Day 211: Henriette Alban
“Enthusiasm I feel is contagious, and it has nothing to do with me as such. It’s not an “I-me-my” thing. My own reward – and I believe everyone else’s too – is more fun.”
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Toni Reece: We are recording for the Get Inspired! Project. Thank you so much, Henriette, for agreeing to be part of the Project, and before we begin, can you please introduce yourself?
Henriette Alban: Thank you, Toni, it’s a pleasure to be here. I feel honored that you asked me. My name is Henriette Alban. I am a native of Switzerland, and I have several certifications and a diploma as a Doctor of Naturopathy. My focus over the last couple of years really has been stress relief and of course counseling is a part of that as is coaching, as is just being a soothing listener and sometimes an encouraging listener.
Toni: Well thank you for that. That just leads beautifully into the very first question of the Project which is, when you think of that word inspiration, who do you inspire, and how does that happen?
Henriette: Enthusiasm, I think, is a big part of it, and so enthusiasm over again the last year or so has grown to be a very large part of my life. When I’m inspired, it seems to go right over to everyone around me in whatever form they ask for it. So when I’m open to what shows up in my daily life, and I don’t have any preconceived notions that it should be this way or that way, and I don’t have an attachment to what shows up and how it, you know, result … what it results in, I find it very exciting.
Enthusiasm I feel is contagious, and it has nothing to do with me as such. It’s not an “I-me-my” thing. My own reward – and I believe everyone else’s too – is more fun. There is more likeness, and again more enthusiasm. Eckhart Tolle says this in his New Earth – or maybe it’s The Power of Now – where he says enthusiasm comes from “en-theos” which is in Greek saying “In God,” and I totally like that because that, of course, is a gift.
So I would have to say, you know, it takes a bit to get to a place where nothing that happens creates big resistance or judgment. And to me it has become so clear that any time we judge, criticize, belittle, or express any other negative attitude, we have just left our connection from our divine nature and cut off from the place where we feel wonderful and promote and, you know, like experience enthusiasm. But you know, we can feel this instantly. It’s important.
It’s important to me also that we recognize our body’s signals when we focus where we don’t want to be and make up stories about what might happen. You know, it’s like your body will say “Ooh, this doesn’t feel so good,” so stop thinking that. So there’s like a signal in your belly, or your heart feels tight, or your throat closes, and in all of those situations, the mind makes up stories and enthusiasm gets out the window. So I try to inspire everyone to stay in the moment, if I can, by humor, really, just laughing at it.
Toni: That’s fantastic. How do you then help people to explore their own potential when you’re working with them?
Henriette: Listening, praising, appreciating, directing them to a better feeling thought. And what I noticed several years back is that I have this apparently — it seems to be unique, at least from my clients and the people in my circle — the ability to create a completely different viewpoint for them. It is more than reframing, which has become like a hip word in the counseling – it’s not an industry, but field – reframing so that the mind can recognize it as something fresh but to show them different angles.
If you watched the same situation without a bias of what the mind will tell you that it is, which is obviously why people have pain or stress, or you know, they look at it one way and you reframe this or you just give them a different viewpoint, they go “Oh wow, when you put it that way, it doesn’t look so bad.” And so, it’s a bit of work to focus where you want to go. And we’ve all had the training as counselors and can see when somebody is right ready to stray again from where they really wanted to go, because the mind is very clever. It doesn’t like to give up its holds.
Toni: Right, and I was just … it occurred to me when you were saying that to use that different word, but to reframe so that somebody can be inspired to think a different way, how does that then become sustainable for that person?
Henriette: It becomes sustainable first of all by … what this promotes is an acceptance of self. To me, these are the most important things and that you accept who you are and love yourself, and that you accept what happens in your moment. Because that’s all we ever have is this moment, until … when I rail against something, you know, I call it boxing with God. Byron Katie calls it boxing with reality, but she calls the reality God, so to me it’s the same thing.
When you fight against something that is, and by insisting that it should not be that way, and why am I, etc., you create two things: You create a victimhood for yourself and the place of no return, and in that state you can’t hear anything other than “I am bad, I am wrong, I am not lovable, I’ll never get it.” And so to me the first piece of that earlier question is how this works for my clients. You get to accept yourself. And I’m always telling them they have to do their own work, but what I will do is I will be the body in front of the door in case they want to slip out of being responsible for themselves and to themselves in the sense that is loving and self-accepting. So I will not allow them, you know, to drop back.
Toni: And so you really help pull them up and hold them accountable and responsible to staying in that moment.
Henriette: No, I’m not saying that one session may be enough of this, but I use the Emotional Freedom Technique, and I also work with psych-K, psychological kinesiology, which is muscle testing. It’s specific questions that were tested in majority of people in the field by thousands of practitioners over, I don’t know, 15 years or whatever, and they came out with, you know, there are some resonant questions that people all … everybody … let’s just say, use an analogy – everybody wants to be happy, and it’s your birthright to be happy. Well, it’s not something that everyone recognizes, because it feels good, it feels right. “Yes, indeed, I’m supposed to be happy. It would feel nicer if I was. If I wasn’t holding to disastrous thinking about myself so intensely.”
So the responsibility comes from repetition of information which begets that same kind of thing that we were done to from zero to five or six years old, or even older, you know, when our subconscious gets filled with all this information about who we are and how we’re to be and how we’re not to be, and that we’re not to be ourselves and that we’re stupid until we’ve reached that place where the pinnacle of adulthood is. Except that when we get there we say “Oops, I thought there was more here, but where is everything?” It’s scary. So I hope that … I don’t know if that answered your question …
Toni: It did, it did. I was hanging on your every word, I was! So what inspires you?
Henriette: Nature. Natural settings are my deep heart connection. I love those the most. I spend a great deal of time in the warmer weather in the garden, which is a gorgeous natural environment, and there I get to direct and play and create and be resourceful, and I get to watch. I get to watch the ducks that come to the pool, I get to watch the different worms. I get to watch what flowers like it which year where and why, and I get to just be in it and listen to the hum of the ground, the hum of nature.
Toni: And when you are experiencing a day where maybe you need to be a little bit more inspired than normal, what do you tend to reach for? And you did speak of nature, but are there other things that you tend to reach for on a consistent basis that help you to stay inspired?
Henriette: Definitely, definitely. I adore intellectual, spiritual stimulation. I say it that way because it isn’t strictly spiritual practice, but it works for me. And what I have worked out for myself is something that looks like when I wake up in the morning I often just ask for what I need to know today. And when I don’t have a good day, my mind has been trained so well by now, Toni, that where I go is okay. I am acknowledging I am not feeling my best, and I am acknowledging there is a grumbling going on as a soft text in the background, and it doesn’t feel good, so I often will go into a specific physical position and say clear affirmations.
I have for years and years said things that wanted the body … actually it’s a Metta practice. It’s a Buddhist Metta practice that is, you know, “May we all be happy and peaceful. May we all be healthy and well and strong of body. May we all live with ease and prosperity and enjoy.” That’s my personal one, and I’ve been using this for about a dozen years. And so, that is one of them; others I have said over the many years that I’ve studied, so those bring me back right into balance, into center.
Also, the intellectual spiritual stimulation, you know, listening to Eckhart Tolle’s CDs really make you laugh because you’re just taking yourself way too seriously, and it’s just like “Okay, time to pack that away again. We don’t need you today.” And then you just say “Fine, I give up.” I do a lot of surrendering, too. I give up. I’m saying “You just go with me wherever you think I need to go.” I’m pretty fine-tuned as to when I resist.
Toni: How do you move through that?
Henriette: I’m laughing at it. I’m moving through it, and I acknowledge that it’s there. I always do that. If it’s within the company … you know, I have set up my life in such a way that I’m very rarely in a place where I am not okay. Very rarely … I hardly ever am scared. I mean, I don’t scare easily anyway, but you know, when sometimes you sit in meetings and somebody gives a presentation and you could just groan and you want to run out the door? Every once in a while that does happen, because I’m on a couple of committees. And when that happens, I sharpen my intent, and I listen more actively, and I focus on what this person really wants to say, not the words, and that usually gets me out of it and I become engaging.
You know, it’s like “What do I want from this encounter?” is always the question. “What is in there that I can nourish myself with or that would be benefitting me and everyone around me?” And for the most part, the answer is some form of enjoyment and acceptance and result. You know, something that’s a tangible thing you work with. And when you have that, you get to a place “Okay, I’m back in, I’m participating. I’m not just in the separation booth over here cursing this person because they’re very dull. I am back in it and I’m saying ‘Oh, this is good, okay.’ I want to participate, because resistance doesn’t work. It’s just going to give me a bigger gap, and I don’t want that.”
Toni: Have you ever been resistant to do something that you were asked to do, and it made you a little bit nervous? Do you ever feel that the nerves …
Henriette: What do you think?
Toni: Thank goodness.
Henriette: You don’t get here without having fallen … you know, rope burn, what is it? It’s like rope burn on your face; oh my God, yeah. No, usually you know what I find really works? Just be authentically yourself. Okay, I don’t know. It’s a full sentence. It used to be “no.” As feminists, we say “no” is a full sentence. “I don’t know” is a full sentence. I’m good with that. It takes me out of the space and so then I just let God, you know, and get out of the way.
Toni: Fantastic. You’re giving so much information in this small space and time. The final question of the Project is, how do you explore your own potential? What do you do?
Henriette: You know, for years I didn’t know what I was going to be when I was growing up. I just turned 60 last February, and it’s like I don’t know … I don’t know if it’s ever going to come, but it’s fine-tuning all the time, and I realize that what I’m doing is just being in the moment having a great time. I have my life set up in such a way that I have a lot of space for myself. So of course in the world of struggle and working hard, that doesn’t come very easily, because I haven’t quite figured out how to do both and make money at the same time, but that’s okay, that’s okay.
So, my own potential is explored through my connection to the divine. I need to be able to see myself in the place where I want to be, and you know, I have been somewhat slow into coming into this capacity, but being such … you know, like I have German parents, and I grew up in Switzerland, and we’re very thickheaded over there. I don’t know how long you’ve been in Berks County, but I hear it’s a local trait.
Toni: I have no comment.
Henriette: Well I’m a newcomer. I’ve been here only like, what, seven years, so I’m exempt. Anyway, since I was very thickheaded, maybe the way I’ve been looking at it is the wrong way. I might have just said “Oh, it’s come all the time.” I just haven’t noticed it coming. So I chose not to be attached. So I have most everything I want, and a I live in a way that pleases me, and I know that now the time is to forward to the next place of creating, so … But my work has been very rewarding and, again, it’s not an “I-me-my” that is doing the work, you know? It’s what shows up in the space that’s created between the people and me.
Toni: Fantastic. I can’t thank you enough for being here today, and I know that so many people are going to be so tuned in to this interview. For that, thank you very, very much, and we will put a website as a way to get a hold of you if people would like to know a little bit more about you at the bottom of the interview. So thank you, again, for being part of the Get Inspired! Project.
Henriette: It’s been a pleasure, and thanks so much for talking to me.
Toni: You’re welcome, take care.
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For more information about Henriette Alban: www.henriettealban.com
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