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I made my birthday week special by having a long, 90-minute private call with every active student of mine in my Growth course.
There are things you can see in an interactive course, and then there are things you can see in a private one-on-one call.
What I saw this week is priceless.
I saw how rigidity and fear, scarcity and timid moves, how living in survival actually looks when you look through actions.
Serendipity has been my constant companion doing this deep in the rabbit hole type of work now for exactly a decade… So it is not an accident or coincidence that this week, upon observing my behavior and how I play in my life, I could see that when I am bold I win, and when I am timid, I lose.
How did I see this?
- I looked at my offers… remember? I am in business… unless people buy my products and services, I don’t make a living.
- I looked at how I talk to people, family, friends, clients, customers…
- I looked at how I behave in shopping for groceries
- I looked at how I attempt to get strong again
- I looked at how I plan moving house… (this one is a doozy)
And I saw that the tendency to be timid, the tendency to make weak moves, the tendency to care more about looking good, being safe, not making noise is there… in everything.
I also saw that I can break that invisible barrier through, and make bolder, even bold moves… and feel good about myself.
I would compare it to the behavior of a shipwreck person on a desert island.
Living there till death takes you is, maybe, OK. Boring. Hard. But you’ll live.
But living in civilization, with other people, having a family is better.
If I watched you, I would know how much your behavior is influenced by your fear… By giving priority to survival over living.
Survival is where almost everyone I observe lives… More interested in maintaining than growing, stepping out, risking all.
This is why people live in quiet desperation, of loud desperation… but in desperation nevertheless.
Courage is called for.
But people deny that they are afraid. They lie about it.
In my view, fear is the opportunity to summon courage. I saw that first some 40 years ago.
I always saw the attraction in being bold, but fear won out more often than not. I called it being REASONABLE.
The more often I noticed that I was afraid the more often I had a choice whether summon courage, or just act on the fear.
It is all about choice, I say.
Most people, most of the time, don’t see choice… I have heard people call that powerless… But maybe it is rigidity, playing for keeps, dutifulness, or lack of imagination.
Narrow cone of vision… your cone of vision narrowed by fear, the concern for survival.
So, returning to your desert island, I am now asking the question again: how far are you willing to, prepared to swim to reconnect with your vision of living in civilization, have a mate, and have someone to talk to?
According to my observation, unless you are miserable enough, unless the pain is unendurable, you are not going to swim far enough.
You won’t even get to the idea that maybe you are afraid.
99% of my site’s visitors belong to this category. They are not miserable enough, and they don’t even know that they are afraid.
The 1% knows they are miserable, and it gives them some energy to push away from the island… But because they don’t know they are afraid, they find all kinds of reasons why they turn back at a certain point, and don’t go far enough to even know if civilization, the good life, the success is nearby or completely impossible for them.
Some of my students, the 1%, haven’t realized to the degree they are afraid, to the degree they live in a self-imposed rigidity and tightness to avoid getting into trouble… again.
What trouble, you ask, and they would be willing to tell you how the world is, how people are, and why it is not safe, why it is deadly to do anything different than what they are doing.
That fear and that view of how the world is, how people are, what will happen if they don’t take care of themselves, what will happen if they let up worrying about themselves, was born from an incident when they were little.
To the degree they were stuck there, never really examining the validity and veracity of that ‘worldview’, they are stuck in that intense self-concern, and in that rigid no movement, no freedom, no power state.
I also had an incident when I was 3 years old. I was taken, by a stranger who I trusted, as I trusted every adult back then, and hurt. Very hurt. I was left for dead. And even my mother did the opposite of I would have expected: she blamed me.
So what did I decide? I decided that I am not smart enough to trust myself. I am not smart enough to take care of myself. And other people, for sure, can’t be trusted. Especially the ones that are entrusted with taking care of me.
I lived like that for decades… until I started to consider that maybe a 3-year old is not who I was… That maybe it was time to re-evaluate my worldview.
That maybe if I get hurt I get hurt… but it is a whole lot better than just being a little scared girl.
And I started to ‘swim away from the safe island’ and experienced that I can. And I felt the fear, and I summoned courage.
It took a while… lol.
But when you look at me today, I am not who I was.
I am still afraid… no denying it.
But I don’t act on it, because I value life more than I fear it.
While you are afraid and lie about it, the fear prevents you from even seeing that life has value. To you. The it is worth living, and worth going for things that feel risky, that feel frightening even, but living in a cocoon shaking life a leaf, or being rigid and tight and cautious is not life at all.
The carrot and the stick…
Only when you can start challenging the fear that you’ll have access to the carrot… little by little.
As soon as you can tell that you are afraid. As soon as you stop lying about it. As soon as you allow fear to just be… and not run your life.
I have asked Source, and the suggestion has been was to start with the physical.
I have been walking in the street swinging my arms with 5 pound weights in them as I walk. I loosen my hips, my shoulders, the spine also in the street.
I am sure I look funny: 73 year old woman doing the makarena… lol.
It’s been instrumental in causing me to lighten up. Allow people to think what they think, and do what is important to me.
Loosen yourself up, lighten up, and see that it will be easier to have the fear and do what is outside of the fear… to summon courage in other areas of life.
Then bring the same ‘I don’t care what other people think about me, I don’t care how I look to them, or even to myself’ to other areas of life.
Doing your hammer exercises. Who cares how many time you bounce the ball from the hammer.
I have never gotten higher than three… and mostly it is just one bounce and catch it.
You are not training for a bouncing competition, you are training your attention, your brain, and your courage… and for that the numbers don’t matter. Really.
Or raise your hand when you don’t understand a word, and maybe take some tongue lashing… so what? You are not made of sugar… you can take it, can’t you? It hurt? good. It made you cry? good. Who cares?
If your ego is too big for you to be just normal, they you are a lost cause. Really.
Life is full of painful experiences, if you really live.
If your life isn’t, then you are not living. Then you are already dead… just haven’t been buried.
In the feel your feelings workshop you have a chance to feel whatever you feel. And have it be OK to feel that.
- I used to be afraid to feel anger… I made up, as a child, that my anger kills.
- I used to hate being afraid… it hurt all over, especially my thighs.
- I used to hate feeling stupid… slow… dense… Now I know that this is the price I pay for learning anything.
The feelings course is a recorded series of workshops. (5 workshops)
In addition to the recorded workshop, you have the option to add two live workshops where I will work with each person to help them identify their feelings. Priceless. I can do it because I am a true empath: I feel what you feel, even if you are not aware of it. That is my unique ability, and also my curse.
If you have the recorded Feel your Feelings workshop but haven’t purchased the live session, contact me for a link.
Learn to feel your feelings, so you can become free… despite the feelings you have
