In-Depth Review

Hi. My name is Denis Campbell.

 

I’ve lived on four continents, worked as a CEO, CMO and head of sales with companies large and small. From PwC, Bank of America, Dell Computers, Hilton, Dow, Compaq, Carnival and Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines, two large global law firms to about 40 companies including start-ups and SMEs as an interim. 

I studied management and marketing at the University of Colorado, Northeastern University and Boston College.

I have achieved a measure of success that says, been there… done that. I’ve done a lot and yet, for the last several years mostly felt there had to be something more to life than just constantly chasing money. I’ve survived more than one divorce and, at times, my life was just bloody stool.

 

In my 30s, a friend said Deepak Chopra was coming to San Francisco. I lived in LA at the time and knew a bit of this author speaker world having been good friends with the author Wayne Dyer since my early Florida days and enjoyed listening to his audio cassette tape series. I even met Deepak  in Wayne’s home. So, having never driven the length of the Pacific Coast Highway, I rented a convertible at LAX and drove up to a wonderful weekend of talking and meditation. It was just what the doctor ordered. Relaxing, calm, I fell into it like a duck to water. I immediately signed on for the next program. A week-long program/retreat in Asheville NC. I had no idea how I would pay for it. And the next week went to a business conference in Las Vegas where I literally won the cash at a blackjack table during an unconscious winning streak. Lucky me.

 

Little did I know that would begin a decade and a half long stretch of searching for life’s meaning to find out why I generally felt like shit all the time. I lived in a beautiful ocean view building two doors down from Yogananda’s Lake Shrine. I meditated daily and got what I thought were insights so therefore I was now an expert and knew all the answers. Well, I only had the foundation and it was built on shifting sands. I could not find the origin point for the model of the life I had created. And that life was rapidly collapsing all around me. I thought I could find it back in the next hit from a speaker or the next course. You know. Salvation in a book! Freedom in my mind! Well, after an epic firing, divorce and bankruptcy I was penniless and within months of my severance running out and being homeless.

 

I moved to Europe where I was introduced to a deep coaching process, so I thought, by the American author Brandon Bays. It was called The Journey and, on the surface, it seemed to help people process ‘stuff’ out. I was already working as a coach to high performance individuals and thought this might help them deal with deeper underlying issues. The problem was I did not know how and neither did the founders. The business, I would learn, was a giant cash-cow and I would later join the company and help them generate even more cash, because that is what I do. The program was designed to work at a deep level; it seemed to meet our needs and so my wife and I ran away and joined the circus. We ended up running big parts the business, finances, book publication and the product side of their seminar organisation. Like most, it was all about control from the top and a massive fear of criticism or being discovered as or called frauds.

 

They work very well at spinning people up and wanting the next hit, some spent as much as $10,000 or £6,000 pounds to complete all their programs and become steeped in the process as a ‘practitioner.’ And there’s a commonality to these seminar leaders. Whether in the get rich quick by stepping into your power brands, you know them, people like Tony Robbins and others. They would all tell and advise you from the stage, but no one in the room except for one… maybe two, was actually doing it and earning money. And these leaders could not answer questions about how their system worked or why they don’t? They promise financial or spiritual freedom, but you never get the real experience or get to the lie, deep inside of you to fix. You get sucked instead into the marketing… the promises… the personality.

 

There is a great sense of expectation and they can’t live up to it. They put on a show and when you need help the most, they cannot deliver. And when they have bled you financially dry, you get angry. The anger inside me was volcanic. I then blamed myself. How could I have been so stupid? And the experience completely put me off from doing anything else again ever in these arenas. I was buying into the shiny packages. Constantly moving on to the next and the next and the next. I felt that unless you were a bestselling author, you were not worth my time.

 

Then I met Helen. I was gifted a half day session with her. Everybody raved about their time working with Helen and her horses. I was already hurting and had nothing else left to lose, so why not? I had a big transformational day and did not think much about it until a few years later. Helen and I started working together again, without the horses and I was just not willing to listen, in enough pain or follow where her work was taking me. So, I left as I usually do, angrily. I did not know how to channel my anger to lift me out of my stuck and depressed state.

 

A few weeks ago, she reached out for help on her website and I agreed. We laughed about the previous experience and she said, “look, I can help you some health issues” she knew I was struggling with. So, I went back. This time we had several massive immediate breakthroughs. I quickly learned I had to be mentally tough and emotionally strong to get through this.

 

It’s simple really. Helen knew I was committed to creating change in my life… to do that I needed to commit to creating change in myself. If I failed, I’d likely die without having achieved the success I could create… Funnily, that is what everyone in these courses I took SAID, but no one ever knew HOW to do it or WHY it was important.

 

Something stopped me from achieving. The gurus all talked about what I needed to do… but never could bridge the gap and change the bit that caused the problem in the first place. The gurus all say words and expect you to then convert them into action. I wasn’t an idiot. I could easily see what had to be done. The point was I couldn’t. And it was incredibly embarrassing, continually doing what was not working and expecting a different result.

 

Helen’s clients mostly have hit a hurdle in life. I struggled to find out what why I can’t seem to do what I once did VERY easily and highly successfully. And once you hit your 40s, where do you go? You don’t go to a psychiatrist, because you’re not mentally ill. You don’t go to a therapist because there’s nothing to heal. You don’t go to a coach, because you managed to be successful without one. I mean… who knows success better than me when I’ve achieved it?

 

For lack of better terminology, Helen took me on a spiritual journey. You know, it’s well known in ancient cultures that when people hit 35-40, a bell goes off inside some of us and it says, ‘it’s now or never’. If you don’t do it now you never will. This is a part of you, you cannot easily connect to. It’s like being tapped on the shoulder.

 

Most of the New Age craze is based on this principle. Life is tapping you on the shoulder. You hear the claxon, start looking for answer, but the people you go to, whether it’s doctors, God, religion, new age healing… they do not know what it is. You end up with NO idea where to go, who to talk… to but you know you need to do something.

 

And up like dandelions pop all the gurus, speakers, coaches, salepersons and pretenders… who proclaim I and I ALONE have the answers.

 

And what’s weird is some of their disciples have been on their journey for ten minutes, others for 10-20 years!! And when they cannot find the answers they’re looking for, they give up. They realise the amount of time, money, devotion they’ve spent, was in pursuit of this impossible thing.

 

They’re left with an anger and deep sadness they don’t understand. It comes from deep within, a realization that whatever it was I was looking for – I’m never going to find it… A part of me is missing. I invested in these programs for them to tell me what that missing piece is.

 

And the biggest lesson from working with Helen?  If I cannot find it in myself, no one can lead me to it through a ‘process.’ When Helen brews, I stew… because stuff from very early in life comes out through her. And fixing those early moments in my life alters them through the rest of my life and I then move forward. It’s powerful. It’s liberating but I had to be ready (as in fed up enough) to really commit to do the work. When you do it, it becomes a journey to health and happiness, which brings freedom from pain.

 

The alternative? Is a route that takes you nowhere fast. I can’t explain and stopped asking why my performance dropped, my energy was on the floor, I couldn’t sleep. My life was filled with argument and conflict. What used to be easy became difficult for no apparent reason. I felt incompetent, frustrated, angry, upset and worried…

 

Now some would climb into drugs and alcohol, ritualistic negative behaviour, retail therapy – spend a ton on cars, sell the business, get divorced, find a woman half your age… or others would even choose to end it all and kill themselves.

 

None of those options worked for me.

 

I had to level with myself and change me. I needed to work with someone who would not medicate me or tell me what I already knew. I want to build something for the next 20-40 years, however, many I have left… instead of just jettisoning everything. I’m smart enough to know that changes happen real-time, in the moment, because I am experiencing it. Helen and I have worked together for about three weeks and immediately I knew something was very different. I learned from her that everything… EVERYTHING… starts in the past. My core personal beliefs around people, money, animals, parenting, EVERYTHING started in the past.

 

There’s no vehicle here. No system, no process, no big fanfare, no big show… no shiny package. Helen is not this financial juggernaut with huge bestselling books. You pay her (a lot) for the result, not the wrapper.

 

Why’d I do it? I was going nowhere fast. I wanted more than just more years of life. I did this because that claxon deep inside would not stop ringing. The problem was, I couldn’t see a route out. Only when Helen pointed to its origin, could I then see and know, deep inside, it actually happened to me.

 

The pretenders don’t know what it means or where to go with it. All they do is look at what’s available. And the real problem? Those who make the biggest noise, get your attention. They’re where we all go. I used to think, ‘well they make a lot of noise, fill big rooms, have a nice glittery wrapper so they must know something.’ They do know there is an ‘enlightened’ way to be, that is achievable… but… they don’t know how to achieve it… or why it is important that YOU do it.

 

People who do what Helen does are not shiny objects. If anyone tells you the answers, they do not know. The answers I (and everyone else) needs are highly personal. Everybody’s route to calm 24/7 is different and THEIR own. We need to find out why we’re not calm. And that is what Helen does… And better than anyone I’ve ever seen.

 

The reality is she cannot help everyone 1:1. But if you have reached a point where you are standing on a burning oil rig and the water is 400 feet below you while the flames are licking at your heels behind you. Even though its uncertain, you must jump. Staying where you are? You will die. And for most of us, staying where we are is no longer an option. I jumped. And I’m very glad I did.

 

My journey and yours are to take stress in its stride. This is highly personal to me… I found out why those earlier stressors were the problem… not because she is teaching me anything. Rather, she led me to find answers in myself. And that has made all the difference.