The Change Room

By Matt Elliott

It's easy to stay stuck, but why sell yourself short? Let inspirational life coach Matt Elliott, a former NRL Head Coach, take you on a life-changing journey - a personalised plan that will transform your thinking, your choices and your future.

Discover how to embrace change, and bring abou

• Language: English
• Publisher: MLCK Enterprises PTY LTD
• Release date: Jul 8, 2022
• ISBN: 9780646863559

Book preview

INTRODUCTION – TAKING THE PISS

Change rooms have always intrigued me. I can’t think of one elite sport in which the players come ready to run onto the field. People transition in the change room from being an athlete to a competitor. There’s always a definite intention for a change of attire, and then a frame of mind. The Change Room in this book is a place where an individual has a desire to move beyond where they are presently, expand their consciousness beyond where it is now, and follow a game plan that has every possibility of transforming their life.

Change rooms materialise in the strangest places. Mine did on the way to the bathroom at a convention centre in Sydney, Australia. There I was, quietly trying to look inconspicuous, deliberately not drawing any attention to myself, up the back of the room at a Deepak Chopra event. For those who don’t know, Deepak Chopra is one of the world’s most celebrated mind-body medicine doctors and authors.

I was a bit of a drag-along, but at the same time, kind of interested. I had been receiving motivational tapes in the mail from a subscription I tried to cancel on numerous occasions. On one of the tapes there was a conversation with Deepak which was really intriguing, and it had resonated with me so much. I came along to the lecture thinking, What the heck, this dude may have more to say.

In one of the breaks I headed to the bathroom and the person who had just introduced Deepak on stage in the first session made a beeline for me and cornered me just before the bathroom door.

"Matt Elliott! I’ve watched every game you’ve played for the St George Dragons. I never expected to see you here!" said the man between me and the bathroom door.

I politely excused myself, and explained I needed to use the bathroom. When I came out, there he was.

You know what Matt, I’m going to tell everyone how I ended up here, presenting Deepak Chopra. Actually, it all began during a game when the Dragons were playing Manly.

I said, Go for it mate, and I kind of brushed him and went back into the room.

I quietly found my seat up the back of the room. When I looked up, there he was, about to ask Deepak to join him on stage, but before he did so, true to his word he told the story of how he ended up in this particular room, on this particular day. I could see his eyes scanning the room, looking for me. When he found me my invisible cloak was gone, and everyone knew that Matt Elliott, the football coach, was in the audience.

What I didn’t know at the time, was that the man who blew my cover was Leon Nacson, Managing Director of Hay House, one of the pioneers of the self-help movement in Australia, responsible for introducing Deepak Chopra and many other great communicators to Australia. Over many years now, Leon has become one of my best mates and he has encouraged me relentlessly to write this book.

Breakfast or lunch is very interesting with Leon. All he wants to do is talk about rugby league football, and all I want to do is talk about karmically significant events, and how everyone arrives at their own personal change room.

The thing about change rooms is that their importance, more often than not, can only be perceived in hindsight. How was I ever to know that listening to a tape would get me to a bathroom door where the person I was ready to meet would cross my path and prepare me to change the course of my life?

Whether your change room moment has happened, or is about to, let’s go into The Change Room together and explore . . .

CHAPTER 1 – STEP INTO THE CHANGE ROOM

I have spent 30 years pacing the change rooms of life. I am a coach who has worked with more than 2000 professional footballers, as well as around 4000 injured workers.

I have been immersed in the lessons of success, failure and human nature almost my entire adult life.

This book is a sharing of the wisdom I have acquired from those many varied and valuable experiences in the hope that you, the reader, can become the best version of yourself.

The central theme of the book is about understanding yourself; there is ALWAYS a reason behind what we do and how we do it.

I will explain how your thoughts, feelings and actions work hand-in-hand; they all fire-up and drive each other.

I will teach you how to navigate your playing field in life, how to be the star player, how to bench beliefs that are holding you back, what to pack in your kitbag, and how to win every single day.

Sometimes we need to identify patterns of thinking that are holding us back. Other times we need to acknowledge how our upbringing and cultural influences have prevented us from addressing issues affecting us and, consequently, the people in our lives.

This book is written in bite-sized chapters; it is more like a magazine than a textbook, making it easier to digest the lessons.

Let me take you from where you are now to a much better place.

When we step in to The Change Room, we give ourselves every opportunity to embrace significant personal development and to bring success, happiness and peace into our lives. In short, we learn to Play The Game Of Our Life.

CHAPTER 2 – DRAG AND DROP YOUR FEELINGS

Stuffing emotions deep within us is like putting a parking ticket in the bottom drawer and hoping it will go away. It won’t. As time passes, the consequences of not looking at the ticket amplify and build to a point where the issue is taken out of our hands. And into the courts. And we’ll be hit with a hefty fine.

If you’re like most people I know, you have emotional baggage that’s been eating away at you for years, because we don’t have the tools to explore our emotional depth and sit with our feelings.

You might think, What does ‘sitting with your feelings’ actually mean? It means acknowledging them, instead of immediately reaching for things to distract ourselves, like binge-watching or booze. Many people I know would prefer to dull their problems at the pub. Or the bottle shop. Or with friends. Even if they know that drinking alcohol isn’t the answer to fixing issues and staying sharp.

If your relationships with family, friends and colleagues are ordinary, could you be projecting past-hurts onto them? If you hold onto angry and unloving thoughts there is a high chance you’ll experience them in the outside world, and in your relationships. Allowing yourself to grieve the bad stuff you’ve been through in a healthy way means feeling the sadness.

Think about where that bad stuff is right now. Where is it in your body? Imagine you were explaining it to a person wearing a blindfold. What shape is it? What’s it made of? What colour is it? It might be a giant black hole sitting over your heart. Or it could be the sensation of knives in your back. Getting in touch with what and where it is, helps us realise we are strong enough to cope with it. Without diversions. We all have the power to self-heal. We just need the right tools.

= PLAY-BY-PLAY

Sit with your feelings for two minutes.

This shit isn’t that spooky: it’s just closing your eyes, breathing, paying attention to how you feel and being aware of how you want to feel.

STEP 1: Sit down.

STEP 2: Close your eyes.

STEP 3: Breathe.

STEP 4: Follow your breath as it smoothly and quietly travels within your body. Notice how your body moves when you inhale and exhale, in particular your stomach and ribcage. Allow your total focus to shift to your breathing.

STEP 5: As you breathe in, locate any tension you may have in your body; physically, mentally or emotionally.

STEP 6: As you breathe out, drop your shoulders, relax your jaw and eyes, feel any tension leave your body as you really relax into the position you are in.

STEP 7: Move your attention to allowing that relaxation to move through your chest down to your hips. With every out breath, go even deeper into that state.

STEP 8: Slowly scan your whole body and notice how relaxed you have become.

STEP 9: Bring your awareness slowly back up to eye level.

STEP 10: Slowly open your eyes. If necessary, rinse and repeat for two minutes.

Now you’ve finished, guess what? You’ve just learned to meditate and demonstrated to yourself that YOU have the power to bring internal peace to your life. You’re on fire, so why not find a way to make this a habit so it can help you to enjoy a better life.

By focusing on your internal state in this very simple way, the more self-awareness you build, which is a key attribute of sustained happiness. Something that has become way too rare in modern life.

Meditation is life changing. There are deeper forms (which I’ll get into later in the book) but for now, let’s start with this sit-and-breathe activity that allows you to quieten the mind, relax and rinse off tension. When we are still, we’re aware. And when we are aware, we’re practising self-care, which is something we ALL need more of.

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