Believe in yourself — As I tell my readers in my book, rising from the Ashes, what you believe about yourself is far more important than what other people believe about you. It’s your beliefs about yourself that create your thoughts and your experience. The trouble is, is that most of the beliefs you hold about yourself are subconscious meaning that you aren’t aware of them. They just play out in your life.
Resilience has been described as the ability to withstand adversity and bounce back from difficult life events. Times are not easy now. How do we develop greater resilience to withstand the challenges that keep being thrown at us? In this interview series, we are talking to mental health experts, authors, resilience experts, coaches, and business leaders who can talk about how we can develop greater resilience to improve our lives.
As a part of this series, I had the pleasure of interviewing Emily Cleghorn.
Emily Cleghorn is a Life Reclamation coach, Amazon best selling author and keynote speaker with a heart to help her clients to rise from the ashes of their past trauma and step into their mama hood with fierceness and confidence. Having been on her own healing journey, Emily is able to hold a space for her clients that helps them feel accepted fully as who they are and held accountable so that they are able to create the change they are craving in their lives.
Thank you so much for joining us! Our readers would love to get to know you a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your backstory?
Growing up, I believed I was unloveable and unworthy of being happy. I carried the weight of the world on my shoulders after years of childhood trauma. It wasn’t until my mid-20’s where I really started digging into my healing journey. I started to realize that the beliefs I developed as a little girl were false and I had the power to change them.
Can you share with us the most interesting story from your career? Can you tell us what lessons or ‘take aways’ you learned from that?
I knew from a young age that I wanted to help “kids like me”. I didn’t know then what exactly that would look like. I didn’t know there was such a thing as a Life Reclamation coach. I remember sitting in a session with one of my first clients and having this memory come to mind. In that moment, I realized I was doing exactly what I had dreamed of as a little girl.
When this realization occurred to me, I knew that I could accomplish absolutely anything that I put my mind to accomplishing. It just takes making a firm decision.
What do you think makes your company stand out? Can you share a story?
I believe my company stands out because I serve clients who are walking a similar healing path to the one I have walked. It is through the empathy and the accountability that my clients are able to overcome what they (often times) don’t even realize is holding them back. They know that something needs to change and within weeks of working together, we are able to uncover and address the root cause of the issue they are dealing with.
I remember one particular client. She had been dealing with emotional eating for years. She didn’t know why or how to really stop it. Together, we were able to uncover the root cause and then give her strategies that she could implement quickly and easily to get in touch with her emotions and retrain her brain to not seek comfort in food.
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story?
A particular person who helped me? Hm.. I’ve really been helped by a whole community of women. Women who have been my sounding board, my cheerleaders, my accountability partners.
It’s really challenging to find a community of women that is the caliber which I find myself blessed to be a part of. We celebrate wins together, we life each other up when life deals a tough deck and we laugh together.
Ok thank you for all that. Now let’s shift to the main focus of this interview. We would like to explore and flesh out the trait of resilience. How would you define resilience? What do you believe are the characteristics or traits of resilient people?
Resilience, to me, is defined in ones ability to bounce back from a given situation and not letting that tough or even devastating situation define who you are or what you can achieve.
I believe a resilient person is determined, creative, motivated, courageous, unstoppable and solution oriented.
Courage is often likened to resilience. In your opinion how is courage both similar and different to resilience?
In my opinion, courage is what is needed to stand strong in a tough situation or stand up for what you believe in. Resilience is how you handle to outcome of the courageous act.
Courage and resilience are similar in that courage is often required to be truly resilient.
When you think of resilience, which person comes to mind? Can you explain why you chose that person?
When I think of resilience, I think of my grandmother. She came from humble beginnings and has overcome serious adversity in her life but continues to be strong for her family. I chose my grandma because she taught me through her example what resilience looks like.
Has there ever been a time that someone told you something was impossible, but you did it anyway? Can you share the story with us?
When I was growing up, I was told many times that I was stupid and wouldn’t make anything of myself. I used those words to fuel the fire in my soul to show those people that they were wrong. Not only did I graduate high school among the top of my class, I also hold two post-secondary degrees. Not only have I made something of myself, I am also using my experience to make the world a better place.
Did you have a time in your life where you had one of your greatest setbacks, but you bounced back from it stronger than ever? Can you share that story with us?
One of the greatest set backs I have had in my life was a miscarriage after a year of attempting to conceive and then being told by my medical provider that I was “fine” and to continue treatment as per normal. This interaction made the whole situation worse for me. My doctor didn’t care for me like they were being paid to. This sent me into a few dark weeks but I knew one thing without a shadow of a doubt. That doctor would not be continuing my care and I would find another way.
How have you cultivated resilience throughout your life? Did you have any experiences growing up that have contributed to building your resiliency? Can you share a story?
I couldn’t stand the thought of giving up. I knew deep down that I had a bigger purpose than I could see at any given moment in time. I learned at a very young age that I had to learn how to speak up for myself. I knew that if I found myself in a situation that I didn’t like, I had to do something to change it because no one was going to rescue me.
I remember the first time that I really spoke up for myself. I was 6 and I had been living in an abusive home for about 18 months. I was visiting family and it came time to go home. I didn’t want to go so, I hid. Then when I was found I explained what was wrong. That was the night I recused myself with the help of some extraordinary strength.
Resilience is like a muscle that can be strengthened. In your opinion, what are 5 steps that someone can take to become more resilient? Please share a story or an example for each.
1. Believe in yourself
As I tell my readers in my book, rising from the Ashes, what you believe about yourself is far more important than what other people believe about you. It’s your beliefs about yourself that create your thoughts and your experience. The trouble is, is that most of the beliefs you hold about yourself are subconscious meaning that you aren’t aware of them. They just play out in your life.
Taking the steps to become aware of what you believe about yourself and ensuring that those beliefs align with the life you want to create is essential.
2. Set boundaries
People treat you how you allow them to treat you but let’s be real, boundaries aren’t just with other people. They are with ourselves too. You have the power to determine what kind of behaviour is acceptable for you. You also have to power to choose who you will interact. If someone isn’t treating in an acceptable manner, it’s okay for you to say “no more”.
3. Connect to your vision
What do you want? What do you want your life to look like? Only you can make these decisions. Then, only you can determine how you will get from point A to point B.
4. Recognize your worth
In my own experience, for such a long time, I allowed people to treat me poorly because I did not recognize that I was worth so much more. I think it’s hard to release people from our lives that don’t treat us in the manner we deserve because we have such low expectations and we’re more concerned with pleasing the other person than honouring ourselves.
5. Practice forgiveness
Forgiveness is ofter thought to be about the other person but it’s really not. Forgiveness is about releasing the emotions from a situation which we would otherwise hold on to and allow to fester. It’s really about setting yourself free so that you’re able to focus on the life you really desire to have.
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂
I am on a mission to end generational childhood trauma by empowering mama’s from their own childhood trauma. Motherhood is challenging, motherhood while healing from a traumatic childhood is another level of challenging. A movement of education and resources to heal families is my goal.
We are blessed that some very prominent leaders read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this, especially if we tag them 🙂
I would love to have lunch with Mel Robbins. She is such an inspiration to me to keep on going with building my vision.
How can our readers further follow your work online?
Find me on my website- withemilyc.com
Social media (FB, IG and Pinterest)- @withemilyc
This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for joining us!