I wrote these words a while ago at the back of my 2025 diary. I can’t remember exactly when. I didn’t even do it particularly consciously, it just happened. 

Things have been evolving for some time now. 

Back in 2016, there was no ‘Temple Divine’, my professional social media profiles were called ‘Clare Bennett’. I focused on coaching, and hosted sharing circles in Glasgow like Self Love Club and Authentic Connections. Whether in one-to-one sessions or in groups, my core intention was to create spaces where people could drop the mask and speak from the HEART. And I did the same 

I hired physical spaces here and there, and some felt more like home than others.

Over the next 4 years, I gradually moved into more structured spiritual practices like REIKI, MEDITATION, and I started learning THERAPEUTIC MYTHIC TAROT. 

Then 2020 happened, and it became clear how important it was to have a physical space to root and ground into. That’s when TEMPLE DIVINE was born, a temple in the physical world, but also a connection with the non-physical, the DIVINE. 

And gradually, over time (that I’m not sure I was even conscious of at the time), I felt a deeper RESPONSIBILITY when posting. There was a WEIGHTINESS, not only in looking after a physical space, but in giving voice to Temple Divine itself. It felt BIGGER than me. GRANDER. 

 It wasn’t just about me.

I focused on being the PROFESSIONAL voice of Temple Divine, because high standards and INTEGRITY are important to me. This felt like building strong FOUNDATIONS. 

But what about the PERSONALITY? 

I’m very group-focused and community-minded and I take my responsibilities very seriously. But the work that I was doing back in 2016, that SELF-LOVE is the FOUNDATION for everything else. 

Along the way, through prioritising the collective mission, I lost parts of myself.

I found myself always writing “WE” instead of “ME.” I felt like I was speaking on behalf of a whole community, not myself anymore. Somewhere in that, I silenced my own VOICE. Some of you know I even lost my PHYSICAL VOICE for a time. 

Things have changed now.

As I write this in 

 LIBRA SEASON, I’m reminded of BALANCE. Libra is about the scales, the relationship between TWO. Not ‘this’ or ‘that’ but BOTH. 

We need NIGHT and DAY.
HEAD and HEART.
LEFT and RIGHT (take that as you will).
The individual AND collective. Me AND We.

This is BALANCE.

Libra knows this. It seeks PEACE, it sees BOTH sides, it weighs things up. It knows that PARTNERSHIP is the truth, that BOTH are needed.

Another DUALITY shows up for me through GEMINI. My rising sign is Gemini, and my progressed Sun has moved into Gemini for the next 20-odd years. So yes, duality is a big theme in my life right now. BOTH. I want BOTH. I need BOTH. 

My business needs to be PROFESSIONAL. But it also has PERSONALITY, and HEART, a great BIG HEART. 

And I’m here for people with BIG HEARTS. Sensitive HEARTS. Courageous HEARTS. Strong HEARTS. 

Professionalism is IMPORTANT. Honestly, it would be good to see more of it in the spiritual community. If people are paying for a service, they deserve QUALITY, and they should EXPECT it. This work deserves RESPECT, and it’s reasonable to charge for higher standards accordingly. 

But here’s the thing: I don’t want to sound like every other wellness offering out there, carefully avoiding anything that might not look ‘high-vibe’ ‘nice’ or ‘kind.’

Many people are scared of posting the truth and carefully curate posts.

Raw and Real are fine with me.

Especially in this world of AI-generated content, many spiritual wellness brands are starting to really look and sound the same. A little BLAND. 

REMEMBER…

You CAN be DIRECT and still have a GOOD HEART.
You CAN call things out with LOVE and INTEGRITY.
You CAN be PROFESSIONAL and have PERSONALITY.

We cannot be 100% SPIRITUAL. We are HUMAN. And our HUMANNESS must be experienced. If not, it slips into the SHADOW, abandoned, and grows into something distorted. 

Things get real ugly there.

We are here to be ourselves FULLY.
ALL of us.
And you are welcome as yourself at TEMPLE DIVINE. 

Thank you for reading this length of post. We all have shorter attention spans these days, and I appreciate you spending your time reading this far. 

If something in this post SPOKE to you, or made you FEEL SOMETHING, leave a comment and let me know. 

Let’s continue being REAL in this Authentic Revolution.

Yours with genuine HEART and SOUL,

Clare 

The post Professional with Personality appeared first on Transformational Life Coaching with Clare Bennett.

When asked this question, I started to think about the process that I went through to build a nourishing and positive relationship with myself. I don’t claim to be perfect, and the great thing is that we can always deepen this relationship and we can always show ourselves more love. But in saying that, I have made massive shifts in this area, that have helped transform my life.

Like all solid connections, the relationship I have with myself has been built up over time, there have been what felt like ‘high’ and ‘low’ points, but these all formed key components of the journey, and I would like to share some personal reflections and helpful tips with you.

One crucial aspect of this journey, was simplifying my life and taking time to get to know myself. I cut back on time spent with others to increase the time I spent with myself. I stopped looking outside and started listening within. From this point I was able to question certain beliefs I held about myself and chip away at some of the social conditioning.

Being in a solid relationship with yourself means listening to yourself, knowing yourself, valuing yourself and loving yourself. The result of this for me, is that it means that I never feel alone because I am with myself. That’s not to say that I don’t enjoy company, I do, very much so, but when I am on my own (through choice) I feel content and peaceful.

So how can we move towards this point?

Something I know from my own experience and working with others is that we are often our harshest critics! Why not take an audit of how you interact with yourself, you could monitor how you speak to yourself. Do you speak with words of kindness and love? Do you speak to yourself like you would a friend or an enemy?

I often say ‘be your own best friend’. Think about how you ‘get to know’ a new person in your life, maybe a potential friend or potential romantic interest. You are curious about them.. Maybe you ask them questions and take time to listen to their responses. This process makes us feel close and connected to that other person. Try going through this process with yourself! You could even take yourself on a date!

Taking time just for you is the perfect way to develop the relationship you have with self. A great way of getting to know yourself and connecting with yourself is journaling. Get curious! Ask yourself questions. How do I feel right now? What do I think? What do I enjoy doing? Who do I like? Who am I? Ask yourself anything you feel curious about, then write the response and let it flow. It may feel a bit weird to begin with, that’s OK, keep going. Whatever comes up treat it with curiosity rather than judgement.

Having a good relationship with yourself can also mean setting boundaries about how you let others treat you. It is important that we honour ourselves as much as we honour others. This includes not putting yourself at the bottom of the priority list e.g. not saying ‘yes’ all the time when you really want to say ‘no’.

Not sure how to say ‘no’? I can help you with that (send me a message)

As always I encourage you to use your innate critical thinking skills! Please never take everything I say as the ‘truth’. Read and then see which parts resonate most with you. My aim isn’t to give people answers, it’s to help people to empower themselves. I have a gift of being able to tease that out.

What do YOU think a good relationship with self looks and feels like?

Sending you love

Yours authentically

Clare x

The post How can I develop a better relationship with myself? appeared first on Transformational Life Coaching with Clare Bennett.

I hear people talking about raising awareness and I think that this is important.

I see many articles about managing symptoms and I think that this is important too.

I read posts about challenging the stigma and I definitely think that this is important.

However, what I long to hear more about is how people can fully recover from their mental health issues. So, today I am going share a little snippet of how I healed mine.

When I was 19 I found myself crying on my bathroom floor, for no obvious reason. From then on I experienced mild to moderate mental health issues for years before finally experiencing a mental health crisis in my 30s. I chose not to speak to my doctor about this because I knew in my heart that popping pills wasn’t the path I wanted to take.

There were times that my anxiety was so bad that I was too afraid to go to sleep.

There were times that my depression was so severe that I didn’t see the point in living.

I chose to stop thinking that anxiety and depression were things that I ‘had’, and started to view them as things that I was ‘experiencing’. Instead of saying ‘I am anxious’ I would say ‘right now I am feeling anxious’. BIG difference – this was a MASSIVE shift for me. I stopped repressing my emotions and started feeling them. All of them. It was messy.

I started to ask myself empowering questions like ‘how can I feel just a little bit better in this moment?’ or ‘how can I love myself more right now?’.

I took action, and I started to notice changes, I actually started to feel better, MUCH better.

I discovered that our mental health is linked to our emotional, physical and spiritual health. For me, it wasn’t just one thing that aided my recovery. It was the culmination of many practices. Some of the things I have done to take care of myself are…

• Cleaning up my diet and lifestyle
• Taking time to rest and taking gentle exercise
• Meditating and breathing deeply
• Reading nourishing words and writing in a journal
• Feeling my emotions and talking about my feelings
• Expressing my emotions no matter how inconvenient it may feel to me
• Loving myself and surrounding myself with people who genuinely care about me
• Being vulnerable and letting others get close to me
• Forgiving others and forgiving myself
• Counselling and coaching
• Letting go of all that no longer serves me
• Being less critical of myself and developing self-compassion
• Honouring my needs and desires, and doing things that bring me joy
• Dealing with emotional trauma and speaking from my heart
• Getting to know myself and discovering my life purpose
• Stopping playing the victim and taking full responsibility for my own life
• Facing my fears, finding my courage and never giving up

That’s quite a list, right?

Has this been easy for me? No.

Has it been worth it? Yes.

This is not a one-size fits all approach. We must take responsibility for our own healing. We must go inwards to find out what works for ourselves. We must start to believe that recovery is possible.

However, it’s not quite as simple as that, for you see, the society that we live in is not healthy, and we are deeply connected to the society in which we live (whether we want to be or not). I see the suffering around me. I feel the pain of others. And it hurts.

“It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society”

Jiddu Krishnamurti

I feel the injustice, I feel the inequality and I always have done. It’s not that I am immune to feeling this any longer, nor would I want to be, but now I am better equipped to care for myself, and hold space for others around me. I accept the things that are outwith my control and chose to take action where I can in that moment. And that is called wisdom.

When I stopped pointing fingers elsewhere, and stopped blaming others, I was able to take control back of my own life, and I call that self-empowerment.

I believe that some people are clinically depressed and that for some people medication prescribed by a doctor can be helpful, but I also believe that many of the mental health issues that people are experiencing are due to factors within their control. Just to be absolutely clear, I am in no way blaming people who are living with mental health issues, far from it. It is no-one’s ‘fault’. I have deep compassion for anyone experiencing mental health issues, and that’s why I want to share my perspective, and what tools and practices have helped me. I want to show people who are suffering that there is light at the end of the tunnel.

You CAN get better

There ARE brighter days ahead

DON’T give up

I can help you. If you are experiencing mental health issues and you REALLY want to feel better, contact me. If you are READY to make changes in your life, I can support you to do that through one to one sessions.

I am here to serve you.

So… why not get in touch. I’m looking forward to hearing from you.

Yours authentically,

Clare x

The post What can I do about my mental health issues? appeared first on Transformational Life Coaching with Clare Bennett.