Healing

Stop Trying to Find Your Life’s Purpose: Find It In The Now

What if your life purpose wasn’t preordained? What if it wasn’t determined by your inherent skills and talents, or even the ones you’ve chosen to cultivate?

What if there was no single life purpose that you needed to discover, instead it evolved as you evolve?

What if your life’s purpose was determined, not for your life, but in every moment?

…And what would that mean for you right now?

Most of us have grown up with the idea that we need to discover our life’s purpose. That purpose is supposed to help us determine once and for all, our path in life, and once we know it, whether we’re achieving it or not. It’s like our navigational north star, our rudder that keeps us sailing in the right direction, even the motivation that keeps us moving when seas get rough.

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When Pushing Through Isn’t The Answer

I was home recently, and a family friend and I started discussing how she gets tired quickly in situations that are stressful. She starts to get overwhelmed and then very, very sleepy.

While we’re both introverts in the sense that we need time alone to feel whole and resourced, her tiredness is beyond that. It’s very linked to stress, and it comes fast. It’s a trauma response, in that her existing emotional overwhelm is being triggered by the stressful situation. This pattern is very uncomfortable for her, and sometimes she gets so uncomfortable that it affects the entire group of people around her.

We were sitting in the living room, reflecting on it. “When you notice it’s happening and you feel the fear,” I said. She sighed, chiming in, completing my sentence with the obvious cultural trope, “…do it anyway.”

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Grief and Co-Creating

Grief

I’ve been wondering what to share… am I up for sharing? Is the inner work too cloudy to share on the out side?

We had a death in the family on 8 April. By the time this goes out, we will be in full swing, celebrating the un-timely, peaceful death of my beloved brother at 64yo.

It’s been devastating.
After my nephew told me over the phone, I sat down where I was and started crying.
That went on for a few days.
Even on trail runs, stopping and sitting down on the ground to just weep. Sadness.

When I connect with him I get expansion, freedom, relief. He’s not in chronic pain anymore. This feels wonderful.

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Why You Feel Worse Before You Feel Better

Guided meditation mentioned in this video: Sensational Awareness

Hello, Beautiful Souls.

I want to tell you a little bit about why is it when we’re healing, that things get worse instead of better—or rather, why they get worse before they get better.

This happens really consistently in my personal healing work, and when I’m working with clients. It happens so often, and it’s so unexpected and disorienting, that it’s worth talking about.

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Healing The High Cost of Blame

Hello, Beautiful Souls.

Many of us have learned the importance of taking responsibility for what’s happening in our lives… for the very practical reason that then we can do something about it!

When I find myself blaming someone for something that’s a sign that there’s something inside I’m not wanting to face. When I calm down enough, I sit with it (do some kind of practice that helps me explore what’s inside, see below for a free guided meditation you can use for this).

Why do we blame others for our problems in the first place? Certainly, many of us were taught to and frankly, it feels good to receive sympathy when things are going bad.

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Resistance As A Protective Layer Over Trauma

Hello Beautiful Souls.

Resistance.
Resistance is one of those things we all have, whether we like it or not.

It doesn’t feel great, and gets in the way of doing things in life, so we vilify it. The general idea is that we need to get rid of it, and if we don’t we’re doomed to have it forever, because ‘resistance persists.’

But why is resistance here in the first place?
Maybe I’m resisting walking up stairs, because I’m afraid of falling down. We might feel like it’s stupid thing to resist this, but here’s the thing: your resistance protecting you.

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Your Inner Critic Needs Healing, Too

Hello Beautiful Souls.

Ah, those inner voices that bully us into submission… like the inner critic that says, “You’re stupid for being worried! There’s nothing to worry about!” Those voices are really challenging to deal with and I feel like sometimes we don’t realize that they are actually part of the package that needs healing…
Yes, the parts of us that are worried unnecessarily need healing, but so does the critic! And that can be tricky to realize when the critic sounds so reasonable…

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Healing: When are you releasing an emotion vs making it worse?

Hello Beautiful Souls.

How do we know if we’re healing something or we’re just sitting around, ruminating, complaining and making it worse?
How do we know if we’re releasing the charge or adding to it and making it worse?
Clearing it or holding it firmly in place? Maybe even making it bigger?!

The difference between working with something in a way that improves it versus a way that just keeps it here is the difference between healing and wallowing… How do we know when we’re doing one versus the other? Even in meditation, we might be releasing or we might be wallowing. How do we know?

I’ve realized a new way to think about this, a new model that I’ve stared using. I want to share that with you because I find it really helpful. First, I’m going to give you the one I’ve refined over the years from personal and professional work, and then I’ll give you the newer one. They both focus on healing emotions, because they end up being such a big part of the healing process.

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Healing: Have I Healed It If It Keeps Coming Back?!

Hello Beautiful Souls,

If you’ve done a lot of work around something, like anger, have you healed it if you keep feeling angry?
Isn’t it supposed to go away if you’ve healed it?
Isn’t that the POINT of healing something? So that you don’t have to deal with it anymore?
Didn’t you heal it to make it go away?

For me, when it comes back, I think, “Oh my god, I thought I healed my anger, but I’m mad at my husband again! Where did this come from?! I still haven’t healed this!? Will it ever end?!”
Right?!

How many times have you had that happen: you heal something and it comes back?!
And then you doubt that you’ll ever heal it.

What if there is a better way to look at this?
Let’s look at what happens in healing, and then a way to look at it that allows us to heal in degrees, over time, vs getting disappointed that our magic wand is clearly broken!

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