Episode 26: Henare O’Brien

ABOUT OUR GUEST

Henare is best known as a guide rather than a coach. He has been known to help people remember the source of their power and love in their-self.  He has worked with people at many levels to help them see the joy in creating and roots of their suffering. He helps people look into the layers of who they think they are and expand them.  To help them see beyond what they think they know (intellectual) to their emerging wisdom (experiential) and to help guide them from a head-to-heart place of BEING (beingness).

He does not have an elevator speech or care much for name tags. When people ask what he does he will commonly talk about being a father and husband first. After seeing great pain in his own life he realized that there was more to life than what he thought he knew so he went on an external search to find answers that kept pointing him in the same direction…within.

PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION

00:43 – Meet Henare O’Brien, a self-development coach – although he finds the term “guide” more accurate – who Chris describes as the most humble example of a father and a human part of the spiritual and transformational community. He and his wife Kate always share personal experiences with extreme vulnerability – an admirable trait. He’s also been mentored and coached by the likes of Jack Canfield and Donald Welsh.

03:11 – Henare’s story; who is he, where did he come from, and what did he have to go through to be where he is today? He also takes a moment to dedicate this interview to John – a man who represents power and grace and humbleness for Henara, and who – when he was alive – reminded all of us that we can live a big life. Henare comes from an interesting background. Growing up, he witnessed and was part of a lot of tough situations. He played professional basketball for 10 years and was a school teacher for 8. Afterwards, he decided to step into the arena of personal development.

07:26 – Henare shares his turning point. Or, as Chris puts it, the moment he found himself sitting there thinking; “Is this it? What’s next?” Henare shares that he was playing pro-basketball at 25, he was flying to places, and he had the money and the means. Everything he thought he knew had been achieved. However, sitting on the beach, he realized something was missing in this equation. He managed to ignore it but, over the years, it kept coming back to him, and the curiosity over the “missing piece” accumulated, causing him anxiety and depression. It reached the point where he was sitting at the side of the road at 28, calling his mother and asking her to pick him up. He didn’t know what was going on, but he couldn’t drive. She picked him up, put him to bed, and nursed him back to health in three days. Henare shares his thoughts during that time. “Okay,” he says. “There’s something missing in my life, and I need to find out what … it is.”

09:49 – For the people listening to his who have gone through or are going through a similar experience, Henare has some advice. When we create an idea, we unconsciously set up an opposition to that idea in the form of a concern or a complaint. “95 percent of thoughts are reoccurring dialogues or monologues in our mind that generate conversations about what we need to do rather than actions and what we need to say.”

12:00 – So what was the missing component in Henare’s life equation? What was he doing wrong that he no longer felt complete or “whole”?

12:46 – “When we are whole … we start to generate ‘future’ futures.” What is a future-future?

14:54 – Henare sums up his concept of wholeness: “whatever you’re doing in your life, where you’re performing at some level, the missing piece is the other side – the polarity. Life is a polarity of ups and downs, lefts and rights, backwards and forwards. The brain works in the same way. It sees what to create but it sees the … other side of what would happen if we did create this.”

23:15 – Time Travel Moment: If Henare were to go back to that time where he was 28 and sitting by the side of the road, waiting for his mother to pick him up, what advice would he tell his younger self? “Hey, you’re doing the best you can with what you know.”

24:28 – Time Travel Moment, Part Two: If he was starting over from scratch today with nothing but experience, what’s one of the first things Henare would do? “I would have found support faster.”

26:48 – If you want more from Henare, you can visit http://henareandkateobrien.com/ or visit his Facebook https://www.facebook.com/henare.obrien and feel free to add him as a friend!

27:53 – For the person who just knows there’s more, Henare has some advice: “if you know there’s more, what’s the concern about being more [than what you are]?” Bring a wholeness to your inspiration.