In our third installment of our 6 part campaign, we present Annelise Cherie to talk about what it means to her to BE YOUR OWN Woman in the 21st century.
I grew up in Orlando, Florida as an actress doing musical theatre and television. By my late teens, life re-directed me to Arizona allowing me the chance to pursue new endeavors within my college education. Studying environmental science, I moved to Costa Rica to study habitat destruction and seed dispersion while living with an indigenous culture in the Osa, peninsula. This begins my journey into the understanding of meditation, energy, and how to expand the mind. I later moved to Los Angeles to pursue the arts once more. Four years later after finding moderate success in the L.A. industry, I found myself feeling empty. I had obtained many of the goals set out, but something was missing. it wasn’t long after that I began the discovery of Mental Coaching with my mentor Al Fuentes.
After only a couple of months of going through the mental coach program, I begin to truly step into my power changing my life. In the discovery of learning my own subconscious and conscious mind and how to reprogram it, I went to Iquitos Peru where I worked with plant medicine to continue to expand my understanding of the mind and energy. Returning back to Los Angeles, I let go of everything I had, selling my car, all my belongings, quit my job and stopped going on auditions, creating the space for a much greater and more powerful life to be lived. I began to train under my mentor as well as shamans and practitioners mastering the craft of Reiki and Meditation. This lead me to become a Mental Coach and Reiki practitioner. In less than one year, I was able to rebuild my life from the ground up using the exercises of mental coaching. I am now able to share this powerful coaching with the world around me, while I help develop a Creative Wellness Center as well as developing mental coaching exercises for many clients, getting the chance to see the people around me begin to build their lives up as well. I continued to explore all the opportunities of life no longer thinking and living in lack.
Finally getting to the question, whats Mental Coaching? Mental Coaching is not life coaching or counseling, it is a system that uses the physical body to improve the way the brain functions. Just like the mind can affect the body, the body can affect the mind. there are techniques that have been scientifically developed using the physical body to regulate the chemical (emotional) body with measured, tangible results. This allows you to stop your brain from firing in a fear based or stress based way. This gives you ultimate control over your thoughts and emotions, whether they are long-term programmed thoughts or short-term “in the moment” thoughts. Control that takes your performance to a whole new level!
Realising that in order to be of service to anyone or anything, that you must first be of service to yourself. I spent most of my womanhood trying to be selfless making the world around me happy that I wouldn’t have any time left for myself. I was so limited in my life, but all the while thinking I was getting so much done by “helping” people. I thought this was the ticket forward when in reality, we are only as good to the world around us as we are to ourselves. Shifting into that abundant self-love was the hardest task to this point as a woman.
As a woman in the 21st century, we have the chance to be, look and do anything we want. I think for the first time ever, we truly have the freedom to rise above the adversity and radiate the power and Beauty that ALL we woman are. I feel so blessed that I’m a woman during this time, and I cherish focusing on the strength and abundance that this decade has to offer for a woman. Its an exhilarating and exciting, although there will always be room to grow and progress. And I aim to keep honouring my highest self-everyday, inspiring more lovely ladies around me to do the same.
I spent a significant portion of my life trying to become the person I thought I was supposed to be; at least according to the dictates of social norms, and often falling short in my eyes. Much of my self-doubt came from growing up in a low-income family with daddy abandonment issues; coupled with a demoralising societal view of women and their worth. My beliefs were tainted from years of watching how women were supposed to behave in society. I thought we were supposed to marry and have children by a certain age, yet always be pretty with perfect figures. I watched girl singers perform on TV and thought our worth lied in our sexuality, and certain careers, like the presidency, seemed off the table. As a young woman none of this felt right; however, instead of questioning the world’s ideas of womanhood I questioned myself. I convinced myself that I was dumb, scattered, only pretty, but not pretty enough. Taking ownership of saying to myself, “your failing, you keep missing the mark,” came from this headspace and induced crippling fear. But by who’s standards was I really failing-societies or mine? And then a turning point happened in my life-rather a shift in my perspective.
A couple of years ago I was introduced to the idea that we are the creators of our own reality. At first, this idea really irked me. I thought this can’t be true, I did not choose the chaos in my life nor the circumstances by which I got here. However, this philosophy would lead me to one of the greatest and hardest lessons. That we are, in fact, the creators of our own reality and everything in it. At age twenty-six I felt I was at my breaking point, and with no clear path for my future, I kept waiting for the tide to turn. I was sure it would; after all, I was taking responsibility and ownership for my life. But the tide was not turning and the idea of taking ownership began to work against me. When times are tough people have a tendency to say, “Remain positive and things will work out.” But I was trying to stay positive, and I was still unhappy, with nothing working out the way I wanted it too.
The truth is that being positive is often used as a band-aid to hide why we are broken and unhappy from being addressed. In other words, we tend to use positivity to delude ourselves from facing the root cause of what ails us. Digging deeper I finally had to ask myself the one question I was so afraid to ask- why do I keep choosing unhappiness and failure? The answer was that I did not know what it meant to truly love myself, and as a result did not deem myself worthy of abundance and real happiness.
I discovered that the answer to my question came from a foundation of programming from a young age; subtle daily drips of information being downloaded to form my core beliefs. The negative things that had been going on in my life I attracted like a magnet-thus creating my reality and everything in it. But, I also discovered something amazing that if my mind had been programmed once before then maybe it could be reprogrammed. This idea leads me to mental coaching, where under my mentor, Al Fuentes, I learned the tools necessary to become my own coach. Using specific breathing techniques and visualisation showed me that it is, in fact, possible to reprogram the brain. To me visualisation accompanied by breathing is in many ways the same as meditation. There are many ways to meditate; however, this specific way is designed to help one shift out of the old programming of their mind into a new program. Using myself as a test subject, under the guidance of my mentor I quickly learned how life changing this practice can be. Through these techniques, I learned that because I could not see my own value, I did not have the capacity to see the value in others.
In less than three months of mental coaching, I began to see the magic happen. Because of my new mindset I had a belief in myself that gave me the courage to quit a terrible job and leave an unhealthy relationship. I sold everything I had to start over and rebuild my life from a new foundation of abundance, putting into action the great lesson that we are the creators of our reality. The key was to find freedom in an endless, and effortless supply of loving, seeing, and honour thyself. The ability to see beyond the human, and into the goddess that lives inside all me. So simple right? No. Women have spent countless lifetimes suppressed, and detached from the magic of who they are and what they are capable of. It took work to shed the skin of a victim of society and to not allow myself to be defined by anything, other than self-love. After months of practicing these techniques, I put myself in the driver’s seat of my life . Mental coaching allowed me the opportunity to create a new foundation in my life to build from, and build from I did.
In one year after beginning these practices I have developed a successful mental coaching business of my own, assisting others on this same journey, all while being a part of the creative team that develops and opened ‘ Liberate Hollywood’, a creative wellness center, owned by Cristina Dam. I regularly have my own Reiki clients and hold meditation classes. Reprogramming my thoughts brought me financial abundance and happiness.
Never before in history have we had a chance to BE YOUR OWN Woman more than today.
We have opportunities afforded to us that our own mothers weren’t granted. By nature we are caregivers and creators of life; however, in order to build sustainable, power, and success for our highest good, we must shed the past preconceived notions of womanhood and build from this new empowering place. We must find the loving and empowered goddess that lives in us all and remembers that we are only as good to the world around us as we are to ourselves. Its time to find your voice, truly love yourself and be your own woman.
Instagram: @liberatehollywood
Instagram: @annelisecherie
