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So many of us have one or two things in our life that we believe are absolutely essential for our happiness and fulfillment. For Vivienne Edgecombe one of those things was having children, and when she realized that wasn’t going to happen, she suffered.
Fortunately for her, she discovered the 3 Principles and was able to understand that it is only ever our thinking about a particular subject that causes our suffering. It is possible to be happy, fulfilled, and perfectly content without the things we think are essential for those conditions.
[No personal intro from me this week, unfortunately, as I’m having computer problems and am limping along on an old computer while my current one is at the doctor.]
Show Notes
- The imaginary futures we make up
- How an insight about one area of life can affect all areas of our life
- Getting into the hidden corners of our thoughts
- The behaviors we exhibit when we’re caught up in insecure thinking
- Why understanding the nature of thought is the ‘secret sauce’ when it comes to transformation
- Unearthing the companion and kindness at our core once we are able to understand thought
- The ripple effects out to families and beyond when we begin to grasp this understanding
Resources mentioned in this episode
Vivienne Edgecombe is living a life she loves in the south of France with her husband, cat, dog, and three chickens, where she spends her time coaching and facilitating with individuals and organizations, walking in the mountains and writing when the mood takes her.
Her second book Already Complete: Beyond the Myths of Childlessness is the result of her having seen something fundamental about our ability to be happy fulfilled and to feel complete even when life doesn’t turn out how we expected.
You can find Vivienne at VivienneEdgecombe.com and also at InsideOutChange.co.
You can listen above or on iTunes or your favorite podcast app or watch the video here. Below are the show highlights, resources we mention, and full transcript.
Transcript of Interview with Vivienne Edgecombe
Alexandra: Hi everyone I’m Alexandra Amor from StopSufferingAbout.com and I’m here today with Vivienne Edgecombe. Hi Vivienne.
Vivienne: Hello Alexandra. Lovely to be here.
Alexandra: Oh, thank you so much for joining me today. Let me just give a brief introduction to you to our audience.
Vivienne Edgecombe is living a life she loves in the south of France with her husband, cat, dog and three chickens, where she spends her time coaching and facilitating with individuals and organizations, walking in the mountains and writing when the mood takes her.
Her second book Already Complete: Beyond the Myths of Childlessness is the result of her having seen something fundamental about our ability to be happy fulfilled and to feel complete even when life doesn’t turn out how we expected.
Which is why I want really wanted to talk to you today Vivienne and I’m excited to have you on the show.
Why don’t you give us a little bit more background about who you are and how you came to find this understanding.
Vivienne: I am originally from New Zealand and I was in and still am to an extent in human resources. So I’ve done a lot of personal development through work in and for myself personally and I actually came to this understanding through Jamie Smart, who at the time doing NLP.
He was talking about something different. It was at the time when he was just really starting to say something about this understanding. And so I kind of went on that journey with him because I could hear that there was something in there for me and as it turns out it was something in there for all human beings which is which is lovely.
From then I started seeing things that actually were completely unexpected in terms of my own life. I’d spent a lot of time trying to fix stuff about myself and just had assumed that that would be an ongoing process for the rest of my life.
It was lovely to start to understand that actually there was nothing wrong and that there was nothing that I needed to fix and that was one of the key things that I saw about, as you just said in the beginning, about our ability to be okay, happy, complete, fulfilled etc. No matter what life deals us in terms of cards right.
Alexandra: And you had a very specific issue that you addressed… I don’t know what the right word is… with this understanding.
Can you tell us a bit more about that about your work around childlessness and your own journey about that.
Vivienne: It’s interesting isn’t it, because I knew that that was an issue for me in terms of feeling like there was something missing or that that I would get upset about. But it seemed like it was separate to all this other stuff that I was doing around being happy.
I think I it’s hard to look back and think what I was thinking. I think I just thought that’s a separate thing and that’s just the way it is. I look back on that and think oh I didn’t even see it coming when things started to change for me. It was just part of what was changing for me. So it almost didn’t make a big deal. Oh okay. There is nothing missing.
It’s all fine. Move on. That sounds a bit flippant but actually that’s how it felt like and it was such a relief having for quite a long time been in what I called my tumble dryer phase of just going round and round and round about the same over and over again.
Coming at it from different angles but really it’s always the same thing. And really thinking that if I wasn’t going to have children that that was a second rate life and that. That’s just how it was. And I would have to deal with it or cope with it or find a way to come to terms with it and enjoy my life as best I could given these circumstances.
And so to realize that actually that wasn’t the case. And this is not a second rate life. In my bones I know that there is nothing missing from me and that there is nothing that I need or have to do or achieve or obtain to complete me like.
That is in my book title. I am already complete and so is everyone else. And that was that’s really what inspired me to write the book because I see so much in the childlessness community of people thinking that that’s not true for them, that there is something missing and that it will always be missing if they’re not going to have children.
And there is this void and them that can’t be filled and will never be filled. I think I said in my book when I realized this that I didn’t need to fill the void because the void was never there in the first place which was hugely liberating.
Alexandra: As you learned more about this understanding was coming to that realization a gradual process for you or did it happen over a period of time?
Vivienne: I can kind of identify two phases but I know that actually a lot of things changed over time. People say this is an understanding that seeped into my bones and is still seeping into my bones. I wouldn’t say that I’ve had major thunderclap lightning bolt moment.
And actually, this was even before I learned the principles, or the inside out understanding, I remember realizing that I had made up the futures that I had imagined for myself; one being the sad one without children and one being the happy one with children.
They were both imaginary. Neither was any more real than the other. That was huge. I don’t think I realized at the time what I was really seeing but it certainly when I saw that it gave me a lot of relief because I realized that I don’t have a crystal ball. I have no idea what my future going to be like with or without children.
That was a real turning point. It freed me up to look at okay, well, if I don’t know what my future is going to be like and it’s not true, what I’m believing about it… and when I say it’s not true I don’t mean that I couldn’t be unhappy with that children or I couldn’t be happy with children.
It’s just I have no idea it’s because I’m not in that moment. This is what I realized at the time. It let me open things up completely to what do I want to do and if I’m not going to have children what do I want to do.
Not as compensation for not having children but just what I want to do. Because that’s not on the table. So what else?
And the other thing that I saw and I can’t really pinpoint a time or moment for this and maybe it’s one that seeped into my bones and looking back I realized that I’d seen it. It was the piece about being already complete about. Really knowing in my bones that there is nothing that I need to do or be or have. Including being a parent. That will make me complete as a person as a woman as a human being. Because I’m already that.
And that’s also huge because when that hits you that doesn’t just go to one place. It didn’t just go to my thinking about having children or not. It goes across my life. My work life my home life. I’m human being, I get caught up like everyone else. But in general, I don’t pin my well-being and my happiness and my sense of okayness, my identity, any of those things on to stuff outside of me anymore.
Sometimes I do. But it’s relatively rare now compared to obviously how caught up I was in thinking that I needed to have children, in this example, in order to complete. And that somehow I’d pinned my worth as a human being on that my value as a woman which is a very common thing in that community.
And bless us because society tells us that’s the case. The messages that we get are all about. The sanctity of motherhood and how you can at last feel complete once you’ve had a child etc.
And as I said that was really why I wanted to write the book, to help people to see that that’s just not true.
Alexandra: There’s a couple of things I want to ask you about. The first that comes to mind is that the people that you work with will be dealing with not only whatever’s going on within themselves but also with the messages and the pressure sometimes perhaps that they’re feeling from outside themselves.
As you say, that’s this is the thing that will make you a woman quote unquote complete. So when you when you work with clients around this issue. I guess I just want to ask about what that work is like. I guess you meet them where they are, I would assume, and take it from there.
I’m just a bit curious about what that journey looks like. I’m sure it’s different for every person.
Vivienne: It is. Yeah of course it’s different. It’s been a learning journey for me too.
One of the things that I saw very early on was this is perfect in a way. I realized that although we are talking about the same thing, not having children, everyone’s got a different vision of that. And everyone’s got a different set of thinking. And different emotions about what that means and why it’s important for them to have children.
That was so early on because for some reason and I look back and think what was I thinking? I must have had some perception that everyone would think the same as me or it would have the same thought process as me around why it was important to have children. And clearly it’s not. It’s not the same.
I see that more and more when I’m looking on childlessness forums and things like that. I would never assume that I know why it would be important to someone. What does it look like to you? What is your understanding of the world and how it works?
That means that you think that your value as a woman or your completeness is dependent on you having children. So I’m just listening, really. And then and then from there the conversation starts and I certainly don’t want to minimize or dismiss anyone’s experience at all.
I’ve been there. I know how desperate it feels and how hopeless that place is. That place of knowing actually that you’re not going to have the thing that you think is the key to your happiness. And then it feels it feels there’s a visceral feeling of black to it.
I would never want to minimize or dismiss that. And at the same time, I want to offer people hope you know because I know where that feeling comes from. And it’s not from where we think it comes from. It’s really just about starting when the time is right, starting to point people to what we know to be true about the human experience and how it’s created and what we really made of.
Alexandra: I think what’s so interesting about I was thinking about this before we got on the call was the thing that really intrigues me is that I would say maybe most people have a thing – fill in the blank – in their life that they hold as the thing that will make them happy and fulfilled and maybe fix the way that they feel about themselves or whatever it is.
That could be a relationship or it could be a child or it could be a certain amount of money or living in a certain place whatever it is.
I love that this understanding in the way a girlfriend described it to me was that a rising tide lifts all boats. So whatever it is that that we’re holding as the thing that we think that will complete us that the understanding points in the same direction no matter what it is that somebody is feeling about whatever that thing is.
That really intrigued me about this conversation.
Vivienne: I think that’s something that keeps coming up when I have these conversations is oh this isn’t just about having children or not having children. It’s really not.
And it’s lovely because no matter which direction you come at this conversation this understanding about human resilience or our ability to navigate life and all its challenges gracefully, you find it getting into hidden corners that you didn’t know where even a problem which is how it had been for me with this.
Because as I’ve said I just assumed that this was separate. I don’t think I necessarily had the thought well that works for everything else except this. But I just hid it off in a corner. Well that’s just something I had to deal with. So it’s it it’s as you say rising tide lifts all boats; it’s beautiful.
Alexandra: Yes exactly. And it made me smile when you said that talking about maybe felt it was separate. You said you didn’t maybe quite think that.
I just love that because I feel like in every life, including my own, we have all the things that we perhaps feel this understanding can address but then we have the thing or maybe it’s more than one,where we think, “Oh but that is different.”
Over there, that’s real. I don’t want to touch that. That’s real stuff.
Vivienne: I was speaking with a client the other day and she was talking about lifting. She was picturing that she had all these different bags of baggage as it were. And that she was shining a light on and sometimes she would lift one out and have a look at it and she said that feels so light to me.
Whereas these things had always felt so heavy. And I said actually just by noticing that they’re even there you’re already shining a light on them. You sincerely have to bring them out and dig around in them. The light is shining already.
Just by starting the conversation and noticing that those things are there.
Alexandra: Yes exactly.
Do you ever work with men about this childlessness issue?
Vivienne: I haven’t actually. That’s interesting in itself, isn’t it? When I look on the forums there aren’t many men and I’m sure that it’s just as big an issue for a lot of men as it is for women.
I did a talk in 2012 or something like that for the fertility network in the UK at the immortal life day which was a conference for those who had reached the point of knowing that that they weren’t going to have children and being able to accept as the title said that there is more to life than than having children.
And actually that was really lovely because most of the women there had a man with them. So it is a shared experience.
But it seems like a lot of the time it’s the woman who will look for help or the woman who needs to connect with other people about this and obviously I’m just generalizing and making that up but it does seem to be true that there just aren’t as many men putting themselves into that same public space of even admitting that they’re struggling with this.
Alexandra: We touched on the your most recent book.
Can you tell us a bit about the two books that you’ve written?
Vivienne: Number one has been nearly finished for quite a long time. The one about childlessness actually was the first one that I started.
The first one that I published was called 28 Days of Resilience and that was based on an audio series that I did for my community, for the people that I work with. Not at all about childlessness but about resilience in this human capacity to navigate life.
It was based on a daily audio series that I sent to people and once I’d written the script for the audio series I realized that this was actually a book so I published that.
The next one that I’ve got underway is again it’s the 28 days a format. And it’s about relationships. So following same kind of daily format but on a different thing. And always talking about the same thing.
Alexandra: As an author myself I’m just curious, is writing a daily practice for you? Or do you sort of write in batches or in sprints?
Vivienne: It’s a bit sporadic for me and I don’t have a discipline around it or anything like that. It’s sometimes I just think I get an idea and I want to put it down in it. And often that leads to more writing. But no I don’t have any particular discipline about it.
Alexandra: Just before we start to wind up, are there any new avenues or things that you’re working on that you’re excited about these days around this understanding.
Vivienne: Well actually a lot of my time at the moment is taken up working within an organization in the UK National Health Service around culture; bullying, harassment and all the other behaviors that go with people being caught up in a whole lot of insecure thinking and what goes along with that.
And that’s fascinating and it’s incredibly rewarding as well. I’m looking at that from that resilience angle and starting to dig into what with the people around what is it that would cause someone to act in that way and how we work the same.
It’s lovely to see the lights going on for some of the people so that’s taking up a lot of the moment.
And then yeah getting this next book published is my other thing.
Alexandra: Right. It’s adults you’re dealing with in the NHS organization.
Vivienne: Yes.
Alexandra: I’m intrigued by that.
How did you get involved working with them specifically about bullying and that kind of thing?
Vivienne: It was a conversation that I was contacted because they wanted someone to work with them on the culture program. And I just talked to them about what I had done in the past and what I knew about.
It was leveraged from my existing job and then bringing this extra piece that of course they don’t even know about. They didn’t know about until I brought it to him, which as you and I would know is really the secret sauce to human change and to transformation.
Alexandra: I hadn’t really thought about it until you said it, but what a great application for this understanding. Talking to people about their insecure thinking and where it comes from and then how that can manifest itself in behavior toward others and all that kind of stuff. That’s amazing.
Vivienne: When you look into any organization – this one is not alone – there is a level of mental noise in an organization and the louder that level the more likely it is that we’re going to see these kind of behaviors coming out.
If we know what we can do to quieten the noise get people thinking more clearly, making better decisions. And we know what does come up when we know that.
We’ve got compassion and kindness and all of those things at our core. And that’s what appears once people have got so caught up in all that insecure thinking. It’s a lovely thing to be able to bring to an organization that that has a lot of people who are struggling.
Alexandra: And when you work with them do you work with them over a period of time? And if so do you see change over that period?
Vivienne: Yes. It’s not really a sheep dip approach. You can have a conversation with someone and they say something really helpful for themselves in the first conversation and you can have another conversation with someone else who kind of looks at you like you have two heads. What is this woman on?
But they might have just had something that brings them back to the next conversation or more. It keeps them in it and it really it’s looking to me like there is such a lovely ripple effect with this understanding. Once someone sees something that’s awful to them.
For example, their stress levels start to decrease and therefore they’ve got more headspace and more clarity. Then there’s just implications that go from that. There are better relationships happening, better leadership. It’s more kindness and compassion. It’s just a lovely ripple effect.
It’s thinking up different ways of getting more people touched by the understanding. And who knows. Actually you know the people that have already seen something for themselves or understood something for themselves about their own experience of life and how it’s working. And where it’s coming from.
We will never know the ripple effects of this. That’s the beauty of it.
I can actually feel like I see the ripples going out taking it home to their families. Introducing the idea to their children.
Alexandra: That’s incredible I love that. I love that you’re doing that work in addition to the other work that you do with people who have wanted to have children. Well this has been amazing Vivian. Thank you so much for speaking with me today I really appreciate it.
Vivienne: It’s been an absolute joy. Thanks for having me.
Alexandra: Good I’m glad. Why don’t you let everyone know where they can find out more about you and your books and your work.
Vivienne: I have two websites. One is VivienneEdgecombe.com which is more my author site and has information about the childlessness stuff.
And my more corporate work site is called InsideOutChange.co. Either of those who are believed to each other anyway.
Alexandra: And your books are available on Amazon and all the online retailers.
Vivienne: Yes. Just Amazon at the moment because I haven’t got organized enough to put it on the other ones.
Alexandra: Thank you again so much for speaking with me today and I commented before we started recording that I just love your backdrop. That stone wall in your house there in France. It’s so French.
Vivienne: I know it really is. Yeah, I love it.
Alexandra: Well thanks so much review and take care.
Vivienne: It’s a pleasure. Thanks. Bye.
[Sharing image courtesy Jay Castor and Unsplash.]
