What if….
The things you judge about yourself
The experiences you keep having
The reactions you feel powerless to stop
What if… they make sense?
What if….
Life is not happening to you, but for you?
Difficult or repeating experiences are not random?
What you’re trying to change is exactly what is keeping you stuck?
What if… your life is an invitation?
What if….
The experiences you are having in your life are showing you that who you learned to be and how you learned to navigate the world is no longer working, and you are being invited to meet yourself and life differently?
My name is John Arrell. Through years of depression, anxiety, alcohol addiction, and multiple relationship and professional failures, I started to notice patterns in what I was experiencing, how I was reacting, and the stories I told myself about myself, others and the reality in which I lived.
When I exhausted all attempts to fix myself, control my environment and understand others, I got curious: what if my experiences were showing me the ways I learned to meet life were no longer serving me? What if my experiences were also inviting me to meet myself and life differently from what I had learned?
From this curiosity, and observing my own life through this lens, I started to see life less as something to manage and more as something to participate in.
I now help others meet their experiences with more curiosity, more compassion, and help them discover a different way to participate in life.
The Invitation doesn’t give you answers; the conditions in which you can find your own are created.
What is the Invitation?
The Invitation is a guided half-day workshop where you bring something from your own life that you would like to understand differently.
It might be a repeating experience, a relationship you are struggling with, a reaction that feels bigger than the situation, something you find yourself continually trying to change or control, or simply something happening in your life that you can't quite make sense of.
Rather than giving you answers about what your experience means, I will share stories and experiences from my own life as you are guided through a series of questions designed to help you become curious about your own.
You'll have time to reflect and write privately after each question, followed by an invitation to share what you discovered with the group if you choose to. There is no requirement to share, no attempt to diagnose or fix you, and no predetermined place we are trying to get to.
My role is not to tell you what your experience means, but to create a space in which you can explore it for yourself.
When we become curious about how we meet our experiences, we create the possibility of participating in them differently.
What will we explore?
Together we'll become curious about:
What is actually happening in your life and what you have made it mean.
How you currently respond when experiences like this arise.
Where you may have learned to meet life this way and how that response may have made sense.
What this experience might be bringing you into contact with.
What support, capacity or choices may be available to you now.
How you might meet the experience differently.
There is no predetermined answer or destination. What you discover will be your own.
Who is this for?
The Invitation is for people who have already started looking at themselves and their lives with curiosity, but still find themselves caught in experiences or reactions they don't fully understand.
You may recognise that:
You keep finding yourself in similar experiences or relationships, even when the people or circumstances change.
You understand some of your patterns, but understanding them hasn't necessarily changed them.
You sometimes have reactions that feel bigger than what is happening in the moment.
You find yourself trying to control, fix, avoid, numb or understand your way out of uncomfortable experiences.
You have become aware of ways you learned to adapt, please, perform, withdraw, protect yourself or put your own needs aside.
You're tired of treating yourself as something that constantly needs to be fixed.
You're curious about what your experiences might be showing you and whether there could be another way of meeting them.
You don't need to know what your “pattern” is, understand your childhood, or arrive with an answer.
You simply need to be willing to bring something real from your life and become curious about it.
Who is this not for?
The Invitation may not be the right space for you if you are looking for someone to give you the answer, tell you what your experiences mean, or provide a step-by-step formula for changing your life.
It may also not be for you if:
You are looking for a quick fix or a guaranteed outcome.
You want to focus primarily on understanding, diagnosing or changing someone else.
You are not currently willing to become curious about your own reactions and experiences.
You are looking for therapy, trauma treatment or support for an acute mental health crisis.
You want to be pushed into revisiting experiences from your past or believe that healing requires reliving them.
You will never be asked to disclose anything you don't want to share or pushed somewhere you are not ready to go.
The workshop is an invitation to curiosity, not a demand to uncover, relive or resolve your past.
Ready to meet your experiences differently?
The Invitation
A half-day guided workshop
Date / Time: TBC
Location: TBC
Small group (10 max)
NZ$89 per person
You don't need to have the answers. You don't need to know exactly why something keeps happening or what needs to change.
Bring something from your life that is asking for your attention, and come willing to get curious about it.
The Invitation is an opportunity to step away from trying to fix, control or make sense of everything for a few hours, and explore what might become possible when you meet your experience differently.
The Invitation
Bring your experience and discover a different way to meet it.