A young mother sat cross-legged in an Edinburgh workshop, wondering if the weekend ahead would indeed ‘heal her life’ and lift the dark cloud of depression that had enveloped her. It did… so well in fact that a decade on, the same woman - Dawn Breslin - presents workshops, trains life coaches, writes best-selling books, and talks on television and radio to audiences worldwide in a quest to bring light and healing into other people’s lives. By Marie-Louise Cook.
Personal Success: You were 27 – you were married, had a new baby, and had a successful career in advertising sales. What led you to the personal development world?
Dawn Breslin: ‘I just felt like I had lost control of my life. I had experienced success, happiness and joy and then all of a sudden a big black curtain came down and I couldn’t see beyond it. All I could see was my nose and my baby in front of me. I had no future: it was all gone.’
A close relative then encouraged you to do Louise L. Hay’s ‘You Can Heal Your Life’ course. Did it work?
Dawn Breslin: ‘I was absolutely astounded at how over a two-day period I could begin to drastically change the way I was feeling by changing the way I thought about myself. I learned how the way we think and what we think about impacts on the way we feel; ultimately our thoughts are responsible for shaping our lives. My feelings all began to change… the darkness… the heaviness just lifted. It was a real shock that such simple processes could make such a difference to the way I felt. It was as if a veil had been lifted from my eyes and my mind. There were a million possibilities in front of me.’
Had you ever experienced self-help workshops?
Dawn Breslin: ‘No. Never. I just put my trust in my Auntie Margaret [who suggested Dawn enrol on that first workshop] because I was feeling so awful, I thought, “It’s do or die. I either do this or I just stay in this place so I’m going to chance it.” I knew nothing about it. The Internet wasn’t so accessible then and so I couldn’t research it. I just took her word for it. I had no idea what to expect.’
What were the exercises that you found so powerful?
Dawn Breslin: ‘We had to make a list of the 10 things we felt we should do. There is an expectation with the word ‘should’. When I looked at my “Should List”, it wasn’t anything that I wanted to do. It was all what everybody else thought I should do but there was no me. I had disappeared.
‘I knew I wanted to take what I had learned out into the world. I had a passion to communicate that even when it feels like the whole world is tumbling down on top of you and there are no choices left, you really can make changes if you are prepared to put in the hard work.
‘At the end of the workshop, we had to take an Angel card, which had a single word on it to give us encouragement, and the card I chose said ‘Purpose’. I can remember goosebumping and thinking in that moment, “This is my purpose.”
‘That was the start of the journey. I dreamed of giving seminars, I wanted to get into TV and media. I wanted newspapers and magazines to publish stories about it. However, my biggest challenge was that I was absolutely terrified of speaking in public. I had never done it before and it scared the living daylights out of me. I was terrified of going on TV and the first time a journalist pressed the record button on his tape recorder for me to give my opinion on a workshop that I attended, my mouth dried up!
‘I had so many ambitions but so many fears to overcome. It helped that my passion for what I had learned was pretty unshakeable.’
You’ve said for the next two years, you ‘pussy-footed around’…
Dawn Breslin: ‘Yes. I went back into advertising. Because of the course, I had to make some drastic life changes… one of them was ending my marriage. There was no money at all so I had to be practical. I was brilliant at advertising and it wasn’t very fulfilling but it could earn me a lot of money. I earnt £60,000 just standing on my head, working three days a week. I had to stay away three nights a week, which was awful, but I knew I could earn the cash, be with my daughter and get the money that I needed to then open up a business. In my car, I’d have 20 self-help books and in between calls, I’d be reading this stuff. It really was about absolute passion and determination and application.
‘I started to read every book and to go to every workshop I could… I went to train with Dr. Bernie Seagal who was teaching about how to cure cancer using the power of the mind. I trained with Louise L. Hay – the woman whose workshop I had done. I then became a teacher in her principles. I started to do NLP. I was reading, travelling, going to workshops. I did that constantly for around three years. Then I started to work with a big self-development company run by Jack Black, who was kind of a guru in Scotland. I thought I could start teaching with children because that wouldn’t be so frightening for me but they looked at my history and experience and immediately got me working in PR and marketing and got me promoting their work with children to the media. I got the BBC involved… I got all sorts of big media houses into this concept … got on us to the national news.’
Why did you set up your own training company?
Dawn Breslin: ‘I was a single mum by that time, I’d left my husband, I’d left my home and I’d started out on my own life journey again and I’d got a four year old baby. Although working with Jack was an amazing experience, there just came a point where I thought, “If I could take concepts and aspects from different places and really put them into a process that resonates with me, I can help to heal people, boost their confidence, get them out of depression and help them to heal their bodies and minds and get their lives completely on track.” Some of the companies that I worked for were really materially focussed and that wasn’t my calling. My calling was very much about healing and assisting people out of pain.
‘From early days, I was working with people who were homeless, who were long-term unemployed, women who hadn’t gone back to work because they were too frightened - these were the groups that I was spending time with and then to compensate for a lot of the voluntary work I was doing, I was also running commercial workshops for big companies.
‘There were times that it was absolutely horrendous. I got myself into a huge amount of debt early on because I took on a government project and they didn’t pay me for six months. That was the closest I ever came to not being able to run the business but I always knew everything was going to be okay. I knew that I was on track and was doing the right thing. Anyway, the money came in from the government, the business got back on its feet again and off we went again. I was so passionate about what I was doing. It wasn’t money that was driving me. I was buying and selling property behind the scenes as well and it was funding the business.’
Why did you move from Edinburgh to Bath?
Dawn Breslin: ‘There came a point where I was working predominantly in Scotland and really making my mark and I thought it was time to take this up to the next level. My dream had always been to go on morning television and talk to the people who were depressed in the morning, out of work, sitting at home and thinking that life was just so awful because I’d been one of those people. I wanted to go on Lorraine Kelly’s programme LK Today and sit on the sofa and tell her it can be completely different from this so I manifested and prayed and believed it was going to happen and before I knew it, I was meeting with producers. They were fascinated and really encouraged by what I could potentially offer the viewers.’
You bought pink champagne to celebrate but then got scared…
Dawn Breslin: ‘Once I came off the phone [from the producers], my heart started thumping, and my mind started racing. My palms were sweating and for the first time in my life, I was having a panic attack. I couldn’t do it. I had just realised one of my dreams and now I couldn’t go through with it.
‘I went to my Auntie Margaret’s and told her the news. She said, “What is it that you are frightened of?”
‘I said, “I don’t know. I just know that I can’t do it.” Then I asked for a pen and paper and one by one I began to write down and analyse my fears. I thought: “I’m not attractive enough; I’m not intelligent enough; I’m too rough around the edges; I don’t have a degree in psychology; what if I make a fool of myself?”
‘These were all my old negative beliefs that I thought were dead and buried. However, in my moment of success they had decided to ambush me. One by one, I rationalised and reframed each of them and before I knew it, the panic began to settle.’
What happened when you went on TV?
Dawn Breslin: ‘I told my story on my first visit to GMTV and they invited me back to actually do some work live on air… I took three of the viewers away and did a workshop with them – the same one I did for Jonathan [and The Coaching Academy]. The next day, they came back on air and they couldn’t believe the change in how they felt.
‘The following day, when I went on air GMTV got the biggest response they’ve ever had from a phone-in. People were just fascinated by what I had done. Those people were depressed and ready to give up – I had taught them the principles about how when we really take control of how we think and we start to change our habits and our lives, our characters change and our lives transform.
‘After about my fourth appearance on GMTV, four publishing houses approached me to write books. I never expected that I would be able to write a book because a schoolteacher had once told me that I wasn’t particularly good at English. I employed a ghost writer to write a manuscript for me. We submitted it to an agent and the agent said, “No, it’s awful. Why don’t you try?” I really had to challenge myself and I sat down and started to write the book and it just flowed. When my agent and my publisher saw it, they just said, “Wow, you relate to people as if you’re sitting with them and this stuff is great.”
‘I left a bit out. There were four publishers in the frame and then I went to speak at a big event in London and some people saw my VIP badge and said, “Oh, you’re Dawn Breslin.”
I said, “Who are you?”
“We work for Hay House.”
“As in the self-help guru Louise L. Hay?” I said. It was her workshop that I’d done six years previously, which had transformed my life, and I was indebted to her. I discovered she’d set up her own publishing company, Hay House. The synchronicity of it was incredible. I said to my agent later, “I don’t want to go with any of the other publishing houses. This woman’s work transformed my life, no matter what offer they make, we’re going with it.” As it happened, they came in with the highest offer.
‘As a result of working with Hay House, I’ve worked in America, in Africa and I’m due to go out to Australia. My big passion is Africa – I went on the equivalent of Oprah there and we had 19,000 callers in half an hour on air. There’s a huge calling for my work in Africa. I also feel there’s a huge calling for my work in America because I also do an international radio show with Hay House, the biggest self-help publishers in the world. I can communicate with people and help people all over the world. I get emails saying, “Can you come and work in Ireland? Norway? India?” The whole thing has spiralled…’
Have you worked with Louise L. Hay?
Dawn Breslin: ‘I appeared with Louise L. Hay and Wayne Dyer at a big conference in Orlando. Louise and I have had dinner together and I was at her 80th birthday party in San Diego in October last year. She actually said to me in London, “I have to say to you that I’m 80 now and I hand the baton to you. You’ve got the energy, go out and do it.”
‘At Louise’s birthday party, I had too many glasses of champagne and I said to her, “What’s so staggering is that I was this lost soul sitting cross-legged in this workshop in Edinburgh 10 years ago and it was your work that came all the way across from America to this tiny place in Edinburgh and I learned from you and I’m now sprinkling this work all over the world and right now I’m standing next to you at your birthday party.” My eyes were streaming.
‘Hay House is like a family. The difference with Hay House and many other publishing houses is they only bring on people who are committed to transformational change in the world. We don’t do this job just because we want to make money, we do this because we are absolutely passionate and committed to human beings – lifting their awareness to be free and to realise there’s much more to life than our physical experience. You are a spiritual being having a human experience. When you really get that there is so much freedom.
‘I believe my job is a spiritual journey – I’m here to do this work. Without a doubt that’s why I’m so passionate about it. I don’t sit there meditating in the morning, hoping I’ll be passionate about it today. There’s none of that – it’s just with me, it’s who I am.’
You say achievement is the result of hard work. Do you think people give up when they don’t achieve instant success?
Dawn Breslin: ‘It’s like starting a slimming diet. You have to stick at the diet to achieve the results. It’s about putting the discipline and the routine in place. Until you get into a new habit, nothing will change. My work is all about cultivating new patterns of thinking that will absolutely elevate your life to a new level but you have to stick at the work. If you stop doing it for a week or two weeks, if you’ve been someone who has been negative or cynical or whatever, you’re just going to float right back into that place.
‘Working on daily affirmations, focusing on gratitude, taking the steps to move in the direction of your dreams, can also be very, very pleasant. It can be a really joyful experience.’
Are you living your dream?
Dawn Breslin: ‘Without a doubt, and more. I’m absolutely living my dream. I’m at a stage now where I know that through manifestation prayer, and meditation, I can almost manifest anything I want to happen in my life.
‘I’m now learning and teaching principles so that when the storms come in my life I have coping strategies and principles that will help me get through the storms. There’s a fast lane now and it’s amazing. But it’s taken 10 years for me to cultivate this and I’m just so passionate about sharing this with everybody.’
How would you describe what you teach?
Dawn Breslin: ‘Primarily, my teaching is all about developing the self. It is about empowering individuals to stand in their power, to be who they are, and to trust who they are, to embrace who they are and to have the courage to follow what’s right for them because if we live a lie and live by other people’s expectations then we are out of synch with our core soul, our essence.
‘I change my coaches from the inside. They have to go through their own journey first and by going through it and understanding it, they can then teach it and use it with clients. When their clients come with low self-confidence and are filled with fear and they want to change their lives but don’t have the courage to do anything or are completely stuck and can’t even come up with the first goal, coaches can help them to change their lives from the inside first. Once they change their lives from the inside then they can be set challenges and work with the GROW model. Then they’ll really see the external changes begin to take effect.’
What are your future plans?
Dawn Breslin: ‘I think the UK is way behind other countries. A cultural shift has to happen in this country. We are getting into coaching but we’re still afraid of therapy, we still want the NHS to take care of us. If we looked after ourselves, we could change our lives.
‘In America, two or three hundred people come to my workshops twice a day when I’m teaching over there. In the UK, I think people think, “Oh gosh, that’s all a bit heavy” or “It’s a bit emotional.” One of my visions is to crack the market in the UK, to get workshops running throughout this country and to have coaches trained in the stuff that I’m doing. I want to raise my brand awareness – I want people to recognise the name and to know that this is a brand that is synonymous with helping people fundamentally change their lives no matter what, meeting them at the place where they are now whether they’re in prison, if they have cancer, depression, are stuck in a rut, whatever it is. I want to set up a whole voluntary side to my organisation where people who cannot afford to pay for this stuff get access to it. That’s one of my dreams.
‘My second dream is to set up empowering centres and training programmes in Africa for women and to get these women off the ground whether there’s AIDS in the community or not. I want to help people to feel, to take control of their bodies; I want to empower their minds. I want to try to make a difference in Africa and I want to spend a lot of time there. That’s the work side of it. The other side of it is that I just feel a real synergy with Africa and I want to spend a lot of time out there. My daughter is 12 now so in four or five years time I can see myself spending part of my life in Africa and part of my life here teaching, empowering, and doing community work.
‘All I see when I am talking to you is smiles on people’s faces. That’s my work – my work is to bring smiles where there’s sadness because I was sad once and I didn’t know where to turn. That’s what drives me. People ask what drives me, is it money? No, it’s getting into organisations where I can - or the people who work for me can - make a difference.’
Are you going to be on television again soon?
Dawn Breslin: ‘I do TV from time to time but I have other projects that I’m working on but if GMTV phone me up, I go down. [Dawn moved back to Scotland to be closer to her family but says she probably travels more than ever]. I have close links with Channel Four and we’re trying to develop a format now so there will be TV in the future.
What advice do you have for coaches?
Dawn Breslin: ‘Number one is to be honest with yourself. Self-help is a journey about you and if you can’t look at yourself, if you can’t overcome your fears, if you can’t take risks in your life, if you can’t communicate with your children, if you can’t do stuff… then how can you ask with integrity other people to do things? You have to examine your own life and your own fears.
‘Number two is that my work is not about processes, it’s not about GROW models, it’s not about Dawn Breslin’s six-week process, it’s about being compassionate and caring for another human being deeply. Some of the people I taught from The Coaching Academy have told me the results they have achieved have been phenomenal. They are getting cheques in the mail, they are getting book deals, their clients are bringing them champagne, kissing them at the end of a session because they are so overwhelmed by what they have been through. The results speak for themselves in the coaches’ lives but also in the lives of the clients of those coaches.
‘This goes against some standard coaching principles but the way I teach is that you care and have compassion for your clients and through that love, you heal them; you work with them and you see the best in them. You become a very soft place for them to fall but you’re also empowering them to such a level that they go courageously into the world and do whatever they feel they want to.’
FURTHER INFORMATION
Visit www.dawnbreslin.com
*Dawn Breslin’s Guide To Super Confidence (Hay House, 2006) [previously called Zest For Life and published by Hay House in 2004]
Dawn Breslin’s Power Book (Hay House, 2005). To download Dawn Breslin’s 10 Golden Affirmations, visit www.dawnbreslin.com.
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