We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Greg Lawrence a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Greg, so good to have you with us today. We’ve always been impressed with folks who have a very clear sense of purpose and so maybe we can jump right in and talk about how you found your purpose?
It would be more accurate to say my purpose found me. Nearly ten years the feelings I had been suppressing and trying to ignore since my childhood began to surface and I found myself in crisis mode. Psychotherapy and personal coaching were helping but progress seemed slow. When I added the intentional use of psychedelics I was able to clearly see certain thought, habit and relationship patterns that were holding me back, but even though these were now apparent to me nothing seemed to be changing. Then I learned about psychedelic integration; the process of taking the insights from those experiences and actually making changes in my daily life. Integration was a game changer for me.
I ended up becoming certified as a psychedelic integration coach, studying psychology, becoming a certified life coach, master practitioner in NLP and an HNLP certified coach. My purpose is now to help others on their path of personal and spiritual development, whether they include psychedelics as part of that path or not.
Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?
As a transformational coach certified in several different modalities I specialize in helping people address their triggers, traumas, phobias, fears and limiting beliefs. As a psychedelic integration coach I help people take the lesson or lessons of the psychedelic experience (and there is always a lesson on the psychedelic experience) and make the changes they feel are appropriate in their lives. I primarily work with clients one-on-one and work on what they feel is important in the moment.
I am also an educator, and have been a faculty and guest faculty member for several different psychedelic integration coaching and facilitation certification programs. I am married to the love of my life, the beautiful and talented therapist Catherine Auman, and together we teach a series of tantra-informed relationship courses called “The Science of Creating Your Soulmate.”
I facilitate monthly psychedelic integration circles in Santa Monica, and have been doing so for seven years now. I also have a number of public talks focused on personal and spiritual growth. My influences for these presentations include psychedelic integration, coaching, psychology, Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP), Humanistic Neuro-Linguistic Psychology (HNLP), neuroscience and quantum mechanics.
There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?
Learning to be in the present moment is an important ongoing process. Although our bodies are always in the present but our minds are capable of time travel, taking us into events from the past or trying to predict the future. The problem is that the past and future don’t actually exist. Revisiting past events over and over again doesn’t generally help, and if we go far enough into the future we are bound to imagine some situation that we’re not equipped to deal with – at least not from where we’re looking.
When we are on a growth path the question is not if we will have some kind of set back, but when. How we react to these lapses is key. We can either judge ourselves and worry that we have erased any progress we made or we can pick ourselves up, look forward and realize that as human beings we will occasionally fall back into old behaviors and patterns. In short, beating yourself up is a trap. That (along with judging ourselves harshly) is one of the main obstacles on the path of self improvement.
Learning NLP, and later HNLP was life changing for me. I’d always wanted to know what happens between some external event and my reaction. I not only learned what happens, but also what I can do to help myself and others with those reactions.
What do you do when you feel overwhelmed? Any advice or strategies?
Whenever I feel overwhelmed the first thing I look at is what I’m paying attention to. If I’m in a state that is less than desirable then I am most likely seeing a very small piece of the picture So the question I pose to myself (and to clients who find themselves in a similar situation) is “What are you paying attention to?” and “What are you NOT paying attention to?”
The next step would be to change my physiology – take a deep breath, stand up, move around, maybe do some calisthenics or take a walk. Movement can be very helpful when we feel stuck or overwhelmed.
If the overwhelm is the result of a task or job that feels “too big,” take some time to break it up into smaller pieces and focus on completing one piece at a time.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://psychedelicintegrationspecialist.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/psychedelic_integration/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100012623709820
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gregstep1/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@psychedelicintegrationspec8252
