OR THE PATH TO UNCOVERING YOUR POTENTIAL
When I start working with a new client, they frequently carry a deep sadness about who they are – or who they are not. For many of them it is tormenting: the glimpses they have gotten at who they want to be and how they want to live, and who they know they could be – and the reality of never quite getting there.
“It’s just too hard”, “life should be about something more”, “I keep sabotaging myself and I don’t know how to stop” or “where’s the fun and the ease?” they think, and “If I just felt good on a more stable basis, I could actually reach my goals”. When we feel good, it seems that we can move the world, and our vision and goals drive us forwards. But then, uncontrollably and seemingly without reason, we feel bad about ourselves and our possibilities, enter into fear, and we start operating from a place of lack, never-quite-getting-there, and effort. If you know this dynamic, you know – it’s exhausting.
Shake That Sadness
The sadness comes with despair and a lack of energy. It’s almost easy to see where we thwart ourselves, and that we do it. The chances we don’t take, the moments in which we close off, the need we may feel to hide and not be visible. The many times we’ve tried to overcome the negativity within – and we succeed, only to find the next issue lurking around the corner. It seems like we’re always working on ourselves, always trying our best. But if we’re honest, the result is alway the same: knowing I could, but never quite making it. It’s a constant experience of the pressure to be better, and the sadness that, obviously, it’s not happening for me.
That sadness is just an energy. It is just a feeling in your body, that comes with certain thought patterns. It can feel real that you don’t deserve it to be easy, or that you always have to work hard, or that you are not as good as others, or whatever false belief your mind has attached to. These beliefs are nurtured and get their reality from the sadness that underlies them. And this sadness is nothing but a pattern, an emotion, an informational field that you have subscribed to – and that you can unsubscribe from.
Find The Real Issue
No matter how much we analyze and try to understand – the reason-effect-thinking just doesn’t resolve the issue. We can see very clearly that we are more than adequate, and we deserve success, and we should be happy and enjoy life – but it’s a whole different story to actually feel it, to know it in the core of your being.
So, a singer can stand on stage, and feel her throat close up. She can know that she has done this a million times, and that nothing really bad can happen, and that she loves doing it and is good at it – but in that moment, it’s a struggle to survive. She just has to get through, function, and every bone in her body tells her to run away and go somewhere safe. Her muscles tense and her body doesn’t respond the way she knows it can.
So why does she feel that way, or why do we get sick before an important presentation, or why do we stay in the job we don’t like, or feel so insecure all of a sudden that we cannot stand up for ourselves… why do we sabotage ourselves?
Asking why doesn’t help us get ahead. It’s the wrong question.
If sabotaging ourselves was a conscious choice, of course, we would not make it. So we have to accept that this kind of self-sabotage comes from a deeper layer, and represents emotions and mental patterns with a root outside of our memory and immediate ability to recognize. If we want to escape the constant cycle of moving forward and holding ourselves back, we have to give an answer to those parts of ourselves that pull us the other way, and block us from showing who we are and what we can do. We have to give a solution to whatever “makes our throat close up”, even when we don’t understand where it comes from. And that solution, it is not a mental answer. It’s not enough to understand why I feel so small and unsafe, in order to be able to transform that blockage. In fact, why is irrelevant. What is relevant is letting go, releasing the energy from our bodies and minds.
Granted, oftentimes when you let go, you also find clarity and understanding. But it comes when you release the negative energy, not the other way around. Understanding is a product of the release, not its reason.
Finding the real issue is frequently not an act of understanding and mental clarity, but one of courage to feel, willingness to go inside, and trust that the real understanding lies within us – and so does the power to let go and transform the energy, the emotion, the physical symptom, or the mindset that come with that blockage.
Feel and Let Go
We have to do something that seems to go against what we’ve been trying all along, using our mind as the source of a solution. Instead, we learn to use our bodies, our physical sensations, in order to connect with what needs to be seen and transformed. And we let go of trying to describe, analyze, understand, and shift the issue with our rational mind. When you look at your experience, you will know: even if you have managed to understand “the problem” – it hasn’t meant that something could actually change. So why not try focusing our energy on another aspect: feeling, instead of understanding?
The beginning of a very deep transformation is always the willingness to feel. It’s the willingness to make space within yourself for the experience of negative emotions and inner states we typically avoid. It’s not wanting to feel them in the first place what gave them so much power and made them stuck within our system.
Of course, there are many tools to help us uncover and release negative energies within our system – the parts of us that hold us back. Some focus on completely feeling them, but others don’t even require us to feel them. Some focus on the mental aspects, others on the physical ones. But all of them have one thing in common: They transform your energy, and your level of consciousness rises. And that FEELS GOOD, gives us hope, clarity, and motivation to move forward, to try things, explore, take risks, and grow in the process. It let’s us shift into a more empowered version of ourselves, and live our dreams a little more every day.
Start Believing: It is Possible!
Our mind can only get us so far. We all know that our thinking can go around in circles and get us – nowhere. But at the same time, our mind is immensely powerful. What we believe creates our reality. So I am asking you for your trust, and to open up your mind, and believe me when I say: It is possible to get out of the cycle of wanting to change and getting frustrated. It is possible to step away from repeating the same patterns over and over again. And, more that that: It is not only possible. It is possible for you!
