MY JOURNEY

1. My Journey, in Short
2. A Bit More
3. An Ever Fuller Story
You are here. 4. Ever So Much More Coming to Mind

There is also a short video on my father and myself. So many connections between us, and also huge differences in our life paths.

4. My Journey -
Ever So Much More
Coming to Mind

FROM STUCK TO LIVING FULLY,
FROM LONGING TO FLOURISHING

THE STARTING POINT: STUCK
Longing, Aching, Unutterably Lonely, Dreaming, Trying, STUCK

Childhood

Stuck. Bored. Lonely. An outsider.

I'm a quiet child, much of the time. I love reading, where I leave my life where nothing happens and I am an outsider. I imagine I'm having the adventures I read about, where I rescue. So much longing to be living a life with excitement, friendship, fun. Where I am doing something that matters.

I open a book. I'm with best friends, solving mysteries - like in a favorite Trixie Belden story. There is danger. We find a way out.

But I'm stuck, no idea what I could do.

I do do many things. I write a Christmas play, get neighborhood kids to act in it. It took 3 tries, but it got performed - to a tiny audience, but still.

I write a film script, Young Ladies, Indeed! I have no idea what to do with it. Things are supposed to fall into place. Like school - one class after the other. It's always clear where you go next. Not here. After I write the script, sew a lovely container for it, I'm stuck. Totally stuck.

No camera. No film. No money for any of that. And if I'd gotten those, I was thousands of miles from the studio system. I know nothing about any of that.

Stuck. No map, even, of where to head.

Just fantasy. Dreams.

I think of Hayley Mills, star of a movie I love. She was, so I read, discovered by friends of her parents when they dropped by to visit. They were looking for the star for the movie they were planning.

How can my sister and I be discovered? That is my question.

It's summer. My sister and I are staying way out in the country with an older couple on a very quiet road. Maybe a dozen cars pass in a day. I remember sitting with my sister on the front lawn, wondering if any of the very few people passing could possibly be searching for stars for their new movie. They would see my sister and myself, and . . . .

I tell no one about my dream.

We are never discovered.

Dreaming, longing, aching from the desire to be in the life I'm longing for, with adventure, excitement, friendship, fun, and danger I solve with best friends.

But I'm stuck, no idea what I could do.

And looking back, my sense is that my parents were also stuck, not living a life they longed for. I think of my father with his love of Westerns. We moved from Vienna, a large cite in Austria, to Montreal, a large city in Canada. Much struggle. A huge amount of struggle in this strange new world, trying to make it be a good life. None of the adventures he longed for. And for my mother too, much was missing.

I Grow Up

I grow up. I have “everything.” But I feel as stuck, as trapped, as when I was a child. No idea what to do to get unstuck.

Such a sense of isolation, aloneness. Quiet desperation. I keep doing. But deep-down, close to despair.

The pain of not being in the right life, of having “everything” - and nothing that I longed for. Nothing that felt meaningful to me.

I remember so well the pain of being stuck in a relationship I knew, so utterly within me, was not the right relationship for me. I wanted out, but had nothing that qualified, for me, as a “reason”. No abuse, no cheating. Just a sense of disconnection - which I did not talk about.

Work: flight attendant. Lots of time off. And such an urgent desire to be a writer, artist, actor. Also so many efforts, courses. Trying and trying and trying. I remember writing a film script, So Sorry, Charlie. Very light. And I remember writing a novel, George Papadopoulis is Dead. The first pages felt very alive. After that, they didn't.

More dreaming, longing, aching from the desire to be in a much larger life than I'm in. To have an intensely close dynamic relationship. But I'm numb inside.

I have what is considered a good job - flight attendant staying in top hotels - like the Hilton close to the Eiffel Tower. I travel to top European cities, go to every play in the West End in London.

I'm longing for something very different. My art and my writings touching people. Also, helping with the suffering in the world.

I have a theatre degree. I am not incredibly talented. I freeze. And even most talented people do not succeed.

I take courses. Art courses. Film courses.

My sense. I'm on a road to nowhere.

I long for a miracle. Like finding true soul connection love. Like a miracle job. Something that solves everything.

I remember talking about the courses I'm taking, about the writing I'm doing, about how boring it is, being a flight attendant. I don't remember talking about the sense of being stuck in some utterly inadequate life.

I feel paralyzed. I am paralyzed, in a life that does not feel at all right, but I have no idea what I could do. So much longing. Silent longing. I don't remember talking about what is going on inside.

Stuck. Frustrated. Bored.

Sometimes I feel despair. Hopelessness. But I keep going on.

I easily get angry at little things, know it doesn't make sense. I want to stop that, but it keeps happening.

__________

I have a dream. In the dream, I am asleep, floating on the ocean, want to move, expect to be able to move. I cannot. I try to move one part of my body after another. Even a finger. I cannot. I wake up, terrified.

I have this dream again and again.

I know how I ended the nightmares. I read of a technique: tell yourself a better ending and that will happen. I had no idea how to change things. So I just told myself, before falling asleep, that my dreaming self was to find a solution.

Once again, I'm floating on the ocean and can not move. Terror and despair. And then a small wave under one hand moves the hand. And suddenly the hand can move, and then the arm, the other arm, and all of me. I wake up.

The nightmare never came back.

But I had not solved what the dream was about.
_________

I did not know what to do to move to a life that felt right to me.

I wanted to be in love, to love. I didn't have that.

I wanted to write a brilliant novel, like those that touched me deeply. I knew what I wrote was nothing like that. I could not even keep a journal. I'd write a page, and put the journal aside, come back to it in a year, write another page.

Work? I was stuck. Flight attendant. I had no idea how else to earn money.

My very nice partner, who had a much better idea about possibilities, pushed me to go from taking courses, to going for an MA. I had no idea this would lead to one enormous breakthrough change.

I did not acknowledge - or do not remember acknowledging - even to myself, how horribly stuck I felt - that part of me that was buried inside my everyday life where everything looked good.

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MY TURNING POINT: A TINY STEP
with a huge impact, over time

Nothing dramatic happens.

I get into an MA program. The courses grip me less than the film classes I was taking. But my partner has a map of possibilities, of the way the world works, which I don't. He knows the MA can lead to something, and the courses don't.

But that isn't the small step that happens.

I have no idea where I heard that, as a student, I'm entitled to 18 free counseling sessions. I don't go because I feel stuck. I easily got angry at little things. I wanted very much to change that. I decided: I'll take a couple of sessions to get rid of the unwanted anger. That should do it.

I don't take just 2 sessions. Each week I keep booking another session, until I have had the full 18.

The sessions are not dramatic. The world does not suddenly look different. I do learn that anger is not always a bad thing. But I haven't left behind my own anger. I like the sessions, look forward to them. It's a kind of talking I'm not used to.

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THE DECISION MOMENT

At the end of those sessions, I had a dream. I was coming out of a changing room at one side of a huge gym. My therapist - overweight - was running laps without running out of breath or sweating. My thought: she is much better at this than I am.

My decision: I want much more of the changes that have been starting, more of the talking in a fuller way than is normal for me and being listened to. I want what my therapist has, able to run without effort. I want to get what she has.

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DECADES OF EXPLORATION AND DISCOVERY

Something in me decides: I want more of this. I have no idea about the whole huge field of personal development, the many different varieties and approaches.

But I know this feels like the right direction.

It's totally unexpected - as unexpected as seeing a stranger across a crowded room and knowing, deeply knowing, you want to get to know that stranger.

This wasn't a breakthrough into love.

Not a breakthrough into a job where I am trying to do something about, say, world hunger or the oppression of women.

Not a breakthrough with my art or my writing or filmmaking.

Not, finally, getting an ongoing audience.

Childhood: I wanted excitement and adventure and the chance to make a difference. I discovered a world unknown to me, the world of personal development - the many different worlds. What an adventure - both personal and also, it gave me, increasingly, a chance to help others in an entirely unexpected way.

I think back to myself, all those decades ago. I had no idea of the amount of inner blocks within myself, and of how hard it would be to undo some of them.

I vividly remember the sudden unexpected emergence of one of those blocks. On the home stretch of my PhD - editing the second half - an inner voice started screaming at me, non-stop, that I can't do it, it's impossible, it's too much, I'll never make it. I knew the voice was not telling the truth. I was 97% done. Clearly if I could do 97%, I could do the last 3%. That did not silence the voice. I worked for about 30 days with that voice insisting, shrieking, that it was impossible to get through all the work.

I also remember lying on a beach, casually picking up a new book. On Shame. I was not able to put it down. So much was coming up inside me. Shame. Ashamed of any imperfection, ashamed of being ashamed.

It's always been easy to express thoughts, and some feelings - like anger. There have been many slow changes in expressing liking, and not liking, inner numbness, shame.

There's so much I was unaware of - like that I was dragging things not only from my lifetime, but from who knows how many past generations.

The personal exploration kept continuing. Therapy. Gestalt. Psychoanalysis. Adult children of alcoholics. Tapping (tapping on acupressure points). New Age approaches.

I created and taught a college course, Knowing the Inner Self - an overview of all I discovered. I taught that for about 15 years.

I had absolutely no idea I was embarking on decades - 4 so far - of personal development, a journey that has included my creating my own model of personal development, because I did not only explore - and use - the approaches I came across. I evaluated strengths and lacks. Nothing I came across felt complete to me.

Someone is famous for being the first person to summit Mount Everest. I have no idea why anyone would want to do that.

But I am doing my own summiting - not coming to something finished, like Mount Everest - but imagining, constructing, creating what has come to be my own model of personal development: Full Flourishing, which was also developed to help others on their journey.

Aladdin found a cave of jewels. For me, this exploration with its many discoveries is better than coming into a cave filled with shiny objects.

My sense: we need to find, come to and develop our personal “Mount Everests” - and Full Flourishing is my route to it, to help others on their journey,

The rest of my life has continued.

A topic gripped me. Then a second - on the impact of fear. Both topics became the focus of doctoral research.

I got a doctorate.

I did part-time university and college teaching, then got tenured college teaching. Very satisfying.

Poetry and song writing just happened, shortly after I got my PhD. I started waking up with the beginnings of things I call word pieces going through my head.

Also there's been ongoing idea writing.

I have had 3 long-term relationships, none of which felt really right to me. How much does that have to do with the other person? How much comes from me? I did not bring this up.

I've been on my own for many years. Quite a surprise.

On my journey, I kept coming against, not just the strengths but major limitations of the various approaches. Nothing felt enough.

For example, I appreciated the emphasis on feelings of many approaches, did not appreciate the lack of emphasis on PERCEIVING and on THINKING. I appreciated the attention to the inner self, but believed that a fully developed person was also engaged in the larger world.

Also, some approaches, like the New Age, tended to come across to me as radically unbalanced: like, there is the repeated claim that you are responsible for everything that happens in your life.

You are in an airplane crash. Somehow you need to take responsibility.

I came to DIY - Do It Yourself.

Full Flourishing - my own model of personal development.

Very simple. ACE. Awareness and caring. And then, engagement. If you're aware that you're stuck, and you care. If it hurts. If you ache, long to be in another life but have no idea how to get there. And if you're ready to engage - to take steps, with support, to set out in that direction.

There is no set formula, except to commit to engaging - taking some small step.

Movement, which leads to further movement.

All the same, a good part of the impetus to keep going is that I could still feel major blocks within me. Terror of paperwork, for instance. Sometimes not taking care enough of myself - over-trusting.

Very recently - just months ago - I came across yet another approach, Cognomovement. It can undo the impact of trauma, by accessing the location of the damage in the brain, and repairing it, largely through eye movements. The changes can be profound and are permanent.

I read testimonials from people who had tried many other approaches, who sometimes were professionals using other approaches. Many things still did not feel right within. Cognomovement gave them an inner freedom they had never had. They felt they now were their true selves.

Like those people, I am gaining from Cognomovement - which is becoming another tool in the Full Flourishing toolkit.

Is this the final tool? I have no idea. It's where I am now in my own journey.

Looking back, I find it hard to believe all the changes, all the benefits. Perhaps most, instead of a sense of being stuck, I have such a sense of freedom of movement.

I also have the deep belief, based on my experience, that if I haven't managed to undo some stuckness, there is a way, I just haven't found it.

__________________

NO NIRVANA,
NO MOUNT EVEREST,
NO GETTING THERE COMPLETELY

BUT LIVING FULLY,
EVER MORE FLOURISHING

I was a flight attendant taking classes. Always so much felt missing, was missing. I became a prof, writer ,poet, songwriter, thinker - quite a thinker - coach.

I have an ever so much greater - and still developing - understanding of what is going on in the world. Basically I was questioning so little. Now I question everything.

I have a much larger reach - from the few people I talked with and the limited things I talked about - to my students, discussing so many interesting subjects from ethics to world views, to a online audience reaching thousands with ideas, explorations, and also stories and poetry.

Most, I have such a sense of flow in my life, of being able to take action. Life feels very full.

I've let go of so many blocks and have accumulated quite a toolbox.

Ever more satisfaction.

Ever more ease and flow in my creativity.

The melting of deep-seated terrors.

_________

I did not see myself as afraid, decades ago. I was always ready to speak up, to defend my ideas.

I came to recognize the terrors I didn't know were there.

How to express what it feels like, to be able to call the government without massive terror?

It used to be that I could not dance. I felt frozen, my legs not connected to the top half of my body. I love to dance now.

I remember reading a book on shame. I could not put it down. I came to recognize I lived in an ocean of shame - ashamed of not having friends, of any imperfection, of my background - and I felt ashamed of being ashamed.

I wish I could report: Heaven on Earth!!! I cannot. Griefs, doubts, hesitations.

I still come to dark nights of the soul. But I do not stay in them for years.

Also ever more reaching and flourishing.

Imagine being on a high plateau. It isn't heaven. But it is breathtakingly beautiful.

There are many parts to my life, much flow, and always trying for some balance.

Idea writing.

Creative projects.

Perhaps most, continuing to go ahead, so many possibilities.

If the idea writings or creative projects might appeal to you, you can try them out, subscribe to: the Truth Summit.

If Full Flourishing draws you, if you're frustrated, stuck, stymied, if you're longing for fuller freer living, I have an invitation for you: schedule a free 15-minute Discovery Call.

When I think back to my long ago self, I shake my head in wonder. I cannot believe the distance I've traveled.

I am so grateful to my much younger self who took the first step. She had no idea all she would find. She wanted to get unstuck. She got that and ever so much more, including the key to her own deep creativity.

____________________
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FOR MORE:
1. My Journey, in Short
2. A Bit More
3. An Ever Fuller Story
You are here. 4. Ever So Much More Coming to Mind

There is also a short video on my father and myself. So many connections between us, and also huge differences in our life paths.
___________________
___________________

Testimonials

Chris Zahn

BChris Zahn Before I met Elsa, I had wanted to be a writer for years, but I didn't write. With Elsa, with her baby step formula, I started writing.

I also felt disconnected, didn't know anyone else like me, who was questioning things. I was anxious from all the hysteria. I was worried about the future. There was crazy talk about the “New Normal."

I was referred to Elsa and Full Flourishing right then, when I was seeking a like-minded group. I found what I was seeking. A group of thinkers who weren't willing to accept the propaganda we were being spoon fed.

What I found was a group of like-minded people. And I'm connecting with way more like-minded people outside the group.

It has been transformative to work with Elsa and the group. The world had gone insane. Elsa and the group were a breath of sanity.

We learned a lot from each other. I learned much more quickly than I would have on my own.

Elsa and the group are very caring. This encourages engagement. I'm encouraged to engage within my sphere of influence about everything.

I recommend Full Flourishing and Elsa's ACE method (Awareness, Caring, Engagement) for everyone.

Chris Zahn, friendly guy who can't help being logical

________________________

Maria Nardi
Maria-Nardi

Dr. Schieder's “Getting There From Here” was a wonderful experience for me. Many times, people don't take initiatives simply because they don't know what to do or how to start.

Dr. Schieder has a way of helping people not only define what it is that is holding them back, but she provided a framework for activation and execution of goals.

Our group meetings were engaging and fun.

It gave me the motivation and support I needed to formulate a plan.

Once I began the process, the stress of feeling static left me and instead I was energized and renewed with a deep sense of purpose.

I highly recommend her program for anyone wishing to take their goals from thoughts to concrete action.

Maria Nardi, software developer

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Mary Andrew

Mary Andrew

When I came upon Elsa's work, I had been galvanised to protest by the horrific slaughter of children in the Manchester bombing.

But I felt isolated, downcast and daunted by the mountainous size of the problems.

I have always been utterly anti-racist, but because it involved terrorism, my friends thought I had become a bigot.

I didn't know what to do.

Elsa's amazing, inspirational work has become a beacon of light to me, and her friendship has furnished me with the encouragement and support (and occasional rap over the knuckles!) which I desperately needed to become tougher, more confident, and much more active.

I no longer feel alone; united we stand!

Thank you, Elsa, so much for all you have done to embolden me, and nurture my development. I am truly grateful!

Mary Andrew, working for a voice in mainstream politics

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Jane Bayler

Jane Bayler

Elsa is a strong and wise leader who has inspired me massively with her commitment to humanity and her powerful leadership.

She is super smart and at the same time very compassionate and caring.

She is utterly dedicated to the advancement of justice and human rights, and ending unnecessary suffering in the world.

Elsa will truly help you to flourish and achieve your full potential both as an individual and in the context of your wider role in society.

I encourage you to engage with Elsa who will help you to flourish fully as a human being and reach your highest potential in terms of the impact you make in the world.

Jane Bayler, entrepreneur, proud cancer survivor, marketer and trainer who helps thought leaders and experts generate impact and authority through their online presence and communications.

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Nicole Davidoff

Nicole Davidoff

Elsa is a spiritual healer and a brilliant writer and thinker.

And her music videos are a reminder that there is a beauty in this world too!

She is also for me a pillar of strength and a voice of reason.

Nicole Davidoff, passionate advocate of human rights and freedoms, passionately against any ideology that is totalitarian, cat lover

The Full Flourishing Formula

MY JOURNEY

4. My Journey - Ever So Much More Coming to Mind FROM STUCK TO LIVING FULLY, FROM LONGING TO FLOURISHING

4. My Journey -
Ever So Much More
Coming to Mind

FROM STUCK TO LIVING FULLY,
FROM LONGING TO FLOURISHING