The birthday truth that'll make you squirm...

Hello and Happy Sunday!

It's my birthday today, and I'm about to share something that might make you deeply uncomfortable.

Over a decade ago, I thought I was a terrible practitioner. I had all the certifications, knew all the techniques, could rattle off frameworks like nobody's business. Yet I felt like a fraud every single day.

Then my dog taught me the most profound lesson about transformation work I've ever learned.

Stay with me here - because what happened next completely changed how I show up with clients, transformed my practice, and might just be the key you've been searching for.

Grab your Sunday coffee (I've got birthday cake crumbs in mine), and let me tell you what really matters in this work.

My Birthday Slice of Sharing

Picture this: It's 2011, I'm sitting in my coaching room after what I thought was a disastrous session. My client had been sobbing for twenty minutes, she was overwhelmed, confused and every technique I tried just seemed to make things worse. I felt useless.

As she left, still tearful but somehow different, my dog Gem wandered in. She looked at me with those knowing brown eyes, settled her warm body against my legs, and just... stayed. No agenda. No need to fix my distress. Just pure, accepting presence.

That's when it hit me like a lightning bolt.

My client hadn't needed my techniques. She'd needed exactly what Gem was giving me right now - someone to witness her pain without trying to change it, fix it, or make it better. Just to hold space for all of it. To allow silence to work its magic.

The next week, I received an email that still gives me goosebumps: "That session changed my life. For the first time, someone just let me be broken without trying to put me back together."

That moment taught me everything I know about real transformation work. And over the following years, I've discovered six other truths that help us build sustainable, soul-deep practices that actually change lives.

The Gifts and Lessons

Here's what years of getting it wrong (and beautifully right) has taught me:

1. Your Dog Is Your Greatest Teacher

Might sound weird, but I'm starting here because it's the foundation of everything else.

Dogs don't read self-help books or attend workshops on "How to Hold Space." They just love you through whatever's happening. They celebrate your arrival like you're the most important thing in the universe. They don't judge your bad days or try to coach you out of your moods.

They've mastered what we spend thousands of pounds learning: unconditional positive regard, complete presence, and zero agenda.

Your value isn't in being the smartest person in the room - it's in loving people as purely as a dog does.

2. Your Triggers Are Gold (Stop Running From Them)

That client who makes you want to shake them? The one whose victimhood story makes you internally scream "Just get on with it!"? The person who reminds you of your mother/ex/difficult colleague?

They're not problems - they're your curriculum.

I used to think I was a rubbish practitioner because certain clients wound me right up. Now I know those triggers are showing me exactly where my next level of mastery lives.

I used to believe I had to be perfect, yet the truth is our unconscious mind often attracts clients with the exact issues we are working on - it's a two for one offer from the universe. It can be unnerving. It's a thing.

Discovering this and accepting it taught me something profound about holding space for the parts of people (and myself) that I find most challenging.

3. Uncertainty Is Your Superpower (Not Your Enemy)

Here's what they don't tell you in training: those moments when you haven't got a clue what to do next? When you're sitting in silence thinking "I should say something wise right now"?

Those are often when the real magic happens.

I spent years frantically reaching for techniques to fill uncomfortable silences. Now I've learned to surf uncertainty like a wave. Some of my clients' biggest breakthroughs have happened in those pregnant pauses when neither of us knew where we were going.

Your comfort with not-knowing gives your clients permission to trust their own uncharted territory and for you to trust your intuition. We have all of the resources we need.

4. Connection Beats Credentials Every Single Time

I know practitioners with basic training who create miracles because they genuinely care, and highly credentialed experts who leave clients feeling emptier than when they arrived.

The difference? Connection. Energy, Rapport. - Real, messy, human connection.

Your clients don't pay for your certificates - they pay for how they feel when they're with you. They pay to be truly seen, not expertly analysed or taken through a system that ignores the spaces in-between.

5. You're Not Broken (And Neither Are They)

The biggest lie in our industry? That we're all fundamentally flawed and need fixing.

This creates practitioners who unconsciously communicate incompleteness, generating dependency rather than empowerment. I see it everywhere - the subtle message that clients can't trust themselves, that they need us to interpret their experience for them.

Rubbish.

Your role isn't to fix anyone. It's to hold space for their inherent wholeness to remember itself.

The deepest healing happens when someone truly sees you as complete - not despite your struggles, but including them.

6. Joy Is Your GPS (Not Grind)

Transformation work can be intense - for everyone involved. Growth edges aren't comfortable. But here's what I've learned: sustainable change happens through joy, not suffering.

When the work feels heavy, forced, or draining, something's off. When there's an underlying current of aliveness even in difficult moments, you're on track.

I used to wear my exhaustion like a badge of honour. Now I know that if I'm consistently depleted, I'm probably doing it wrong.

Laughter opens the door for profound change.

7. Your Presence Is Everything

Every practitioner obsesses over methods and frameworks. But here's what my client hours have taught me: people don't pay for your techniques - they pay for how they feel in your presence.

That quality of being? It's not learned in courses. It's cultivated through deep personal work, radical self-acceptance, and the courage to show up authentically flawed rather than perfectly polished.

Your competitive advantage isn't what you know - it's who you've become through integrating what you know.

This Weeks Takeaway

These aren't just feel-good insights - they're practical business truths. Practitioners who embody these principles build waiting lists. They charge what they're worth because clients can feel the difference. They avoid burnout because they're working with life force rather than against it.

The transformation industry is changing rapidly. AI can deliver information and frameworks, but it can't replace the irreplaceable: human presence, authentic connection, and the kind of love a dog gives freely.

Your value isn't in what you know - it's in who you've become.

MY BIRTHDAY GIFT FOR YOU

This week, audit your practice with dog-like honesty:

• Where are you hiding behind techniques instead of showing up as presence?
• What current triggers might actually be pointing toward your next breakthrough?
• Which of these truths feels most uncomfortable? (Start there - discomfort usually marks your growth edge.)

Special Birthday Offer:

To celebrate another year of beautiful, messy transformation, I'm opening something I haven't offered since spring 2023 (updated and renamed):

"The Presence Project" - A 6-Week Journey into Embodied Practice

This isn't about learning new techniques - it's about becoming the kind of practitioner clients never forget.

Week 1: The Dog Principle - Cultivating unconditional presence
Week 2: Dancing with Triggers - Your curriculum for mastery
Week 3: Surfing Uncertainty - Trust in the unknown
Week 4: Connection Over Credentials - The art of genuine relationship
Week 5: Wholeness Practice - Seeing beyond the story
Week 6: Joy as Compass - Sustainable transformation

6 x 90-minute group sessions + private practice support
Investment: £997 (Early bird until 15th September: £777)
Starts: Thursday 25th September, 7-8:30pm GMT

Secure your place: drop me an email at [email protected] with the subject “presence-project” to find out more about it. Payment plan available.

Only 10 spaces - because this work requires intimacy, not scale.

Choosing Happy Podcast Update

A further 3 episodes published this week and birthday special episodes this week:

1. Monday Myth-Busting (10-15 mins) – Birthday Truth About Credentials

2. Wednesday Real (15-20 mins) - Real stories from real people – Unimaginable Choices – the aftermath

3. Friday Fail Forward (20-25 mins) - What went wrong and what we learned – “Falling off a Cliff to Find Your Wings”

All episodes are available at www.choosinghappypodcast.com or on your favourite podcast platform/app.

Start With AI Update

New episodes this week "Why Artificial Intelligence Will Never Replace in Transformation Work"

You can listen on your favourite app or here on the website:
https://www.startwithai.online/podcasts/start-with-ai-podcast.

The 5-day email course is helping transformational practitioners integrate AI into their businesses without losing their human touch.

Join us at www.startwithai.online

That's it for this birthday edition, beautiful human.

Thank you for letting me share what this journey has taught me. Here's to presence over performance, connection over credentials, and the courage to love as freely as a dog does.

The birthday coffee offer remains open, always.

With so much love and gratitude,

Heather

Heather V Masters
Chief Coach, Writer, Trainer and Facilitator of Magic

Email: [email protected] or [email protected]

P.S. If you know a practitioner who needs reminding they're already whole, share this with them. Sometimes we all need permission to stop trying so hard.

P.P.S. That inner knowing about The Presence Project? Trust it.