A very dear friend of mine was here for her annual visit recently. As usual, we were engrossed in our conversation about life at the deepest of levels. She had been musing on what she was here to do in this life, with retirement in sight and with many mokopuna (a Māori word meaning grandchildren) growing up around her, her purpose seemed to elude her.

We had talked about many things. One of the questions she asked was why a person would want to strip away all their layers of life’s stuff, of course I could only answer for myself as it’s the journey I’ve been on.

“It feels lighter, less encumbered.” I told her, “I get less wound up by the same old stuff, less triggered and able to respond more calmly; I can think more clearly and, well, I feel better.”

We also spoke about this idea that perhaps we are all just aspects of the one thing getting to know itself. This led her to question why, that being the case, starvation was something that needed to be repeated over and over in different lives.

It is an interesting question. I’m not sure any of us came intending to suffer in any way, yet there is clearly a lot of suffering that occurs from the ritual beating ourselves up in our own minds (which is likely an echo of a past parent’s words) through to starvation and so many more horrific ordeals.

Perhaps it is more that I came with an intention to gain something new from this life, a new way of being rather than of doing.

My friend told me it was a huge relief to think of life as becoming who she was meant to be, rather than what she was meant to do; it felt far more achievable that this illusory purpose that had seemed to evade her all these years.

Perhaps there is something specific I am here to do, but I suspect that until I become the person I intended to be in this life, the fullest expression of myself, it will not be clear. I also think it’s entirely possible that I may never know what I’m here to do, because it seems that I could have an effect on another’s life without ever knowing it, the way many others have had on mine:

The kindness of my paternal grandmother, her gentle nature and care for me...The belief my first swim coach had in my ability to improve and swim well, and the time he spent helping me do it...That same belief my second coach had in my ability to succeed at a higher level and play an important role in the team...The question posed on how many dimensions there might be, a physicist revealing to me the ten already discovered by scientists in the early 1990’s...

I could go on, these are seemingly small yet seminal moments, times in my life that have retrospectively created a sort of virtual cheerleading squad in my head when I would otherwise have had doubts about who I am and who I am capable of being.

Regardless of the circumstances we are born into, or find ourselves in, whether mundane or horrific, I suspect it is who we are being that carries the most weight.

A starving grandmother can still make a difference in who she is being both to herself and to others, as can the well-fed one. Sometimes those circumstances are extraordinary, sometimes ordinary. Perhaps though, it is in the extremes of life that things that are most important to us come into sharper focus.

I can only attest to my own circumstances; I find myself in the murky soup of western civilisation. I say this not to point to the current global pandemic, I’m pointing to all the modern conveniences and constructs of life that serve to distract me from things that are important.

Like someone talking to me about conspiracy theories the other day. The moment I hear someone referring to something that is conjecture as if it is fact, my solar plexus goes off like a tsunami warning system.

It is not that I disbelieved what was being espoused particularly; it is simply that I was listening to my own truth. My gut was telling me to steer clear and for good reason. Whether some well known historic figure is still alive, or whether a government has a malign intention, or a secret organisation is behind events or atrocities, there is little to be achieved by my dwelling upon it.

The temples on each side of my head start to throb and my mind starts to feels totally congested with information that cannot serve me in that moment except to distract. It brings to mind a statement I heard long ago “if you cannot convince, confuse”. I have a suspicion that is exactly what most of this information is designed to do – both in the mainstream and in social media.

I have done, and continue to do, my personal work; unwinding the unhelpful thought patterns and beliefs that I unwittingly adopted in my childhood. I do this so I can think more clearly, without getting waylaid or triggered by old fears.

In a life where I wasn’t unwinding my trauma, I was distracted going around the same old loops, having the same old arguments, the same old guilt trips, and the same old unhelpful stuff. I spent too much time worrying about what other people may be thinking or worrying about other things that are outside of my control.

This brings me to a conversation with another friend, when I said “I reckon most people have been getting born, then spending their life distracted. This feels like the start of an era of moving beyond the distraction, gaining clarity on who we each really are, our authentic self and who we came to be”.
Who were you born to be this life?

If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Risk Your Friendships More in Order to Be Fully Loved, What Are the Right Questions to Ask Right Now?, What to Do if You Feel Trapped By Your Circumstances, How to Break Free of Addictive Relationship Patterns and You Don’t Need to Be Perfect to Make a Breakthrough. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.

He arrived home, like a great gust of forceful energy sweeping in the door. “Where is the charger?” he snaps. “You’ve packed the charger when I need it?”

We were going on holiday, I had been packing while my partner had gone to work for the morning, we were leaving in under an hour. I’ve left out some expletives, but suffice to say it was a tirade that was neither respectful nor even rational far less loving.

It’s the kind of thing that happens under stress and, in similar scenarios, in the past I’d have felt the sharp edges of it like a personal sting and lashed out in defence – particularly if I was also under stress. And let’s be honest, life can be stressful.

But I feel like I’ve awoken from a long sleep. Instead of being locked in a cycle of anger and resentment, I’m now able to be an observer more of the time. What I observe can sometimes makes me think “Really? I’ve been putting up with this?”, but on the other hand, I am no stranger to poor behaviour.

Being hyper attuned to others feelings, I have tended to suppress my own until they all spill over and unleash in more of a volcanic reaction. I can be loud; when I was growing up, a parent from a rival swim team once asked my mum if she fed me on raw meat, such was the strength of my voice in leading our team’s chant. When I open my mouth to refute something the indignance in my voice carries force.

The times I have reacted angrily have rarely been in proportion to what has actually happened. It is more like my reaction to the sum of every similar experience I’ve ever had, remembered in mind and body. And it’s fair to say I had never moved far past my teenage rebellion towards the things in my upbringing that constrained me, I just became more refined in how I expressed it.

The term nature versus nurture is commonly used to describe who we were born as (our essential nature) versus who we become (the reaction to the sum of our experiences). Personally I suggest that developmental trauma is probably a more accurate description than nurture.

I certainly come from a time in society where children were to be moulded rather than nurtured to blossom into our full potential. Little was understood about subjects such as secure attachment and attunement, only now am I seeing more discussion about this in the psychology fields. It seems like the general approach to parenting is slowly changing, but there is lack of good education and role modelling.

I heard a description by, I think, the internationally renound family therapist Terry Real, that states the journey of our psyche from the wounded child to adaptive adult (the ‘grown’ rebellious teen also known, in my view, as most adults on the planet today) to the integrated adult, one who learns to take all prior experiences and integrates them in a healthy way.

That has really been the foundation of the journey to me. To give an example I’ll turn again to my favourite document by Claire Zammit and Katherine Woodward Thomas on the self limiting thought patterns people tend to have and the associated gifts those are pointing to.

As a child I felt pretty powerless. I had to do what mum and dad said, let’s face it, they held all the cards. In reaction to that powerlessness I’d aspire to be the leader rather than the follower in life, and I had a hard time being vulnerable, rarely letting people know what I needed.

I’d present myself to others as though I had it all together and didn’t need them for anything, put up an invisible shield against hearing the whole truth, covertly letting others know I only wanted to hear positive feedback, and usually failed to have other powerful people in my life with permission to coach me.

This meant others would not perceive me as having problems or needs, they may have experienced me as unteachable at times and may have had a hard time contributing to me because I already seemed to know everything.

So I’ve had to find the kind of role models I aspired to, and learned to listen deeply to the wisdom of others. I’ve had learn to hold power alongside equally powerful peers, to simply say “I don’t know” and stay open to new possibilities,  and am learning to tolerate uncertainly as one of the most powerful places to be standing.

According to Zammit and Thomas, one of the gifts of having believed I was powerless, and having acted so independently in order to gain a sense of power, is the potential to hold a tremendous amount of power in the field and have the ability to lead others to unprecedented levels of their own empowerment.

The deeper truths, that I recognise, are that I love to learn and everyone has something valuable to teach me, and I am here to serve the full empowerment of others.

So when it comes to hearing something these days from a loved one that is less than loving, less than respectful, and devoid of appreciation, I am able to observe rather than react angrily. I can do this because I have done the work to both become aware of the self defeating beliefs that were invisibly shaping my life and have reshaped these beliefs based on the reality of my life today.

That does not mean I should allow someone to treat me in a demeaning manner, I teach people how to treat me by what I do and don’t accept. But because I can observe what is going on in a more objective way, I am now generally able to talk to my partner – or whoever happens to be the perpetrator - about these little outbursts in a way he can hear me, and he tends then to adjust his approach.

He is not deliberately acting that way to demean me; he is acting that way to gain power because of his own invisible and unhelpful belief patterns. We each have our own work to do.

While my work is not done, I feel well on my way and – more importantly – I have uncovered many ways and methods to help me and others. Instead of lapsing into an angry or depressive state I have learned to welcome these blots on the landscape of my day as they are there to show me the way home to a more expanded version of myself.

​Is it possible you harbour learned but invisible beliefs about yourself and your life that could be holding you back? Are you willing to look at them in order to receive the love, appreciation and respect you deserve? I hope so, because that expanded version of you is the one you’ve been waiting for, and the one our world needs.

If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy I Am a Recovering Approval Seeker and Control Freak, What I Love About Being With Narcissistic People, What to Do if You Feel Trapped By Your Circumstances, How to Break Free of Addictive Relationship Patterns and You Don’t Need to Be Perfect to Make a Breakthrough. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.

I was reading an experienced tutor’s words and he said to his students “The first step of the process (of learning this method) is to respect your own value. Understand that you have skills and talents that can change someone’s life.”

It made me think about the times in my corporate career I’d sat and refreshed my work resume and how much effort it had taken me to really hone in on those things that were unique to me and had created value.

Ordinarily I’m looking at myself from the inside out, not the outside in, and I am acutely aware of my own doubts and failings – far more so than my value.

But there is a statement I read “My very existence in and of itself provides extraordinary value, and is a profound blessing to all” that really resonated with all I have come to believe about life. I can’t imagine why some people would be created as less valuable than others, like a creator somewhere would be saying “Hmm, that’s enough people with value, now I just need some to fill the space around them with useless folks”.

​So, back in the corporate days, I would sit down and start with all the outcomes of my productivity, and the ways in which I could quantify it. Then I’d look at any praise or feedback I’d received and, finally, I’d go through the list and focus in on the things that I had really enjoyed. 

I also remember formulating my elevator pitch, a short description of what I did and the value it added that I could recite casually at the drop of a hat.

Having embarked on a deliberate journey to project myself from the inside out, my pitch has evolved. 
For example, one of my online profiles says:

After years of working with people and cultures in the field of customer experience transformation, I know true success comes from people like you and I being, well, the real us. Figuring out what that means is a process for all of us. Each week I publish articles sharing my own insights and experiences to inspire you to live the life you deserve – and to help you become the authentic person that our friends and family, our organisations and corporations, governments...our world, needs. To find out more visit shonakeachie.com

It’s been a while though since I revisited it, and I’m now starting to orientate myself to what else, beyond publishing my own experiences, I could do to help others on their journey.
I wondered what my pitch would be in ten years time.

This reminded me about what the ancient Egyptian’s call the ren (they referred to five parts of the soul: the ba being the personality, ka the life force, ib the heart or record of good and bad deeds, shuet the shadow aspects and ren the name).

It is said the ren was more than just a name, it was a secret name, a short phrase that depicted the sum of a person’s experiences that only they (and possibly those closest to them) would know. Knowing someone’s ren held power, it is like a concentrated or condensed version of a person’s authentic totality and a hyper condensed version of an elevator pitch.

I admit this idea of a ren is appealing; it calls to my desire to really crystallise who I am. From that perspective my ren feels like a work in progress, yet to be revealed. The most concise statement I have for me right now is something like “Seeking a way to put to good use that which was lost and now is found”.

I suspect there is some gold among the last few years of learning, discovery, healing and child rearing. And, probably like in the days of writing my resume, I could start by casting the net wide and just listing the things I’ve been doing and then start to really consolidate that down into the value I’ve gotten and created. The journey and growth these last few years has been huge.

For example, I uncovered a belief that I felt – to a degree – invisible.

Claire Zammit and Katherine Woodward Thomas outline in this fantastic document the self limiting thought patterns people tend to have and the associated gifts those are pointing to.

As I read through the notes associated with the belief I am invisible, things like not asserting my needs and desires (even when I was aware of them) struck me as true.

It’s no surprise then that others can be completely unaware of my feelings, needs and desires in that context, and can become very self centred in my presence. This could then lead me to believe others are selfish.

In close relationships that could then result in me asking for what I want in ways that are attacking, making an assumption people don’t care about me. Or it could lead to me engaging in selfless service to the point of exhaustion and depletion rarely presencing my needs and desires.

Zammit and Thomas go on to describe the skills and capacities I may want to cultivate to evolve beyond this false belief (that I am invisible) and then go on to describe the gifts it offers and the deeper truth statements that represent more of my authentic self in relation to it.

For example, they write “You possess a deep capacity to see the invisible, the ability to hear what is not being spoken, and to discern that which has never been made known before”.

That one document is abundant with phrases that encapsulate the deeper exploration, learning and growth in relation to the pursuit of my authenticity these last few years.

That one document is abundant with phrases that encapsulate the deeper exploration, learning and growth in relation to the pursuit of my authenticity these last few years. That my inner and outer perceptions are now closely aligned has given me a deeper respect for my value, I no longer feel like some imposter is out there acting as me.

In fact, as I read through the document and recognised many of the unhelpful beliefs about myself I’d uncovered using various methods – many of which were self driven - it gave me a much greater appreciation and respect for the journey I had undertaken and the value those experiences can add to the lives of others.

Perhaps it is time to take a fresh look at yourself and all that you have achieved in order to appreciate your journey and its effects a little more, and start to respect your own value? 

If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Value Your Unique Perspective – Especially When You Feel Rejected, What Support Are You Blocking Yourself From Receiving?, How to Live in Conscious Self Awareness in the World and You Don’t Need to Be Perfect to Make a Breakthrough. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.

Image by CJ from Pixabay

Eckhart Tolle, a master teacher on the concept of presence, said “Stress is caused by being here but wanting to be there”. I can relate to this.

When I was at the chiropractor, I asked her what she had noticed in my body this week and she said “It was twisted, it easily untwisted but it was twisted none the less (in my usual left hip to right shoulder pattern) – like you are being pulled in this direction and that direction”.

As soon as she said it I pictured a tug-of-war, rather like Dr Dolittle’s fictional Pushmi-Pullyu animal being pulled in different directions. It made absolute sense to me because it’s how I feel when the family are all at home and I have things I need to do, yet they are clamouring for my attention.

Of course, here in the southern hemisphere, it is school summer holidays, but this year – with so many lockdowns in process – I am sure there are many parents around the world contending with the same issues and on more intense levels.

For my kids I’ve found there is balance needed between planned activities and having enough downtime in order for boredom to kick in.

School takes care of much (often unwanted) planned activity during term time, but during holidays that falls more to me. Though as the kids get older they obviously have more of their own ideas and plans, which can bring about a whole other level of conflict and logistics to manage.

Another of my favourite Eckhart quotes is “Stillness is where creativity and solutions to problems are found”, it has also always been the place in which I am most in touch with my own thoughts and feelings, my sense of self, which is something I desire for my kids also.

When boredom kicks in for the kids, though, I both relish and dread it.

I dread it because it is a temporarily painful experience for me, they start to complain and pick fights with each other, looking towards me as a beacon of hope to solve their boredom and their conflicts. However, I have found that it is often wiser if I avoid doing either, and simply give them each some positive attention before turning my own attention back to whatever I was doing.

But I also relish their boredom because, once they get over this hump – which they do (and they do a lot quicker without devices on the scene), I see the magic of their creativity come to life.

This used to create other issues as, when they were younger, it often involved turning our lounge into some fantastical kingdom, which could look like someone had taken the contents of our cupboards, strewn them over the floor and then stirred with a big spoon. However, as they get older, they get better at tidying up with less intervention.

Then, of course, there are the other things that need to happen, like clothes being washed, food purchased, meals prepared, alongside the support I provide to my partner in his business. And because none of this really floats my boat I heed Annette Noontil’s advice:

“It is best not to do more than 50% for people because it takes away their opportunity to learn and grow. If you have to do 100% for someone make sure you are learning something for yourself from this opportunity.”

Which is why I make it a priority to type these posts each week, it’s my time to really sit down and take in what lessons are presenting themselves.

So when I ponder on what I really need to know when I feel pulled in these different directions, here is my take out:

• I have a tendency towards people pleasing, and the fact I feel pulled in different directions is a signpost to relook at the lessons I’ve learned about what being hyper attuned to others’ needs and feelings has taught me, including defining and asserting my personal boundaries.
• No one will respect my needs and desires unless I prioritise them; I teach others how to treat me.
• In my situation, no one is going to die if I don’t get the balance right between doing too much or too little. But the fact I’m feeling so torn probably means I would more likely benefit from doing less; my expectations of myself are too high.
• Nothing needs to be perfect, whether I get it right or wrong for me, the kids and/or my partner, there are always going to be things I can learn and grow from, so either way I’ll get where I want to go. As my gran always said “What’s for you won’t go by you.”
• Be present to whatever is happening in the moment. Even in the process of typing this up, I’ve had to press pause a number of times and switch my attention to conversations with the kids and with my partner and each interruption provided an opportunity for connection with people I love.

With humanity experiencing so much turmoil right now, I imagine many people feel pulled in different directions. What is your life trying to teach you? What do you need to know right now to feel less torn and more present?

If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Do You Need to Heal Your Boundaries?, When the Thing That Binds You is the Road to Freedom, How to Stop Being Triggered by What Other People Think, How to Break Free of Addictive Relationship Patterns and You Don’t Need to Be Perfect to Make a Breakthrough. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.

I asked my young niece how she would describe love without using the word love and she responded “it is what you feel for someone who is important in your life and the person/people who you would always want to be around until the very end”.

Aside of being my favourite answer to this question so far, it also made me look at the people I love in my life through new lenses, are these people I want in my life until the very end? Thankfully yes. But there have been times in the past when I’d have said no to that question and, inevitably, these people are no longer in my life, which is why it feels like a good litmus test for me.

But I can’t think about love without thinking about emotional entanglement. At the core of my discoveries about life, is this notion that as I was born into a family with a mother and father who – probably like most parents – loved me and wanted a good life for me, but that meant moulding my behaviours and my thinking, even my feelings, so that I fit in with what they and society expected from me.

Let me give you an example. Just today I watched a little boy (he was about one-year-old) and his brother (who was perhaps around three-years-old), playing with a ball. The infant boy clearly wanted the ball all to himself and got very upset every time the older boy went near it.

The kids were split up, neither allowed to play with the ball, and while the older one was clearly upset, the younger one was totally beside himself. This is a great saying as it reflects extremely well what is usually going on in the physical body; the consciousness is no longer at home. He was crying, loudly, clearly distraught, now well away from the ball and the parent was sternly telling him “no” over and over.

But what does “no” mean in a situation like that? If I project myself into a one year old’s psyche, completely devoid of rational thought, this would hold limited meaning beyond my parent’s disapproval. Of what? Of me. Does it mean I am wrong to be this upset? I can’t help feeling the way I feel. Am I not allowed to feel the way I feel? How the heck do I reign in such huge, overwhelming feelings?

As to questions about whether I’m not supposed to be acting this way, showing how upset I am or embarrassing my parents, or not being selfish with the ball, that is way beyond the realms of my young mind, way way beyond. I just need this adult to be able to handle the totality of who I am and all my feelings, if he can’t, how can I?

But the adult can’t or won’t and, since I depend on him to feed me and look after me, I have to take that part of me that is really upset and shove it deep deep down inside – over and over until I learn to suppress my true feelings with such ease I no longer even identify with them.

So then I grow up and my friend watches someone blatantly step in front of me in a line and I say nothing, even though that person then takes the last – say, soda – that I really wanted. My friend can’t believe I never said anything. I am annoyed of course, but I don’t want to create a scene, it feels wrong and, frankly, a bit scary.

My own kids are a bit older but still at an age where they are dependent on my partner and me for their survival needs, and there have been many moments when I’ve been on the parent’s side of that kind of example, and many moments that I too have not acted the way my kids would have liked me to.

Of course, they couldn’t tell me that, they could only express their big emotions which left me feeling turned inside out, in a tug of war between the child-part of myself that learned to suppress such feelings (and would not have dared embarrass my parents like that in public because it would have had consequences) and this other part of me that wanted to figure out how to let my kids express themselves authentically.

This meant my kids’ experience of me was rather schizophrenic, until I was able to learn new ways to deal with situations like that - both inside and out- more consistently. Generally now, if my kids get upset, I simply acknowledge how they are feeling and how I would probably feel like that in their shoes, it’s amazing how it takes the resistance and momentum out of a situation and calms things down.

Yesterday we visited a park with lots of families around and, aside of being grateful for our relative freedoms here in New Zealand, I watched with interest as children universally mirrored their parents, for better or worse. I could envision fast forwarding twenty years and many of those children rejecting the many parts of themselves that mimicked their parents, and their parents before them.

I find myself thinking “These kids take their cues from us, and we are just screwed up kids in adult bodies, they deserve better. Some wear their broken parts more obviously than others.”

In fact, my daughter asked me today who I liked better when I was growing up, my mum or dad. In the not too distant past I would have avoided answering that, out of some sense of misguided loyalty or fear of creating a rift in their relationship with a family member.

Instead I gave an honest answer and I was very clear that my preference was based on my cumulative experiences of kindness versus harshness.

There is another emotional entanglement when it comes to love. Should love be easy or hard? I think perhaps love it easy when it reflects the authentic part of me. But given I spent most of my life walking around in a skin made from experiences such as the one I described above, I did not spend most of my life projecting the authentic me into the world.

Whether my relationships have been easy or hard, they have all reflected back to me what I did or did not want, and therefore have been enormously helpful in pointing the way towards reclaiming the real me.

I am both the injured person and the person beneath the injury after all, and that does not mean I should stay in a relationship because I can see a person’s potential.

Within my relationship with my partner, after our kids came along we got to a point where we didn’t know if we even loved each other anymore. We were mirroring so many parts of our entangled childhood selves and experiences – parts we had denied, suppressed and disowned. And because we loved ourselves enough, and chose our family over going separate ways, we worked on changing who we each are – the less tangled versions.

It reminds me of a Viktor Frankl quote I heard this week “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” He goes on to say “When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.”

In my case, while I could have changed my relationship status, I have been in enough relationships to see certain thought, emotional and behavioural patterns recurring, and there came that time to look in the mirror and be honest about what I was contributing that was creating those patterns.

So is love an adjective or verb? It’s both a feeling and a action. But because of these entanglements from childhood, until I figured out who I really am and connected with others from that place, it kept creating entanglements in adulthood.

When my niece then asked “So, Auntie Shona, how would you describe love without using the word love?” it gave me pause. I like her definition, especially when I think about all these entanglements created by parts of myself I’d denied, disowned or suppressed; I wouldn’t have wanted to be with that version of me to the very end, I really didn’t love myself enough.

But I also think of love as being our natural state, when things really hum, life happens with ease and I feel good. When I am not in that state it’s a calling card to become aware of what’s actually triggering me, who I truly am, and own it and appreciate it and put it out there.

So just how important is your definition of love? Regardless of what your experiences have been to this point in your life, we each have the opportunity to experience more love in our lives, starting with the way we feel about ourselves.

If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Risk Your Friendships More in Order to Be Fully Loved, What Support Are You Blocking Yourself From Receiving?, How to Live in Conscious Self Awareness in the World and You Don’t Need to Be Perfect to Make a Breakthrough. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.