The Cocoon Effect: Transforming Hard Times Into The Opportunity Of A Lifetime

By Reto Schabron

Do you feel like every time you go one step forward, you take two steps back? Do you feel stuck in your work life, love life, or spiritual life?

If you tend to feel stuck, agitated, or simply want to throw your hands up in the air from time to time and say, “I’ve had it!” this is the book for you. Learn unique tips and mind power tricks that will cause you to have the biggest transformation of your life!
Just like the metamorphous a caterpillar undergoes while in its cocoon, The Cocoon Effect: Transforming Hard Times into the Opportunity of a Lifetime, will help you go from grief to gratitude (as well as living in the moment, taking on a fearless attitude and much more!) as though it was always your second nature to do so!
Do you want to unveil the hidden lessons in your hardship AND thrive because of it?
Do you want to learn innovative ways to relax your body and mind during times of grief, so that you can attract the love you truly want to have—and deserve?
If so, then this book is for you. In fact, it’s not only for you but it was written BECAUSE of you. Learn how to take any hardship into your life and transform it into the life of your dreams…no matter how hard those curveballs come flying. Easy to read and even easier to implement, The Cocoon Effect teaches you how to do just that, and much, much more.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Apr 7, 2014
• ISBN: 9780578141343

Book preview

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Introduction

Your life is full of adventure. Some of it is desired and wanted, while others are unexpected. In each one of these experiences that you have, there are relationship dynamics that change, personal tastes and opinions that emerge, and the outcome of your biggest goals and dreams that often turn into something else, entirely.

Then, of course, there is the unanticipated.

You may get ahead in your career, feeling like you’ve accomplished (with flying colors!) what you set out for. Then suddenly you stumble and feel as though you are taking three steps back. You may finally find the love of your life, but while you’re planning your future together, life has something entirely different in store. This relationship might end in order to make room for the true love of your life, later.

You may get passed up for a promotion at work, leading you to look for a better job opportunity elsewhere, which is exactly where you should be ultimately working. Or, you might feel as though you can’t lose weight no matter how hard you try, which eventually causes you to think ‘outside the box’ and start listening to your body—instead of the latest fad diet.

You may run into conflict and indifference with someone in your life—so much so—that you feel as though the world is conspiring against you. However, in hindsight you see that it was all for a greater purpose—an experience that provides you with the rare opportunity to become stronger, bolder, wiser and braver.

When encountering setbacks in your relationship, career, health or financial life, it’s only natural to feel as though the emotional pain and discomfort you experience at this moment is what you’ll always feel. Or, the stress and worry you are consumed with now is fixed in time. If someone tells you no, the pangs of rejection can sting. If something stops you from accomplishing your goals (downsizing in the company you work for, a romantic relationship that didn’t work out like you wanted it to) you may feel stuck, at a loss, or altogether plagued with anxiety that you don’t make a move at all. You become stagnate, instead.

Your natural reaction (and a perfectly understandable one) is to shutter away from the discomfort, and do whatever you need to in order to stay within your comfort zone and out of harm’s way. But the very thing you often need in order to move on, to feel satisfied, to forge through life with passion and purpose, is the hardship.

You may think, What? Why?

Why can’t things just stay as they’ve always been?

When a caterpillar turns into a butterfly, the process itself is messy. It doesn’t look pretty. After shedding its skin, the caterpillar retreats, and waits to be transformed without knowing exactly what’s happening, or why it’s happening.

But it instinctively knows that it has to happen.

No matter what you may suffer from in your life, it’s for a greater purpose, and part of the big picture. You are ‘you’ as you know it to be, today. Up until this point, you’ve changed and encountered a vast variety of experiences and lessons that have made you a beautiful, amazing person in your own rite.

Perhaps you’ve hit a recent snag at work or at home that has left you to feel as though your hands are up in the air, and you don’t know what move to make—to make it better.

Look no further than this book.

What you’ll learn about yourself, about the choices you have the right to make, and about the process of letting go and controlling what you can control (even during times of adversity) is similar to what a caterpillar undergoes in the cocoon…on the way to becoming a butterfly.

The process itself is not always pretty, and if you were to peer inside a cocoon, you wouldn’t be able to tell just what the outcome would be, but it’s there and taking place. It’s the transformation of a lifetime.

This is your transformation of a lifetime.

You may not know what’s going to result or what the outcome will be. You may want to desperately know the answers to your biggest questions, and be able to tell the future, but rest assured: everything will turn out better than you could have hoped for. And, this book is meant to be your guide along the way.

Understanding the Cocoon Effect

Do you remember that magical moment in your childhood when you learned that a caterpillar turns into a butterfly? Today, you may not be able to remember the moment in which your teacher or parent told you about the transformation a caterpillar undergoes, but back then that feeling of wonder and awe stayed with you for quite some time.

As a child, you probably wondered how in the world a caterpillar could weave a cocoon, and then come out as a beautiful, brightly colorful butterfly.

Or, you may have wondered why you couldn’t do the same!

You may have questioned why it is that butterflies can’t then weave a cocoon and turn themselves into a bee, or bird, or spider. It’s perfectly natural as a child to wonder, and become in awe and illuminated by a transformation as strange and peculiar as this. It’s a beautiful process. Just think about what a miracle it is—that something can go into a cocoon as one, and come out as another!

But now you’re an adult, and things don’t always seem as magical, or exciting or peculiar as they once did when you were a child. By now, you’ve had enough experiences to cause the once peculiar to become the norm. You’ve fallen in love, fallen in lust, fallen head over heels and felt the occasional burn from relationships that have died out or gone in a different direction than you hoped. You’ve learned from past jobs—especially the jobs you’d never want again—in order to find the job that’s right for you.

When learning to drive at the tender age of 15 or 16, you learned how to steer, take the clutch and slam on the brakes—which has given you the experience to now become the skilled driver that you are. In other words, you’ve transformed from inexperienced to experienced; from overwhelmed to self-assured.

You now know through years of experience in school, that if you miss class or don’t keep up with your homework, you will fall behind and run the risk of barely passing your classes. So, just like the student of life that you are, you stay on top of day to day responsibilities. You do your best. You learn the lessons that require your attention and focus. And with each new day, you become stronger, smarter, and wiser.

You have even become more comfortable in your skin because you’ve shed the ‘skin’—the parts of yourself that no longer holds a place in your life like it once did.

You’ve already learned the painful financial lessons of what happens when you don’t pay your bills on time and when you forget to set your alarm for tomorrow’s important 8am meeting. There are consequences for everything and every choice you make, which you take in stride.

So, what happens when life sends you something you never, ever thought you’d experience?

Shedding Skin

What happens when your confident, happy self is thrown a wild one?

What happens to your self-esteem when you unexpectedly get dumped by your boyfriend, or told you’re not good enough from your spouse of ten years?

What happens when you lose your best friend to cancer, or you get into a car accident while on your way to your daughter’s dance recital?

Life can be harsh, and at times, seem drastically unfair.

The fact is, it’s never fair to lose someone you love, or to be diagnosed with stage four cancer when you’ve lived a healthy life and done everything right. And it’s never fair to be a victim of abuse, neglect or assault.

The Inside of a Cocoon…

If you were to open up a cocoon right now, do you know what you’d see? It may surprise you to know that you wouldn’t see a caterpillar tightly curled up waiting to be transformed. What you would find is a caterpillar shedding his skin. It’s true—its transformation, just like yours is a process of shedding skin to make way for the new.

Just like a caterpillar in a cocoon, you’re shedding your skin during times of hardship so that you can become a magnificent version of yourself the world is waiting for!

But it can’t happen by looking the same, or feeling the same. Something has to give, even when the process there seems a bit uncomfortable, foreign and uneasy. To the naked eye after a caterpillar sheds his skin, it looks similar to a big pile of slimy goop. It’s not pretty. It’s not clean. But, it is necessary to allow the ‘bigger and better’ to come along.

That’s because while the ‘goop’ caused by the shedding of a caterpillar’s skin doesn’t seem pretty at the moment, it’s the very thing that’s responsible for turning it into a butterfly. While it may not look good to any bystander who has peeked into that cocoon during the process, the ‘ugly’ goop is what’s responsible for the transformation of its lifetime!

Whether you think about it on a conscious level or not, you have already undergone many transformations yourself. You’ve survived adolescence for one—that deserves a huge pat on the back! Here are some more to give you a confidence boost, which you undoubtedly deserve!

You’ve forgiven someone in your life for something. It could be a sibling for picking on you when you were younger, or a best friend who was hiding the truth from you. Whether you’ve forgiven and let go of past hurt from an ex-spouse, friend, or nasty neighbor, that’s an accomplishment to be proud of.

You’ve learned new and better ways to communicate with the people you love. It could be a transformation of shutting people out, to one in which you listen and respond in a loving, caring manner.

You’ve transformed your body. Have you lost weight, or learned to eat better? This is an important transformation to pay attention to, because the mind and body are connected at all times! What you believe, your body will be able to achieve.

You’ve set your sights on a goal, followed through with it, and achieved it. This could be earning your way into the first school of your choice, setting your sights on an internship or job (and stopping at nothing to get it) or working your way into the life you’ve always wanted for yourself.

Being afraid of something (a fear of flying, dating