Transformational Stories - Individuals
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You Can Speak Your Truth
Where are you compromising your truth? What are the impacts? What we fear holds our opportunity for growth.
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You Actually Can Have It All
Are you doing work you love? What stories hold you back from the career change you seek?
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Yes You Can Make Decisions!
Worthiness and deservability play a huge role in decision-making.
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Be the Protagonist In Your Own Story
What stories do you repeatedly tell yourself that block new growth from taking root?
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Trust the Mystery!
Are you here for the discovery route or the ‘safe’ road?
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You Deserve Better!
Are you going through the motions or learning about You as you Go?
You Can Speak your Truth
Discover Your Courage
What stories are you telling yourself about how your truth will be received?
We are conditioned from our earliest beginnings to conform to implied family and societal dynamics; to think like the people around us or risk losing love and belonging. We orphan the parts that do not fit in, forge our identities around what does, and compress or withhold our truths - sometimes for years - without recognizing the consequences to our bodies, minds, hearts and JOY!
Unfortunately, this learned-behaviour forms the basis of how we build relationships - with friends, family, intimate partners, and our co-workers and colleagues - thus impacting all aspects of our lives. Fortunately, we can change it.
Having the courage to acknowledge our truths, and move through fear to speak them aloud generates huge shifts - in ourselves, our families and organizations - and creates results we could not see from the precipice of fear and conditioned thinking.
K. H.
“Kimber helped me realize that my cultural beliefs contradicted those of the organization I worked for. She helped me see the impact this was having on my mental and physical health, as well as our team and program. With her I built the confidence to speak my truth. It not only set me free, it mobilized my teammates to speak their truths, which surprisingly the organization appreciated! This allowed us to make the necessary shifts to our approaches and serve our community better. So much great change from releasing fear and speaking up!”
My approaches included:
I met this client in her current thinking, within her social and cultural context and its complex history. I saw and heard what was not being expressed and understood the reasons, which I reflected and invited for reconsideration. She recognized that habitual thinking and fear were holding her back and that loss was not the only possible outcome of speaking her truth.
She developed the self-belief and confidence to speak up, improving her mental health, and in so doing, discovered the organization valued her perspective. They then allowed it/her to lead program changes and create better results for her team and program participants.
Start Thriving
We are conditioned within our family, social and cultural contexts, and specifically within gender-conforming belief structures to play certain roles, and to define success in those roles in certain ways. While our young people are leading the change in this regard, for some of us that conditioned thinking lives on, and can restrict what we believe is possible for us, what success means, feels and looks like.
Do you love your life? Do you love what you do for a living? Is there something else that whispers to you that you would love to do, but that you cannot bring yourself to express for the fear of the disruption it would cause or the judgment you imagine it would bring?
What does your body tell you about how you live your life? Are you listening?
The golden handcuffs are real. Societal-conforming gender roles are real. The systems in which we live define success along very narrow lines that do not work for many of us. You do not need to conform. You are far more powerful than you think when you align with what you really want - on the inside - and give yourself permission to go for it.
You Actually Can Have It All
B. B.
“Kimber cares so deeply for all human beings. She helped me see that while I was successful in my job, and really liked parts of it, what I really wanted was to have my own coaching business and help a lot of people. I’d held this dream since the age of 6. When I started Kimber’s program I was having severe chest pain regularly and all the testing showed nothing. Within the course of Kimber’s program the pain stopped and my relationships - with myself and others - improved. And within two months of completing Kimber’s program I launched my own coaching business and had my first 4 clients signed up!”
My approach included:
I saw everything occurring within this client as holding the key to his desire and his growth - from his way of thinking to his gigantic love of humanity to the stabbing pain in his heart. He wanted to live his dream, but feared that a change in career would financially impact his family. His conflict was palpable, his thinking limited, and his heart pain told the story of constriction he was living in.
Through his immense commitment to the weekly calls, videos and reflective activities, he aligned more closely with feeling, changed his thinking and learned to love and trust himself more fully. His heart no longer hurts and his relationships and new business are thriving.
Know Your Worth
Our ability to make decisions can be traced back to our earliest days when we were presented with choices (or not) or invited to have preferences (or not). Our families and social contexts define - often implicitly - what is acceptable, what is valued, what is good and what is bad, and these often do not align with how we feel inside. And since we will not risk losing our place, we can easily learn to stifle our desires, suppress our voice, and inadvertently hand over our choices to those we deem more capable of choosing for us.
Over time, this can impact all aspects of our lives.
Were you ever taught how to make decisions? To listen to and honour your preferences?
The truth is, no one but You really knows what’s best for You, but if you inadvertently learned early on not to trust your opinions, your desires, or if your self-worth is tied up in whether others approve of your choices, you may not know how to connect to what you want, let alone have the self-belief to make the choice when what you want shows up.
Yes You Can Make Decisions
I. M.
“Before this program, I couldn’t even decide on a pair of shoes. Shoes! I didn’t know that my decision-paralysis was related to the fact that my family always thought my choices were ugly, or wrong, or simply decided things for me. I also hadn’t realized how my self-worth was impacted by this, and how it played out in my relationships with my partner and children. Now it’s a game. I am more connected to myself and my worth, I play with what I want and I get it.”
My approaches included:
As is my way, I contextualized this client first and foremost. She grew up as the last of nine children from a collectively organized culture with strong beliefs, values and religious norms, which continued to frame her way of living, while remaining largely unconscious.
This meant that identifying what she wanted, and feeling worthy of it, was no small task. I invited her to explore her origins and to see how her greatest obstacles were tied to the smallest - yet highly significant - experiences in her family and culture of origin.
Together we explored her opinions and desires, and teased out her authentic identity. She discovered that she was worthy of exploring, of self-discovery and began to reframe how her individual and collective identities could live harmoniously. As a result her self-worth vastly improved and she created new opportunities beyond her previously-held dreams.
Be the Protagonist In Your Own Story
Start Prioritizing You!
Taking the next step in our careers, re-entering after a long absence, or changing direction not only requires a shift in our thinking, it requires becoming an impenetrable fortress of self-belief so as to define our own worth within an external world that measures success along very narrow lines.
Few mothers, for instance, realize that staying home with our children during their early years can cost us our careers, our professional identities, and seriously impact our self-worth. When we decide to return, reclaim or re-enter, it can feel like a long and turbulent road to regain this lost ground, while simultaneously still wanting to prioritize the growth of our young people!
This conundrum costs many of us precious energy as we try to figure out how to fit our own desires, goals and dreams in and around our children’s needs, partner’s careers and a system that still clings to (often unspoken) archaic norms and divisions of labour.
Alas, fear nor, fine woman, there is a way out of this never-ending staircase, and it actually starts with prioritizing yourself, which is a message we hear in a myriad of ways, but more often than not fail to actually do because our habitual thinking and social conditioning keeps us tightly in place. The answers lie within and the work is committing to going inward, and quieting the mind to hear the heart.
E. V.
“Kimber helped me finally see that I was worthy of love without being of service to others; that I was worthy just by breathing, but my old stories were suffocating me. Before working with her, I dragged myself out of bed each morning, lethargically approaching the many tasks required of me and falling back into bed as soon after as I could. I simply didn’t have the energy to do a single other thing. I felt ashamed, wondered what was wrong with me and at times, I really didn’t know if I could go on. Mindset work changed everything.”
My approach included:
I resonated strongly with this client, having made a similar choice in my own life, with similar impacts. I built a relationship where I held space for all the complex thoughts and feelings, the history, the trauma still being enacted in this client’s life and gently challenged the limiting beliefs and old stories that kept her locked in place.
I invited her to give herself the love and care she hadn’t received in her early holding environment but somehow managed to offer her own family so freely. In time she developed self-loving practices that nourished her parched soul back to life. She learned to be the protagonist in her own story and her relationships and new business flourish!
Often, we need to quiet our minds to hear our hearts, and invest in ourselves, to have it all.
Trust the Mystery
Soar to New Heights!
We can’t see around the next corner, no matter how hard we try. And our conditioning in the Global North teaches us to prioritize security over taking a risk. This leaves many a person dissatisfied with their life, with dreams unmet and vital life force energy unspent.
What is life for, if not to reach for discovery?!
The desire for growth and expansion is Universal. All life forms seek it. And if that involves taking a chance, why not reframe that into Giving Oneself a Chance, by Betting on Yourself?!
We’re taught to measure success in tangible results - the house, the job, the accolades - but what we don’t realize is, it’s always an inside job that leads to those successes. It’s not who we think we are that holds us back from what we want, it’s who we think we aren’t, or what we think we don’t deserve. Our biggest dreams come true when we go inward for answers and believe in ourselves and trust that what’s coming next is derived from the inspired actions we take today.
P. J.
“Before this program I’d done some others, and yet I still had old stories and limiting beliefs that held me back from really going for the things I wanted. I could see my dream vacation home in my mind’s eye, but I couldn’t see my way to safely owning it. Even with a little unexpected cash influx I hesitated, letting fear hold me back. Within the Living Inside Out program, with the weekly calls, community support and Kimber’s vault of helpful tools, I released the fear and now I own that vacation home!”
My approaches included:
I acknowledged that this client came into the program with a lot of personal growth experience, yet still some old stories and beliefs that held her back. I helped her see those old stories and beliefs for what they were - stories - and that helped her develop trust in herself. As a community, we felt her immense value and reflected it, which helped her trust that no matter what was around the next corner, she would be ok, because all she ever put out into the world was pure love. What we are we attract. What we offer, we get to keep.
Discover Yourself!
We play the roles we’ve learned to play in our families and communities, we do the job we’re hired to do, but are you learning about yourself in these roles?
You deserve better than ‘going through the motions’! Life is for discovery! So much of our thinking and feeling and behaving is habitual, and we might not even be aware of it, or the impact it is having on us at a deep level. There is always more going on under the surface.
Are you giving yourself time to reflect? Do you pause in your day to think about what you’re learning or are you going through the motions?
Are you really present in your interactions, your relationships, your tasks? Are you aligned with what gives you joy? Do you feel you deserve that?
Life is for discovery. To know oneself, one’s thoughts, feelings, criteria for joy is to be free. To do that we must pause, breathe, go inward, reflect; quiet our minds so we can hear our hearts. Open ourselves up to new thoughts, new feelings, new experiences, new people. Discover who we are deep below the roles we play.
You Deserve Better!
A. R.
“I did not know there was so much more to me than who I know myself to be - son, brother, friend, community member, development worker… I have so much more to learn about myself and I am so excited!”
C. S.
“From a continent away, you helped me see what I could not, and push to create a better life for myself.”
T. G.
“We did not know how much we needed a space to speak honestly to one another, so that we could learn from one another, instead of each feeling like we knew everything. Thank you for creating this space. Now, we can move forward.”
My approaches included:
Meeting each of these clients where they were, contextualizing their cultural beliefs, listening, building therapeutic relationship quickly and through that vehicle, creating space for honest dialogue, honest reflection, and consistently showing up for them, which in turn inspired them to show up for themselves in new ways. We can never really know the impact we’re having on other people in a given moment, and in each of these situations I simply reflected the light I saw within, that was trying so hard to get out. I saw the layers of social and familial conditioning that covered over what truly needed expressing and created the space for that to occur. The choice to do so, belonged to each of them.