom to live my life the way I wanted to.

A lifestyle enterprise differentiates itself from others by the fact that they serve the entrepreneur, giving them the means to live the lifestyle she or he desires.

My first real business experience was opening a daycare center with my mother, with the aim of instilling loving values in children. But more importantly, I had just become a single mother at the age of 18. This business allowed my mother and me to earn a living while enjoying my son full-time!  I began assisting my mother as a handywoman. We literally created this daycare center from scratch, installing sinks, toilets, after building the walls. We even made the furniture! Then, when it opened, I was promoted to cleaning lady. I worked my way up to managing the establishment in just a few years. My mother set me up for success. I started by being coached and mentored by my parents as I forgot to mention I had been my dad’s assistant for a while in his handyman business.

My second enterprise was a retail store. Let me share the secret reason I opened it. I wanted to wrap gifts. Christmas had just come and gone and I had felt great joy in wrapping gifts for my friends and family.  I wrapped each imagining their delight in seeing how beautifully wrapped they were, imagining a delightful gift inside. What a beautiful lifestyle it is to wrap gifts; I offered myself this gift and doing so, I discovered so many more gifts.

My first idea was to open a boutique where I could wrap gifts. In my boutique I had a stock of nice papers, ribbons, and accessories to wrap everything in such a way that, sometimes, people came to me with things they had bought somewhere else for me to wrap. I had found another gift within myself: I could create anticipation of good to come, I could make people hopeful and willing to unwrap something new, to step into the unknown with delight. My store was franchised and was a great success, some stores are still in operation 30 years later. I've also learned a valuable skill: giving people what they want, not what I think they want, or what I'd like to give. I've learned to create to order. I developed my intuition, guided by my senses.

Then, I followed my heart at 35, wanting to reinvent myself as a singer. Everyone said: ‘you’re too old’. But I didn’t listen and tried anyway, following a strong gut feeling. I discovered a niche market offering multimedia bilingual shows to francophones and anglophones outside Quebec. I toured the country and opened kid’s minds to the idea of speaking two languages. Then I took to writing and teaching grownups.

By giving in a new way, I discovered more gifts within me.

I had no idea I had a motivational speaker and a pedagogue in me, that I could change lives for the better. I remember a teacher I met in a school hallway; she stopped to talk to me and said, 'You changed my life as a teacher. You taught me that all children are creative.

After my books on Unlimiting lives were accepted by a publisher, I began to think about how to sell them. I researched what books had sold the most and on top of the list was the bible. So I researched Jesus’ marketing plan. It was pretty simple: Jesus told stories, attracted disciples and each story put people in front of a choice; you continue with your misery or you follow my teachings. Jesus’ plan put people at a crossroad; they could never be the same. Even if they did not follow him, some even persecuted him according to the story, he left no one indifferent.

I have often been told: you changed my life. In this booklet, I want to share what worked for me to change my own life and that of others.

I hope to make you see the gift that you are, so you can never think again that you are not gifted and beautiful.

The first part in my gifting process is to notice a need or a lack.  An opportunity to help in a situation presents itself or I am asked to contribute. I create to fill voids I notice in the market or to solve someone’s problem, guided by my senses.

Now, what exactly do I wrap my gifts with since I am no longer in a boutique? Happiness! Excitement! Freedom, peace, joy and love. All I do in fact, is present new ideas that are wrapped in such a pleasurable way that you want to entertain them.

Going into a ride at the fair is scary, it takes us all out of our comfort zone in a big way. Why do we do it? For fun. To overcome our fears.

Just imagine. You are given the best gift ever. It is really nicely wrapped. How do you feel? Happy and curious? Then you open the gift, and what do you find? What do you find in the best gifts? Something that you really need. Something you longed for. A piece of yourself you were looking for. A piece you thought was missing. But it was there within you all along. This book is my gift to you. It will lead you to the best gift you have ever received, the gift of who you are.

I am a fairy whispering in your ear; You are now free to create the life you have been longing for.

In the next seven days, I will share with you how I use whatever is there in the moment to create again and again, more gifts to offer others. And as giving is receiving, I find myself in an endless supply of love, peace, joy and freedom. After all, isn’t that what we all look for in a gift? I want to get you in this joyful continuous loop because…

You are the gift I am waiting for, that the world is waiting for.

Guiding you to freedom, frees me and it also frees the whole world as we are One.

I am looking forward to witnessing you unwrapping your true Self, the true gift of yourself. I wouldn't miss it for the world, because without you, the world doesn't exist.

Introduction

Unlimiting the gift that I am

Let’s go back in time. I wrote this essay at the end of the 90’s, and here is how I felt;

I am at a point in my life where I can see that what I am creating is not bringing me personal satisfaction anymore. I feel this longing for more inside of me. Somehow, there is something missing. I create, I create, and I create. But lately, I am wondering? What and who am I creating for?

I know that I have been creating good stuff so far, that I met a lot of needs for my clients. but I also created a lot of pain for myself. Like there was an unwritten rule that suffering is necessary to succeed. I want to go beyond this belief.

I have this feeling that I am not truly there, not truly serving the world as I could and that this belief is creating blocks in me .I feel stuck in between two concrete walls, I feel some blocks within me, not freely flowing.

I start to wonder: am I creating to escape something? To run from myself? Not pausing to figure out and address this discomfort? The answer is yes.

While I create to escape my life, I don’t have a lot of time to think about me and this annoying voice that keeps coming back, louder and louder, saying: you can be more. But creators are always in demand.

I can hide in the creative loop forever and no one will notice in the little league where I play, that I am not all there. There is always a need to create something else for someone else, so playing small in a small league is a safe bet, and a safe hiding place. But I know within that I am playing small and I hurt, I long for more.  I feel more and more like I am suffocating.  I am caught in a vicious circle. I want out.

A few years back when I first started writing this, I had sabotaged my boutique’s business into bankruptcy. It was going really well and I could not handle the bigger league. At the time I blamed everything and everyone, but me. That gave me a serious creative block, so much so, that I did not just want out of creating, I wanted out of living. I had lost almost every material thing I had created and was severely depressed. I was completely lost. I even thought my kids would be better off without me! I had suicidal ideations. I went into therapy, found out I was an artist and started to write to myself in a journal. During this time a brilliant idea came to me:

Instead of creating stuff I can lose outside of myself, trying to fill a void within, from now on, I will create from within..

That way, I will never lose anything again. I might lose the stuff, but I will not lose me!

I felt there was a distance between my life and who I truly was and I wanted to cross this distance.

I wanted to free the person I truly was and always evolve towards more of me. I wanted my life to make sense. I wanted an inner direction.

Who are we truly? How do we find ourselves again and again?

This book was my first attempt to find myself and it worked. I created a path, a tool that enables me to connect deeply to the gift that I am, again and again.

This was my reason for wanting to live a more generous, creative and sensual life,

I wanted to see what more was lying dormant inside of me, what more I could give. I wanted a way to rediscover my gift and wrap it up beautifully once more. Rinse and repeat.

Why are you listening to this book? Something must have pulled you to pick it up? Start writing down what you long for, what is stirring inside, and what wants to come out. Reading this book will support your quest in discovering beautiful inner gifts. I hope you will want to open yourself up and get in touch even more with your unique way of giving to the world. I hope you will feel free to give of your true self again and again, better and better each time. A never-ending unwrapping process. So let’s start this 7 day process of unwrapping the real gift that you are.

The world needs your gift.

The power of why

I believe life is to be enjoyed, not endured, as life is a gift.

My daughter had a teacher in grade 4 who started each day by telling the kids: today we will have fun! I loved it! My reason to write this book is to add fun to my life. And fun for me is creating joyful experiences. And in this human experience, I create joy through my thoughts, or perceptions, discerning the offerings my senses bring me like an inner mirror. And in this human experience, I create joy through my thoughts, or perceptions, discerning the offerings my senses bring me like an inner mirror.

Asking why we desire something, why we are making a choice, taking an action, is a very important step in the creativity process.

Questions generate desire. Desire generates action.

And action generates results.

So what was the desire behind my wanting a more generous, creative, and sensual life? The trigger was my dissatisfaction. I am not satisfied. My needs are not fulfilled, I felt. I want more.

Why do I want more? And more of what? I have this gut feeling that there is more, somehow, somewhere. I want to unwrap myself, to see myself bare. I want to go treasure hunting. Here’s a song I wrote a few years later that describes how I felt. I believe the words came from my higher self:

Undress for me1

Undress for me, undress for me, reveal yourself, yourself to me

My trail of kisses will take you, around the world and close to me

Undress for me undress for me, I will teach you how to be free

I will love you so many times, you’ll never want to change your mind [1]

Words: Hélène Nicole Richard Music: Léo Bédère, Copyrights 2001, 2013

I found, in writing this book, that we are filled with never ending treasures of peace, joy, love and freedom, each wrapped up in our own unique way. We bring unique gifts to this world from beyond. Let’s unwrap ourselves, shall we? Answer this question once again, go even more deeper: why are you reading this book right now?

What more do you want from life?

This question will lead you to what more you have to give.

Everything starts in the present moment. How are you? Start a journal with yourself. Unwrap your gifts one word at a time. Under all my thinking hides the real Me. I am not my thoughts but my thoughts are powerful. Here are a few of my answers for writing this book, which portray some of my values:

I love adventure and awe moments

I want more of those in my life. They bring me a lot of pleasure, trigger my desire and generate massive doses of energy in me. I am an adventurous person and I love witnessing beauty. This project brings me both. I look forward to unwrapping the gifts the day will bring me. I feel like a kid playing outside when I let me be me.

While on the last reread of this booklet, I'm enjoying a delicious asparagus soup with wholemeal bread, sausages and mustard, washed down with ginger herbal tea on a train between Geneva and Fribourg in Switzerland. I projected this moment from inside myself. In a few hours, I'll be in the arms of my older sister. Let yourself go and reveal your hopes and all the beauty that lies within you.

Question:

What do you love? What brings you awe moments? What’s your idea of an adventure? What do you value most? What would make you move mountains?

I love freedom

As a child, I loved the idea of growing up. I was excited to grow up, to get bigger. I loved it because I believed that once I was all grown up, I would be free.

I didn’t know that once my body was big, I would still be in jail