Post 4 - Where the answer lies.....

Happy Monday fabulous people.?I can’t believe it’s been a week since I wrote my last article.?It’s been some week for me, btw I mean that in a brilliant way and no I didn’t win the lotto, get the dream job or actually have much change in circumstance but I’ve had such a shift in perspective ?I could cry with joy! (I actually have a couple of times this week).?Are you reading this thinking – ah here she has lost it, what the hell? The things she needs to change haven’t yet but yet she feels happy? Yep I do and let me explain why below….

?As you all know life has thrown me some curve balls and while I haven’t gone into too much detail. I actually don’t believe it’s relevant as all knowing what someone else went through does is give us a point of reference and either says to us – oh god I don’t feel so bad now about what I am going through or shit I feel worse, it doesn’t in any way help address the current situation or more importantly the emotions attached to it.?You see it’s not what happens to us that make the difference it's how we react, interpret it and the emotions we attach to it. For most of us those emotional attachments were created when we were children.?Personally for me most of mine were before the age of 7.?In simple terms what that means is that events happened in my childhood that caused a trauma that I interpreted a certain way and attached an emotion to and that becomes the foundation of that feeling – i.e. not being good enough etc. ?I spent most of my life dismissing these emotions mainly due the fact that when I brought them to the attention of my parents when I was a child they were dismissed to the point that I was shunned for feeling the way I did.?The reality is my parents never meant for one second for me to feel that way but they were responding from a place of their own traumas.??You see then thing about trauma is, it will keep affecting your life and those around you until you face it with curiosity, kindness and empathy.?A visualisation technique I use is imaging your 7 year old self after a fall with a large gash on your knee – how would want to speak to yourself, what would you want to ask yourself?

??The events of my childhood left me feelings and subsequent beliefs of ?– overwhelmed, anxious, not good enough, full of imposter syndrome and deeper ones of not being lovable or that I could not be trusted and ultimately at so many times in my life with the ultimate questions what’s the point? What I didn’t realise is that they formed the basis of my belief system about who I was at my core my whole life (what’s called self-limiting belief’s) and where further angst came in for me was that I seemed to be creating and causing what I feared most – evidence that my self-limiting beliefs were true (or so I thought).??Has anyone ever said to you “you are so capable” or “you’re inspiring” and you get this feeling in the pit of your stomach followed by this voice of “if only you really knew me” – that is what is known as being triggered, where an emotional reaction is caused in your body where a wound is triggered.?I spent my whole life being triggered which I took as further proof that they were true which led to coping mechanisms of numbing what I was feeling – we all do it, whether it is alcohol, nicotine, food, sex, gambling, work etc

An addiction manifests in any behaviour that a person finds temporary pleasure or relief in and therefore craves, suffers negative consequences from, and has trouble giving it up. Dr. Gabor Mate.

These ‘addictions’ are just ways of numbing the pain, and too much of society would tell that if you just focus on the behaviour you’ll fix the problem!! That’s like cutting the head of a dandelion an hoping it comes back as a rose!! Depending how far down the stem you cut is all that determines how long it takes to come back as a dandelion.?If you want it to be a rose you have to go deep into its roots and often with help, remove the roots and plant the rose plant, nurture it, be patient and watch it bloom. Just a little heads up – the best person to help you do that is always someone who had done it themselves, not someone who has be taught how to do it.?As Tony Robbins says “success leaves clues”.

?You see the key to all of our healing, understanding ourselves planting new roots, creating habits and ultimately in our growth is in the questions we ask ourselves, you see they must be powerful questions and here are a couple of questions that you may be using and how you can shift them to powerful questions.

?1.???????????Why is my life such a mess? Swop it for - If I had the life of my dreams what would it look like?

2.??????????Why even try? What is one thing I could do today to take me in the direction I want to go?

3.??????????What do I have to offer? Swop it for - What are the obstacles I have faced in my life and what have I done to overcome them? What no one realises is that it’s in your mess that is in your message? You don’t go through pain and suffering for no reason.

?You see for years I told myself that everything I went through was evidence of all my self-limiting beliefs being true but the truth is.?My self-limiting beliefs were formed as a result of trauma I went through (by the way trauma doesn’t have to be a big event and I’ve yet to meet someone who hasn’t had trauma of some form in their life) and those self-limiting beliefs became the foundation of who I believed I was and hence the place I acted from, I have a masters in self sabotage and procrastination, I have the scars and wounds that it has caused but every day I am doing the work and replanting rose bushes.?

?If something in your life is not where you would like to be it is a direct reflection of your self-limiting beliefs and wounding, take the time to do the work to heal the wound and create new and amazing empowering beliefs.?

?They say you should never meet your hero! I am one step closer to meeting mine everyday – myself.

?So my question for you today is…. What empowering question are you going to ask yourself?