Image by mbulalwanga81 from Pixabay

Listening to Lynn Twist talk to Tammi Simon this week, she said that the more she herself suffered the more her perspective shifted from helping people to serving people. As a recovering people pleaser and fixer, I can relate to this. Her view is that helping suggests the other is weak, fixing conveys they are powerless whereas serving acknowledges they are whole.

Then I was listening to Katherine Woodward Thomas talk about a pivotal moment in her life when she was sharing her intention for a major change in her life and her friend said “I’m going to hold that intention with you and for you if you give me permission to hold you accountable for being who you need to be in order for that to happen”.

Now, many years on and having achieved and surpassed that original intention, when she wants something she takes the time to envisage it in her five senses, to see how it feels, tastes, smells, sounds and looks in her body, and if it feels right she asks “How will I need to grow in order to receive this? What or who will I need to let go of? And what is my next step?”

While she is a proponent of who we are becoming rather than what we are healing, preferring to focus on the future rather than the past, she fully recognises that “A critical part of what we need in order to achieve different outcomes is to look at who we are being. What beliefs do we hold? What is our world view? That is where we get stunted if we don’t know the consciousness we are speaking from”.

One of the things Katherine is well known for is her book and teachings about Conscious Uncoupling. She says “Your next coupling will reflect how well you uncoupled from your last partner, how you’ve learned, expanded or grown – or not”. That can of course be applied to career roles, other roles we hold such as parents, community members as well as friends and partnerships.

A few years before my last relationship ended I chose to become more aware of the patterns that had repeated again and again in my life across different areas and the consciousness I was speaking from. Katherine’s joint publication with Claire Zammit on the unhelpful patterns at play in my psyche continues to be one of the most useful resources in my work.

But that also opened up a sense of grief, for who I had been, fully identified with the fake self that was created though early relational wounding, which is another way of saying many of these patterns emanate unconsciously from early childhood.

A Buddist monk once told Lynn Twist that “Grieving is medicine for the attachment, when the grieving is done all that is left is love”.  I think this applies to all grieving, be it someone we love who dies, a relationship that has ended, or the person we used to be.

Underneath all this though there is a “me” that is absolute and unchanging. It’s not the me I identified with most of my life, but it’s the me who inwardly reflects back whether I am at peace or out of sorts.

Caverly Morgan, whose practice included 8 years of training in a silent Zen monastery, challenges us to recognise who we are in the timeless sense. One of the best exercises she found to demonstrate and feel into this unchanging part of ourselves, is to get into a meditative state and then bring to mind who we were at age 5, how that felt, and then once we have a good sense of that do the same in 5 year increments. Then look for the common “me” at all those ages.

I’ll confess the first time I did this I kept tapping into “anxious me”. However, Dr Laura Berman talks about “finding your home frequency” by first grounding ourselves and then thinking of a time in our life when you felt pure, unadulterated, all-is-right-with-the-world joy. Go into that scene as if it’s happening right now and you are experiencing it firsthand (not watching it happen) and notice what the sensations in your body are. If I do that exercise in the 5 year increments I get a profound sense of the timeless me.

Uncovering my authentic self is an ongoing journey, sorting through many of those unhealthy patterns, figuring out what my own needs, wants and values are, learning the skills and capacities to hold boundaries and communicate those, and recognizing and handing insecurity in myself and others with compassion.

And, as Katherine Woodward-Thomas says “We don’t become ourselves by ourselves. We all need support to become ourselves fully. We all need health in our relational field, people who are holding us and uplifting us and can help us to realise the higher purpose of our soul’s calling”.

But that is also another lesson, recognizing that I am choosing that for myself. In the past I would often be attracted to people for their potential, and hang onto some of those golden moments of glimpsing it in relationships early on, and then get disappointed when they didn’t realise their potential. Briana MacWilliam makes an excellent point that unrealized potential can be as much of a soul purpose as realized potential can.

Thus it’s been an important lesson to me to serve only those who are not only asking, but in ways that support the degree to which they are willing to become who they need to become in order to realise their desires.

And that is also part of the grief process for me, letting go of my attachment to other people’s potential and loving both myself and them for who we are right now, in this very moment. Because it’s from here that I am not resisting myself, and I can embrace the journey to becoming who I need to be to realise my desires.

So who is the you that is showing up right now? Do you love that you? And who is it that you need to become in order to achieve your desires in life? How will you need to grow in order to receive this? What or who will you need to let go of? And what is your next step?

If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Life of Your Dreams? How Would Life Be Different if You Believed in Yourself? Be Purposeful in Your Focus - Your Glass Is Actually Still Half Full, Dreams May Be Free but They Are Also Essential to Progress and Make the Invisible Visible - Celebrate the Gold in Your Emotional Reactions. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.

I was reading my course notes on healing attachment wounds this week and marveling at the ways my attachment to certain feelings, expectations and beliefs shows up in my life through relationships.

While I learned about attachment theory at university many years ago, I’ve enjoyed this deep dive into understanding the neurological wiring and physiological responses the survival part of our brain drives depending on whether closeness or distance feels safer to us.

As Briana MacWilliams explains, this wiring is determined by the extent to which the parenting we received was supportive and loving versus critical and demeaning and many of us grow up with insecure attachment styles. That said, our wiring is malleable and will change if we meet the growth challenges. In other words, I can feel more secure by:

• understanding attachment wounds more
  
• recognising when I’m triggered
  
• learning to differentiate between what is reasonable and unreasonable
  
• developing better communication skills
  
• and meeting my own needs while also respecting those of others.
  

Attachment styles can be thought of in the sense of whether we behave in ways that are highly avoidant or highly anxious, with those who are low in both avoidance and anxiety being considered more secure in themselves. There are many ways and layers with which to define this, but broadly those with:

• anxious attachment tend to struggle with feelings of unworthiness, respond to a familiar type of emotional unavailability in partners, are terrified of abandonment, will do anything to preserve the relationship and tend to get stuck on potential and wind up settling for “the best they could hope for”. When they feel threatened they try to control the situation. In other words, this type will avoid anxiety by searching for temporary relief through an outside source. As Briana says, “It’s like putting numbing spray on a festering wound”.
  
• avoidant attachment tend to struggle with feelings of rejection and a fear of being consumed.  They believe that relationships come at the cost of personal freedom and need a lot of space. In other words, this type will avoid anxiety by being dismissive and cutting themselves off/withdrawing from outside sources. In Briana’s words “It’s like cutting off a whole limb to treat a minor abrasion”.
  
• disorganised/fearful avoidant attachment (who can be both highly avoidant and highly anxious) want love and connection but are also afraid it’s a façade, that they are being manipulated and used. They tend to be predictably unpredictable and to cut themselves off, dissociate and then attempt to reconnect. In Briana’s words “It’s like numbing a wound before cutting off the limb and then trying to sew it back on again”.
  
• secure attachment generally are open to new relationships, believing they meet people when the time is right. They are looking for shared values, goals and emotional honesty and know that compatibility is the true foundation for lasting relationships and connection.
  

One of my close friends and I often fall into what’s popularly called “the anxious –avoidant trap”. The person with anxious attachment (me in my unconscious “wired” state) moves towards intimacy, and the person with avoidant attachment (my friend) moves away from intimacy to regain their space. It’s been very useful to recognise this pattern, though in truth my friend is probably more wired with both anxiety and avoidance reactions.

It is perhaps a sign of rising to the growth challenges anxious attachment presents that I am able to now recognise this pattern and, despite loving them deeply, have no desire to be in a romantic relationship with them while they maintain such a fear of emotional intimacy. I’m quite happy to have them as just a friend.

I have noticed, however, just how often my old patterning can kick in and I feel quite hurt about something they have said or not said). When this happens I now take a look at the narrative in my head running those hurt feelings, and unearth whether these (generally) unspoken expectations are reasonable or unreasonable.

Once I shine a light on whatever is driving the narrative I often discover I’m being unreasonable with both myself and them, and old patterns and beliefs are running the show. I acknowledge that is not always the case, I have also learned the hard way to discern through other relationships when more toxic patterns emerge, like gaslighting, and then it’s time to disengage.

However, if I can see I’m being unreasonable, and old patterns and beliefs are at play, it provides a good opportunity for me to reframe the narrative in a more healthy way. I described one way to do that in What Resentment, Frustration and Pain Have to Do With Your Boundaries but there are many ways to do this and it’s been a matter of finding what works for me in which situations.

It’s with regularity lately though that I see that many of the painful feelings inside me are less about unearthed healthy boundaries, and more about a narrative that no longer serves me or that I actually even believe anymore.

Just this week in a conversation with my friend about something that happened many years ago, I felt that familiar pain arise and started to take stock. My whole “poor wee me” narrative was just one perspective, my friend had quite a different take, both wounds were fuelled by fear and had elicited our typical anxious/avoidant dance.

Then I realised there is no feeling they can elicit from me that isn’t simply a reflection of what is already within me. And it’s a choice as to which of those feelings, which of those expectations and beliefs driving those feelings, are actually true for me now.

I have no need to subjugate myself. That was a coping mechanism which, as Briana MacWilliam puts it, “was once the most functional way to get one’s needs met in a dysfunctional system or environment”.

More often than not, it’s a simple decision to take a more mature, more secure stance that shifts the feelings within me. It’s about holding true to the types of feelings I want to feel but letting go of attaching those to any particular person. That can also mean letting go of relationships with specific people entirely on occasion, but more often than not it just assigns them to a different category in my mind.

In this way I can see I’m actually not so quite “attached” to my feelings, expectations and beliefs are I thought I was. As I grow, emotional fragility becomes emotional intelligence, gullibility becomes adaptability, self abandonment becomes forgiveness, desperation becomes expression, smothering becomes nurturing, people pleasing becomes more healthy generosity and kindness and self depreciation becomes self reflection.

In what ways could you grow by reexamining and attaching new meaning to your feelings, expectations and beliefs?

If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy I Really Want to Go From Overwhelm to Clarity and Confidence, Ways to Reach for Growth Rather Than Reacting With Old Conditioned Constriction, Put Mature Parts of You in the Driving Seat for Better Results  and Overcome the Greatest Human Fear – Be the True You. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog. With thanks to BrianaMacWilliam for the insights and guidance.

This week brought an end to a busy period for me over our summer, where my attention has been focused outward and I haven’t had a lot of time to think about either my present circumstances or my future hopes and dreams.

The first thing that happened was I fell into a slump, the reality of where I am versus where I want to be hitting me like a juggernaut. Sometimes it’s easier to keep busy and just not think about “what is”, but then that line of thought spiralled me into grieving for the decades of my life where I’d done just that.

It's like author Edith Eger talked about in relation to the concentration camps, when she was imprisoned her focus was on survival and keeping her soul in the light. When released she became imprisoned in the darkness of her mind until she finally grieved and processed what had happened in the camp.

I have a close friend that shows me frequently, inadvertently through their own situation, a reflection of the prison I'd put myself in for many years. Also, given their generous and kind nature, they unconsciously illustrate to me the ridiculousness of people like us subjugating to others who take advantage of that nature without getting our own needs met, nor receiving any reciprocation of respect or kindness.

That looking glass is there in my life to – among other things I’m sure - allow me to grieve for my own poor choices that I made in the past. That, coupled with the loss of distraction, and I felt quite depressed at the landscape of my current reality. Heaviness had set in across my chest and I found myself ruminating about “what is” and “where to next”.

Currently I sit in an in-between space in my life, in between shaking out the things I don’t want and attracting all the things I do want. I’m very aware as I transition into a new phase of my existence I’m journeying towards aligning my inner and outer worlds in every area of my life.

More and more I embrace the saying my gran repeated many times “what’s for you won’t go by you”, more and more I have absolute trust in the flow and serendipity of life.

However, it is hard to be in the flow of life when I’m spending too much time noticing that my “reality” isn’t what I’d like. It’s like one minute lying back with my lifebelt on just enjoying the trip downstream, then the next deciding it’s all down to me to get where I need to go and struggling against the current to get to the bank and exit the river and do it all on foot.

To stay in the flow I have to make “now” fun, give myself something to be excited about. I was reminded by another friend of my own inner voice speaking about a year ago when I had to start negotiating the time my children would spend at their father’s house versus mine:

"Use this time (without children) not to fulfil tasks and be productive but to fill your heart. If you will fill your heart it will change your vibe and the rumination will naturally drop away".

I’d been drawn to an article this week about unique ways to start having fun, but when I did some of those I was still stuck in my spiral and it really just pointed me back to the things that are currently not in my life that need their own time to manifest. However, there were some great ways in there to uncover your heart’s true desires. It reminded me of the saying:

“If you want to know where your heart is, look where your mind goes when it wanders”.

So my friend jumped in with a little bucket list exercise, and once I’d laid out the big stuff (my vocation and intimate relationships) that need their own time to become evident and for me to be in the right heart space, it cleared the way for ideas to come up around some of the things I can do now or at least plan to do in the near future.

For example, I am booked to travel and see family overseas this year and, although I will have my children with me, it also provides an opportunity to catch up with some dear friends I haven’t seen in many years. I’d like to travel there more often in future, once in seventeen years has in no way been enough so I’m excited about this second trip.

That of course led to a discussion about travel and all the places in the world we would like to see, some of which I could certainly plan in the next few years. Then we got on to talking about perhaps going to some kind of retreat, or going to see one or two of my favourite teachers at a live event, something to directly nurture my spiritual side.

And inevitably this opened up a much wider realm of possibilities for all sorts of things I might want to pursue right now, from a wardrobe revamp to other things I want to study and learn about.

As we batted ideas back and forth, it sparked some light into my life again and I do feel more excited about the possibilities that lie in the present.

Sometimes it’s just not possible to make certain dreams come true this very second. However, in order to enjoy life and to be in the right frame of mind, heart space and open to receive when things do line up, perhaps it is time to consider what possibilities there are that you can get excited about in your life right now?

If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Have Fun Not Knowing What You Want to Offer the World, Meditation – the Cornerstone to Your Success, How to Withstand the Assault of Self Doubt and Go After Your Dreams and When Life Is Getting You Down – How to Lift Yourself Up. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.

Recently I saw a post that stated “You are the average of the five nervous systems you spend the most time with”. This is a derivative of Jim Rohn’s assertion that “You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with” but the principle still rings true for me.

When I exited an unhealthy relationship, in the months and years that followed both my osteopath and chiropractor observed the difference in my nervous system.

Author David Burkis said, when researching the science of social networks, he found that we are indeed influenced by the people around us but that influence doesn’t stop anywhere near the five people we spend the most time with. It’s far more dispersed and research suggests it includes people we haven’t even met yet.

He concluded “You’re not the average of the five people you surround yourself with. It’s way bigger than that. You’re the average of all the people who surround you. So take a look and make sure you’re in the right surroundings”.

As writer Maarten Van Doom points out “The people you surround yourself with:

• Shape who you are
  
• Determine which conversations dominate your attention
  
• And affect which attitudes and behaviours you are regularly exposed to”.
  

Burkis cites the example of putting on weight, when people we know put on weight we are more likely to also – and when friends of friends put on weight that also increases our likelihood of weight gain. Van Doom explores the question of trying to live well, and proposes that we surround ourselves with people we admire.

Sound advice given that research by social psychologist Dr McClelland of Harvard concluded “the people you habitually associate with determine as much as 95% of your success or failure in life”.

I know from my early years in an intense personal development programme, it can be easy to interpret that as material success, but experience has drawn me more to resonate with the following quote by Sasha Tozzi, which I have posted on my wall.

Choose people who:

• Choose you
  
• Ask how you are
  
• See you
  
• Let you be you
  
• Feel good to your nervous system
  
• You can breathe easily around
  
• You don’t need to perform for
  
• Are good for your mental health
  
• Want to see you win
  
• Don’t try to control you”
  

That isn’t necessarily the story in most people’s childhood, and that is where friends become incredibly important, certainly they were for me. Then, as I grew, and got involved in more romantic relationships and career dynamics, the people I were drawn to were often challenging.

Those challenges, as I now see them, were like unconscious do-overs of the early relationship dynamics that I wasn’t in control of. It would be oversimplifying things if I said I was subconsciously trying to prove my worthiness, but along the right lines.

In essence, I’ve metaphorically hit a lot of brick walls and bled out to grow on a soul level.

And as I sit in an in-between space in my life, in between shaking out the things I don’t want and attracting all the things I do want, I am feeling - by and large - pretty nurtured by the people I associate with these days.

But I am turning more towards the desire I have to help people navigate life from love rather than fear, taking them back to simplicity and reminding them to do the things they’ve forgotten. And I’m orientated to being with someone kind and secure in themselves, with whom I can feel the deepest sense of belonging, companionship, wholeness and love.

So this timely reminder about who I associate with is perhaps right on cue as a reminder to engage with others who already embody these things or have already attracted them into their own life. Others who inspire me and stretch my thinking in the direction I want to go.

As you think about your life, and the people you associate with, in what ways do they reflect the life you want to live? Are there boundaries that need strengthened? People who you perhaps need to let go? Others you might want to attract?

If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy How to Attract People Who Love You the Way You Are: Accept and Approve of Yourself, What You Give Your Attention to Is Your Greatest Contribution, How to Withstand the Assault of Self Doubt and Go After Your Dreams, Stand in Your Own Truth and What Do You Want From Your Relationships - Time to Take an Inventory? To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.