Create Your Success: The Lived Experience

By Patricia Butterworth

At the age of ten, author Patricia Butterworth fantasized about becoming an archaeologist. It conjured up an exciting life travelling to far-flung destinations, digging deep into the unknown, discovering mysterious and ancient ruins, and studying exotic cultures so different from her own. Although she was articulating her life purpose, this purpose was not about digging up human remains and artefacts. Instead, she would go within herself to discover the hidden treasures of her own potential.

In Create Your Success, she offers an inspirational memoir of adventure and pushing the limits. Patricia talks about backpacking exploits through South-East Asia, Central Asia and Europe, her “hippy” experiences, and relationship challenges. As a psychologist, she provides insights into grief, life, and the mindset to achieve, and she recounts the successful strategies she has learned to reach one’s full potential.

Filled with wisdom, this memoir examines a gradual unfolding of Patricia’s spirituality and pivotal moments in her life. It documents her journey during thirty-two years in Hapkido and how, at the age of sixty-six, after overcoming physical, personal, and emotional challenges, she achieved master status. Create Your Success resonates with those who want to connect with their inner potential, chart their own life course, and create their own success.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Balboa Press AU
• Release date: Dec 31, 2019
• ISBN: 9781504320191

Patricia Butterworth

Patricia Butterworth is a senior psychologist in education who holds master’s degrees in psychology and counselling psychology. She trained extensively in Reiki, neuro-linguistic programming, theta healing, quantum healing hypnosis technique, and is an angel intuitive. Patricia attained the level of 5th degree black belt in the Korean martial art of Hapkido, making her the highest-ranked woman in the Australian Hapkido Association. She is a mother and grandmother.

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Copyright © 2020 Patricia Butterworth.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Balboa Press

A Division of Hay House

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www.balboapress.com.au

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

The author of this book does not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use of any technique as a form of treatment for physical, emotional, or medical problems without the advice of a physician, either directly or indirectly. The intent of the author is only to offer information of a general nature to help you in your quest for emotional and spiritual well-being. In the event you use any of the information in this book for yourself, which is your constitutional right, the author and the publisher assume no responsibility for your actions.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

ISBN: 978-1-5043-2018-4 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5043-2019-1 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2019920845

Balboa Press rev. date:  02/26/2020

For my grandchildren:

Bowie, Harper, Scarlett,

Mya, Tiana, Matilda, Bella and Christian.

Contents

Acknowledgements

Chapter 1 Waking Up

Chapter 2 Salad Days

Chapter 3 Going Within

Chapter 4 Dark Night of the Soul

Chapter 5 Finding the Way

Chapter 6 Because You Can

Chapter 7 Continuing the Journey

Chapter 8 The Rapture

Chapter 9 Creating My Success

Chapter 10 Challenges

Chapter 11 Warrior Spirit

Chapter 12 Master

Acknowledgements

To my children, Brett, Trent, Tane, Krystle and Nathaniel, for your unconditional love, understanding and support of me as I pursued my Hapkido training throughout your lives. And for at times joining me on the journey. I am grateful for your acceptance as I embraced my spiritual path.

To Leanne Griffiths and her spiritual guides, for planting the idea in my consciousness years ago by asking me when I was going to write my book. I am eternally grateful for your support and guidance, which has enabled me to give voice to my soul, share my story and leave a legacy.

To Scott Wetherell, for challenging me to let go of limiting beliefs, realise my potential and achieve the seemingly impossible. Thank you for continuing to guide me from the other side. Your presence has remained strong with me and would not let me give up when I so very much wanted to, so many times.

To Mitchell Wetherell, for continuing what Scott began and for your encouragement, training and absolute belief in me. I am grateful and I thank you for awarding me Scott’s memorial trophy just at the time I was about to give up Hapkido and retire.

To all the Hapkido Masters, for the training I was fortunate to receive from you, your respect and recognition of me and your teaching of the yin as much as the yang in our amazing martial art.

To Daniel Marie, for your input into the compilation of the Australian Hapkido Association Handbook and the Instructor’s Handbook from which I drew most of my background information about Hapkido. Thank you for supplying me with additional historical material.

To Grandmaster Matthew Sung Su Kim, for bringing your style of Hapkido to Sydney and for your inspiration and support of me throughout my Hapkido journey.

To Mark Koehler, for your editing, guidance and mentoring throughout the entire writing process. Thank you for telling me that I could write my own story. I could not have done it without you. Thank you for polishing my story and turning it into something worthwhile to share with the world.

To Kenny Foo, for recording the 2002 Hapkido trip to Korea. Your anecdotes and details assisted me to document this memorable time.

To Kirsti Boothroyd, for your spiritually themed, therapeutic yoga classes and for facilitating the ‘sister souls club’. You helped increase my flexibility, inspired and motivated me through a tough year of training. Thank you for sharing your voice, shining your light and providing the opportunity for others to shine theirs.

To Debbie Shaman, for your meditation and crystal dreaming sessions which helped to heal me physically, emotionally and spiritually. I am grateful.

To Hay House, for being a beacon of light on the planet – for the books, seminars, courses and workshops. These have sustained my spiritual journey and nurtured my soul.

To Joe Milgram, for your tireless support of me as I attended Hapkido training, camps and gradings for the thirty years we have been together. Thank you for honouring my spiritual growth when I attended Hay House events, which took me away from you for weekends and sometimes longer.

I am blessed to share this life’s adventure with you all.

CHAPTER 1

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Waking Up

You were born with potential. You were born with goodness and trust.

You were born with ideals and dreams. You were born with greatness.

You were born with wings. You are not meant for crawling, so don’t.

You have wings. Learn to use them and fly.

Rumi

‘I want to be an archaeologist!’ I informed my friends as we declared what we were going to be when we grew up. At the age of ten, I fantasised about becoming an archaeologist. It conjured up an exciting life travelling to far-flung destinations, digging deep into the unknown, discovering mysterious and ancient ruins and studying exotic cultures so different from my own. As children, before the veil of forgetfulness has fully set in, we are very much in touch with our chosen life purpose. I was not to know then, however, that although I was articulating my life purpose, this purpose was not about digging up human remains and artefacts. Instead, I would go within myself to discover the hidden treasures of my own potential.

I grew up in the 1950s in Sydney, Australia, in the inner-city suburb of St Peters. I was a young student at a local Catholic school, attended Mass every Sunday and made my first Holy Communion at the age of eight. At school, the nuns were my teachers. With their full and billowing black habits and long crosses swinging as they strode into the classroom and across our playgrounds, they presented a formidable and fearsome presence to young children like me who would scamper out of the way as they sailed by imperiously. The priest delivered the Sunday sermon of fire and brimstone for transgressions of the Ten Commandments, and reinforced the fierce and scary image of the Catholic religion to impressionable young minds like mine.

But nothing was more fearsome than being caned! Caning is a punishment in which a rod, typically made of rattan, is used to inflict pain – in our case, on the palms of the hands. Despite being a girl, I received my fair share of the cane alongside the boys. It did not occur to us to complain to our parents or the Mother Superior about this. Corporal punishment was an accepted cultural norm that we all simply put up with.

One practice the nuns relished was to have the offender stand before the class to receive the cane if they had missed church on Sunday. How humiliating! I was struck by the injustice of it all. What control did we have if our parents couldn’t bring us to Sunday Mass?

One elderly nun, who was my piano teacher, was especially adept at meting out punishment for forgotten lessons or misplayed piano keys. If I hit the wrong note, she would take my finger and grind it into the key as a lesson for next time. She even hit me over the knuckles with a wooden ruler that had a metal trim along its edge. I never learnt to play the piano very well, and after my school days were over I never touched a piano again!

When I entered fifth grade, it was a relief to have a nun who was a kind and compassionate teacher.

I grew up in a stable, loving household with my parents and my older sister, Rhonda. My mother, Vera, was a Catholic and she wanted the best for her daughters. Born and raised in Proserpine, Queensland, she was the daughter of Ukrainian immigrants who had fled to Australia by boat in 1909. My grandfather, Basil, had been a Cossack soldier in the Czar’s army and deserted the army with my grandmother, Marianna. I am told they were shot at as they made their escape.

Vera met my father, Peter, when she was a nurse aide at the Concord Repatriation Hospital in Sydney during World War II. He had been shot through his left knee while fighting on the Kokoda Trail, in what was then the Australian territory of Papua. My mother assisted with nursing him and – maybe under the influence of Ernest Hemingway – he fell in love with her. After he recovered from his injury and she returned home to Proserpine, he followed her, hell-bent on making the beautiful nineteen-year-old his wife.

I suspect that, not being a Catholic, Dad had