The art of implementing and managing life changes
Presented by Speaker | Psychologist | Facilitator | Author
Catherine van Heerden
“Real, sustainable personal change doesn’t happen overnight, but it does take one moment of truth to kick-start a series of events that finally brings about the transformation that could mean a more authentic and happy self.”
C the Change is described as a journey of self-discovery that empowers participants to discover the need for change, implement change and deal with the repercussions (both positive and negative) of the change
R1499
The online course consists of an introduction, followed by nine comprehensive modules:
Module 1
Introduction
Why change management is important, how it can assist you and why it should be mastered.
Module 2
Clarity of Mind
The nature and need of the change should be understood with clarity. Clarity is what captivates or arrests attention because this is what enables a person to ‘see’ it or have insight into the WHY. One can get clarity when the need and nature for change is explored on all dimensions.
Module 3
Calculated Choice
The purpose of calculation is to consider with great care. This is where deliberate focus and attention is given to asking relevant, and intelligent questions relating to a variety of dimensions – on an emotional level, physical, psychological, social, intellectual, moral, spiritual, vocational, relational, environmental and political levels.
Module 4
Creative Curiosity
Curiosity unlocks creative inquisition. Change demands creative curiosity and a continuous exploration of possibility. We need to be prolific and playful in our way of thinking in order to be energized which attracts ideas and solutions.
Module 5
Convert
A mental shift needs to be made with great discipline. Skills one need to tap in to convert would include capabilities and applied competencies, collaborative attention and relationships, having the capacity to have the vision of the changed scenario, and embracing the need of shifts of cognitive patterns. Also, being very clear on ‘what to let go’ and ‘what to embrace’ during a transition
Module 6
Conversations
Connecting with self and being able to connect with your environment through constructive conversation. The purpose of these conversations should be to ‘get into the skin’ of the people you deal with so that they share the passion, the rationale or the intentions of you, the change etc.
Module 7
Challenges
Change would always include challenges, risks, difficulties, dangers and being mindful of these aspects and being proactive about it, could assist in being highly responsive and intuitively effective in dealing with each of the challenges. Challenges could pose conflicts, and raise cautionary aspects which could serve to possibly make the change even better.
Module 8
Closure
Part of stepping into the change process, is our ability to close certain aspects with intent and with clarity. This releases the person to identify with what is new.
Module 9
Courage & Confidence
Change is always partnered with fear. Fear could have one of two effects. It could debilitate you or it could mobilize you. The difference is in how you perceive self, others, the environment and being able to tap into that fear and making it work for you by being courageous.
Module 10
Coaching
Whatever the reasons, past and future implications of the change process, it is important to seek counsel, test ideas or soundboard your thoughts, fears, expectations with people who could coach or mentor you. This demands a teachable spirit and an inner ability to discern which voices to listen to or who to give authority in your life.
Start your journey of self-discovery now with:
Catherine van Heerden
About the Presenter – Catherine van Heerden
“It takes a huge amount of courage and honesty to reinvent yourself – it means being aware of the role you play in the creation of your current circumstances and the events, both big and small, that your own limiting beliefs are allowing to take place,” says Catherine van Heerden, psychologist, author and developer and facilitator of a personal change online course called C the Change. Catherine’s personal journey combined with her professional experience have helped inform the content of the course and shape her unique approach to helping others.
Speaking about her life and the challenges she overcame, there is a sense of pride and accomplishment in Catherine’s. Raised by neglectful parents preoccupied with their own hurts and ill-equipped to properly parent two young girls, it was a blessing when Van Heerden was shipped off to boarding school at a young age. It meant that, at least during the school year, she could concentrate on her academic performance and she was able to separate herself from the challenges of her home environment.
It was as early as grade one that a young Van Heerden realised that hard work would help her create an existence larger than the limiting circumstances of her childhood home. “I learned from a young age that in order to get noticed, you have to stand out – if you perform well in life, people see you as extraordinary. Without understanding the language of it, I knew the importance of impression management,” Catherine explains.
“You can construct your own future by the way you think, how you conduct yourself and how you in invest in controlling and guiding your thoughts.”
Early academic success set the tone for Van Heerden’s entire school career and later her performance in her career, too. “I was totally committed to whatever task was given to me, no matter how mundane. I had a high work ethic and I was driven to always improve myself and my circumstances,” remembers Catherine.
At the age of 25, Catherine founded a training and development company, Thinking Dynamics, which offers a wide variety of training programmes in the areas of business strategy, facilitation, leadership development and improved team performance.
“While diligently building a successful career, I was also building this idea of perfection in my mind,” says Catherine “Perfection is an ideal that is not healthy or sustainable – but it took me many years to realise this.”
Catherine married at the age of 19 and became a mother shortly afterwards. She says she knew in the first year of marriage that her husband was emotionally unstable and abusive but she had disciplined herself so harshly to be completely satisfied with the turbulent and unsatisfying life that her marriage offered. “I believed I had to ‘make the best of it’ and be ‘satisfied because the grass is never greener on the other side’. In such instances, you ‘never ever quit’,” Catherine wrote in her book about her divorce, Rites of Passion. The book is a chronicle of personal stories, poems and prose Van Heerden wrote in the period after her marriage of 24 years came to an end.
“The moment I decided that I could give up this façade of perfection and decided end to my marriage, was my moment of truth,” says Van Heerden. “Only once I decided to leave my husband did I allow the pain of my marriage to surface. I went into a real emotional darkness and now I can truly understand how people choose to commit suicide or become involved in substance abuse. I have experienced the power of falling into the abyss of your own soul.”
Describing that period in her life as a “highly controlled emotional breakdown”, Van Heerden says her divorce was in fact one of the best things that ever happened to her. “Now I understand that life has seasons and we need to have the wisdom to ascertain and gauge these seasons, know when to work harder and when to give up, because giving up on something means the start of something else.”
For Catherine, her new start was the pursuit of her passion for transformation and helping others through their own awakening. Currently studying a PhD on the science of human transformation, focusing specifically on Change management, Catherine has developed a series of tools designed to help others through their own seasons of change. In addition to offering one-on-one transformation sessions with clients, Van Heerden has worked closely with Producer and Speaker Susana Kennedy, to develop C the Change, an online course on how to achieve and manage change in life.
“Through my personal and professional journey I have realised that so many people are simply managing their lives, trying to make the best of a situation. Through my work, I give people the tools to work with sustainable change, to realise and address limiting self-beliefs,” explains Van Heerden.