My Story

Summary

After a successful career in Tech Sales for companies such as LinkedIn, I spent 10 years of experimentation, self-inquiry, and self-recovery after experiencing a burnout, divorce and sever health issues. During my recovery I transformed my career and learnt my craft as a Leadership Trainer and Executive Coach. I noticed that high perfomance was directly linked to client’s capacity to access a state of calm to be more self-aware and make better decisions in the present moment. I started to blend my Leadership work with Mindfulness and created my own Emotional Intelligence training supported by science back methodologies to teach the foundations of self-regulation. When we learn to regulate our emotions, we can have more clarity to make better decisions, find more patience and more easily step into our confidence.

It was in Bali, when I was at my lowest that I learnt that I could shift my emotional state with my energy, to feel more calm and see more clearly. At the time, I couldn't eat, I had lost 10Kg, I had sever acne, and suffered with panic attacks. My body was screaming for help. During many retreats, workshops and courses, I experienced the benefits of the mind-body connection and over time started to understand how my distressed mind was reflected in my distressed body and vice versa. Practices such as yoga, meditation, mindfulness, sound healing and many more slowly gave me faith in recovery being possible. By learning to calm my body, I could calm my mind. By learning to calm my mind, my body could feel better. It is only when I felt better, that I could think better, and work better.

We have more control over how we feel than we think. We don’t have to feel victim of uncomfortable emotional state. And for those who don’t feel so much but experience chronic pain or anxiety or poor sleep, or big mood swings we are talkign about the same dynamic at work. They are simply experienced in a different way. We can change them, when we choose to learn how. This art of self-regulation is the secret being elite performance and sustainable well-being.

My qualifications

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Everything we want, is on the other side of fear.

At the age of 30, I was a high achiever in Tech Sales having gone from starting out as an SDR to a Global Account Manger in 10 years. I had worked for some of the world’s key Infrastructure companies while the “Cloud” was being built. It was a good time to be in Tech, learning from some of the best places to work for companies, with great Leadership and a high performing people cultures such as Rackspace, Equinix and LinkedIn. I was healthy, confident, had a fun social life and happily married.

I was traveling a lot, thriving at work. At the time, I was living my best life. I loved solving business problems for clients, traveling, working with great talent for great companies and getting recognised for success.

For me life success was work related, it was financial freedom. I had accomplished 20 years of career progression in 10 years. When I got everything I wanted, I discover it wasn't enough to make me happy. I didn’t feel right and was haunted by an ongoing dissatisfaction. At the time, the only thing I could think of being to blame for not feeling happy, was my relationship. Isn't it always easier to blame someone else?!

Transformation is messy in the middle. 

Trying to make things work, ended in an amicable divorce. I moved from London to Paris with LinkedIn and started again. Reconnecting to my French roots, enjoying working with great people in one of the most beautiful cities in the world. I thought I had found the answer to happiness when I married again. I felt alive again. However, over time I became exhausted all the time. There were a lot of very high highs and very low lows at home. I focused on living to my high expectations, pleasing everyone. I gave too much of myself trying to be perfect at work, in my marriage, as a step-mum and neglected to take care of myself.

I had left LinkedIn to take some time off and set up my own coaching practice. I managed to attend a year long professional coaching certification program, but I had no energy to do this justice.

After experiencing a burnout, food intolerances, serve weight loss, acne, chronic pain in my body, and constant relationship up and downs, my body, mental and emotional health couldn’t cope with tolerating intolerable relationship conditions any longer. I held on as long as I could to avoid feeling the shame of a second divorce. In the end, I needed to walk away to save my health and my life. After a second divorce, I hit rock bottom. I was ashamed, physically weak, and a former shadow of myself.

I took a break from life and found refuge in Bali. I wanted to know what pattern were repeating so I could break them. During a yoga retreat, in my most vulnerable state, I experience a deep state of relaxation and calm for the first time in my life. It led me to become curious about how this was possible when I was so scared and fragile at the time.

We cannot change in low energy.

Following a spiritual quest for answers, many personal development courses, workshops, coachings, therapy, healings and other interventions, I learnt that we can shift our energy and emotional state in an instant by reconnecting to our body with our breath, with observing our thoughts, in movement and in stillness.

I learnt that I wasn’t a victim of my circumstances or my body and I had the power to change my inner biology. I learnt that I could choose how to respond in a different way to negative circumstances when I felt safe, when I was resourced and calm. Practicing Mindfulness brought me my Power back!

The science behind self-care became an ongoing curiosity and I prioritised studying its impact on health and performance. I progressively learnt how to make my way back to sustainable high energy and how to teach others to do the same. This was always a goal for me because I wish I had known this when I was working in high pressured jobs and dealing with relationship issues at home!

We cannot change what we cannot see.

The deeper I went into psychology the more I understood that there was a lot I didn’t understand about myself. I learnt that my external world was reflecting my internal turmoil, most of which was subconscious.

95% of our thoughts, feelings and actions are subconscious 

I was shocked to discover this known truth in psychology. This was a huge revelation because I learnt that while my past conditioning had led me to two divorces, and I was responsible for my choices, it wasn’t my fault. I was simply unconscious of my conditioning. This helped me find more compassion within and stop being so hard on myself. From that point forward it was my responsibility to fix what was not serving me and create new conditioning for myself. It taught me the importance of finding balance amongst extremes. It inspired me to learn to walk, what Buddhist refer to as. the middle way. A life long journey.

When we start to notice more of our subconscious behaviours, we can become more informed to make better choices for ourselves. Life can become a series of conscious choices, instead of being defined by our auto-pilot programing from early life experiences which we are not aware of. We can choose to overcome subconscious tendencies, blind spots and change our inner programing to make better choices for ourselves. We have more power to change than we think. We are stronger than we think. But first we need to find the courage to want to make the unconscious conscious. This is where the keys to true freedom can be found. Who we surround ourselves with has a big influence too.

I believe prevention is better than cure. My mission is to give access to self-knowledge more easily so that those seeking to resources and support, can better manage difficult times in this game of life!

Self-Knowledge is Self-Empowerment.

Find Peace, Power and Purpose.

The gift of this story for me has been discovering who I am when I am not working in auto-pilot mode, when I am alone to face my biggest fears, when I am having to be my own cheerleader, when I am at peace in my body, in my heart and my mind, when I am fully present to the power of now. Finding aliveness within myself and learning to accept myself as I am has been my favourite sign of recovery.

I believe a journey of self-discovery starts with understanding the science of our human operating system and multi-dimentional wellbeing. Learning about how our energy, our mind, our emotions, our body, are all interconnected to create our experience of the world: this is the science of the Mind-Body connection.

Today I invite you on a journey to feel better, to live better and to work better, with all the knowledge and self-awareness I wish I had access to before I had a burnout out.. I take a science based approach to teaching well-being for performance to find Peace, Power and Purpose by working with psychology, the biology of stress management, the mind-body connection, mindfulness and best in class tools in a safe, fun and impactful way.

Thank you for your attention and interest. If you work for a company, check out my services at The Self-Science Lab. If you are curious on how I can support your teams, I invite you to reach out in a 30 mins call to share your challenges and explore if how my corporate services can support your business goals.

“Transformation comes from becoming Comfortable with the Uncomfortable.”

— Lauren Cartigny