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

• Jamie Smart

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