Today we’d like to introduce you to Penny Payton.
Hi Penny, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today.
Hi, thanks so much for having me. My story is a crazy one, more the tale of two stories really. I had been living quite a different life for my first half-century. I was the director of operations with several popular, award-winning fine dining restaurants here in San Diego for nearly thirty years. I was having beyond bucket list experiences until, one day out of the blue, I nearly died. That experience showed me how little I understood the concept of self-care. I ended up having to leave my job and even though everyone I knew had said that I’d be snapped right up; no job offers came. So next, I found myself selling my home, everything I owned, and relocating to be closer to my son. I also started hypnotherapy and became an iPec-certified Energy Leadership coach because I wanted to understand more about myself and my actions. This became a deep dive into researching childhood trauma and the benefits of increased emotional self-awareness. I began my work before childhood trauma and mental health had become as mainstream as they are now. What I discovered was unbelievable and truly life-changing.
In 2018 I came home to San Diego and wrote my first book about my story of change. It’s titled Unpacking Emotional Baggage. I was then fortunate to write the second, titled Consciousness is Under the Rubble, with a colleague in higher education, Vincent Wiggins. Both books are available on Amazon or at your local bookstore. Next, I was invited by Vicky Zien with Anvil of Hope to be a speaker at their Women’s Speaker Series twice, which began my public speaking career.
Vincent and I have founded our own grassroots movement, Emotional Awareness Advocates, designed to raise emotional awareness on an individual level and increase humanitarian consciousness globally. If you’d like to know more, please contact me to get on our email list or visit www.unpackingemotionalbaggage.com, we will be updating that site as we buildout out the experiences.
I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey has been a fairly smooth road?
What I now realize to have been the biggest challenge was my own closed-minded way of looking at life for those first fifty years. I understand the division in this country because I’ve lived from both perspectives. I used to think the world would be a much better place if everyone lived the way I thought they should. I understand the feeling of having your way of life threatened and how terrifying that is. I know what it feels like to mistakenly believe your identity is taken away with the loss of a job.
It wasn’t until my entire life crumbled before my eyes and I was shoved out of my comfort zone that I realized I’d been living a life I didn’t love and hadn’t made me happy. I was only living how others thought I should. The lessons I learned all took me back to an understanding of how the childhood years left me shut down emotionally and filled with false beliefs about myself, others, and life. What’s exciting now is all this personal work and research has placed me in a uniquely amazing position to help others look deeper into their own stories.
Appreciate you sharing that. What should we know about Unpacking Emotional Baggage?
Of course, as I said, I became interested in emotional wellness by just trying to understand my own issues (with food and weight). As I kept digging, it became so clear that most all of us were taught to ignore our feelings and not taught how to manage them and cope effectively. Anxiety is a natural thing, but when emotional energy is not released it creates toxic anxiety. That’s the first issue that combines with several others and keeps people stuck in outdated ways of life and harmful perspectives. We focus on all three of the top elements that block individuals, the need to understand emotions, trauma, and subconscious sabotage. Because of our own lived experiences and research, we know in great detail the specific efforts that are needed to resolve these issues in ways that work.
In addition to the information we already discussed, I’ve been having really great success with one-on-one coaching. Every one of us can benefit from a better relationship with ourselves. To connect more deeply with humanity in empathy and compassion we have to be able to connect deeply with our own emotional state on a daily basis. Introspection is the new best practice!
Childhood trauma can be a tough concept to grasp and even harder to navigate without an experienced guide. I offer successful and proven methods and techniques that provide rapid results. This is not talk therapy. This is core root coaching designed to assist a person in connecting the dots between their lifestyle and actions today with the points of origin in the past.
I also coach those who are interested in just knowing more about increased emotional wellness and understanding the difference between emotional and mental health issues. I teach practices of coping to assist with anxiety and work with clients to help them understand how the subconscious works when it comes to things like dysfunctional behavior patterns.
In addition to coaching and building the Emotional Awareness Advocate program I am also very excited about an upcoming journal I have coming out in the next month or so. It will be a very personal and unique journey geared toward emotional wellness for each individual who wants to get to know themselves better.
I have several things happening around town on a regular basis.
Each week on Thursdays from 10 am to 1 pm I provide a free coaching service at Brew Wave on Newport Ave in Ocean Beach.
Beginning in June, each first Monday of the month, I will hold a monthly meetup discussion group at AleSmith Brewing in Miramar.
Information on each of those can be found in the San Diego reader or on Eventbrite.
Let’s talk about our city – what do you love? What do you not love?
As an Obecian, I love living near the water. This is where I am truly happy. In fact, happiness was so illusive change to elusive for me for som change to so many years. It’s weird to think that a person could not truly understand that so many things we had learned to believe were innate are not. Empathy is not innate; neither is compassion or understanding how to manage our own emotions. Our personalities are not set in stone. Happiness is not innate either. The things we may have been taught that should bring us happiness very often do not. People used to tell me how jealous they were of my old life, which I didn’t understand because I never really experienced happiness, regardless of what I was doing. After my own journey inward, I finally realized that I wasn’t given the gift of time and space to consider what would make me happy as I was growing into adulthood. The freedom of that personal choice. Instead, I lived by default.
I realize now that type of freedom is truly the doorway to happiness because it’s based upon what the soul truly desires. I have to say; it’s become an honor, privilege, and a joy to help people navigate their way home.
- Pricing (Optional) – Is there any pricing information that you wish our readers to know? please include details
The programs I mentioned will include pricing in the posts. I usually coach based on what the person is able to pay and what they feel it was worth to them. I wanted to offer something special in thanks for being featured in this article. I have put together a core-root coaching package for $129 that I call The Turning Point. We will talk for fifty minutes three separate times within one month’s time. This package is designed to set people up for success from the first call and provoke the ah-ha moments needed for sustainable change. Individuals that have spent years in therapy have said this package changed their lives.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.unpackingemotionalbaggage.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/unpackingemotionalbaggage/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/unpackingemotionalbaggage/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/penny-payton-46b3b49/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCabHTRp-82HCAUCbqzoKI_A
- Other: www.pennypayton.com
