Síle Uí Chiaráin, Registered Psychotherapist, Whole 'n One with Síle
Educator, Psychotherapist, Podcast Host, and Actor. Having retired from her post as a primary school teacher in Ireland a number of years ago, in a career that spanned thirty years, Síle continues to educate, inspire, and mentor in her new incarnation as a life and business coach, psychotherapist, success strategist, ideas practitioner and gurus' guru.
Síle works with formulas to help clients achieve mind-derived health optimisation. Teaching individuals and business communities about Causing an Effect as opposed to cause and effect, Síle is taking blueprints for best practice, from philosophy to initiation and then to mastery, one recovery programme at a time.
Culture is key when it comes to excellence within ecosystems. Facilitating the autonomy and empowerment of the people within organisations, improves company culture.
Síle's WHOLE 'n ONE master plan frames the 3As of adaptability, authenticity and agility as non-negotiable in the architecture of growth mindset, at individual and organisational levels, for optimum results.
Thoughts are the locomotive to living intentionally, as opposed to living out of habit. Of course, some thoughts are reflexive, but you can also think deliberately. Síle expounds the value of meta-cognition as a launch-pad for achieving desired outcomes. When you learn how to think about, what you've been thinking about, you are no longer the programme, and you are the observer of the programme. To this end, you can change behavioural responses and therefore change outcomes. You need to be able, and willing, to think beyond your environment.
If you don't evolve, you revolve. So, knowledge, particularly psycho-education, as well as a regular practice of mindfulness, gratitude and nose-breathing, not least to improve sleep quality, are invaluable tools of the trade, if you wish to live deliberately and optimise results.
The WHOLE' n ONE model draws attention to the potential of meta mindset, as well as placebo and nocebo effects when coaching people and partnerships. Leveraging and/or making requisite mindset changes, improves productivity and self-efficacy by allowing the management of self-talk, building a healthy relationship with anxiety, and being willing to rewrite the narrative; tell yourself that different story. It's just like doing a bicep curl for your brain.
What is your favourite social media platform, and why?
I engage on LinkedIn regularly. LinkedIn serves me well in that I have built a virtual network of valuable contacts in that space. In addition, LinkedIn is an excellent research tool. By looking over a company's LinkedIn page, you can learn a lot about its culture, mission, and even hiring trends. I enjoy the brain food and learning capacity of LinkedIn. It's a quality platform, a digital gateway to a world that both interests, and grows me in equal measure.
Tell us about you and your current role or area of interest.
Having been a primary school teacher for thirty years, with experience as deputy and acting principal along the way, I have retrained as a psychotherapist in recent years. I straddled both worlds for a very busy but interesting period until my retirement a couple of years ago. As a registered psychotherapist, building my private practice has been rewarding and fulfilling, especially given the challenges people faced, for a couple of years.
My job affords me the pleasure of mentoring people on their personal and professional journeys with great success. "If you do what you love, you'll never work a day in your life," - Marc Anthony. I have long since identified learning and teaching as core values of huge importance to me, and continued involvement in my practice equally serves my own personal and professional expansion adaptively. Psycho-education continues to be a pivotal part of my work.
Evidence of the cross-pollination of my background in education, and my new departure as a psychotherapist, finds fluent expression in the learning and teaching I involve in on a daily basis, with self and others, about the all-important mind/body connect. Functional or deliberate breathing, for example, is one of the most productive, cost-free tools for changing state with immediate effect. When you know how to change state, as innocuously as changing your breathing, you can potentially change outcomes for the better in a very short period of time, with measurable gain, both personally and professionally.
The storyteller in me found expression in a radio show I hosted with Voice America last year. A very special experience, this transformative, transitional period, awakened within me an awareness of an unmet need for, and comfort with, visibility. On a mission now to satisfy this hunger, I am leaning into my media career for the afternoon of my life. 52 is the new 22! I am a fluent Irish speaker and have recently been cast in Ros na Rún, an Irish-language TV drama which airs on TG4 in Ireland.
As Irish ambassador to The Human Contract, I will host the foundation's TV show in the not so distant future. The Human Contract has a personal, an interpersonal and a collective view, of how we can leverage mature thinking toward a thriving world, in peace. The focus of the foundation is very much on our rights and responsibilities as human beings. Its content is based on the seven principles of human dignity, as outlined within The United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
What do you like about your career or area of focus?
I have never been as excited in all my life about a career choice as I am at present. The launching of my acting career at the beginning of this year felt so right. I feel that everything I have ever said, done and experienced to date has been about preparing and positioning me for this, the third chapter. My dream beyond the small screen is to land a lead role in a blockbuster movie. Rinse and repeat!
What is the best advice you have ever received?
As somebody who was unhelpfully empathetic and co-dependent in the past, my attachment style was one of ‘anxious insecurity’. Whilst I learned skills that improved my confidence, apparently, at least, my self-esteem often remained dangerously low, which left me over-sensitive emotionally, socially and professionally, quite depressed and very fragile on occasions.
I realised that 'comparanoia' would not make my boat go faster, when the facilitator on an enneagram course I attended about ten years ago, suggested that I stay in my own lane. A focus on personal advancement through self-care and self-love, as opposed to comparison to others, is a practice, not a mandate, and is something I need to turn up to daily and do the work, in order to establish and maintain homeostasis. Staying in my own lane keeps me balanced. Balance is key!
What inspires you, motivates you, or helps you to move forward?
Love. Love is the answer, whatever the question. We are pack animals, and we are born to have a sense of belonging, to feel seen, heard and valued. The extent to which we have our basic emotional needs met... in balance of course, determines our success in life; as individuals and in relationships with each other, with huge connotations for how we show up and get on, in business also. Quality connection changes everything. Feeling respected and valued motivates me, and inspiration flows within that sacred space.
Loneliness kills. Isolation and aloneness can cause and accentuate loneliness, but not always. When one's human needs are being met wholesomely, which will usually be determined by how well one is using one's innate resources to seek out the nutriment one needs in the environment, in order to have one's own psychological needs met healthily, isolation may not be downregulating, and could, in fact, be restorative. Healthy processing time, helps me to thrive.
A concerning determinant of pathological loneliness is caused by feelings of shame, guilt, marginalisation, and a lack of autonomy and control. However involved one might be within a group or groupings, an erosion of meaning and purpose happens when living on the fringes of relationships within families, organisations, communities, etc., within toxic cultures in other words. It causes chronic ailment in individuals and stagnancy in ecosystems of all kinds. In all its forms, love fuels health, growth, and restoration of people and organisations. Heart-shaped LeadOURship is possible. The time is now to lead inclusively with integrity and decency. Feeling appreciated and acknowledged motivates me to love myself more, love others more and move forward seamlessly. Love is the red pill!
What are you proud of in your life so far?
If you asked what gives me a sense of pride, my children would feature in almost every aspect of my answer. What am I proud of? I’m proud of my work. I’m proud of my value system. I’m proud of my resilience and my decency in life.
Having learned how to press reset myself with unwavering endurance in the face of many adversities, I have gone on to teach and mentor life-giving levels of resilience to others. It evokes within me a huge sense of achievement and pride in my work. Research is MEsearch!
What is your preferred way to meet new people/network?
What might formerly have been considered digital disruption, has become the new set point in business and life in general, with limitless potential for global trade and connection. I feel honoured and privileged to live in this era of digital media potential when it is used for the higher good.
For the most part, I prefer face to face engagement, but I have respect for and appreciate, the availability and proficiency, of both in-person and online networking options, in our ever awakening world.
What skills or qualities do you feel have helped you?
A very arresting and humbling moment of collapse, of slow-onset a number of years ago, catapulted me into the meta-mindset mode, quite unconsciously at first. More conscious awareness of the capacity of growth mindset more laterally strengthened my vagal tone over time and eventually improved my emotional fitness for life in general. Learning how to climb up into my observing self, stitched some hope into my then tattered heart.
I had always been a very enduring individual, but endurance alone couldn't sustain me in the rough terrain of my life at that time. New coping skills were required to push through those pain barriers. I soon learned that on the other side of fear, is love.
Ever since I consider myself beautifully unfinished. Healthy levels of empathy, vulnerability and growth mindset, help me make values-based decisions, as opposed to emotion-based decisions, as I navigate the undulations of life, benchmarking against my authentic self all the way.
What do you wish you had known when you started out?
Life is full of learning curves, some steeper than others. As soon as we learn a new lesson in the school of life, we begin to understand what drove us to need and want to grow in that particular area in the first place. Lessons keep showing up in different guises until we embrace them in their fullest form. When you know your why, the how gets easier.
This productive struggle happens at the intersection of epigenetics, neuroplasticity, and psychoneuroimmunology, which can leverage our wellness mentally, physically, and emotionally. Thoughts can make you sick, but equally, thoughts can make you well.
Life is definitely a journey, not a destination.
My pain has often pushed me until I allowed wisdom to pull me.
"We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time", T.S. Eliot.
Who do you most admire in business, academic or creative circles and why?
I have been hugely influenced by so many writers and speakers over the years. Among them are Dr Johann Hari, Dr Gabor Maté, Dr Joe Dispenza, and Dr Anna Lembke, to name but a few.
Dr Andrew Huberman has been my guilty pleasure and go-to guru in recent years because he is clever, relatable, informed and personable. I thoroughly enjoy his interview style and respect his magnanimous dedication to cost-neutral delivery, of the most up to date findings in neuroscience.
I am intrigued by and would love to interview Russell Brand. I would love to act with Matthew Mc Conaghy and with Saoirse Ronan. When Mc Conaghy's 'Green lights' is made into a film, I would love to play his mother. My son, who looks incredibly like him, could play his younger self. Now that would be a dream come true. These guys have influenced the launch of my third career. Older, not over!
Outside of your professional/work area, what hobbies or interests do you have or what other areas of your life are of real importance to you?
Daily meditation, exercise and quality connection with like-minded people are non-negotiables for me. I find that when I win my morning, I win my day. I aim to get outdoors within half an hour of waking up in the morning, preferably within two hours of sunrise and again within two hours of sunset, for two to ten minutes of exposure to natural light, to reset my circadian rhythm.
Self-generated forward movement down-regulates the amygdala, so I tend to amalgamate my aerobic exercise with exposure to natural daylight and fresh air as often as possible. I feel so much better and achieve so much more when I lean into the edges on the good days so that I have a quality template to refer to when there are blocks in the operating system. And sometimes, you have to do less to achieve more. Those days grow me too. There are times when you have to have a well day, to avoid two sick days.
Has the pandemic had a positive or a negative effect on you and/or your business, and how have you managed it?
The world locked down on my fiftieth birthday, 12 March 2020. For me, this period has been emancipating and adventurous. I've never been busier in my entire life, but I'm happier than I've ever been. I retired from teaching, threw myself full time into building my private practice, hosted a radio show on Voice America's Empowerment Channel and launched my acting career, all within Covid. It's like a coming of age, biologically if not chronologically.
Do you have a mentor, or have you ever mentored anyone?
I consider myself vicariously mentored by Anthony De Mello and Eckhart Tolle, amongst others, spiritually and philosophically. I have been steered by masters of their craft, in real-time too.
Randall Libero, my executive producer on Voice America, kindled and fanned the flame of a propensity for media in me, that he encouraged from the outset, which helped me match my competence with my confidence seamlessly from the get-go.
My supervisor in psychotherapy, Véronique Chown, has been my support and my sounding board from student to successful psychotherapist and is a mentor I hold in high regard. I have a very special mother earth in my life, who has literally breathed life back into me when the grit was not enough to get me over the line. Her wisdom, kindness and lateral thinking, never cease to amaze and enlighten me.
I'm most grateful for some other very significant and light-bearing friends as well. Friends are the family you pick for yourself. Mentorship is a very important part of the work I do too, and it takes on many forms, bespoke to the needs of the individual, group or organisation. Much change can happen when a mentor/mentee relationship is a good match #differencemaker.
What advice would you have for someone looking to get into the same area of work or interest?
Education and a fully loaded emotional tool belt are hugely significant weapons for change-making, locally and globally. Educators and psychotherapists have that privileged position of influence in peoples' lives, where their product and how they deliver it, carries the potential for so much more.
I feel that if education and/or solution-focused therapy as a practice, are your mission as opposed to just your passion, you will be able to play the long game, whilst saving the requisite spare capacity for your own self-care, continued growth and expansion. Avoiding compassion fatigue requires alignment and cohesion, between one's innermost dominant thoughts and outward actions, not least in one's chosen career. It is essential to sustain ‘ability’.
I regularly do emotional needs audits with my clients to ensure their career continues to stretch, not stress, to fulfil, satisfy and grow them. Be curious. Make space for new things and practice readiness. As I skip into the third chapter of my life, literally and metaphorically, I'm so grateful for the lessons heretofore. Everything happens at the right time, place and sequence.
"The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be." - Ralph Waldo Emerson.
What do you feel is the most common reason for people failing or giving up?
Imposter syndrome is a very debilitating state of mind; it's insidious enough to take the waterway into your very essence, sometimes unconsciously, sometimes painfully viscerally. As a result, high achievers often find it disproportionately difficult to acknowledge their accomplishments and appreciate their accolades, questioning their worthiness for same.
We all have stressors, from within and from without. When triggered, these stressors engage the stress response, a generic system with a generic physiological signature, which displays symptoms that we all know as the hallmarks of anxiety.
Ancestrally said the system was designed to mobilise us. Unfortunately, our brain doesn't know the difference between a self-tape or an audition, after two years in lockdown, and a sabre-toothed tiger up your ass. Your body is actually doing a good thing for you by noticing the potential danger and preparing you to fight, flee, freeze or fawn, which is to tease and please, to confuse and defuse! But over a long period of time, chronic stress takes a huge toll on our wellness. The body keeps score. Anxiety is habit-forming. Anything practised in an unchecked way becomes reflexive. It's an energy conservation strategy.
By present-day standards, the 'predator' or perceived threat is your boss, partner, kids, bills, etc. And whilst survival mode was built to aid and fuel evolution, experienced chronically, human beings become sick, incapacitated, and stuck when they live in stress response to their world over a protracted period of time. After a while, your body gets out ahead of you and causes a panic attack all by itself. At that stage, the servant has become the master. Imposter syndrome is a similar such trigger and is a major player in the game of life today, causing people to fail or give up. #mindsetmatters
Is there a phrase, quote or a saying that you really like?
'Where 'er you be, BE'. It's one of my own, a 'Síleism' if you will. Randall Libero suggested that I should digitally graffiti a wall of Síleisms, commenting on my turn of phrase. I reminded my children regularly to turn up to every moment in innocence. This facilitates emancipating forgiveness, for self and others, thereby improving cognition, and mitigating self-doubt and fear, in favour of the freedom to BE fully present and 'in joy'.
What companies, brands, or institutions do you like or do you think are getting it right?
Ryanair made flying affordable. DE monopolisation and an era of more competitive aviation.
Tesla is ahead of the curve regarding the need to move away from fossil fuels
Stripe is an online payment company. Limerick-born Patrick and John Collison maintain the human touch in weekly meetings across their global workforce.
Customer Service Excellence Ireland, Charlie Boyle, as well as experience economy improvement, CXI is collaborating with MIT to establish a Human Skills Institute in West Donegal. I wonder would Stripe sponsor it? Great initiative.
Championing the success of two amazing companies in my home town of Dundalk...
Gardiner Family Apothecary is a multi-award-winning manufacturer of dermatological skincare for dry, sensitive skin. Working with Reforest Nation, GFA will plant a tree for every product sold, packaging-free, customer choice.
Phytaphix is a multi-award-winning scientific nutrition product company, creating whole-food, plant-based nutrition products based on the research and expertise of company founder Dr Conor Kerley. Conor is out ahead of his own MS diagnosis due to lifestyle choices and Phytaphix supplements.
I'd like also to give photo credit to John Murray Headshots.
How do you define success, and what lessons have you learned so far that you could share with our audience/readership?
As a success strategist myself, I help people and organisations to be tactical in addressing situations in the short term, as they arise, to manage and mitigate against obstacles to the achievement and/or accomplishment of long term goals. Whether agreed with others, written or otherwise, the design, launch and enduring enactment of an innovative plan, to achieve intended outcomes, positions people and companies for success.
Knowing how to recognise and celebrate small wins is hugely important in the tapestry of success. Creating the perfect chemical cocktail of dopamine and serotonin for success requires anticipation and appreciation. It's important If you can feel it, like you've already got it, thereby increasing the electromagnetic field for manifestation. Strategies can be emulated and superseded. Success leaves clues in its wake.
You are always getting back from the universe, exactly whatever you are offering vibrationally. What are you broadcasting? Is it a vibrational match for the desired outcome? In that quantum space, your abundance is waiting to get out of the vortex and into the bank, your life, your bed... we are the masters of our own destiny! Total potentiality today, success tomorrow, when we realise that we are the only thinkers in our own brains.