CHAPTER 16

LEARNING TO LOVE AGAIN

Fabio was good for me: not the heartbreak cure I’d imagined, but good for me anyway. And, although we were close, our relationship was an ‘on–off’ one, something that turned out to be another blessing in disguise – because, when our season three celebrity partners were announced, another angel flew into my life.

The TV chef James Martin came along at a time when I was seriously doubting that I’d ever meet anyone with whom I’d have the same chemistry – that mysterious magnetic attraction – I’d shared with Brendan. But the moment I met James, I recognized that invisible chemistry again. We hit it off straight away and became extremely close. We reached the semi-finals, but better than that, I learned so much from our friendship.

1. Brendan wasn’t the only soul mate I’d ever have

James came into my life just as I was starting to emerge from my period of mourning for Brendan. I was still far from healed – but I could feel a small ray of hope starting to glow inside me; the hope that maybe one day I would be able to love fully again, just as that Danish psychic had promised. By reminding me of what it was like to share chemistry with someone, James helped me to remember the positives from my relationship with Brendan – and that taught me a big lesson in love: instead of focusing on all the bad stuff from a past relationship, we should always try to think about what was good. Focus on the positive things about a past relationship and your future ones should be more positive too.

If you struggle to find positives, focus your attention on looking for them next time around. Instead of thinking, ‘I hated that about my last relationship’, try to think, ‘Next time, I’d like someone who can give me …’ whatever it is you want. For example your ideal relationship could be with someone who has more spare time than previous partners, or someone who likes walking holidays or who likes to travel. Expand and add to what you would like from a relationship – that’s far more exciting than wasting your time focusing on everything that went wrong.

WERE WE, WEREN’T WE?

James and I were pretty much inseparable throughout the season, leaving the press guessing whether we were or were not an item. On the last night at the show’s wrap party, he gave me a very special thank you present – the most gorgeous pair of diamond earrings – which to be honest had me wondering if perhaps there had been more than chemistry at play … and then we went our separate ways.

2. People come into our lives for a reason

Through James, a long-held belief of my mine was reaffirmed – that the people we meet are sent to teach us things and help us to move forward in life.

I’m sure that James floated into my life to remind me that I would feel chemistry and meet a soul mate again. He also taught me a vital lesson about myself. He was someone who worked extremely hard, and never really took time off. One night, eating sushi with him, I said, ‘I can’t believe you’re not burnt out from working 24/7 the way you do.’

The irony was that I was just the same kind of workaholic as him. Only I couldn’t see it at the time! I did go on to burn out – several years later – and it was then that my conversation with James came back to hit me in the face and I realized that, for years, I’d been on autopilot, working round the clock and round the calendar and never giving myself the break I badly needed.

The lessons we learn from the people who come into our lives can always be used to our advantage. We can even learn from seemingly negative experiences. For example, you may wonder why you keep meeting people with emotional baggage, or people who are needy or angry. Well there could be one of two reasons for this:

Either (a) You may have that same kind of baggage and are being shown what that looks like so that you can recognize what needs healing in you by seeing it in someone else.

Or (b) If you don’t have that baggage yourself, maybe you are a fixer – someone who likes to rescue others who are weighed down by it.

Now, you may be thinking, ‘Why not? What’s wrong with trying to fix someone who’s broken and needs help?’ Well I used to be a fixer, until I realized that the only person I could fix was myself.

We may mean well when we try to help someone to fix their problem – be it anger, depression, alcohol or drugs – but we have to accept that we should not interfere with someone else’s journey and the lessons they have to learn. That’s not to say that we can’t be supportive friends and partners, but the person you want to change has to be the one in charge of the changes. Someone who is hooked on drugs or alcohol can have all the support in the world when they say that they want to give up. I believe the only person in control is the addict, and unless he or she genuinely wants to give up they won’t.

Now, when the fixer in me pops back up and I feel the need to help someone, I immediately think of the saying, ‘You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink.’ So I offer my support, but don’t waste my energy trying to fix someone who is not ready to change themselves. I now know that the only thing to come out of that will be aggravation between us – and disappointment when I realize I’ve wasted all my energy and nothing has changed.

3. With the right mindset, anything is possible

James was the first to admit he was not a natural dancer, but he promised to work as hard as he could – and, as I said earlier, against all the odds we made it to the semi-final!

I was so proud of him as I’d been the one to teach him. But he also taught me a great deal, too. As well as restoring my faith in my ability to recover from my heartache, he taught me to not have tunnel vision. By now I’d spent 30 years dancing, and it had been about the only thing in my life. But James made me see that there was a world of other opportunities out there, and I could grab them without sacrificing my dancing. He already had. He was a businessman, a chef, a TV host and a celebrity. I remember once I asked him how he managed to pack all that in and be in Strictly, too. ‘It’s simple,’ he said. ‘I just imagine I’m wearing different caps.’ He told me that when he was wearing his dancing cap with me, he wouldn’t even think about other work. He wouldn’t even answer his cellphone, because he knew it would distract him from the matter in hand. He never got sidetracked. I use his example all the time in my own life. Right now, writing this, and when I write my magazine column, I put my writing cap on. Later, when I am coaching, I will wear my life coach’s cap.

I now find it helpful to schedule things into my diary and once they’re written down, they’re written in stone. If I have set aside an hour for a project, then I simply do not allow myself to take any calls, check emails, Twitter or any social media, until that hour is up. Every time you stop to take a call or look at your inbox, you get distracted and it takes time to get back into what you were doing. You will quickly come to realize how much more you can get done when giving each task your full and undivided attention. (When I was writing that, I accidentally keyed in ‘divine’ instead of ‘undivided’! Maybe the universe was trying to tell me something!)

We will often pick out qualities and traits that we recognize from ourselves and it’s worth doing this exercise to see if this is the case.

MEETING YOUR EQUAL

When we meet our equals, they are our emotional equals. They do not make us feel that we want to fix them, and they should not want to fix us. James did not need fixing, and though I still needed to heal after Brendan, he knew better than to try and fix me.

A good way to find out whether the person you are considering having a serious relationship with is your emotional equal is to ask yourself these questions:

(a) What are the top qualities about this person?

(b) What are their least attractive traits?

I know it’s easier to associate with the positive things we have put down, but when we list the negatives it can be difficult to accept that maybe we, too, have an issue with anger, sadness or negativity, for example. Unfortunately, the fact that we see these traits in others usually means that we possess the same characteristics. Or if we don’t now, we probably did in the past.

So, if your partner is constantly moody, take a look at yourself and ask yourself if you are moody, too. It is essential that you be completely honest with yourself here and if you do realize that you are in fact moody a lot, it’s time to do something about it. Find out what it is within you that is causing this feeling. Remember, change can only start with ourselves. I have heard people say that after working on improving their own emotions, the people they were irritated by no longer annoyed them.

If you do this exercise and find that you’re noticing certain emotions in the other person that you think you once possessed but no longer do, then it could be a reminder of your past that has come back to challenge you – and it may be a sign for you to move on from that person. You are the only one who knows what you need in your life to make you happy and when you dig deep, you will find the answers.

Something I learned from NLP is, ‘Perception is Projection’, which means that everything you perceive you project. From personal experience I know that this can be a little challenging at first.

Here’s a little example of how we can have different perceptions of the same people or situations. You and a colleague or friend both meet the same person at two separate events. The next time you meet up, you tell her what a lovely person you have been introduced to, and she says what a difficult person she has met. Now this could be down to a couple of different things. It could be that the other person has had a rough week or day and your friend has caught her in a different mood than the one she was in when you met her. But it could also be that your friend has some issues and is sometimes rather moody herself and this is how she perceives her new acquaintance.

Or, have you ever wondered why two people who have gone to the same party have had two completely different experiences? I find this fascinating as how they describe the party actually explains a lot more about the person than the party.

Acknowledging an unattractive or unhelpful trait in ourselves is the first step toward changing it. It’s like admitting that we have an addiction. I have used hypnosis to help many clients quit smoking. But I have also seen many people resist giving up because although they knew it was not a particularly healthy habit, they still enjoyed it for various reasons: the ritual of opening up a packet; the way they think it makes them look sophisticated in a Bette Davis kind of way; some people actually enjoy the taste! Often some of these clients would tell me how hypnosis hadn’t worked for them when they tried – and notice the word ‘tried’ – to give up.

‘But did you really want to give up?’ is my usual response to that. ‘No!’ they say more often than not. ‘But I felt like I had to because my partner or friend or whoever told me to,’ or, ‘I felt like I should, but didn’t really want to.’

Let me just be clear about this once and for all: we will not make major changes unless it’s we ourselves who decide it’s time to change a behaviour trait or habit. We are all on different journeys and we’ve all got different timetables. So when someone else thinks it’s time for you to change something, unless your timetables match, you’re not going to. When you do arrive at the conclusion that it’s time to change and you have decided that it’s time because it is going to enhance your life and make you happier, then the change can be powerful, challenging and wonderful.

Change can be powerful, challenging and wonderful

When we make major changes within I believe that we will often be challenged with a situation to test us to see if the change is fully integrated. For example, if you’ve recently given up smoking, you may have to face a situation where everyone around you is puffing away – although with fewer and fewer people smoking these days that’s increasingly uncommon – and someone offers you a cigarette. I think that’s fate’s way of testing whether or not you really have given up.

A different scenario could be if you have let go of anger. Let’s say you’re someone who’s on a short fuse, easily wound up and often end up reacting angrily in situations at work or at home. You know this behaviour is doing you no good because when you get angry in situations, you lose perspective and act irrationally. So you decide to improve your behaviour and in future change all your angry responses to calm ones. This may take some time and you may choose to work with an NLP coach, psychologist or another type of therapy.

How will you know if you have succeeded?

You will more than likely suddenly find yourself in a situation to which you would normally respond angrily. I believe these challenges are thrown at you to give you an opportunity to see if your new behaviour response has become ingrained in you. If you react calmly, well done. If you blew your top, and then become angry with yourself for doing so, don’t despair and think, ‘Oh well, obviously I was meant to go through life as a bad-tempered curmudgeon.’ It just means that psychologically you weren’t ready to make the change. But if you persevere, the time will be right. The key to moving forward is always to acknowledge our behaviour and learn from it.