It feels good to feel good. This sounds like an obvious statement, but I had actually forgotten how good it feels.

An old friend of mine sent me a link to a song this week, it reminded him of some time we had spent together with our swim team way back in 1985. We then got to reminiscing about old times, as is our tendency when we have touched base now and again over the years.

I enjoyed the conversation, being reminded of simpler, less encumbered times always feels good. I suspect this happens a lot in the era of social media. What I notice though, is this often ends up in an emotional entanglement, especially between men and women; it certainly used to for me, because I would attribute my feeling good entirely to that person.

What has changed for me is my perspective. As I got older there seemed to be more that made life complicated and weighed me down. If things got particularly bad, I would attribute those feelings to a person or circumstance and often move on.

Then I got to a point after a lot of life changes when I looked in the mirror and realised the only way I was going to feel good about myself and my life is if I changed what was going on in the inside. Really, every article I have ever written is a reflection of this journey of personal growth and change.

Catching up with my friend gave me a bit of a litmus test on how far I’ve come. Going back to those days of childhood innocence, of what fun, love and heartache at twelve and thirteen feels like, is light in contrast to my life today.

More importantly, it gives me something tangible, a real feeling point within me, of what I’m aiming for as I actively seek to become less encumbered in my self-limiting thoughts and beliefs by reaching for new ones.

As we caught up on our lives today, we both share in common having started a family rather late, we laughed at ourselves having taken on such a foolish task in our forties. Of course I love my children, but there is no denying that parenting is a strenuous task, one that pushes me beyond the brink of my comfort zone most days.

Life at home, with two adults trying our best to provide a good life for our highly spirited children, is challenging. I’ve come to appreciate that my partner and my kids are reflecting back to me all those self limiting beliefs and narratives I have going on in a very intense way; it’s like a boot camp for personal development.

I’m also aware, that in the past, in the time before I looked too deeply into the mirror, my gaze would have fallen on my circumstances and the people in it, and I would have felt my dissatisfaction towards them instead of the real culprit.

In fact, thinking about my time in the swim team again took me right back to that juncture in my life when I started to look outside myself in a really tangible way for other people to make me feel good.

Having grown up in a family with two parents who were solidly together, and often against me, I thought I was half of a whole, and somewhere out there was my other half. Certainly the messages surrounding me in society supported that, especially all those happily ever after Disney-type tales.

It took me a long time to realise that I am actually whole within. As I said, there were a lot of self doubts, fears and other self limiting beliefs that certainly made me feel less than whole, but as I have started to address those I have a real sense of just how whole, and what a powerful creator of my own reality, I am.

It is quite a lovely thing to have people in my life who are an emblem of a life less encumbered and remind me of the feeling I’m working towards.

Another example from that early juncture in my life is my grandparents, who died when I was fourteen. While a part of me would have dearly loved to have known them better as an adult, I know instead I am left with a sincere impression of something very precious; I still feel my grandad’s interest in my swimming and see his beaming face, and I still cherish within me my gran’s gentle eyes, and her care and kindness.

I like to think of my friend, grandparents and others, as my soul family; people and circumstances that represent a part of my essential self, the one I wish to reclaim.

Even in my adult life, my partner and I reminisce the days we used to go out on our boat before the children came along. Although it was laborious getting the boat ready and then unloading and cleaning when we got home, there was an amazingly middle part that made it worthwhile; lazing on the deck, watching the sun dance on the water.

There are many examples in my life of times that felt good when I start looking for them, times shared with special people in my life in the past and present. They are not there to beckon me back towards them and to repeat those circumstances, but to remind me of how good it feels to feel good.

​What or who in your life reminds you of how good it feels to feel good?

If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Great Relationships Happen When You Put You First, Do You Really Know the Different Parts of You? and Get in Touch With What You Want for Your Future – Recognise Your Brain Is Dwelling in the Past. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.

“The wound is the place the light enters you.” Rumi

I saw this flash up in one of the Transcendence 2 episodes about emotional healing, which I had been watching fresh from the heat of an argument.  I’m not going to pretend that I let the light in and had an epiphany at this point, the feelings of the trauma recreated in the argument were still flowing through me and I was basically distracting my mind by watching.

It’s important to point out the word re-created here. I’ve moved past the phase in my life where I’m completely identified with any self limiting thought patterns for any length of time, I’ve stopped labouring on points of principle and right and wrong. But on a bad day, and in the heat of an argument, yes siree, I report for rewind and repeat duty.

Thankfully it doesn’t take long for conscious awareness to kick in, and I realise the details of the argument are not important. What is important to me is to recognise the pattern, and uncover what about the whole interaction poked at an old wound and caused the flare up into automatic pilot.  I try to use each opportunity as a chance to at least let the light in retrospectively.

In that moment, however, I was just too exhausted to do anything more than recognise that this was exactly what had happened. The self righteous voices in my head disappeared and I vowed to look at it afresh when I had the energy, clearly there was some work to be done.

I do wonder sometimes if I will ever be free enough of the encumbering patterns to live life as my kintsugi-ed essential self. Kintsugi is a traditional Japanese art that uses a precious metal (liquid gold or silver dusted with powdered gold) to bring together the pieces of a broken pottery item and at the same time enhance the breaks.

As I’ve said many times, those unhealthy thought patterns really came about from my early childhood, in the process of my making meaning about how to be loved and to survive. I know I came into this life with an expectation of growth and expansion, so I look at the process of taking on those thoughts (which started out as helpful forty years ago), recognising they are no longer helpful, then healing and integrating them, in a similar way to kintsugi.

In a bid to quantify this in some way, earlier today I drew out what I called the pain body. The inspiration came to me after watching an energy healer do work on moving stuck energy in a couple of peoples’ biofield. As she worked through their fields, identifying and clearing traumas, it was very clear that both people viewed trauma differently.

Unlike the healer, I know both these people well. One, who I know to be highly sensitive, empathic and more likely to assign meaning to events, had a significantly larger amount of stuck energy in their field. The other, who tends to be more present in their body, had relatively little stuck energy.

There were also no real surprises in their fields, as both had previously talked about the issues that came up. The surprise was that those issues were stuck in there because of the depth of emotion that had been felt and meaning assigned to them by the individual.

I created a picture in my head of my own biofield projecting out around me with the significant events in my life reflected in it. Within my body I saw the beliefs, the repeated thought patterns, which I had developed as a result of making meaning of these events and their potential to cause disease. While many of my beliefs will have had their origins in the time before conscious thought or memory, the stuck patterns will have reflected themselves in later life events anyway and are likely quite visible.

So I first listed out all the significant events I could think of year by year. This ran to three pages. I thought about the two people whose biofield I’d witnessed being cleared and imagined if I were like the second person, and did not feel so much around me, I’d likely have less than a page.

The usefulness in this thought was really only in appreciating how different we all are. We all carry unwanted baggage around with us, but I have high sensory sensitivity, am an empath and meaning maker by nature so my baggage cart was so full I could not even see myself behind it when I started becoming aware of all this on the journey to me.

“The worst predator is our thoughts” says Dawson Church. If you feel any sort of discomfort that is a sure sign you have emotional baggage. Then one of the other presenters in Transcendence 2 asked “Is there someone you haven’t forgiven?” and I know the answer to that in most cases is me. I am very good at forgiving others, but seem to have unreasonably high standards for myself.

This week, after a nostalgic conversation with an old friend, it took me back to a time in my childhood when I was less encumbered, it was nice to feel into that and get a good look at the girl pushing the baggage cart. It’s a useful technique to imagine a conversation between present day me and child me, because I find it a lot easier to forgive myself in hindsight.

My friend was encouraging my writing and it got me to thinking about some of the other people in my life that have really cheered me on and believed in me, even when I didn’t believe in myself. As I result I decided to get in touch with my first swim coach and share with him what his belief in me had meant through the years, only to discover that he had sadly died back in July of 2018.

I lost touch with him in my twenties, and had kicked myself for not getting in touch with him in 2016 when I wrote Magic Happens When You Believe in People. Bill Tinney was the kind of man everyone only had good things to say about, and he took time out his busy schedule to break things down for me so I could perfect my technique.

After I had exchanged a couple of emails with his son, I walked out onto our deck to take a look at the night sky and, would you believe it, I saw a shooting star. I like to think that was Bill acknowledging he had heard and understood, and was still cheering me on.

I figure if I am going to look at what is encumbering me, I should also look at the good stuff: the things that went well in my life, the helpful beliefs I held, the happy moments and the people who believed in me, those are the parts that are worth dwelling on. In fact, these are the very things I need to expand on to get in a better feeling place more of the time

I’ll finish up with a quote from BrightVibes “Stop being ashamed of how many times you have fallen, and start being proud of how many times you have got up.” No matter how broken, the willingness to take ownership of and examine our broken pieces allows the light to enter and the wound to be healed and integrated into a stronger, less encumbered and more expanded you.

​If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Great Relationships Happen When You Put You First, Do You Really Know the Different Parts of You?, Change Unhealthy Reactions and Get in Touch With What You Want for Your Future – Recognise Your Brain Is Dwelling in the Past. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.

I heard from someone this week who was sorely disappointed with the Mother’s Day she experienced. While her husband and kids had recognised Mother’s Day and given her gifts, it was a far cry from her expectations. She did not really feel seen, understood and – most desired of all – cherished in her role as a mother.

This was similar to some parts work I had been watching recently where a young woman was struggling to reconcile the relationship she had with her grandparents, who had brought her up. Each time she visited them she had expectations about her emotions being seen and validated, instead, she continually felt crushed and unseen in this regard and would take about a week to recover from the sting.

Emotional intimacy was what she yearned for from her family yet, as much as she yearned, she had never glimpsed it in that relationship. The teacher pointed to how the young woman was continually torturing herself. She reminded us that doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results is the definition of insanity.

They explored both the part of her that desperately wanted to be seen and understood by her family, as well as the part within her that did not want to let go of the relationship despite the pain it was causing her. This led to the revelation about other needs she did get met – and value – from that connection with them.

The teacher asked her to consider, that while the potential was there for her family to meet her need to be seen and understood emotionally, there was a strong likelihood they never would have the kind of relationship she wanted and to consider that those needs could be met elsewhere.

Pointing out the power in reminding (that part of) herself (that wanted emotional intimacy), in advance of any visit to her grandparents, of all the wonderful needs that would be met; the teacher went on to make another suggestion.

This was for the young woman to take a more curious approach in her relationship with her grandparents, sort of make it her mission for the visit to get to understand them, their life experiences and what makes them tick.

I did see how – in seeking to understand them better – it would give her something more empowering to focus on, and perhaps even more insight into the emotional world of her grandparents and thus some of the intimacy she had been seeking.

All of this reminded me of some words I first heard almost fourteen years ago, to let go of the cumbersome impossibility of trying to control people and circumstances, when the only thing we can really control is our reaction to what is happening around us.

In both of the examples above I recognise expectations I once had of other people too and won’t pretend that they have completely disappeared. In so many aspects of my upbringing, from the expectations and boundaries that were set around my behaviour and choices, to the role models I had, the books I read, the programmes and movies I watched, a picture was created in my head of what a good partner/mother/father/colleague and so on looks like.

Now I recognise this was all conditioning and, while there are certainly generally agreed archetypes, for mothers for example, expectations do vary from person to person, within cultures, times and societies. As the lady who got herself into a self professed funk over Mother’s Day said, it is literally published, advertised and displayed everywhere.

I feel this kind of sets us up for a fall. As a mother I know I’m still wading my way through trying to figure out my authentic desires versus those that were indoctrinated deliberately or inadvertently. I also know the expectations I put on myself are different to every one of my friends who are mothers; some differences are minor, others major.

In every role I‘ve held and hold in life I used to feel righteous in some ways, a failure in others; now I just feel that each one of us is doing our best. I’ve also noticed I hold a lot of contradictions within myself.

One of the big contradictions going on in my life at the moment is “I want this to end; I don’t want this to end”. A lack of personal space has had me yearning for an end to the lockdown, yet I’ve enjoyed our family bubble and there is a part of me grieving that it is coming to an end.

There have been times I’ve felt understood and appreciated, times I’ve felt taken for granted and used, and times I’ve felt invisible and powerless. There have been times it has been intense. Other times it has been easy. In all of it there is only one thing that has really changed, and that is the script in my head. When I catch myself thinking about what I or anyone else should do, I know I’m just buying into some conditioning.

Sometimes that means I have to go into the shadows and get a really good look at whatever part of me is lurking there, other times it means I just need to change my focus in that moment, it just depends on what has triggered me and how strongly I’m feeling it.

There have also been times in my life when I know that I cannot continue in a role and be true to myself, and I have walked away. But mostly, when weighing up the pros and cons, it’s not the role I need to change, it’s the narrative. Otherwise I live in continual self torture, which is a miserable life and I don’t want to feel miserable, do you?

If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Great Relationships Happen When You Put You First, Do You Really Know the Different Parts of You?, Change Unhealthy Reactions and Get in Touch With What You Want for Your Future – Recognise Your Brain Is Dwelling in the Past. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.

About this time five years ago I watched one of the most fascinating exchanges I’ve seen. It was between Dr Wayne Dyer and Esther Hicks at a Hay House conference as he interviewed the collective consciousness Esther accesses and calls Abraham. He had been a fan of Abraham teachings for many years and was relishing the opportunity to gain some insights from this more abstract level of consciousness within our infinite intelligence.

It is clear in the interview that, as well as acknowledging it in words, Dr Dyer held the Abraham teachings in great reverence. The interview goes on for almost two and a half hours, but my absolute favourite part is towards the end when Dr Dyer, normally the teacher on stage, becomes the student and is shifting uncomfortably as he recognises the wisdom in what he is being taught.

It is a moment of such humanness that it touched me to the core, and the lesson stayed with me. Hay House has just replayed it as part of their You Can Heal Your Life Summit, as they have most years, and I made a point of relistening to it just to hear that lesson again. I’d sum the lesson up as:

Don’t get so stuck in the problem that you continue to feed its energy and exacerbate it, focus instead on the solution and how it will feel to you when there is no longer a problem.

I can only agree wholeheartedly with a review of the conversation when someone named Hank writes “I laughed out loud when Dr Dyer expressed how GMOs (genetically modified organisms) and their corporate manufacturers piss him off. Abraham’s answer is worth the price of the video. Anyone who is an activist can really benefit from taking this wisdom to heart.”

While this is true, I look to that lesson every time anything feels unjust in my life, be it to do with an issue my kids have had at school, a legal stance on natural health remedies or something that is of great public debate. When I feel I am right on some sort of moral grounds and start to feel myself getting hot under the collar, I think of the wise words I heard.

Part of what Abraham was trying to teach Dr Dyer is there are many sides to an argument, and to push against someone is to create resistance, further entrenching them in their position. I know when someone challenges my point of view in an emotive way I can instinctually feel that I get drawn to defend my position. Yet there are usually good points on all sides of an argument and, certainly, one solution does not fit all.

As if to really drive this lesson home again, I got a few extreme reactions to a documentary I shared on social media that was raising some questions about the approach to the current COVID-19 situation. The documentary was subsequently deleted, which I found disappointing especially when there are plenty of videos that attempt to debunk it still live.

Some of the reactions were skewed by one of the points in the documentary, which was questioning the validity and wisdom of mandatory vaccinations. Despite being only one of many points, this immediately invoked extreme reactions on both sides of that debate. So, instead of entertaining that, I posted this:

“I've deleted my posts lest they divert your attention from what I believe is the most important point here.

What I'm most interested in is the freedom of people to express an opinion, and I'm disappointed that big platforms continue to remove things like this. I don't believe in absolute truth versus lies, what popular opinion and science presents as truth continually changes, just as what I personally feel as my own truth continues to grow and evolve.

It’s interesting but very human for people to call a whole documentary crazy sauce because one person featured in it has been debunked as crazy by a faction of society. Our human tendency is to debunk everything someone says if they disagree with our core beliefs or motives in some way. I don't believe nor disbelieve what was said as a whole, but the documentary made some interesting points that resonated with me.

Let us all be free to express our own views and explore others because the only gate keeper of our own truth lies within each of us. Trust that.”

Interestingly, with the topics removed from the discussion, and as if to underline the lesson I had reheard, this new post got far more positive interest than the previous ones. I don’t have a transcript of that interview, but here in summary is what stuck with me from that iconic conversation about GMOs:

Noticing the problem is a good thing, just don’t get stuck there. Dr Dyer spent most of the conversation trying to get Abraham to acknowledge what he saw as the problem with genetically modified foods and was talking about a commitment he had made to actively educate people about the problem.

One person who is actively focused on the solution is more powerful than millions who are not. If you do get stuck in the problem, as is the human tendency to get in the middle of things, eventually (assuming there is enough desire for change) a solution will come about. However, this means enduring a lot of unnecessary suffering.

Dr Dyer was talking about how the fruit being sold on Maui no longer had seeds in it, and Abraham asked him “all the fruit?” “Well” said Dr Dyer, “80% of it.” The answer? “Focus on the 20%, on how delicious it tastes and how good it feels to know the natural fruit can be replanted in the back yard from its seeds for generations to come.”

There is a moment of obvious frustration where Dr Dyer says “But won’t you at least acknowledge the issue?” With that, Abraham challenges him “Can you acknowledge that, on the other side of the fence from where you sit on this, there might have been some benefits to the human race in GMOs?”

Abraham was certainly not advocating for GMOs, the wisdom was instead pointing to an acknowledgement of the many sides to the argument. Even if one of those sides is the economic benefit, as it invariably is, it is a hard task to pit heath against money on moral grounds, the viewpoints on an individual level are far more complex.

In short, Abraham’s advice was to stop beating the drum of the problem and, instead, get out and promote the benefits of naturally grown, delicious foods. That is the approach with least resistance and the approach that invokes the energy of the universe in our favour.

I write these articles in humble acknowledgement that these are my own lessons. While I did not get particularly triggered by the reactions to the documentary I posted, or it being removed, I can admit that I did get very triggered by something of no significance at all on the world stage; an email from one of my children’s teachers about building will.

I think we are all activists on different levels, with different topics really activating our flight and fight responses, be it a niggle in our day to day existence or a debate of global importance. Any issues that activate us, whether big or small, are the ones that most benefit from taking a broader view, focusing on the solution, and creating a vision of the world in which we want to live.  

If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy What You Give Your Attention to Is Your Greatest Contribution, Change Unhealthy Reactions and Is This the Opportunity of a Lifetime? If you would like to see or read the exchange mentioned in this article it was released as a book and DVD called “A Conversation Between Master Teachers – Co-Creating at Its Best”. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.

I was reading an analogy of 2020 today as a year that was full of promise that seemed to get off to a false start.

Anne McNaughton’s said “Imagine Usain Bolt, the fastest sprinter in the world, lined up and hyper focused. The starter’s gun goes off and they bolt out of the starting blocks but then an alarm goes off – it is a false start and the runners, one by one, realising this at different lengths down the track stop, turn around and no doubt say a few choice words. A lot of mental preparation had to go into getting off to the best possible start and that has all been destroyed. There would not be many happy chappies in that line up”.

This is true, and I can’t count the times my partner has said “2020 isn’t at all how I imagined”, I suspect few could have imagined it this way. However, it has its silver lining; it has given many of us – and the planet – much needed breathing space.

Tomos Robert’s four minute video The Great Realisation, published this week, sums this up more beautifully than anything else I have read or seen to date. It is read as if written in the future, a father narrating a story to his children that explains why they say hindsight is 2020, well worth a watch.  

To pick up on the theme, this has certainly been an opportunity for me to get clarity on many things I would not have otherwise been able to see. With an end to lockdown in sight here in Aotearoa (New Zealand), my thoughts are turning to concrete actions that were not centre stage before we went into lockdown. It is a real chance for a do-over.

One of the things that has become crystal clear, having been forced into home schooling, is why my kids are normally so resistant going to school. Other than the big first day of school, which brought with it a sense of coming-of-age excitement – neither of my kids have ever relished going to school.

I can now see they haven’t grasped some of the basics and – as the curriculum advances – they are feeling more out of depth. It is hard for me to relate to this as I had no problem learning in school but my partner, who has ADHD and we suspect is dyslexic, spent most of his school years completely unengaged in class.

I do remember watching those in my own class at school who struggled and, even at that young age, could see the classroom environment wasn’t serving them. The last thing I want is my kids to spend the majority of their days in flight or fight mode from being forced to learn in a way that doesn’t suit their brain. So, as we start turning our heads towards life beyond lockdown, I am actively seeking screening and exploring alternatives for them.

Just as I have reflected on the children’s schooling, my partner has also had time to reflect on his work-life balance. For the first time since starting his business a few years ago, due to the lockdown, he returned a zero revenue balance last month. Things have truly gone back to the starting blocks in many ways, and allowed for a reset around expectations and workload.

While I highly recommend listening to Tomos Robert’s The Great Realisation video, there is another short video I want to share that might make you smile and lighten your heart. It was made by a family in Akoroa, here in New Zealand, and really captures the spirit of the family lockdown opportunity in a fun way with the Family Lockdown Boogie.
 
So while 2020 might not have got off to the start we were expecting, it may just have given us exactly what was needed: a chance for a do-over. What have you learned from this lockdown? Do you need more time for reflection? Or is it time to make your way back to the starting block and win at 2020 and beyond?
 
If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Is This the Opportunity of a Lifetime?, Are You Overlooking the Obvious Opportunities in Your Life? and  Be at Ease With the World Around You. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.