I got an email today from someone in lockdown who is struggling to see any of the positive aspects in her life. It is serendipitous as I’d just been ruminating on the messages life has sent me over the years that I’d completely missed.

In hindsight I can see that some things I disregard or push away are the things I need to embrace. In fact, all the things in my life that feel uncomfortable, stressful or painful are all telling me something important.

The general thought pattern in my head goes like this “The thing I feel most inspired towards/want the most is X (fill in the blank), this particular issue has nothing to do with that and it doesn’t inspire me so I’m not going to focus on it.” In fact, it is fair to say I usually feel it would be easier to focus on all the other, less important, things if only I could have the one thing I desired the most first.

That blank (the thing I feel more inspired towards/want the most in my life) has been different things for me at different times. It’s not something that usually changes on a daily basis, but rather something that becomes an overarching or dominant theme for an extended period of time. And the longer I don’t have it, the more strongly I want it and the more I think about it, yearn for it and feel its absence.

As I was reminded by Claire Zammit in her Unlock Your Feminine Power talk recently, I do have aspirations in all areas of my life, and it is often helpful to focus on something of less importance in order to create some positive momentum.

There is no greater example of this in my life than when I wanted to start a family. After years of trying and four unsuccessful pregnancies, as I describe in Food for Your Best Life, it was only when I felt I’d done all I could and decided instead to focus on my overall health and wellbeing the way forward presented itself.

However, this is obviously not a lesson easily learned for me as I still have a tendency to focus on my main desire to the exclusion of all else. Yet when I turn to the other areas in my life that need attention, and are usually easier to get traction on, I get so much positive momentum. Usually, in hindsight, I see they were all intrinsically linked like a magic code to unlocking my deeper desire.

I’ll give you some examples. Despite my experiences that led to finally having the family I had dreamed of, I had gotten off track with my diet after the kids arrived. For a number of years I knew my body fitness and health needed some attention but it was not my dominant theme. My dominant theme was about uncovering my life’s purpose.

I allowed myself the excuses of a busy work life and a busy home life, and had argued in my mind that I could get through until about age sixty without making drastic changes, by then I’d have the time and energy to focus on it as the kids would be grown.

Then a couple of years ago life decided it had enough of my crappy excuses and sent some stronger messages as I contended with my first kidney stone, which I wrote about in What Are Our Thought Patterns Really Doing for Us?

I knew the changes that I wanted to make, I wanted to take up swimming again and eat a diet that resembled something consistently closer to nature rather than anything processed. Having given my mind permission to ignore this until I was sixty, my body rebelled.

My body had decided instead that my mid-forties were more suitable and delivered me some straight forward calls to action through my osteopath as I wrote about in Get Moving to Get Moving: Where Physical Exercise Fits into the Soul Journey and Listening to the Signs – My Road to Health.

In the midst of this I realised my life’s purpose - as discussed in How My Kids Helped Me Find My Purpose (and it is not them) – and my deepest desire then evolved into a desire to understand how to live my life’s purpose, how to be of service in the here and now.

Meanwhile the relationship I have with my partner is another example of an area of my life that was (and is) important to me, and it wanted its time in the sun despite my attention being focused on how to live my life’s purpose. As this year got underway, having come out of the long summer school holidays here in the southern hemisphere and an extended visit from a family member drawing to a close, I was ready for a big out breath; finally some time to myself.

However, only four days later my partner had an accident. Instead of out working, he found himself at home, incapacitated, for a few months. To give this context, he is a person who likes to be productive and enjoys being out and about serving his customers, meanwhile I enjoy the solitude that (and the kids being at school) brings.

This happened before our country was particularly concerned about the spread of COVID19 and a month before lockdown. I won’t deny that I had my moment of anguished “why me?” and “are you kidding me?” cries to the universe. My partner and I had not spent that much time alone together since before the kids were born and, while it required some major mental shifts on both our parts, it was a true gift.

Now, in light of the lock down, it has actually turned out to be such a blessing. That time together enabled us to be on a more solid footing together before the kids got added to the 24/7 environment.  As I described in Is This the Opportunity of a Lifetime? It is allowing us to work on our whole family dynamic and relationships.

Would I have chosen any of these things? The answer would be an emphatic no. However, I cannot deny that these are all areas of my life that are flourishing as a result of giving them some positive attention. That being the key, I think, they are all now receiving my positive attention rather than the negative light I saw them in beforehand.

Another area of my life coming to light, that I have been pushing away for some time, is about creative expression. I decided the other day that – while we are all in isolation together – I have to find a project I can work on in snatches that gives me an outlet for expressing that deeper part of me. The obvious answer, since I love to explore and focus my thoughts through writing is to write a book (or at least start one); something many people have suggested.

This idea is one I have never really felt inspired towards, but when I consider how uninspired I was about improving my health and relationships, and how well that has turned out, I’m thinking it’s an idea at least worthy of consideration since it keeps coming up.

It also tackles another area that I’ve been ignoring, and that is taking time for myself when the rest of the family are around. If ever there was a prime opportunity for cultivating that it is now.

There is a quote by Rumi “what you seek, is seeking you”, so what is seeking you right now? What challenges are you facing, and therefore what opportunities are staring you right in the face? If ever there was a time to really confront the obvious, it is now.

If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy in Life Really Does Support Your Deepest Desires (And How to Access Its Support) or What to Do if You Feel Trapped By Your Circumstances. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.

In New Zealand we have gone boots and all into lockdown this week after initially taking a getting-slowly-sucked-down-the-plughole-of-coronavirus-control-measures approach since the first case was reported here at the end of February.

I guess, having watched our fellow humans across the globe tackle it in different ways, the government here decided we were better to jump to the most stringent control measures. So one day, when our kids were at school, there was an unexpected nationwide address at 2pm announcing all this. By 3pm our kids were being picked up along with all their schoolwork, and non essential businesses closing for a minimum of four weeks.

While I know there are people who are worried about having enough income to get through, I feel gratitude for the decisive action the government here have taken, and what appears to be relatively good communication, support and quick decisions; it is quite refreshing. We have one friend who, within a day, received a decent hardship payment, but I am sure it is not all plain sailing for everyone.  
As I pondered the irony of finding myself overnight taking on the role of homeschool mum (a role I have always rejected in absolute self awareness despite my views on Evolving Education) I related strongly to a funny post someone shared “Day One of Home School: Two Students Suspended for Fighting, Teacher Fired.”

After a few days of infighting I decided that this was a golden opportunity for us as a family to get on a calmer footing and learn to communicate with each other more respectfully. In Be Accountable to Your Intentions and Find Blissful Peace I wrote about a tick sheet I created for myself, towards the end of last year, that was titled “I will speak respectfully to my children”. They get to decide each day if I get a tick or a cross.

Dr Laura Markham says “How can you expect a child to learn to control his own emotions if you don’t control yours? … If you were yelled at, it takes tremendous work not to yell…it’s not rocket science, it takes about three months.”

I followed her advice and, having seen it in action for a good few months, the kids were happy to get on board with a tick sheet of their own. For every five ticks, my youngest child gets a glass crystal, once she has collected five crystals she gets to choose what we, as a family, do for an hour. She has in mind our first activity: nail painting, including her dad.

I am also thinking about other opportunities for the kids to dictate their own learning and pace for a while, as well as looking after my partner who is currently undergoing a lengthy recovery from a rather bad riding accident.  Of course this is all while ensuring I take care of my own needs.

With the pace of life more natural than at any time since my childhood, this all feels like a golden opportunity to recalibrate. While we are not allowed to drive to the beach to take a walk, we are allowed to walk around our local neigbourhood, which has plenty of greenery.

I am also feeling blessed we have a garden that needs just a little bit of tending each day. It is enough to keep me connected to Mother Nature and not too much that I am overwhelmed, especially coming into autumn here. Our neighbours are friendly and helpful, and chats through the hedge and across the street are a welcome connection to other people outside of the electronic highway to everyone else.

My partner and I had already started an online course with Kelly McGonigal 40 Days to Positive Change, which is another blessing as it is not time heavy and supports all the changes we have had to make, as well as ones we want to make.

I’m even feeling blessed about the surge in theories and conspiracies, all of which are always interesting, I especially like this one as it made me think about what a virus (any virus) actually is. I don’t fully resonate with the conclusions, and - as always – I advocate just taking what resonates for you.

However, I’m not wading too deeply into any of that as these largely point to things outside my control at this juncture and there is a fine line between keeping myself informed and creating needless fear. It is much better that I focus the vast majority of my time on the things directly before me and on maintaining presence.

Meditation is always a non-negotiable for me, only fifteen minutes a day, but it keeps me consciously aware of my thought patterns and feelings and helps me course-correct pretty quickly. Last night when one of my kids refused to settle down to sleep, and kept bouncing out of bed well over an hour after her usual bed time, I found myself screaming “I just want to have some time to myself!” In light of that, today, Sunday, I’m taking some time out.

So is this the opportunity of a lifetime? An opportunity for us all to slow the pace, to reflect and think and make positive change? How can you turn the negatives into positives, what opportunities lie before you right now?

​If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy in Base Your Actions on Love Not Fear, What Is the Deal with Conspiracies? Want Better Health? Be Shrewd About Stress or Get out of Your Head and into Your Heart. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.

I can see that loving me for who I am, today, not what I can be tomorrow, and loving my life for what it is today, is a worthy goal in every respect. But if I can’t do it today, if I can’t love myself, will I beat myself up? Or will I allow in enough love, enough understanding, to be gentle with myself and simply try again tomorrow, knowing I am doing the best I can?

I don’t find it easy to be kind to myself. Growing up I learned I often had to be something else, someone else, than who I was being in that moment, to be loveable. This was inadvertent, through a combination of messages about acceptable behaviours and my parents’ reactions to my thoughts, desires and requests; it was certainly not intentional on their part.

Then, in early adulthood, I fell totally and utterly in love. Finally, I felt I had someone who could love me for me, someone who brought out something more light-hearted in me. But less than two years later, he left me.

As I was swallowed by a gaping chasm of pain, loneliness and grief, I blamed myself for being too needy and too serious.  Maybe I was those things, but I can see now I was still loveable; the only person who didn’t understand that was me.

I beat myself up about that for decades, decades, and kept playing out some version of needing to be more in my life in order to be happy. And did it make me happy? No, according to an amazing lady I met recently who has the capacity to reflect back to me exactly who I am being in that moment, formidable is what I have become.

This is not gentle; it is not kind; it is not loving; it is harsh.

With my partner incapacitated at the moment, having broken his leg, this is probably the most time we have had together since our children were born. It has led to some interesting and introspective conversations about the things our children are reflecting back to us, things that we might want to change about ourselves and our habits.  

I’ve always known how different my partner and I are, but what these conversations have crystallised for me is just how self satisfied my partner is versus my opposite sense of self dissatisfaction.  He has a self satisfied light that beams from him; it was one of the first things that attracted me to him.

In truth, I believe that light is within us all, it is just that it’s often obscured.

In our parenting, while my partner and I each recognise aspects of ourselves that are less than desirable, our reactions to that are quite different. I am hard on myself, feeling less than, and driven to change. He is far gentler with himself and, while wanting and committing to change, still remains essentially self satisfied.

It is not that I haven’t felt the satisfaction of the expansive and joyful feeling of connecting with the source of who I am, it is more that many of my thoughts and beliefs disconnect me. The sense of self worth I have was not built from the inside out; it was built on trying to please others outside myself.

This is something I have sought to fix on the journey to me, and I have spent the last few years getting to know many of the parts of me that I have denied, rejected or disowned. But my reaction to these recent conversations with my partner has given me another lens through which to look. I can consider that the path to enlightenment is also, paradoxically, another path upon which I can opt to beat myself up.

Spiritual growth is something I thrive on, and there is no doubt it is a good thing. However, if I see the growth as necessary for me to be somehow more worthy than I am today, then I know that is not serving me. It is, in fact, contradicting the very growth I seek.

Being gentle with myself, while learning to love all the parts of me, is something I am yearning and learning, slowly. It takes vulnerability and willingness to set strong boundaries around my own needs and desires.

Meanwhile, I know that every day of my life I’ve done the best I could, with what I knew, felt and believed at the time. I can’t change the past, but I can change how I view it, and I can certainly change how I view things in the present.

What about you, how hard are you on yourself? Do you fear that going easier on yourself will lead to more disappointment or not meeting other people’s expectations? Do you feel worthy of love? I like to look at it this way, would you benefit from more love? And if you are not able to give it to yourself, do you think others will be able to love you enough to make up for that?

I pray that we each find ways to let the love in, because I don’t have to use much imagination to picture this world full of people who are withholding themselves from love. But a world full of self loving people?  Now, that would be quite something.

If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Why Resenting Your Parents is Healthy, You Are the Gift Your Ancestors Gave to the World, The People Who Hurt Us Are Vehicles for Our Growth, Whose Energy Is This Anyway? Stop Taking on Board How Others Are Feeling and You Are Not as Important to Your Parents as You (or They) Think. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog. Heal Your Past Hurts To Help You Fulfill Your Potential.

I want to acknowledge the many awful moments that my children have experienced the worst of who I am. Moments where I’ve dropped into flight or fight mode and spewed forth the worst of who my parents were to me in those same moments.

You know the moments, the ones where you suddenly realise how much you sound like your mother or father?

I also acknowledge the many awful moments in my life where my partners have experienced the worst of who I am. These were the moments I also dropped into flight or fight mode, or the sympathetic nervous system response, reacting to something that reminded me of the way I was treated as a child, only this time I wasn’t powerless to hold back my fury at such treatment.

You know the moments, the ones where you feel criticized, undervalued, blamed, or the many myriad of emotions that our parents used elicit in us as we were growing up?

I am not perfect, and I am not always right, if there is such a thing. But I do observe most of us walking around as our child selves dressed in adult skin. The real test is under stress, which is when we revert to old patterns.

I know that it would have helped me a lot growing up to have heard “it is not you; it is my stuff that I am dealing with”. Instead I heard “it is you, it is your bad behaviour that is making me act like this towards you.”

As a child, I had no context of the family history, I had no concept of what either of my parents had suffered themselves growing up, but I saw it written in their behaviours, and I thought I was to blame.
This is not about the atrocities that happen, though it applies to those things too, it is about the far more pervasive emotional abuse that occurs unknowingly in most households.

If I interact with others outside the home and have friends and colleagues who think I’m a nice person, it is lovely. But if I then walk through the door of my home each day and become someone less than lovely, it is a huge warning sign that I’m being inauthentic. 

The exhausting pretense of going out into the world and acting in ways I was taught and learned were appropriate means I then come home and am too tired, perhaps too hurt even, to keep that all up.
How I interact with my children, the example I show them in terms of my own emotional equilibrium and how I maintain it, is everything.

I can yell at them from the kitchen like a director shooting a movie and expecting absolute compliance, or I can walk over to where they are and look them in the eyes while talking to them. I mean, if I had a guest in my house, I wouldn’t just yell at them would I?

I can carry on yelling at them to hurry up while I myself am barely making it to the car on time, distracted by a message on my phone. Or I can ignore my phone and be more present with my kids and help get them to the car on time with much less fuss. Heck, we could even make a game out of it.

All of this seems so ridiculous and yet it is normal. Generation after generation unintentionally and unwittingly repeating wounds and hurts; until someone says “no more”.

For me personally, I have to be that person. I can’t accept behaviour from myself that perpetuates constant pain and mediocrity. If I am to fulfill my potential, if my kids have any hope of fulfilling theirs, we must unburden ourselves of these patterns.

​From all I have been able to ascertain, although many people tend to spend many hours in therapists offices around the world delving into their childhood, it takes more than just recognising where these behaviours and patterns come from. I have known many people able to recite quite aptly exactly why they are the way they are, and yet feel powerless to change.

Despite the best of intentions, without actual healing taking place, each time I get triggered, my sympathetic nervous system is turned on and, boom, I am back in child mode. That takes a huge amount of willpower and persistence to overcome.

True healing only ever seems to take place if the memories of the relevant events are refocused while in an open and relaxed state. As I mentioned at the outset, it would have helped me a lot growing up to have heard “it is not you; it is my stuff that I am dealing with”. Instead I heard “it is you, it is your bad behaviour that is making me act like this towards you.” That creates a shame state which is totally destructive.

Instead, if I can go back into some of those early memories in a relaxed state, preferably guided by someone who is experienced in this type of work, I can acknowledge that child-me deserved better. I can then refocus the memories away from an attachment to me being somehow bad, by recognising the real culprit; my parents’ own childhood traumas.

In Your Childhood Is Not Your Fault but It Will Be Your Limitation I talk about The Completion Process by Teal Swan, one of the most powerful techniques for healing I’ve used (and continue to use). Here is a link to an enlightening video of her doing this process with a client, it is certainly excellent at demonstrating just how early in our life these traumas occur and the patterns begin, and how to heal them.

There is also this other article that gives a great overview of trauma recognition and releasing techniques. Marisa Peers is another good self help source. Family Constellations is a possible way to go; there are many ways to conquer our shortcomings and suffering, it is just a question of finding something and someone who works for you.

As I said to someone else this week, you are never too old to heal. If there is breath still in us, I believe it is in fact our duty. I truly hope that you will make the quest to give yourself the love you deserve a priority in your life. It really will be a huge gift to you, but also an amazing legacy for your family. I will be cheering you on and celebrating as you step into your best life, giving us all hope and inspiration.

​If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy You Are the Gift Your Ancestors Gave to the World, The People Who Hurt Us Are Vehicles for Our Growth, Whose Energy Is This Anyway? Stop Taking on Board How Others Are Feeling and Want Better Health? Be Shrewd About Stress. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.

“Humans are the most violent and the most compassionate creatures on Earth, the most destructive and the most creative” the commentator said. I was watching a short video about what animals think and feel and it concluded that all animals do think and feel to an extent; it’s just that humans are more extreme.

If I dwell on the atrocities that have and still do occur among humans, it pierces my heart and makes me feel small and helpless. But if I spend time focusing on compassion and creativity; I feel that the whole world within me opens up to a brighter and better future, because it helps me be more present in the world instead of enslaved to my past.

Shauna Shapiro talked about this very issue in a podcast I was listening to this week, about having an attitude of kindness and curiosity to allow the parts of the brain, that increase our motivation to learn and create more of an open perspective, to function freely.

In contrast, she pointed out that when we get stressed we shuttle resources from learning and being open and receptive to survival pathways (the fight, flight, freeze, faint responses) and we are unable to learn. Here are the words that resonated for me:

“Really, when it comes down to this basic understanding of how we learn, I think this is why our educational systems, parenting systems and many others have failed, we learn when we feel safe and interested, and that is the kind of internal environment I want to help people create for themselves.”

This, I believe, is the very way to make a positive difference in the world today. And it is no more obvious than in our closest relationships. Shauna Shapiro mentions parenting and, as a parent of two young children, that certainly rings true. As I’ve often quoted, in the words of Dr Gabor Maté:

“It is often not our children’s behaviour, but our inability to tolerate their negative responses that creates difficulties. The only thing the parent needs to gain control over is our own anxiety and lack of self control.”

In Reclaim the Sovereignty of Your Soul I conclude “The anxiety we feel as parents in response to our children’s negative reactions, is the same anxiety we felt as a result our own parent’s reactions.”

But the same is true in our other relationships. James Redfield’s model of the control strategies that we each develop in order to stop others draining our energy is summarised in Your Childhood Is Not Your Fault but It Will Be Your Limitation.

For example, I noticed how defensive I got this week when my partner tried to talk to me about how he was feeling. Rather than feeling safe and open to really hearing him, I automatically sprang into a mode that felt nothing short of pull up the drawbridge, secure the perimeter and ready the cannons.

I then noticed how this pattern, rather like a blame game of tennis going back and forth, was reinforcing the patterns from our respective childhoods. To use James Redfield’s Interrogator archetype, he says if a child is constantly questioned, criticized, nagged and faults found, it makes the child self conscious and erodes their confidence.

As I grew, I learned how not to let my energy be drained in this way and, instead, refuted each criticism admirably, tussling to maintain an even field or win the upper hand. However, on the inside, the criticism ate me up, which is why I became such an approval seeker (see I Am a Recovering Approval Seeker and Control Freak).

My partner has his own demons, but none of these are really the fault of our parents, these patterns have been repeating subconsciously for generations. I think it is highly unlikely there is a person alive today who is not dealing with some version of this. In fact, I would bet that beneath the mask of history’s most vile monsters and egotistical maniacs is a small boy or girl who is hurt.

What makes this time in history different, I believe, is that many people are becoming aware of the roots of our shame and insecurities. This is a time in which I am free to explore taking different roads of action in my closest relationships.

Learning to feel safe and curious is a process. Certainly my kids don’t shy away from blaming me for everything in their life they are unhappy about, and I often feel my partner is not far behind them. At what point did I become an emotional dumping ground I wonder? This too is an unhealthy pattern pointing to a need for healing within me.

While I’ve discovered The People Who Hurt Us Are Vehicles for Our Growth, I also find that most people are still quick to blame others if they are unhappy; few seem to take responsibility for their own growth. It does seem a tad unfair that I’m taking responsibility for my own thoughts and feelings, rather than blaming others, and at the same time having others blame me for their woes.

However, playing boo hoo is not going to serve me nor help me move forwards. As I wrote about in Whose Energy Is This Anyway? Stop Taking on Board How Others Are Feeling I am learning to notice when I’m taking on others’ negative energy, and ways in which to deflect their own feelings back to them. My old patterns won’t die overnight, but they are getting more recognizable.

Knowing these for what they are gives me a greater sense of safety, and being interested in what others are thinking and how they are feeling, creates a sense of compassion for them as I gain more clarity on their deeper issues and realise we’re all tussling with the same things.

That does not mean I have to accept blame from others. As Buddha said, if you give me a gift and I don’t accept it, it is still yours. Therefore, if you are angry, resentful or frustrated at me, it really is up to me to decide whether or not to get insulted and angry in return.

In fact the gift I recognise is that on some level I am still blaming myself as I did when I was a child, creating this constant need to be perfect and not elicit any criticism. I am quick to defend externally and quick to accept internally.

So I have to look at each thing directed at me and be curious about whether this is something I need to take accountability for, or is this something that is about me learning to love myself more, to have self compassion.

If we can each begin to recognise our patterns of thought and behaviour and regard them with curiosity and self compassion, we will slowly start to change the patterns of behaviour we reflect into the world. Won’t it be fabulous to hear far more compelling tales of compassion from our species than violence, and see many more examples of creativity than destruction? Now that is a world we can thrive in.

If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy What Do You Want The Prevailing Global Culture to Look Like?, We Can Live in Harmony. How Can I Create a Better World?and Be an Evolutionary (Rather Than a Revolutionary). To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.

I had been watching a video on the topic of people pleasing last week, and having healthy boundaries, and was thinking I was less of a people pleaser (in the sense of saying yes to them when I really want to say no) and more of an approval seeker.

Although I will make the decision to say yes to me, I often explain my rationale, I want people to approve my right to make my own decision, whether they agree with the actual decision or not is unimportant. I’m like a dog with a bone. In fact I recall someone describing my use of words as both a gift and curse. She likened me using explanations like using a drug, and feeding others on that drug. 

I have a clear understanding of where this comes from. As a child I, like most people, was taught that what I wanted was less important than what others wanted for or from me. There were punishments for disobeying or misbehaving, and so – being strong willed and persistent - the coping mechanism I developed was to try to persuade (generally my parents, then later teachers, coaches, employers and partners) through logical argument.

This need for approval could also be called a need for validation. After pondering this I serendipitously got sent a short video called Validation. It’s quite cool, a great little pick me up and reminder that we each have amazing and unique qualities that we would do well to focus on. It does, however, perpetuate this idea of other people validating us before we can be happy.

As I said in The Magic of Those Who Believe in You, those people who have and do lift me up in life are truly magical; I need the cheerleaders for sure. But what about those others, the ones I love and who love me, who may want the best for me, but are limited by their own horizons?

Marlena Tillhon-Haslam says “The way you treat yourself and how you let others treat you shows how much or how little you really value yourself. So notice the standards you set. Notice what you tolerate. This will tell you whether or not you value yourself.”

I notice. As someone who firmly believes that there is no one right way for everyone, that we all have our own opinions and priorities, I long to have my own beliefs and priorities respected. But I have tolerated too much.

From those closest to me, I have tolerated my beliefs about healthcare being derided; I have tolerated my prioritised spending on self care appointments being resented and vilified; I have tolerated my parenting being heavily criticized; I have tolerated demeaning (so called) jokes. I could go on. These are the things that send me into approval seeking mode.

The initial phases of recognition and recovery are clunky. I blurt things out, I talk too much, I feel tears coming and I feel totally vulnerable. But I reclaim the ground my soul is calling me to stand upon.

I have not been perfect either. Dorothy Law Nolte said a child who is constantly criticised learns to condemn, and it’s a habit I notice I step into when I’m feeling resentful, underappreciated and/or overwhelmed; I want to step away from doing it.  I have also done a lot of work on learning from my anger as I wrote about Let Anger Be Your Teacher While Learning to Become Its Master.

But one of the biggest challenges I’ve faced is in trying to save others from themselves. Even though I know I can’t, and should not, I’m adept at seeing ten steps ahead and emotionally attuned to others.
As a result I often try to smooth the way as much as possible, which can backfire, leaving those I’m trying to help feel resentful and me feeling underappreciated for my effort when I should have left well alone in the first place.

While I’ve generally backed away from doing this with other people, certainly around my kids I’m still in that mode. Their tired, emotional meltdowns feel emotionally unsafe because they reverberate with the meltdowns I experienced from adults around me growing up.

Just this morning my youngest daughter, who hasn’t been sleeping well (she is a bit anxious about returning to school), told me she didn’t want to go anywhere today because she is too tired. Ten minutes later she had a big meltdown because I said she couldn’t go on a long bike ride with her dad in a forest that is quite some distance from here.

I knew my partner could really do with a big ride on his own to relax which she is not capable of doing at her age. Based on my experience, I imagined by the time they arrived at the forest after the long drive she wouldn’t even want to actually ride, which would frustrate the heck out of her dad.

Anyway, he had said yes to her, so I wondered why I was even standing in the way of this valuable experience for both of them.  Sure, tomorrow when I’m trying to get her back to school after the long summer break, her tired state will undoubtedly add to the intensity, but tomorrow is another day. She is better being in the forest riding with her dad than here fighting with her sister.

Rather than anticipating others’ needs and trying to smooth the way, I know it is better for me to step the heck out of the way and allow them to learn from their own experience.

But I also honour and recognise the child in me who, as one friend says, needed to ensure they weren’t swallowed up by a world that pressed in on them too much. There is a deep need to belong and be seen and yet a deep fear of belonging and being seen also.

I started to write these articles almost five years age in an attempt to gain clarity and confidence about who I am, and it has given me that. But there was also a part of me using them initially as a way to seek approval for the things I believe in.

Over time it has made it easier to speak my truth, because I now have more clarity and confidence in what that actually is rather than just feeling muddled. Nowadays writing these has become a disciplined way for me to reflect on what life is teaching me in the moment.

As Eckhart Tolle says, “For presence to become deeply rooted, it must be tested in the fire of relationships.” As I continue I create stronger boundaries and slowly start to see changes in how those around me treat me, and how I treat them, I know how perfectly on point these lessons are.

If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy What Happens When You Accept Yourself And Stop Seeking Approval? And My Needs versus Yours. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.

What is grabbing my attention this week is the inner struggle between myself and my connectedness to all else. Put in a different way, it’s about my own needs versus my relationship needs.

On the face of it, these two things often feel in opposition. After all, that is what the journey to me has been all about. My starting point, like most, was enmeshed in the expectations placed upon me in my early childhood years. These were the years in which I learned that what I felt, believed or wanted often wasn’t as important as what other people wanted of or for me.

That early entanglement is undeniably still with me, though to a much lesser extent than when I started the journey to figure out who the real me is. Instead of being completely identified with the encumbered version, I now observe with interest what things trigger me and use the information to unwrap yet another layer of something false.

This week I read some words that took me back to that early inner tussle with life as I emerged into adulthood. Then, as now, my biggest lessons were always to be found in those closet relationships I had.

You may know I’ve been drinking in several novels by Belinda Alexandra lately, and what a joy it has been to find such kindred spirits in the fictional characters. The latest one was no exception, it was like the very echoes of my own struggles within old relationships:

“If you are lonely with me now, neither marriage nor children will help. You are asking me to fix something only you can solve.”

“Perhaps I didn’t believe anyone would be faithful to me unless they were tied to me in some way.”

“Although our beautiful life together came to an unanticipated end, you have left me with an invaluable gift; the gift to be myself...Without this heartbreak between us I may never have discovered that desire.”

“I need more time, I’m just starting to grow into the real me, and I like her. I want to fill her empty spaces myself. I want to be free of shackles and insecurities.”

“I had yearned to belong to someone then because I hadn’t known how to belong to myself.”

As I wrote about a couple of years ago in Great Relationships Happen When You Put You First  I have come a long way since those early, needy relationships. Nowadays I look upon any issues as a chance for me to get to know myself even better and a chance to look at where I’m still buying into early conditioning.

But putting myself first doesn’t mean I win and you lose, it means I’m looking for the win win. For example, right now I’m in the midst of an extended period of social time. With kids at home over the long summer holidays, and family visiting, instead of my usual regular spaces of solitude I’m rarely on my own.

Today, after driving some distance to bring my youngest child home from a stay with her grandparents, I would have liked to have taken a nap. I could have, but it was my dad’s birthday, and spending some time with him also felt important. So I opted for the win win in that, and we went to the beach for a walk. I allowed nature to sooth my weary nervous system while we chatted and wandered along the ocean, the waves working their usual magic.

It’s always an interesting and testing time of year for me. I am finding that, as each year passes, I am coming to know myself better and be more comfortable in dropping the vestiges of that angry, defensive, insecure person I once was in favour of embracing a new way of being.

I think perhaps there was a point, early in the journey to recover a sense of my authenticity, that I had a strong desire and need to withdraw from my relationships and be utterly covetous of my own company in order to gain some perspective and clarity. However, now I’m able to function much more comfortably within my relationships without losing sight of who I am.

There are still times when I drop into the me versus you mode, but I quickly become the observer and start to notice instead what there is for me to learn when I’m getting triggered. In Belinda Alexander’s terms, I’ve come a long was in learning how to belong to myself and – in doing so – am now valuing my connection to everything else in an entirely different way.

Instead of that needy, insecure person, I am now seeing that your needs and mine must be a perfect match or life would not bring us together in this moment. That does not mean that our needs are necessarily harmonious, they may in fact be mutually unharmonious in order to push each of us to resolve our inner struggles.

Versus can mean against, or in opposition, and that is how I used to view my relationships when there were conflicting needs. But now I have come to see that a different definition of the word versus, meaning in contrast to, is much more helpful in order to gain a valuable perspective on my connection to everything and everyone else.

If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy How Can I Create a Better World?, Be an Evolutionary (Rather Than a Revolutionary), Base Your Actions on Love Not Fear, and Let Anger Be Your Teacher While Learning to Become Its Master. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog. 

Earlier this year, when listening to a talk by Carol Look, I did a simple exercise to define what success would look like for me. Being a mum of two school age children, top of my list was the ability to centre myself and find calm amid the storms. More than anything, I wanted my words and behaviours to uplift and inspire rather than cut and criticize.

I have found that one of the hardest things to shake, though, is old patterns of behaviour. It’s been relatively easy to understand intellectually why I might react to someone (or a situation) in a certain way given my entry, upbringing and indoctrination into society; even achieving conscious awareness of my reactions in the moment has been possible with regular meditation and practice.

However, the desire to change only took me so far; willpower and patience oftentimes ran out and old patterns kicked in. Conscious awareness of the often incongruence between my reactions and behaviours and the desire I hold within me for something different only increased my pain.

What has really taken me across the final stretch to lasting change is accountability. In my case, I’m doing this work for my kids and myself, but it benefits every other relationship I have and will have.
In her book Peaceful Parent, Happy Kids Dr Laura Markham says “How can you expect a child to learn to control his own emotions if you don’t control yours? … If you were yelled at, it takes tremendous work not to yell…it’s not rocket science, it takes about three months.”

I followed her recommendation and created a tick sheet for myself that was titled “I will speak respectfully to my children”. They get to decide each day if I get a tick or a cross, and I’m glad to say the result so far is overwhelmingly ticks. That said, I am human and expect there will no doubt be occasions where I’m not a model of emotional regulation.

By declaring my intention and following through with the daily check in, it’s given the kids both the comfort of knowing that their mum at least means well and the permission to pick me up on any reactions that don’t match with the intention I set.

What I’ve noticed, is that the years of practicing meditation and becoming consciously aware of my thoughts and feelings in the moment have paid dividends. I am able to catch myself when I’m becoming exasperated and losing patience.

I remember that my body is starting to kick into flight or flight mode only because of its association with the fears of my childhood. Being late, for example, is not akin to a tiger rushing at me, even though it rendered punishments in my early years and thus created this pattern of anxiety. This is the science and biology of entraining emotional regulation and new reactions; I have to create new pathways of response.

I find my best course of action is to stay connected to the kids rather than spin off into the reactions that long since became automated. I get involved if we are late, calmly helping them to get ready, reminding myself the world will not collapse and I will suffer no serious consequence if we do, in fact, end up being late on that particular occasion.

Accountability has helped me to clarify my intentions in my relationship with the children, and it has helped me to achieve success in that as the new norm. In going through this process day in and day out with my kids, it’s inevitably helped me in all my other relationships too, because I’m now practicing a pause before reacting.

And the silver lining? Because it was top of my list in terms of what success would look like in my life, it’s brought me both a sense of meaningful achievement and a sweet, blissful peace.

​If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Your Childhood Is Not Your Fault but It Will Be Your Limitation . To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog

I was reading a novel last week by Belinda Alexandra, about the Spanish Revolution, and there were some words in there that really spoke to me:

“No one life is wasted. No matter the sacrifices, no matter the appearance of defeat, it will add to the progress of the human race. In all of history there is one thing that repeats itself again and again: all honourable causes eventually succeed even if at first they fail.

Out of darkness and suffering can come hope, joy and progress. The spirits of good people, even if they die in defeat, return through future generations to continue moving the human race forwards to higher and better things.”

In a world where I often feel like I’m talking a different language to those around me, these words gave me both hope and perspective. Thankfully I’m not suffering the dire circumstances of the people of that era, but I often feel isolated in my thoughts, feelings and ideas none the less.

There was another line in there that also spoke to me:

“Self righteousness is the greatest squanderer of time… time that you will never get back.”

These words reminded me of the futility of resting my gaze too long on what is and resenting, fighting or otherwise resisting it. Instead it is more fruitful to allow my gaze to open to alternate future possibilities and weave those into existence.

I experience deep pain and sadness when those around me can’t see the ordinary every day things that keep our true selves from fulfilling our potential. More frustrating is that so many either don’t see it or prefer to remain silent.

​This is because I am here on a mission, I feel the sovereignty of our being is the most important issue on this planet right now; I make no apology for saying this time and time again – in as many ways as I can express it.

Having kids of school age, I am constantly confronted by example after example of Western education and health systems’ dire need to evolve. But that doesn’t come close to the underlying and drastic need to change the fact that it’s big money - and not what is best overall for our people and planet (and all life that exists on it) - that drives our culture and choices today.

​Then there is the pain of watching people I know and love choosing suffering in ignorance of their real potential. I am surrounded by many who are completely identified with how they think and feel, playing out patterns that emanate from their childhood without any conscious observation of the lack of connection to a more authentic part of themselves and everything around them.

I have one editor who likes me to write only about my personal vantage point, using I/me, but we is my personal experience; I’m intrinsically connected to the whole, which is why the first person grammatically is I and we. Your pain is my pain.

Yet I know my perspective is mine alone, I understand this, it is the lens through which I experience the world. I also know my lens is most oftentimes obscured by my own early experiences in life. So I live in a committed routine of becoming aware of those and seeking to create a new, more authentic experience.

People who are educated in becoming consciously aware of their thoughts, feelings and actions, and the cause and effect between those things, will – I believe – make honourable choices about how to treat others; including our living, breathing planet and all of the life it contains.

However, I am aware that by pointing to the everyday things that are not in alignment with that, and complaining about them is only a starting point. It doesn’t create change, and may not even incite the need for it in others. How can I feel heard or respected when many around me don’t even hear or respect their own authentic selves?

The only way I know to reach that authentic part of each being is through inspiration, not exasperation. Therefore dwelling on whether I feel heard, respected, lonely or in pain is not in the least bit helpful.

Like the words that were scattered through the novel I read, or sometimes it’s just something I hear in a movie, or from the lips of someone in passing, I feel the universe is conspiring to light my fire. It lights my fire by helping me to see possibilities.

That too is my mission, to see the possibilities and to express those. I get glimpses of this, but each time I resist what is in front of me in self righteous indignation, the future alternative possibilities slip further from reach.

This is the process I am in right now, it is a quieter time of emptying out, letting go the impulses to act and react in defence, to allow the greater field of possibilities to come into view.

So if at times you do not feel heard or respected, perhaps it will help to think of Belinda Alexandra’s words “all honourable causes eventually succeed even if at first they fail”. The drum beat will become louder as more and more of us join in conscious awareness of the new world we came here to live in.

If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Evolve Our World. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.

One of the things I found myself contemplating this week was the question “what are you most embarrassed about/ashamed of in your life?” I started to recall a night almost thirty years ago, when a younger, heartbroken me cried uncontrollably in front of my ex’s mates after we had all been out for the evening.

One of his friends said something like “It’s not the end of the world Shona” and I reacted by wailing a distraught response along the lines of “You have no idea what it feels like to have your heart broken!” I was completely mortified by my lack of emotional control in that situation.

There are probably things that are much more embarrassing I could dredge up from my past which – on the face of it – would rate more highly on the scale of shame than this, but I was deeply wounded by that break up, and exposing just how wounded was something I always regretted from the moment it left my lips. It left me feeling vulnerable and weak.

I think it’s also true that many people are uncomfortable witnessing a display of raw emotion like that. I was listening to a rare disclosure from Tami Simon (Founder and CEO of Sounds True) about her personal life. Tami admitted that she finds it extremely difficult to deal with her partner when she expresses her emotions; she wants to jump in and fix things as quickly as possible to get away from the intense, uncomfortable feelings.

In Psychology Today Leon Seltzer says “There are many reasons that we may endeavour to hide or disguise the emotional pain that comes in the wake of negative beliefs about ourselves, evoked by a particular person or situation. But what they have in common is that they are all fear based.”

On the journey to uncover my authentic self these last few years, I’ve discovered that tuning into my emotions is important – critical even - for these reasons:

1. They tend to be reliable indicators of my wellbeing and can lead to sickness, injury and harm if I don’t pay attention; if I do, they can lead me to my best life
2. Healthy relationships of any kind come from expressing my authentic feelings in a healthy way
3. Most of my negative beliefs about myself stem from my pretty normal childhood, raised by well meaning parents

Knowing this, when I was contemplating this moment of shame I had experienced after that break up way back when, I wondered when it was that I had first learned expressing my true feelings was not a safe thing to do.

I decided to go back in time meditatively to see what I could uncover, and sooth the memory by bringing in my more aware adult perspective (which tends to then take the sting out of any subsequent related memories).

After immersing myself for a while in the memories and feelings of that horrible night, I then asked when the first time I’d experienced those feelings was. This wasn’t a process of trying to go back through my memories, it’s more about looking into my mind’s eye as if it’s a video screen that is about to reveal to me something that my memories can’t consciously access.

What I saw and felt took me back to a time in my first year of life when I had contracted bronchial pneumonia. Here are some of the metaphysical meanings attached to that: stirred up emotions, wanting to get rid of the thought that you are not in charge, you want to cut contact with those irritating you but you dare not branch out on your own, and, feeling suffocated by a situation.

I can well imagine that, as a helpless young baby I may have indeed felt this way. Being a parent myself, I am also acutely aware how hard it is to know the right things to do for our children, especially in the face of contradicting advice from family, friends and healthcare workers.

One of the things I remember when my own kids were born was the vehemence with which the healthcare system promoted both natural birthing and breastfeeding, and methods such as attachment parenting. This would have been in stark contrast to the healthcare system into which I was born almost four decades earlier, which advocated pretty much the opposite.

I started off in a cot in my parents’ room, only to move into my own room after a few nights since my snuffling noises kept interrupting their sleep. I was breastfed initially but soon moved onto bottle feeding. Healthcare nurses of the time were obsessed about the volumes being drunk, with advice to keep feeding despite baby’s rejection and spilling (a pretty way of saying the milk comes back up from your stomach and out of your mouth). It is no wonder I was such a huge baby.

When I used to cry, I remember my mum telling me that she often used to switch on the vacuum when she had exhausted all the obvious avenues to soothe (Too cold/warm? Needing a diaper change? Needing a sleep? Needing burped? Teething? etc). She said the vacuum seemed to “do the trick”, no doubt I was terrified knowing what I know now about the effects of noises like that on burgeoning auditory systems.

When my own babies would cry and I could find no reason, I’d assume - after reading Aware Baby by Aletha Solter - they just needed to unload some emotions. A bit like Tami Simon’s reaction to her partner’s distress, I noticed most people around me were uncomfortable with my baby crying, even in her mum’s arms in her own home; everyone was always trying to fix this rather than seeing it as a natural way for the baby to de-stress.

What I sensed more in my meditative state than anything was how I used sleep as an escape mechanism. If I just shut my eyes and fell asleep I could forget the turmoil of this new world. Of course, looking back on it all through my adult eyes, I can see we were all just trying to do our best. At the same time, I can see how easy it was for me to pick up the belief that it was better to keep any emotional distress to myself.

Understanding how these ideas have come about is helpful, just as it is to acknowledge that all emotions are valid; we feel what we feel whether we understand why or not.

Tami Simon’s disclosure about her discomfort around intense emotions’ was while interviewing Dr Christian Conte, who is an expert in meeting people where they are, even when someone is in a state of intense emotional distress. In the podcast, Dr Conte talks about how to make yourself a safe space to receive another person, the keys to deep listening and how the primary purpose of validation is connection.

Dr Conte is clearly well practiced in dealing with people when they are highly emotional and has much to teach. This seems to me the real key – practice. Becoming comfortable with my own emotions, being vulnerable and becoming a safe space for other, these are all things that require practice.
In my former years in the corporate world I learned a lot about communications through leadership training and experience. All of that, though, was from a perspective of being wrapped up in layers of beliefs that truly did not originate from my authentic self, they originated from my upbringing in keeping me safe.

Since then, having discovered a lot more about my true feelings, and coming to a clear understanding that there is no right and wrong, only what is right or wrong for any given person in any given moment, I know that this is a better perspective from which to learn.

I completely agree with Dr Conte when he says “one of the biggest obstacles to meeting someone in emotional distress is thinking they shouldn’t be feeling whatever it is they are feeling”. He calls this living in a cartoon world, a world we make up from the beliefs and expectations we have about how we think people should or shouldn’t feel.

He says that once we stop trying to mold people to fit our cartoon world, we can enter the real world and meet people where they actually are (not where we think they should be). I think this is a great place to start with ourselves.

Accepting myself for the way I acted that night, seen in the light of compassion for the baby whose tears were drowned out by a vacuum cleaner, is a step in the right direction. Rather than going over and over that night, or other interactions with my kids (or others) that I think should have gone differently – especially if I’ve gotten emotional – it’s better to talk in retrospect about what was happening for me rather than not discuss it at all.

When I talk about emotions I’m also aware that words like blame, entitlement and deserve are ones to watch for. Caroline Myss says “if you could extricate those three words from your head you would have no idea how much better you would feel.”

Everything I feel is about me and my journey; my growth towards authenticity and service from that standpoint. Blaming others or feeling that I am entitled to or deserve something other than which I’m getting will only hold me back from that growth.

In time, and with practice and focus, talking about my emotions in real time will get easier and easier. I have already experienced a huge shift over the last few years in terms of what is happening on the inside. With a regular meditation practice, I’ve become more of an observer of these moments instead of being completely identified with them.

I do believe that expressing my true feelings in any situation is a great indicator of where I’ve gotten to in the journey for authenticity, especially when I’m not blaming anyone (myself included) or feeling entitled. And those situations where I’m avoiding that have great depths for me to plunge into and examine and learn more about who I am.

It’s not about just about what I express, but the way in which I express it; I’m driven to master the art of authentic, compassionate communication.

Imagine a world where each of us was aware enough of our own psyche to more objectively examine and understand what was triggering us, and be comfortable in expressing our true feelings without blame or shame? This, I believe, would be a more harmonious world in which we could work together to create a better future; now that is a world I’d like to live in.

If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Get out of Your Head and into Your Heart, Change Unhealthy Reactions, Base Your Actions on Love Not Fear, Your Childhood Is Not Your Fault but It Will Be Your Limitation …Until You Take Responsibility to Heal. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.

In The People Who Hurt Us Are Vehicles for Our Growth, I wrote that it is no coincidence that we form relationships with people who trigger us. Whether it is an intimate relationship or a more distant one, we are drawn to people who, in some way, match our own issues and they both challenge us and help us heal and grow.

A great question that arose out of that was “How do I know when to break away from a bad relationship or situation and when to stay”? While in my experience there is no one right answer to that, I think there are some basic questions to ask and principles to apply that are of benefit.

I do acknowledge that there are conditions that can make life extremely difficult or impossible for some people to make changes to anything other than their mindset at particular points in time, for that read What to Do if You Feel Trapped By Your Circumstances), but here I’m assuming a choice.

There was an exercise I heard Sonia Choquette taking someone through a few years ago I thought was extremely pointed and useful for making decisions like these. In her example the person was deliberating over whether to stay where she was or move to Marin, which was a major upheaval for her family.

Sonia said "Tell me your thoughts on it" and allowed her to answer before saying "and?" three or four times. This gave the rational mind the opportunity to fully air its pros and cons. Then Sonia asked the lady to close her eyes, take a deep breath, feel into her intuition and then open her eyes. She asked "What is the true question here?" and the lady answered "Can I spend the rest of my life living apart from my sister?"

Interestingly the sister hadn’t even been mentioned until this point. So Sonia asked her "How do you feel about that?" Her response was "I have to move to Marin". Sonia checked in "Is that true?" to which the lady said "It feels true". Upon which Sonia felt the lady had got her true answer because it was something felt rather than part of the back and forth mind objections that needed to be given their say first. 

​In my life I’ve made conscious decisions to leave relationships, jobs, careers, teams, homes and many other things I likely just can’t call to mind right now. Equally I go through the same process if I decide to stay. I’m not a half hearted person, when I commit to something I take it seriously.

Change has been necessary for my survival. I don’t mean that in a physical sense, though that would be a legitimate reason, for me it’s been about self love, growth and authenticity. Given what I know about the human experience, I suspect it’s the same for all of us.

If I’m feeling lack, and I know I’m not living life from a standpoint of self love, there is only so long I can deal with that before my body starts breaking down (see What is Your Body Telling You?) in even minor ways such as a cold or a headache through to more serious wake up calls.

The way I look at people and situations that trigger me now is always from a perspective of “what is this person or situation teaching me?” but to help me figure that out I need distance, objectivity.

When I’m not able to personally achieve that, I go to the people I have in my life whose opinion I respect and value and ask them to help me figure it out. I have a couple of friends who also look at situations in their life from a point of inquiry. When I can’t see the forest for the trees, so to speak, I explain my predicament and another starts questioning in a similar way to Sonia Choquette. We learn from each other through this process time and again.

But there are many other methods of inquiry I use: journal writing, writing with my non-dominant hand (to access the subconscious brain), emotional release techniques like tapping and applied kinesiology. I also have a trusted mentor I can call upon to give me a broad spiritual perspective and that helps to lift my thinking on any topic, plus my trusted set of reference books on the metaphysical causes of illness and accidents.

What I am always looking for is something to lift me out of my thoughts and the fear they hold for me (the “what if’s”) and something that helps me to figure out what is right for my highest good. All of which is underpinned by my daily mediation practice that helps me to understand the difference between being in my head and simply observing what is in my head while being in my heart.

For example, when my partner and I got together thirteen years ago we had both been married before and, when we talked about our future, my partner really had no interest in saying wedding vows again. At first I felt quite insecure about this; I wanted a forever promise no matter how irrational that was since we had both broken that same vow previously.

I’ll never forget the moment I broke away from that thinking; I was on a long car journey and, suddenly, this question of marriage popped into my head and I looked at it with curiosity.

Why was it even an issue for me? Why on earth would I do that to myself again? How could I promise someone forever? I didn’t want to, I wanted and want to be free to be me, and I don’t want him to ever be anything other than who he is either. I’d had enough of trying to change people, or compromising who I was and what I wanted in life.

It occurred to me that being married was just a concept I’d been brought up with (in the family home and indoctrinated by society), believing it part and parcel of committed relationships. It was tied to a whole heap of multi-layered emotions about security, self worth, sex and children among many things.

Needless to say I let go of that belief there and then, it was liberating.

I find situations and people that trigger me are often just signaling outdated beliefs I’d taken on either about myself or the world in my upbringing, and I am continuing to adopt even though they are no longer serving me. This trigger then delayering process is a constant source of learning and growth for me.

If you have ever approached life in this way you are one of the few. It seems to me most people go around thinking life is being done to them. Yet it is has been liberating to take my thoughts and emotions into my own hands. That said, this has been a huge journey for me, I did not learn any of it overnight. But I have every confidence that anyone can learn how with focus and determination to claim their best life.

One thing I do firmly believe though is that no one need tolerate being abused by another physically or emotionally, for this you might want to read Why Does She Stay? … and What Makes You So Different?

But whether that is (or has been) true for you, most likely you are tying yourself up in knots and what is going on inside your head will be far more insidious than whatever happened or is happening on the outside; it seems to me that most of us have the tendency to beat ourselves up mentally and emotionally almost constantly.

​As to whether to stay or go, like I say, there is no one right answer, there is only ever what is right for you in that moment. And regardless of which you choose, a silver lining of personal growth towards a more authentic you is always possible with many awesome ways to make a breakthrough towards it.

Feel free to comment on or share these thoughts with others if they inspire. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also subscribe to my blog.

It’s no coincidence that we form relationships with people who trigger us. We are drawn to people who are, in some way, a match to our own issues, and they both challenge us and help us heal and grow...
Read the full article here on Tiny Buddha

There is a common perception that women tend to share their feelings more than men, but I’m not sure I agree. If anything, I’d say we tend to share what we think is socially acceptable, rather than even acknowledge our true feelings.

Acknowledging how I actually feel puts me in a position of vulnerability, and that often seems unwise in our society. Given that I grew up learning what I wanted was really not relevant to my survival, it has taken me a long time to realise the purpose of that survival was to get me to a place where I was then in a position to thrive.

I’m probably two to three decades beyond where that could have first occurred, but early survival meant taking on a lot of concepts that weren’t mine, like – for example - despising people who behave in a lazy, selfish, non-committal, unresponsive or inconsiderate way, and it really obscured my view.

It’s taken quite a few relationships and roles to begin to see patterns that make me look in the mirror and really question my own beliefs about things. I’ve had to start to own my true desires and figure out how to do that without feeling like a bad person.

If I take my little list of despised behaviours, while these were not things I was particularly berated as being, certainly I heard judgments about those around home; condemning them in others. This left me in no doubt I did not want to become those things.  

Taking lazy as an example, I’d look at lazy people in disdain. Yet what was my definition of lazy? Really it was someone who was less busy or productive than me. So in a work environment, if your diary wasn’t as full as mine I’d think I was working harder than you. Of course I may have been right, but the other person may just have been working smarter.

When I really look at the word lazy, and take out the judgments, what I felt was “why do you have more down time than me? I want to relax and recharge too”. But I didn’t really feel I could do that because I’m a chronic overachiever, always trying to stay one step ahead of those expectations about who I should be in order to avoid trouble.

There’s the root of my true feelings on most of those things. I didn’t want to be the bad girl, so I became the perfectionist, the over achiever. Those are some hard habits to break as they were also highly prized and regarded with praise and positive attention.

When I suffered a fourth failed pregnancy and a colleague suggested going to see a therapist I was offended. What I felt he was saying was “you are over emotional and it’s affecting your work, you need fixed.” When I went to see the therapist (I really felt I had no choice as work paid for it and it was in work time) he said “do you think you could be a perfectionist?” and I felt insulted.

Being a perfectionist carries the same sort of stigma as being lazy, they are both adjectives used to describe behaviours that are usually associated with weaknesses in our society. I feel one indicates I’m spending too much time and attention on something, the other indicates I’m not spending enough time and attention on it.

Weak is not something I want to feel, I like to feel strong – as we all do. Strength and vitality are, I believe, our true nature and that is the issue. Not having had any real opportunity to explore my true nature as a young infant and child, I was instead cast into a mould of what was deemed good and strong in order to survive in our family and society.

Said another way, instead of being fortified from the inside out, I stepped inside a suit of armour. While that presented a strong front, it lacked inner strength and resilience, it lacked vitality.

To figure out who I was beneath that armour, I had to use my feelings to guide me. Having strong feelings about things didn’t tell me what I liked and disliked, as I first assumed, it taught me about what I’d never really owned in myself.

The things that I despised in others were really a list of things I had within me, but the same is true of things I admired about others. Both are hard to accept in their own way. Owning both creates anxiety around feeling worthy because of all the feelings I’d attached to them.

I remember back in my early thirties, I used to watch all the Trinny and Susannah What Not to Wear programmes. I used to really admire those people who knew how to dress with style.  I didn’t have a bad body image particularly, but I really had no experience in dressing well. Growing up we had only enough money for essentials, so I was often dressed in what was sensible and available at the time.

Moving into my teenage years it was all about fashion. How I laugh now to look at photos of the dangly fry pan earrings (with tiny fried eggs in them), the short cropped hair slicked up to one side, the bat-winged jersey and baggy trousers; finished off with a pink neon studded belt. Fabulous.

But when I learned about dressing to suit my body shape and colouring, well, it tapped into a part of me that I’d never really explored. I had great fun creating a new wardrobe and new image. At first I felt really vulnerable dressing differently, instead of the stock standard pleat skirt and blouse I’d usually wear to work, I started to wear things like a wrap dress and knee high boots.

I was worried people would think or say things like “who does she think she is? Mutton dressed as lamb”. But I took a deep breath and did it anyway and quickly became confident in my new look.

Owning the things I despised in others took longer – another decade – and was just as uncomfortable. But if I take my little list (lazy, selfish, non-committal, unresponsive and inconsiderate) and turn those into attributes I admire it becomes self evident that those are concepts I want and need to adopt:

• taking time to restore your energy
• putting your own needs first
• taking a position without feeling the need to explain it
•  saying yes to things that fuel you, no to things that don’t

Again, at first I was worried that I’d be attacked or thought less of as a result of adopting some of these concepts, they were uncomfortable. But they felt positive, I could sense that my vitality and wellbeing – my inner strength - depended on me practicing these new behaviours.

Like anything new, it just requires focus and persistence. I’m not saying I’m there yet, but I’m consciously aware of what I’m feeling about most things on most days, and that helps guide me towards things I might need to look at or focus on in order to keep fortifying myself from the inside out.

So what are your feelings towards others and situations telling you? What do you admire or despise in others? Imagine a world full of people becoming conscious of their true nature in this way, a world full of more authentic people would mean we could take put all that armour in the melting pot and use it as fuel towards a better life.

​If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Build a Healthy Self Concept. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog

When I am in conflict with someone’s ideas or behaviour, I have to remind myself to choose kindness over suffering. In my heart I know that we are all expressions of the one thing, and yet when I start acting as if I’m separate and unconnected, believing that they are the cause of my distress, all I’m doing is blocking my own energy.

A few years back when the kids started regularly fighting, I taught them in words that they deserve kindness. I try to teach this through my actions too of course, as that is what will actually teach, but don’t always succeed. Often if they have friends round and they all start arguing I ask “who here deserves kindness?” and they all put their hands up and instantly get the point.

I was reminded of this quality again when I was watching an interview with Jeff Olsen who had a near-death experience over twenty years ago. He described how his consciousness was wandering through the corridors of the hospital (where his body was lying in the Intensive Care Unit hooked up to umpteen machines), and he was looking at the doctors and nurses and experiencing everything they were feeling.

This is a phenomenon I have heard described before in these circumstances. He expressed how, with one nurse, he somehow knew everything that had happened to her, her abusive childhood, the events that had occurred since and all that she felt about herself and the world. Above all he felt this deep connection to all the people around him and complete unconditional love.

I like to imagine that was him having the experience our source energy has at all times, that we are each just individual points of focus in the broader scheme of things, all connected in the context of that unending unconditional love. As such, I feel it is my goal in life to be a full expression of who I am in this point of focus, while honouring that connection to everything else.

So choosing kindness is essential for my own wellbeing and the health of my relationships with others. That means I also have to be kind and forgive myself when I haven’t been kind to others. Like when I’ve reached some limit of tolerance with the kids and yelled, or been argumentative with friends who have challenged my thinking, or tetchy with my partner for getting in my way in the kitchen.

It’s deeper than just a commitment to being kind to others, as with everything it starts within. When I find that I haven’t been kind, I look within myself to what that points to. My patience with the kids may be endless if I had endless patience with myself, or I may have reacted to my friends’ viewpoints as an opportunity to expand my thinking or my partner’s intrusion as an opportunity for connection.

As always, it points to our early experiences in life. I could say that if I’d experienced endless patience as a child I’d be patient with myself and others, if I’d experienced more interest and respect in my ideas as a child I’d be more open to hearing others’ views, and if I’d felt more welcomed into the personal space of those I was closest to as a child, I would likely be more welcoming to others.

It is easy to see how these thought patterns and behaviours perpetuate generation after generation; until we become aware of them. This is precisely where kindness is required, those people who were responsible for me had their own experiences as kids that shaped their behaviours, they were likely doing the best they could and living in a state of unconscious awareness of the connection that now seem so obvious to me.

Instead I look at these examples as the fertile fields of the lessons I’ve come to learn, the areas I want to expand in. It doesn’t mean I’m obligated to follow through on any of it, I might decide I like my personal space as it is, but that I do want to be more patient with myself and others, and more open to others’ ideas.

I also know that the neurophysiology inside me won’t change overnight. My experiences over a lifetime will have created strong neural pathways, so my reactions will require conscious awareness and practice to create new wiring. I have to choose kindness in this process as I learn to have patience.

One of the kindest people I knew was my grandmother. She died when I was fourteen, but the visceral memory of her kindness lives on inside me. That kindness showed in her features and was expressed through her heartfelt generosity. It is not hard for me to call upon that memory when I want to be reminded of how kindness feels.

And I know I must be making progress. After writing an advocacy paper recently about an education system, one of the recipients invited me to discuss any concerns with him about the specific experiences we are having at the children’s school. Previously I’d have felt myself rallying in response, ready to go in fully loaded with all my grievances.

In this case, I felt called to an entirely different approach, one I always yearn for but have often felt too rushed to ask for. People want to express and address concerns, but there is a wider context – always. That wider context is who those people are, their unique cocktail of genetic expression and experiences; their story.

So invited to express my concerns, instead I said I’d love to hear their story; what was it that had drawn them to this system of education, what their experience of the journey had been like and why he was still involved in its ongoing story. I said I’d then share our experiences and leave it to him to decide whether that gave any cause for concern.

At the end of the day I am at a point in my life journey where I realise my opinion is only that, and I’m comfortable that I don’t need to persuade others to agree if it doesn’t resonate for them. I can choose kindness and stand in my own truth, whether that means making choices that differ from others or running with the pack.

And because I’ve given myself permission to be who I am, I generally feel more comfortable with who others are in their differences too – including my kids. It’s an absolute wonder to watch them knowing they are born of me and yet so unique.  When they challenge me I recognise that – on some level – I have invited that challenge.

So kindness remains the thing I must choose towards myself and others in this unending journey of growth and evolution, integrating all the pieces of me that separated from the love that I am in the quest to become one with all.

​What about you? Will you choose to continue suffering or will you choose kindness?

If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Nurture Yourself, The Path to Unconditional Love and Change Unhealthy Reactions. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.

It was 1985; my swim team was on an exchange trip with another team in a neighbouring country. I was spending my first weekend away independently from my family. Thirteen year old me was nervous but looking forward to meeting the other family I’d be staying with: a young girl my age, with an older brother, who both swam for their local team.

When I arrived, I met Rachel and her older brother, who was driving us back to their house. I got into the back of his old light blue Ford Capri, his obvious pride and joy, and Rachel and I began to chat. As the journey began through the winding countryside of Lincolnshire, I had been unprepared for the sheer terror I was about to face.

At thirteen I didn’t want to seem uncool, neither did I want to be bad mannered, but taking the narrow winding lanes at speeds in excess of those dad normally drove at on the motorway was pretty hair raising. I was having a complete internal melt down and literally preparing myself to die…

Over the last couple of weeks I had been enjoying some of the talks at the World Tapping Summit. I often forget about tapping as a tool – especially in the moment when I’m blindsided by something that gets me spiraling on a negative track.

Anyway, after listening to a great talk by Carol Look on self sabotaging behaviours, I had started to recognise how my empathic abilities were sometimes stopping me from getting too close to others to be able to help them.

This was followed by another fantastic talk with Carol Tuttle on this very topic. Discerning whether the energy we are feeling is wholly ours, or whether it originates from other sources (like a TV programme or others around us, or even our ancestors).

She covered something very close to my heart, about what we take on board in our early childhood affecting who we become. She made the astute point that, if things aren’t peaceful, predictable and safe in our early years, our ability to read others’ moods is heightened in order to just survive within our family environment.

While this would obviously be more marked in abusive households, it happens to a certain extent in all households, since we are all human and experience a gambit of emotions after all. Carol teaches how to take this empathic gift we have developed out of preservation and protection and use it instead for something that can benefit us.

This really resonated with me, having keenly felt my mum’s angst and stress in ordinary day to day life as she was parenting. Kids learn to recognise the signs around this and want to smooth things out. Yet I can’t help someone feel good by taking on how bad they are feeling, which is precisely what ends up happening.

With my awareness raised I’ve been more alert to taking on energy that isn’t mine and using some of Carol’s techniques to release it.

For example, last weekend I was headed across some native bush in a car with four others. The road we were on climbed up over the hills and back down the other side on miles of dirt track, with many sharp bends and places where the track narrowed to a single lane.

This isn’t my favourite kind of car ride, and not just because of the motion sickness I experience. When it comes to cornering I stick with the slow-in, fast-out technique taught to amateur drivers’ world over. Approaching with caution appeals to my nature.

Many years ago, I did an Advanced Driving course at Silverstone, home to the British Grand Prix. I have noticed in the years since that it appears to be a trademark of most petrol heads to drive as if they are on the race circuit, maximizing both entry and exit speeds when taking a corner. Of course there is unlikely to be another vehicle coming towards you on a race course.

As we were headed along the road I heard my fellow passenger in the front telling our friend, who was driving, to be cautious. I knew my fellow passenger was not looking forward to taking this route due to an experience she’d had many years ago; so my empathy was on high alert.

That is when I became tenser and started to anticipate all the awful things that could happen. While our driver was far from a petrol head, he certainly cornered faster than I would. And as we progressed along the road I added my voice to that of the other passenger, and then the person next to me picked up on the vibe and added her voice and anxiety, while the other passenger just wanted to know when we would get there as she felt sick.

You can imagine the discord. I could see by the set of my friend’s jaw as he was driving that he was feeling under pressure, and it felt like he was digging his heels in by not slowing down. That triggered me further because of past incidents (like the one described above) where I’ve felt like a hostage in a vehicle, absolutely sure I was going to die at any given moment.

This brought the cacophony to a head, with him yelling at us all to leave him alone to concentrate. I imagine there are many out there in great sympathy with my friend, I mean, I get it. Even in that moment I started to get it; just how affected each person’s energy had become by the others and our own spiraling memories and thoughts.

So I just closed my eyes for the rest of the journey and focused on my breathing, imagining myself sitting inside a bunch of reflective mirrors that allowed me to return others’ energy, and leave me free to experience my own while working on becoming more centred.

Carol Tuttle mentioned how it takes men take seven times longer to process their emotions, just because of where the limbic system is situated in their brain, so it was fair to say there wasn’t a lot of engagement from our driver for the rest of that day; he was pretty wrung out. That said, we had all gotten ourselves in a better space by the ride back, which was a lot calmer.

One of my friends mentioned afterwards how sad she was we had that experience, but I don’t see it like that. There is no one person responsible for setting the tone, we are each responsible for our own energy. Our driver friend was as responsible for his energy as I was for mine; the same applies to the others in the car.

The only thing we can each do is start to recognise when we are feeling triggered by something and do what we need to in order to centre ourselves and feel calm enough to get some perspective that is more helpful. All in all, it was a fabulous learning experience for all of us.

I have had many experiences of unpleasant car rides, just like the one I recount at the outset of this article and – when I think back further – all of these reinforced the initial anxieties I took on in childhood sitting in the back of a vehicle and listening to terse phrases about slowing down, and watching out, the energy palpable in those moments.

I can see how I’ve taken on board someone else’s story and made it my own over the years. That is not to say I’d steer away from advising any driver to approach corners with caution, especially with nervous passengers in the car. Nervous passengers versus driver ego appears to be a common scenario.

This is just one example of many in each day I could probably mention. That very same day my partner was watching a documentary about a huge pop star, now dead, accusing him of some horrific deeds. I knew better than to tune my energy into something like that. I am aware of the suffering that goes on in this world, but I am not helping anyone by taking it into my energy.

As I said to my friend, the best we can do is focus on our own energy rather than trying to fix other people, no one needs to take responsibility for how others are feeling. She has a sunny nature generally, so just be the sun that continues to shine. Sure, there will be the odd cloud, but no need to invite a storm because of how others are feeling.

If you are reading this article it likely means you too are aware of taking on others energy. As Carol said, this is huge in itself. Conscious awareness of something is the first step to change. Figuring out what is mine and what is not is a process. It will take many examples to work through, tapping being one way of helping.

Practicing feeling into my own energy versus others may take some practice, but I reckon it’s worth it to just feel the relief of my own unadulterated energy – so much lighter than carrying everyone else’s.

​There are many other techniques and tools to help out there to release the trauma we feel, for that is what taking on negative energy is. Anything negative that triggers us is likely to be creating a trauma signature in our bodies and, left untreated, will eventuate in sickness. A quick Google search brought up suggestions such as bodywork, hypnotherapy, energy work (like tapping) and Biofeedback.

I’m grateful for my empathic gifts, but know that unless I can learn to observe without letting my energy tune into something heavier, it is stopping me from helping as much as I can in this world – which is the real reason I have this gift.

Empathy is the gateway to compassion. For a long time I had understood compassion to mean I needed to get down with the person so they knew I was in their corner. Instead of lifting them up from down there though, I’ve discovered it’s a whole lot more effective if I can help them to lift themselves up.

The reason for that is it’s an inside job. I can make someone feel better by lifting them up, but then what? Then a dependence is created on external things (like me) to make them feel better. When in reality, they are already equipped with that ability inside themselves.

For a long time I’ve created distance in order to help others, by offering perspective. While I will continue to do that, it’s time I created capacity for deeper healing and growth to occur.
What would it feel like for you to lose the weight of how others are feeling? What would it free up capacity for you to do? A world of lighter beings, even just a few, sounds like progress towards a more authentic and compassionate world.

​If you enjoyed this you might want to read Who is Holding You Back?, Shine the Light on the Shadows of Your Childhood or You Are the Gift Your Ancestors Gave to the World. If would like a fresh perspective on a situation in your own life, feel free to contact me with an outline of your circumstances or click here for further information, I love to help. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog

The art of putting yourself first sometimes means saying “No”, and sometimes it means facing fears and saying “Yes”. To discover more, read on...

​Published in Soul Analyse

“Loneliness and the feeling of being unwanted is the most terrible poverty.” Mother Teresa

I will never forget the feeling of loneliness, though it is something I now rarely feel, but those memories are still etched on my heart.

There is no one memory, more a series of them, as people in my life came and went. Yet I was brought up in a loving family, by parents who were very much together in their game of life. I was surrounded by a large extended family who were also in long running relationships, it seemed like the thing to do was find that person to partner with.

Happy ever after is what was fed to me through the very fabric of the society I was brought up in, and people leaving my life was something I felt acutely – and took personally.

Being a sensitive soul, I like to go deep with people, so I’ve always tended towards a small group of close friends rather than a large social circle. Having moved around and moved through different relationships though, I will acknowledge that small group has changed and grown over the years, but with each chapter there can only be a spotlight on a few.

So those few who hold my heart and attention in the present moment are always the ones most acutely felt when they exit my life. What I feel now when this happens (something I am largely at peace with) is massively different compared to my earlier years. I will try to describe what has made the difference.

First though, a few of those earlier memories.

I remember bumping into an old friend at university one day, a day when my usual circle of friends were not there and I was feeling like a spare part hanging around between lectures. It had been hard adjusting to university, it was so completely overwhelming in its size and culture compared to anything I’d experienced before and there was real no sense of belonging.

My old friend had been one of my closest in our early teenage years, and we often stayed at each other’s houses. But I had let that friendship slip as my focus was drawn into a relationship at the age of sixteen. So bumping into her at university made my heart lift, but as we stood and talked it became obvious how much she had moved on, and she had someplace to be; there was no welcome to join her.

My heart sank as I watched her walk away. There was no malice in her actions, but I felt terrible none the less. I became acutely aware of how she must have felt when I had left her to pursue other interests. That is the hardest part of friendships and relationships, letting go when I’ve outgrown them.

Yet I have always let go, the calling inside me to move on stronger than any regret about staying. Sometimes, though, the call to move on has not been mine.

I can vividly remember sitting in my room at my parents’ house one Saturday night, looking up through the street beyond, and watching a neighbor head out for a night on the town with his friends.

I’d been in a relationship with a guy I met at university and, in that summer I graduated, he had left me. He’d had the whole of my heart for almost a couple of years by then, and I just felt so totally rejected and worthless.

On that Saturday night as I watched my neighbor, I felt utterly alone and sad and wondered how to get past what had happened. Having been so involved in that relationship and, having just left university, I really had no circle of friends that I could even ring up and go for a drink with. Even my younger brother was out having fun with his friends.

Slowly, starting with a girlfriend of my ex’s friend that we used to socialize with, I built another circle of friends and life moved on.

In later years I can then recall – in another relationship – my partner going off out with his mates one Sunday evening. I had moved cities and pretty much had our relationship and my work, that was enough to keep my attention fully occupied, so I hadn’t really cultivated a group of friends to socialize with and didn’t much feel like doing that anyway.

It was a strange thing to be faced with an empty space, scary even. But there I was, his Sunday night out became a regular thing. At first I felt lonely, then I started to fill my time with things that interested me and quickly began to look forward to ‘my’ time.

That might sound so obvious, but living in constant company had gotten me used to compromise. There was freedom in watching the kinds of TV shows that only I wanted to watch, listening to – and dancing to – music only I liked, reading books and having time to reflect and contemplate.

But being on my own with my thoughts was not always an attractive concept in days gone past because I was completely identified with the thoughts rather than simply observing them. Talking to a friend the other day about this same topic, I was sharing a memory of being in a motel with the kids and waking up one night about 4am, hearing a loud bang in the neighbourhood.

Wherever my thoughts had started, they quickly spiraled to a bad place in that half awake state. I was soon imagining a mad gunman on the loose and had carefully planned an escape route in my head that included waking the kids up and getting them well away from danger without alerting the gunman. Thankfully I caught those thoughts, observing how they were making me feel and reasoning the unlikely nature of them.   

While I had learned the ability to ‘talk myself down’ from a highly anxious state many years before, it was actually during the time my partner’s social life had left me free each Sunday evening that I began to take more regular notice of my thoughts and how they were making me feel more generally.

I read a book by Brandon Bays called The Journey, recommended by a friend. The Journey was Brandon’s account of self healing, fully recovering from a large tumor with no medical intervention.  

It was the beginning of the journey to me, the journey to my inner world that included no one else.  You see, up until that point, it had always taken another person to explore the depths. But this was all me, figuring out who I am, life and all that I and we are capable of.

That was about 15 years ago and it has, by no means, been an easy journey. There have still been moments of the good, the bad, the downright ugly and the amazing. But loneliness? Not so much. Every since Brandon took me on a guided meditation and showed me how to find the peace within myself, and how connected to everything else we are, loneliness is no longer there to be felt.

The single biggest shift in that conscious awareness of my thoughts, and of the much larger part of myself behind those thoughts, has come through regularly meditating. My whole concept of how who I am, how the world operates and how to get the best out of it all has completely changed for the better. I feel more in control, happier and – most definitely – not lonely.

So have you met the most important person in your life – you – in this way? If you’ve had glimpses of it, I’d encourage you to regularly practice observing what you’re thinking and feeling, the connection between the two and your power to change it. A more balanced and contented you leads to a more balanced and contented world; a world in which loneliness will be a thing of the past.

Other related articles of Shona’s you might enjoy:

Who Am I Now?
Great Relationships Happen When You Put You First
Saying Goodbye
Meditation – You’re Cornerstone to Success
Keep Growing: Don’t Look Back - Don’t Look Down

If what you read here resonates and you’d like a fresh perspective (and only that, it’s not advice you have to take or act upon) on a situation in your own life, feel free to contact me or click here for further information. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.
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Talking with some friends about our relationships it became clear that, not only have my ideas on this topic evolved a lot over the years, but the way I am within my current relationship has changed quite substantially from the way I have been in any other relationship to this point.

Since many of us get exposed to similar ideals through media, at home and in society generally, my early ideas about relationships were probably similar to yours. The sorts of beliefs that formed in my head were things like:

• it is my job to make others happy, and it is their job to make me happy
• we are meant to be with someone, the right person is out there for each of us
• we ‘fall in love’, an act which is outside our control and completely random
• if it is ‘meant to be’ it will just work
• children are better supported by a mother and father who are together… and so on.

While society has changed a lot in the last four decades and some of these ideas have become a bit old fashioned, many of us still hold on to these beliefs somewhere in our psyche. I know I certainly felt I’d failed on many levels as the years chugged on and my relationship numbers tallied.

On the plus side, I’d had plenty of opportunity to test out my beliefs. I tried hard to make things work each time, and read pretty much every relationship book I could lay my hands on. I learned a lot about personality differences, gender differences and communication, and - as someone who is sensitive to the way others are feeling – I generally tried to accommodate my significant other’s needs.

Things always started out well, but after a time the unavoidable “what about me?” voice would speak up. With all those sacrifices towards another’s needs, all that learning and insight, why weren’t my needs reciprocated I’d wonder? So I would inevitably end up searching elsewhere.

When I met my current partner twelve years ago, it was almost the first time I had been alone since I had hit my teens. Admittedly I hadn’t been single for very long, but it was the first time in my life I had actually been happy about being single. Getting to that place had given me the chance to really start to understand my own needs better and take a more honest look at myself.

By the time we met in our thirties we were both very aligned on what we had learned from our previous relationships. We agreed on the need to be ourselves, to keep doing the things we each enjoyed (even if it wasn’t something the other wanted to do), the importance of independent friendships and of good communication.

Around that same time I heard two things that really resonated deeply, and have reshaped my beliefs ever since. The first was advice to let go of the cumbersome impossibility of trying to control other people and circumstances. That phrase “cumbersome impossibility” just felt so rich and on-target and conjures up exactly the way it feels when I am trying to control anything other than my own reactions.

Since I am the only one who controls my reactions, I then began to really understand I am therefore the singular creator of my own reality. So the second thing that stuck - although really confronted me at first - was hearing that if I really understood my ability to make myself feel good, I would ask no one else to be different so that I could feel good.

Over the years I have proceeded down our relationship path with these new thoughts in mind, yet admit I have often been drawn into thoughts and behaviours that are attached to my old beliefs, like looking to the other to “make me happy”.

This was especially true amid the intensity and pressure of bringing children into the world while working full time in a job that carried a lot of responsibility; that cast up many strongly rooted archetypes. My partner and I both highly value our autonomy, yet were feeling trapped by our circumstances. We became freedom seekers, fighting control with control; it was pretty ugly. 

It was really only in 2014 when I took a far more intentioned hold of the reins to release some of the pressure that things started to change.

I get my energy from inward reflection, not outward interaction, and that requires having my own space on a regular basis. I could not go on giving my attention outwardly twenty-four hours a day (literally, even in sleep, it was with one ear alert to the kids’ awakening through the night), so with deliberate focus I etched out some me (only) time.

Then my partner followed suit with a big authentic leap of his own in 2016 when he started his own business. It’s amazing how, with no real focus on ‘the relationship’ and pretty much allocating any time to spare on our authentic selves, the relationship has become naturally more harmonious.

I’m not saying we should never work on improving our relationship; but our relationship is always improving when I look at each annoyance, disappointment and frustration as things that hold a lesson for me. Then I find the root cause is rarely my partner; he is merely the trigger of some other deeply entrenched belief that is typically not helpful to me anymore.

Neither am I condoning that anyone stay in a relationship that is unhealthy or abusive. But it is important to understand why you were drawn into it to try to break the pattern and avoid a recurrence.

One thing my friends and I were talking about, that I found quite thought provoking, was whether it is healthy and/or helpful to change our own actions in order to fulfill another’s needs.

We were specifically talking about the different love languages we all have. So if one person thrives on (for example) lots of praise but the other is not naturally inclined to give gushing praise, is it even healthy to indulge that?

While that may be a small thing that could make a big difference to one person without particularly diminishing or overly taxing the other, my mind curved back around to what I’d learned 12 years ago. If someone is looking for lots of praise then they are looking for something from another person to feel good; yet they have the power within them to feel good with or without it.

And while it may be a small thing to make an effort to praise someone, knowing they enjoy the praise, does that then perpetuate their reliance on others to make them feel good i.e. does it actually disempower them?

As evolved as my friends and I are about some aspects of our relationships, we all acknowledge that we are being and doing various things to please our partners, even in small ways like wearing or not wearing perfume. Then we wondered what our partners were being or doing in order to please us?

While I’ve come a long way towards my authenticity within a relationship, I recognise there are still ways in which I’m not fully myself. Interestingly, with my partner working away for a week, it’s given me the opportunity to notice who I am without him here and flush out some of those behaviours. 

So far I’ve noticed I’m more relaxed in many aspects. It feels like the pressure is off to act in certain ways, like the way I might manage the kids’ behaviour if he’s around, or when things get tidied, or what I am doing with my time or even what time I go to bed.

Now, I could make that about him, or about what we need to change in the relationship, but it’s not about that; it never is. He is not actually driving any of those things, even though he may make comments or act in a way that might make it appear it’s his issue. I have come to learn that if I wasn’t buying in to those comments on some level, he wouldn’t even think to make them.

There is always room for us to step into more of our authentic selves, and each step we take we feel the freedom of our being in response. That puts us in a much better place to be present and give another person the space and freedom they need to be more of who they are.

And what could be more beautiful than a relationship with another who is being their authentic self and freely choosing each day afresh to be with you?

​If what you read here resonates and you’d like a fresh perspective on a situation in your own life, feel free to contact me. There’s no charge or strings attached, I truly enjoy helping where I can, click here for further information. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.
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As William Shakespeare wrote “All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players”. That is the nature of our reality here on Earth of course, everything about our physical existence is temporary yet it’s all telling us a story if we pay attention in the right way.

As I reflected on this, I started to wonder about the people in my life in particular. In this era of social media, our relationships are much more apparent as we continue to connect in the present with those we knew in the past. But as I thought about it, I realised there are really only a small number of people that have much effect on me right now.

It’s always like that, people come, people go. It is perhaps easier with hindsight to reflect on the lessons we learned than the ones currently in play. For example, when I think back to my first job in a large company, I cringe to think about my own part in that particular act.

The people on stage were very different to those who are now in my life, with the exception of my dad; although his role has now changed somewhat. It was the first time I had ever had staff and a department to run and, as usual, I wanted to be the best I could be.

In some ways I succeeded, winning national customer service awards year after year, with promotions and pay rises along the way. In other ways I was party to the emotional drama that remains my signature memory of the place.

I was fully aware that having a job as an official apologiser (I ran the Customer Relations department) did not make me an easy person to be around. No one can tell customers to tone down their emotions, so sitting at the end of those bullets day after day, dealing with all the escalated complaints, I got emotional. I called it passion.

Now there were times people complained about things and it inspired me into action; hence the career progression and awards. But here is a tip, if that passion is fuelled by emotions like anger, frustration and indignance it’s usually expressed in just the same way.

Then last week, an actor with a bit part in my current life reminded me of that time. She was talking to a group of parents about the need to try and communicate without emotion as it makes it a whole lot easier to deal with the issues. She is right but “that’s rich coming from her” I thought.

That is when I pondered on the bit part of this particular person “why is she even on my stage?” I wondered, “I hardly know her”. Clearly there are some things I still need to learn and she can teach me.

Not that the actors on stage with us really have any awareness of the lessons they are teaching. In fact, if someone is actively trying to teach you something, the real lesson probably lies elsewhere. It’s all about who they are being to you and what it evokes.

This led me to think about the full cast.

When I tallied up the people in my life right now that have an impact on me – positive or negative – it amounted to relatively few numbers; thirteen to be exact. “Gosh” I thought, “Shakespeare nailed it, it really is like a small cast in a play.”

It was also surprising, and perhaps a relief, to realise how many others are in my life in a more neutral way.

Those we live with usually rattle our chain more than others, especially when we have been taught how to find fault in everything – a loud drum that beats throughout most of modern society. The same is true for me.

As someone who likes a lot of quiet time, an organized and clean house - but does not enjoy organizing and cleaning more than once – it is interesting that I have chosen to have a partner and young kids who constantly challenge me on those fronts. It is also true that we most often choose a mate who is our opposite in so many ways.

Realising that these particular actors and I are the main characters in what is likely to be a long running show, my intuition is telling me to grow through the pinch points. It’s up to me whether I want this to be a sitcom, drama, documentary or horror, but I’d like to choose sitcom as it’s so much easier when we can laugh at things.

It’s also much easier to laugh at them when I have a broader perspective.

So lately I’ve begun a journal that I note things in each night about the nice things people have done for me, or made me feel appreciated or uplifted in some way. That too stems from something I first heard way back at that job I mentioned “notice the good things”, I was just too busy being angry to do that justice then.

I figure I have to do something to counteract the tendency that I was trained into to notice all the not-so-good stuff. Interestingly the things that annoy us most about people are likely where our own strengths lie. It was a wakeup call to me to finally realise that things like my communication skills and emotional intelligence are a gift and not everyone finds those things so easy.

The other heartening thing about the list of actors on my stage, is that there are many whose role seems predominantly about uplifting and supporting. And of course there are a few who rattle my chain, but I am able to look at those in a different way now.

That really is in part thanks to my mum and the role she played in my life. Mum had a strong sense of right and wrong, black and white; so my upbringing was fairly strict and typical of the era and place. As a child and young adult I felt rather controlled and resented those strong opinions that held me in judgment.

As an adult, still repeating the same thought patterns and feelings about it, I then realised that I was holding myself in judgment of those opinions rather than my own. Instead of feeling comfortable with my own choices, I was still defending them and that was on me.

And as life does, it beat the drum louder and louder until I could really not stand it any longer. Onto the stage of my life came some new protagonists, each more outrageous than the last, so I could really get over this; I needed to get comfortable in my own skin.

I found myself confronted by strongly opinionated women in the professional realm until finally I encountered one whose behaviour was outright domineering. “I will not be bullied by you nor anyone else” I heard myself yelling across a meeting room one day at the last protagonist in this life lesson. Finally I had drawn a line.

After that, life got a bit easier. I decided to figure out who I really am. I’ve discovered I’m not so black and white as those opinions others tried to force upon me, I’m more about the full spectrum of colours, “each to their own” I feel.

On this journey to me, it’s fair to say this lesson comes in many guises. Back in January I wrote about another example in Do What Fuels You and Dump the Rest but I have to say, that reflects only the vestiges of that particular lesson, its grip has loosened and is slowly disappearing.

I am not quite there yet but the need to defend, to stop trying to please others or to have them agree with me is negligible in comparison to what it once was. Instead I generally hold to my own beliefs and allow others theirs. In fact, I now believe that is one of my core life lessons – to understand there is no one universal truth, the only real truth is our own.

So I look at my mum as one of my greatest teachers, she led me on the journey to me, the discovery of who I truly am, and why I am here in this world. Thankfully in those last years she was here, I had become comfortable enough in my own skin that my relationship with her took on a whole new feel. I was able to drop the blame and appreciate my mum rather than see her in this negative and one dimensional way.

No person is singularly how we see them. That really struck me when someone I knew took their own life. My personal experience of them had been only in the last couple of years of their life, and it was a little scary if I’m honest; there is a raw edge to someone who is that unhappy. But at the funeral I got to hear about their life in a much more multidimensional way, and could appreciate the fullness of who they were to the many others in their life.

These are some of my biggest lessons so far when it comes to people:

• To look for and appreciate the lessons they are here to teach me rather than resent or blame
• To listen to the drum when it starts beating, rather than have to invite in a whole darn horde of drummers  to blast me into sense
• To seek a more rounded view of those that yank my chain
• To appreciate those who support and uplift me

So take stock of who is on your stage right now, note what you like or dislike about them, see if you can connect that with others in your past that may have been similar. If it helps, ask a friend or someone neutral for their perspective. Try to take the helicopter ride on it all, a broader perspective, and see what life may be telling you. It will help you get past the groundhog-day style of life you’ve been leading and take you further along the path of your best life.

If what you read here resonates and you’d like a fresh perspective on a situation in your own life, feel free to contact me. There’s no charge or strings attached, I truly enjoy helping where I can, click here for further information. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog