As I was driving home this morning, I noticed what a beautiful crisp autumnal morning it was. The sky was a clear blue, the trees were full of burnt orange leaves, alight in the morning sun and there was a low lying mist coming down from the mountains, laid on the foothills like a blanket.
For those in the northern hemisphere, in full spring, we are at very different places in our biorhythms for sure, with nights getting shorter instead of longer as they are here. Either way, seasonal change is upon us and, with it, an opportunity for reflection. As I was driving back home from the mountains to my coastal town, I was listening to Dr. Jude Currivan being interviewed, Her words, along with the breathtaking views of nature I was seeing all around me, reminded me that despite the different experiences we are all having, everything is interconnected none the less. While Dr. Currivan is a scientist - a cosmologist with a background in physics - and holds a Ph.D. in archaeology from the University of Reading, where she investigated ancient cosmologies – what I particularly love is that her work explores the intersection of science, consciousness and spirituality, emphasizing holistic approaches to understanding the universe. Although much of my interest lies in the microcosm of human psychology, I always view it in relation to our part in the bigger whole. So I was particularly interested when the podcast delved into the topic of conscious evolution; this refers to the progression of self-awareness over time. From single-celled organisms to complex human communities, each step signifies an increase in consciousness. This expansion of awareness extends from personal growth to collective, planetary, and universal levels. Just as individuals evolve through experiences and learning, so too does humanity and the universe as a whole. So as I was driving along appreciating how seeming small acts of self awareness can make a huge difference in the world, I was also reflecting on the workshops I have been doing this week with Kate Northrop. Many of the wonderful concepts she talks about in relation to money were timely reminders for me of things I learned in my twenties from the likes of Alvin Hall and Robert Kiyosaki. Back then I had begun to put many of the concepts - like offering more value rather than more time, and leveraging time and money to make passive income – into play, albeit I was still in an early phase of conscious learning. But between my move across continents to a country with a much smaller economy, and my focus on having and bringing up a family, I hadn’t thought about these principles in many years. But Kate’s work is now based on something she only really learned the importance of in 2019, and wasn’t featured in any of the work I read or did thirty years ago either. And there’s certainly no spoiler in sharing that her belief that a relaxed nervous system is key to abundance, as she has discussed this concept in her books, talks, workshops, and interviews. This is the same principle I’ve come to learn in my own work, and it has a universal application, it doesn’t just apply to money. But the beauty of Kate’s work is that this is where she goes deep with it and helps countless people break through their unconscious barriers in relation to this topic of finance specifically, so they are able to define and live the kind of life that is important to them. It was interesting reflecting on my own path to purpose, which really has never been clear to me, other than my desire for a family and a knowing that I wanted to be of wider service to the world. Money was never a focus, but I was aware enough of it to know I didn’t want it to be an issue either. I really only went to university because I had no better idea of what to do with my life at that point and, back in the 1980’s and early 90’s, the UK government was offering free education, along with grants for living expenses. That was followed by postgraduate study in what is now called Human Resources, but I was still none the wiser about what I actually wanted to do as a career. After a few years in the recruitment industry, I stumbled upon network marketing. In itself, it wasn’t for me, but it did lead to 7 years of personal development and growth on many fronts. As a consequence, I found myself drawn to customer experience roles. I was such a strong advocate for improving internal systems, processes, structures and cultures within organisations based on customer feedback that I won several awards, sat on various working groups, and many opportunities in that field opened up to me. After emigrating, I continued working in that field, but it soon became evident that transformation was only possible in organisations when the top decision makers were able to see the value of it to the extent of driving it or getting behind it themselves. Instead, in most organisations, customer experience transformation (which most substantively requires quite a bit in leadership training and development) is often seen as “nice to have” and transformation programmes are often cut in lieu of more short sighted goals. When I exited that kind of work to bring up a family, I knew it wasn’t a field I wanted to return to at that corporate level because it requires such intrinsic change. However, what the intensity of bringing up children taught me, was that the desire and intellectual know-how alone don’t create intrinsic change. Why? Because my own deep seated patterning kept tripping me up. As I’ve mentioned many times, for all sorts of reasons most of us end up with some really unhelpful belief patterns that get hardwired in there. Unseen, yet running the show: I’m not worthy, I don’t belong, I’m stupid, I’m too much, I’m not enough, I’m alone, I’m afraid… the list goes on. These arise in childhood before our conscious memories; they are our ways of interpreting the world depending on many factors, including our earliest experiences and our natural personalities. We aren’t aware that these are then hard wired into our neurobiology, our nervous system, and so our sense of felt safety and “normal” are set in relation to these. That means we may not always be attracted to compatible or healthy relationships – and that can include our relationship with money, health, sex, intimacy, people, fun, our confidence, and our connectedness with the world around us, among many other things. So when I think back to a time a couple of decades ago where I created a “root cause” field in a new system we were installing to track customer issues, I think that in my enduring intrigue around the human psyche (and search for something meaningful to contribute) I was always looking for the root cause of dysfunction – the “why” behind a lack of success in many things despite desire, goal setting and right action. And that is it. Listening to Dr. Jude Currivan discuss various big topics - including our interconnectedness with the cosmos, reframing the universe as a great thought rather than a great object, the significance of the laws of physics, the holographic nature of the cosmos, and the potential for conscious evolution - I can see the first steps are cultivating conscious awareness of our own dysfunction and sense of separateness. As we navigate our individual paths, let's remember the profound interconnectedness of all things and the potential for conscious evolution within ourselves and the world around us. Whether it's in our relationship with money, our partnerships, our parenting, or any other aspect of our lives, let's embrace the journey of self-awareness and growth as a pathway back to unity, belonging, and to achieving our greatest potential in all things. What small step can you take today to foster greater awareness and connection in your life? If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Embrace Your Evolution: Who Do You Want to Be this Time Next Year?, Embrace the Wonder of Your Senses Every Day to Embody Your Soul, How to Live in Conscious Self Awareness in the World, Trust That It’s Absolutely Okay to Not Know Where You’re Going and Normal Is Dysfunctional That Is the Growth Opportunity. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.
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I was reading some articles about dominant themes for 2024, one cited destruction lust as the primary theme. This means to be consumed, even at a subconscious level, with the desire for destruction of that which a person perceives to be against their best interests.
It said that “over the course of history, what you see is that when a society feels frustrated and failed enough by the very society they live in, they tend to elect and/or support a leader that promises to create drastic change and fulfill their destruction lust regarding whatever is causing them that frustration and pain. And these leaders, who are poised to satisfy this destruction lust, are the very ones who instead bring about negative change motivated by self-interest rather than positive change motivated by actual care for the people. These leaders exploit and manipulate the people’s pain and subsequent destruction lust for their own personal agendas. Throughout history, people have fallen into this trap again and again because the relief that destruction promises, blinds them to the consequences. And what it often takes to get elected, is the exact opposite of what the people actually need.” It’s interesting as a recent article in Time Magazine talks about how globally more voters than ever in history will head to the polls in at least 64 countries (plus the European Union), representing a combined population of about 49% of the people in the world that are meant to be holding national elections, the results of which – for many – will prove consequential for years to come. In New Zealand we will certainly be seeing the ramifications of the 2020 election in which the Labour Party won a historic victory, being the first party to form a majority government in the MMP era, for many years to come. It is not unsurprising the pendulum swung in the opposite direction last year when the national election then saw the worst defeat of a sitting government since the introduction of the MMP system; with Labour losing almost half their electoral seats in Parliament. What really struck me, as I was applying some critical thinking to whether and whom to vote for last year, was how the left/right arguments were so dominant and distracting. When plotting where political parties sit on a continuum, there appears little notice or credence to the other axis that represents a continuum between personal power and a nanny state. After the complete loss of many personal freedoms during Jacinda Arden’s time in power, it was something I personally paid a lot of attention to. As far as I can see, fear drove many of the supporters of her party’s decisions to fall in behind them without critical questions being raised. When I wrote Is It Time to Break Free of That Holding Pattern You’ve Been In? there was a recommendation to evaluate decisions from the perspective of imagining how we might feel looking back on those decisions after we are dead. And to become as aware as possible of the positive and negative consequences of those decisions before we make them. In the article about 2024, it was suggested that it will be a pivotal year and decisions will play such a big role that decision making is a contender for the dominant theme. It says ”When it comes to making decisions this year, each and every one of us must gather all the information possible, without only seeking information that confirms our biases. We must also deeply know our values.” Knowing my values hasn’t always been easy to articulate. Among things I value most deeply - and believe in vehemently - are human potential and personal empowerment. I like the article’s reminder to share inspiring and heartwarming stories and post beautiful images that remind people of the magic of life on Earth. Human potential may not always be obvious and yet it is always there, ready to be unleashed through the making of intentional choices and purposeful decisions. This, it suggests, is the antidote to the desire for destruction. I can well believe it. I think one thing we humans all share is a strong desire for freedom of choice. From Mel Gibson’s well known movie battle cry “Freedom!” as William Wallace in the movie Braveheart, through to Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning, books and movies – fiction and non-fiction – abound with the theme of our human capacity when our freedom is thwarted. Years ago I commented (in a company I worked for) on how marvelous it would be if we could repurpose every person in our call centres, give them the freedom to bring their own values, talents and gifts to work every day in order to best serve the company’s main goals and aspirations. The response was interesting; it flushed out fears of how people would take advantage and couldn’t be trusted. Perhaps. I have read about various experiments where people have been given freedoms they had wanted and abused them, but those experiments then show what is only logic – when faced with the natural consequences of their choices (rather than society’s punitive consequences) over the longer term - behaviours changed and people become more responsible and accountable. I believe in the potential of human beings to achieve great things, to recognise their interconnectedness and act with cumulative effects in mind. I believe good decision making requires people to practice making decisions full stop, we will make bad decisions along the way, but we will learn. As mentioned, throughout history, people have fallen into the trap again and again of following, electing and/or support a leader that promises to create drastic change and fulfill their destruction lust regarding whatever is causing them that frustration and pain, heedless of the consequences. These are patterns that we can see when we step back. To be able to do this, I need space and time to think and contemplate. What space and time to contemplate do most people take in today’s world? As we move forward and we are faced with decisions about which leaders to follow and support, especially when they promise drastic change, it will be more vital than ever to be able to step back and really critically examine all of those promises and consequences and not just be blinded be people promising to take away pain points. So how well can you articulate your own values? Where are the pain points in your own life that could blind you to making good decisions? And where and when can you make regular time in your life for reflection and contemplation so that you are able to maintain a broader perspective? If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Leverage the Astonishing Power of Intuition, Flow and Kindness, How to Receive and Be More Confident in Your Needs, Desires and Opinions, Explore Your Limitless Potential, Is It Time to Break Free of That Holding Pattern You’ve Been In? and Life – Will You Take the Easy Way or the Hard Way? To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog. “My hope for you is that you become the fullest expression of yourself.
This is the road to maturity. I want you to know you can do hard things and facing bad feelings won't kill you, in fact it's the key to your best life. The day you realise:
is the day you are available to fulfill your potential and become the most authentic version of you. After a hard day, take responsibility for your feelings and deal with life, it will make you stronger and more mature than any substance, drink, device or other distraction will. Feel your feelings, name them, and own them. Every day. Don't tap out. And if you do, be kind to yourself. Those who succeed in maturing into the fullest expression of themselves keep failing and keep getting back up. The world needs more mature people. You can do this. I love you.” I wrote this for my children, but it has been my personal mission for some time and my highest hope for humanity in this next period of human evolution. I wrote it because they’re at an age and stage of curiosity about the things adults do, things that aren’t healthy, and particularly toxic and harmful to growing minds and bodies, like drinking and drugs and all the other things they can’t and shouldn’t do or try until they are older. It made me think about what really is important, and certainly substance use isn’t something to be flippant or casual about. It's not something I do or support, but neither do I want to create big resistance to it, which will just make them more determined to try it because they see it in many places. But toxic substances aside, I see many of our next generation tapped out on screens, not feeling their feelings. It’s the consumerist society; shopping and eating rubbish are in the quick dopamine hit category. Is that just a precursor? We have a generation who have just been through a prolonged period of social isolation in their critical formative years of social and emotional development. Mental health issues are bound to be on the rise, and they are. When I see what I saw in my own youth, the blatant hypocrisy of adults - be it in people I know, or on TV, or in the media, the hypocrisy of my youth alerts my nervous system “danger”, someone is trying to paint a distorted reality. What comes to mind is “What you do speaks so loudly I cannot hear what you say”. Ralph Waldo Emerson's famous quote is as accurate and meaningful today as it was back in the 1800's. Many of us know it in its more generalized form: actions speak louder than words. I am a truth teller and while those who have confused, undermined, disoriented and pulled the rug from under me in the past with their lies and hypocrisy have left an indelible mark on my life, that mark is now a reminder to ignore their nonsense and see through the distortion. But I also remember that to engage in unnecessary arguments is to shout at an empty boat. It is not necessary as I'm already standing on solid ground. What it boils down to for me as a parent is that it is natural for kids to be curious about things they see and hear about, particularly if they are not allowed those things. Making a big deal of it is only going to pique interest, but endorsing it isn’t the answer either. For my own part, I try and practice what I preach, sometimes I fail, but I own it quickly these days. It’s not always been an easy journey; there have been some uncomfortable and downright painful moments over the years as life has reflected back to me aspects of myself through others that I need to look at. My gran used to say “Oh to see ourselves as others see us”, which was a quote from a Burns’ poem where he essentially says in his fine Scots language is “To see ourselves as others see us would free us from many a blunder and foolish notion”. Over the years I have had those moments of seeing myself through others’ eyes, and it’s taught me not to judge others as much because I’ve been there myself. So for all that, I am back where I started “My hope for you is that you become the fullest expression of yourself. This is the road to maturity. I want you to know you can do hard things and facing bad feelings won't kill you, in fact it's the key to your best life. The day you realise:
is the day you are available to fulfill your potential and become the most authentic version of you. After a hard day, take responsibility for your feelings and deal with life, it will make you stronger and more mature than any substance, drink, device or other distraction will. Feel your feelings, name them, and own them. Every day. Don't tap out. And if you do, be kind to yourself. Those who succeed in maturing into the fullest expression of themselves keep failing and keep getting back up. The world needs more mature people. You can do this. I love you.” If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy How to Let Go of Your Attachment to Your Feelings, Expectations and Beliefs, Switch Focus to Get Unstuck, Leverage Your Feelings to Find Your Authentic Self, How Exploring Mortality, Love, and Grief to Leads to Poignant and Profound Insights and Do You Always Express Your True Feelings? To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog. Here in New Zealand, as in many places throughout the world, it’s Mother’s Day. As I receive good wishes and gifts from my own children, and see and hear the delights of such from other friends who are also mothers, along with a beautiful appreciation of my role as a mother from a burgeoning relationship, I have felt called to also contemplate the deeper meaning of the term mother.
The mother that resides within and for all of us. The mother consciousness, as defined by author Sarah Durham Wilson, says “you are perfect exactly the way you are. Every breath you take is a gift to the world. There is nothing you could do to make me stop loving you. I will always be here. I will pick you up when you fall down. Go after every dream. I’m right here, I love you.” She talks about the archetypal journey from maiden to mother, which I think men can also relate to through their own childhood and inner child. Her journey work starts with meditating with that young child, the little girl (or boy) inside who has been waiting to be mothered for a very long time. Sarah makes the point that patriarchalised mothers don’t have the energy and the fortitude to be the primordial femme. The patriarchy just bleeds into everything and becomes programming “this life is hard… don’t even try…stay small, you’ll be protected…” and then there is that look “that makes you feel you’ll never be good enough, she will never approve of me”. Therefore, in seeking to connect with the primordial mother energy, my first job was to sit in meditation with the maiden, the little girl inside who had been waiting to be mothered. And I started the practice of hearing her, heading into the underworld and making reparations. And then, as Sarah says so sublimely, “you start to forgive and release, to alchemise maiden pain into mother wisdom. The pain becomes the medicine”. It truly does. My childhood may not have been perfect, but my relationship with my mother was everything I needed in order to grow into the person I’ve become today, I wouldn’t change a thing. As I reflect back on my female lineage, mum may often have led with the sharp side of her sword, but it ultimately helped define my edges as I journeyed through life. She also taught me the value of being present in sickness, of drawing on my own reserves, of trusting my own judgment and of allowing others to be who they are. Her mother, my gran, taught me the value in being alone, of not needing to furnish anyone with an explanation for what my own needs and desires are, to simply live them. And my dad’s mum – though long gone – is with me always and immortalized in her gentle energy that remains with me and her wise saying “what’s for you won’t go by you”. Mothering my inner child has helped integrate a great deal of unhelpful patterns and behaviours, which had been helpful as a child but had become outdated and no longer served me, with the parts of myself that I had suppressed, denied and disowned over the years. I can’t say the journey is at an end, for that will come with my last breath, but I’m in a much healthier place than I have ever been. In terms of the journey from Sarah Durham Wilson’s perspective, she says that once we have mastered alchemizing our pain into medicine, then we meet the cherishing mother – the opposite of the patriarchal consciousness: “We have to practice going inward and meeting the cherishing mother until it becomes closer and closer to how we talk to ourselves and how we talk to others. The work is to see ourselves through the great mother’s eyes, which is to see ourselves with an incredible amount of love”. Being a mother who vowed when my children were born that they would be allowed to become simply who they are – while respecting others for who they are – I’ve had a lot of practice at feeling into the cherishing mother when I am interacting with them. However, intention and reality are not always the same and so sometimes I fail at this, but I never lose sight of the aim. And in many respects that is becoming much easier now that I am easier on myself, now that I am connecting to myself more and more through the cherishing mother. From Sarah’s perspective, this is when we move into mother work. “We learn to build an inner model of the mother we needed when we were little, and the woman our world needs us to be now”. The last step is then to bring that energy to the surface, to the world. As I sat down to write this today, I thought about where I am in life right now. I am an active mother of beautiful children, and of my inner child. The act of mothering the three of us is time consuming and important, especially for them as they move through their adolescent years and into their teens. It is the most important focus in my life at this point. But I am also moving closer to bringing that energy out into the world. Contemplating what to write this morning, I felt called to another mother, Mother Nature, in order to feel into the thread that wanted unraveled in this contemplation. And in seeking direction from that calm, gentle lapping of the waves on the shore as I walked along the beach, I found what I wanted on this special mothering Sunday. “Mothering” says Sarah, “in the way of the great mother caring for us as her children. Like a deep nurturing, a deep protection, a deep unconditional love”. I hope that you will take the time to mother yourself, to sit down with your wounds and to love them through this mothering energy. It is time for us to bring kindness, compassion and love right back to the heart of where it is needed, beating inside our chests and radiating out into the world. If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Should We Abandon Happiness as the Impossible Dream?, How Does Who You Say I Love You to Heal the World?, The Quiet Whisperings of Truth That Inspire Our Life, The People Who Hurt Us Are Vehicles for Our Growth and Be the Change You Want to See. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog. Last week my kids were watching the Kim Possible movie. It’s about a teenage spy who feels overshadowed by a new agent. She loses her identity as “being the best” and doesn’t know who she is anymore. Her mum says “You are who you have always been, you’re still Kim Possible”.
The same day I read a quote from Glennon Doyle “Ask a women who she is and she will tell you who she loves, who she serves and what she does – I am a wife/sister/friend/career woman. The fact that we define ourselves by our roles is what makes us untethered and afraid. If a woman defines herself as a wife, what happens when her partner leaves? Or the kids go to college? Or the company folds?” I observe the same regardless of gender, our roles in relation to others seem to define our very sense of self. Perhaps having been through many changes in my life that have redefined the roles I’ve played within relationships and careers and other arenas, it has helped me to see the qualities that make me uniquely me:
There are times when different parts of me take the lead, and those parts are not always defined by healthy behaviors, yet they were all born from healthy reactions that – at the time – served me. I’ve had to look at these parts of me, the behavioural patterns that may no longer serve and observe, question and make different choices in order to create healthier patterns. As a result there are times I can be fiercely independent and at other times codependent. There are times when I am centered and confident, and others when I am anxious or in flight or fight mode. There are times when I’m deep and serious and others when I’m carefree and playful. There are times I am extremely introverted and closed off from the world, and others when I am open and social and really quite extrovert. There are times when I’m present and times when I’m distracted. I’m human. You might like me, you might not. You might like me one minute and hate me the next. My job is to learn to be okay with that rather than bend my shape to fit something you might like and lose myself again in the process. I’m always coming back to myself, and that happens more frequently and with a stronger pull these days if I veer off course. I listened to someone express their opinion on something recently, who felt the need to preface it with these words: “Things do not seem to me to always match the popular narrative. We are living in a time where people are being silenced and alternative opinions are being monitored for questioning the narratives pushed to the public. It is a time of living in fear of ridicule, judgment and social persecution. Even if I wanted to share my most honest insights about the global and collective energies I would likely be censored, deplatformed or trolled. I am aware I have to filter much of what I have to say, to be careful with my wording so as not to offend others. Yet ultimately I am not trying to convince anyone of anything, I am not attached to anyone needing to believe my truth as their own.” I feel the truth of where they were coming from. In so many ways, aspects of this world seem to be going backwards. While I firmly believe this is actually part of a process of “turning up the heat” on the things that really need to change, I also believe that the thing that will see us through is getting a clearer view on who we each authentically are. I read an email from Brianna MacWilliam yesterday “Oprah once said that the greatest discovery of all time is that a person can change his future by merely changing his attitude, which I personally found really inspiring. But she left out one really crucial part – how damn hard it can be to change your attitude when so much that compels our thoughts, feelings and behaviours is largely unconscious, and therefore beyond our awareness and control. That is of course, until you become aware. Then a whole lot more falls within the bounds of your control”. I believe the key to human evolution right now lies in this bit of work, becoming aware of who we each truly are. The ability to define our qualities and talents and anchor ourselves in that, to observe our thoughts and our reactions and figure out which part of us is in the driving seat and whether it is serving us, this is the key to a kinder, more empowering world. So who are you? Go ahead and introduce yourself to the remarkable human behind the roles that you currently play and anchor yourself in that. If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Introducing the Authentic You, Take a Small Break from Your Life to Restart from Your Authentic Core, Leverage Your Feelings to Find Your Authentic Self, Want Better Health? Be Shrewd About Stress, Change Unhealthy Reactions, Meditation – the Cornerstone to Your Success and Do You Always Express Your True Feelings? To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog. Non-binary means not relating to, or composed of, or involving just two things. While the term is becoming popularised though those who do not identify with the male or female gender, I am really excited about what it is signalling for our human growth potential.
When someone close recently identified as non-binary, it made absolute sense to me. I believe we are all a mix of masculine and feminine traits and – like everything else – it’s easier to think of people on a spectrum in terms of their sexuality rather one of a definitive two things. I thought the same thing this week when I saw a post from an old friend supporting a guy they knew who had donated money to a political party, and some followers of his music were outraged, threatening to sabotage his musical career because they didn’t like his choices. As Morgan Freeman said “Just because I disagree with you does not mean I hate you. We need to relearn that in our society”. For a long time we have been living in a black and white world. One that denotes something as good or bad, true or false, male or female and so on. This kind of polarisation has been no more obvious than in the recent pandemic where governments and the media did their utmost to promote fear and polarisation over the choice of a vaccine. Families have been torn apart by this idea that you need to do something in order to keep everyone else safe, and if you don’t you are not only irresponsible but a bad person. As I said in Ask No One to Be Different So That You Can Feel Good I feel an inherent truth in those words, not the ones I heard espoused by politicians. Brianna McWilliams explains how it is that some of us come to appreciate a broader, subtler palette of thoughts and emotions than others. Brianna specialises in the area of attachment theory and how it affects our relationships as adults. She notes that those with a disorganised attachment, also known as fearful-avoidant attachment, are particularly prone to black and white thinking. This arises, she says, because as children we learn to understand our feelings through our caregivers tuning in and reflecting back to us what we are experiencing which builds our vocabulary and understanding beyond the binary “It feels good” or it feels bad”. If our caregivers don’t or cannot reflect back more understanding than that, we then lack the same. Worse, in the era of behaviourist parenting – still the predominant style – there is a tendency to translate behaviour into beliefs that the behaviour itself defines the person as inherently good or bad, introducing the eternally damaging dynamic of shame into the equation along with guilt. I like to challenge myself in recent years to consciously look at things in a broader context than right or wrong, which my parents had strong ideas about. Instead of looking through a lens of or, I look through the lens of and. This leads me to see the many ways in which things can be both right and wrong. For example, although there were many ways in which I could demonstrate I have been victimised in certain relationships, there has always been learning and personal growth in such circumstances. What if there’s an inherent juxtaposition in everything because – instead of a binary world – we live in a world of contrast, a contrast that allows me to figure out my own unique true north instead of being taught it by someone else? And what if every day that changes on some level? The person known as Shona Keachie is a collection of trillions of cells, a collection of emotions, experiences, multiple psyches, skills, opinions and on and on. I first felt this acutely when – in my twenties – I did a lot of personal development work. I remember listening to Florence Littauer talk on stage about four distinct personality profiles and – as hugely entertaining and insightful as it was – I knew life is more complex. It can be helpful to see patterns, but it is also true that I can show up differently in a work situation than a personal relationship and differently again in a friendship, and different in all of those depending on the people within them. As Tony Robbins said “Inside of you, there are parts of you that are incredibly gracious and generous, but there is also a part that is selfish. We all have loving parts and not so loving parts, playful parts and boring parts, courageous parts and fearful parts”. Then he said, poignantly, “The real question is not Who are you? The real question is Which part of you is in charge right now?” In fact, Tony firmly believes he doesn’t change people; he just gets them to put another part of themselves in charge. I believe that applies to all the various parts of us, the tangible and intangible. The mind, body and emotions can be complex and ever-changing. To me the LGBTQIA2S+ community are on the leading edge of a new kind of – and kinder - approach to the human experience on Earth. Who we are is not so simple, it’s shaped by many things. To try and make anything from our sexuality to our cereal preferences and any other minor or major life choices a straightforward binary equation is far too limiting, it stymies our growth as individuals and as a society. Is it time to embrace the full spectrum from shades of grey to the rainbow of choices that define our uniqueness in every way? If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Don’t Tell Me What to Believe - Help Me Find What I Already Know, Are the Most Loving, Courageous and Compassionate Parts of You in the Driving Seat? The Inevitable Pain of Returning to Love After Years of Abandoning Yourself, How Do I Honour What I Believe and Care Less What You Think? and Shine Your Inner Light - Let No One Keep You Down . To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog. Many decades after the war had ended, holocaust survivor Dr Edith Eger finally began to do the inner work necessary to thrive in her life. She said “At Auschwitz, at Mauthausen, and on The Death March, I survived by drawing on my inner world. I found hope and faith in my life within me, even when I was surrounded by starvation and torture and death.”
However, of her life after the war, she said “My inner world was no longer sustaining, it became the source of my pain, unstoppable memories, loss and fear… I tried to banish the memories of the past, I thought it was a matter of survival.” Then she reflects “Only after many years did I come to understand that running away doesn’t heal pain… (In America) I was further geographically than I had ever been from my former prison, but here I became psychologically imprisoned… running from my past, from my fear.” Dr Egar, now a renowned psychologist, also observes “There is no hierarchy of suffering. Nothing makes my pain worse of better than yours”. She has worked with many patients, both those with overt trauma like her own, and those suffering from more covert chronic trauma of childhood development in a world where parenting has centered on controlling behaviour and ignoring feelings for far too long. Dr Gabor Mate, another child of the holocaust, agrees and says “Trauma creates coping mechanisms. One way is soothing that leads to addictions, but another way is, if you get the message that you’re not good enough, then you might spend the rest of your life trying to prove that you are, compensating by taking on too much”. I recognise all these dynamics at play in my own life. I realise I was compensating my whole childhood for my mother’s poor relationship with her father: an abusive, alcoholic liar who died of lung cancer when she was only seven years old. It understandably shaped her whole way of being in the world, as does everyone’s childhood. My mother was always afraid of anyone getting the better of her, or of us, of being duped, and – as such – had strong unshakeable opinions about the way things should be and a very controlling nature. As children, her reaction to our behaviour (my brother and I) dictated the landscape, and I was never sure whether she would be angry or calm, but she was angry a lot. To compensate I became hyper attuned to everyone else’s feelings in order to anticipate danger, a perfectionist to ward it off and highly anxious in my relational attachment style. Like Dr Egar, mum banished the memories of the past and talked about them very rarely, and she certainly made no concession that she had been shaped by her own childhood experience in a way that did not allow her to be the fullest expression of herself. Now a mother myself, I have been forced to confront the unhealthy behaviour patterns I myself adopted as a child many times over. When I read Dr Egar’s words about her return to Auschwitz decades later, I recognised the truth of them straight away: “Arbeit Macht Frei, seeing those words made me realise they do spark with a certain truth. Work has set me free I realise. Not the work the Nazis meant – the hard labour of sacrifice and hunger, of exhaustion and enslavement. It was the inner work. Of learning to survive and thrive, of learning to forgive myself, of helping others do the same. And when I do this work I am no longer the hostage or prisoner of anything.” When I was listening to an interview with Sarah Durham Wilson this week, author of Maiden to Mother: Unlocking Our Archetypal Journey into the Mature Feminine, she really spoke to this sense of many of us being stuck in our child selves. She talks about the journey of meeting with the maiden (or master) the little girl or boy inside who has been waiting to be mothered for a very long time, about journeying to the underworld (the hurts experienced and the compensations we made) where you start to forgive and release, to alchemise the pain into mothering wisdom. The pain becomes medicine. This is what makes Dr Edith Egar and Dr Gabor Mate so good at their jobs and able now to speak on world stages about their experiences and lessons, not just from their own lives, but that of the many thousands of people they have helped. They have taken their pain and alchemised it to medicine. And so this is the task that Sarah Durham Wilson points to. The journey from the patriarchialised mother, where it’s all about keeping you small as a (so called) act of protection, to the great Mother consciousness, which is the opposite and says “you are perfect as you are and cherished always”. My own healing journey has attracted many more opportunities through other relationships over the years to see all the unhealthy patterns and behaviours I adopted. My work right now is to break the pattern of fighting to have my opinion heard, of my chemical addition to chasing closeness from those unable to give it (the emotionally unavailable), and to ease the pervading sense of anxiety over constant rejection and abandonment. To break the patterns of codependency, enmeshment trauma, and an anxious attachment style, I’m learning to have and hold healthy boundaries, to have reasonable expectations within relationships and communicate my needs directly without blame or criticism, to take responsibility for feeling my pain and discomfort rather than trying to avoid it by jumping into my head, or trying to fix others’ problems, and to take responsibility for regulating my nervous system. I vowed to my closest friends that I will keep heading into the underworld to alchemise my pain until it becomes medicine, to keep going in and meeting the cherishing mother until it becomes how I talk to myself and others, and to bring that energy out into the world just as those before me have done. What unacknowledged pain is there within you? What hurts did you compensate for as a child, what coping mechanisms did you develop, that may now be creating limitations in your life? Are you ready to head into the underworld and do your personal work? Is it time to heal ourselves and to bring back the cherishing mother energy that has been absent for a long time? If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy How to Attract the Blissful Relationships You Actually Deserve, Great Relationships Happen When You Put You First, The Almighty Growth Opportunity in Dealing With Emotionally Unavailable People, Get Emotionally Healthy - Is It Time to Break the Chain of Pain? and Risk Losing People to Make Room for Those Who Can Honour and Cherish You. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog. Image by Sarah Richter from Pixabay I was talking to various friends this week about those three magic words I love you. Our experiences of hearing and speaking those words all vary widely, and my own relationship with them has changed dramatically over the years.
The first person I ever said those words to, and recall hearing those words from, was my boyfriend when we were twelve or thirteen and we used to write letters to one another. I grew up believing – mainly through movies and books - those romantic relationships were where a person expressed any kind of big feelings. Saying I love you to family members was more in the domain of those crazy Americans we used to watch on TV. Certainly not in our homes, nor in popular culture in the UK, it just wasn’t something people said to each other; a definite overhang of centuries of emotional repression. Yet in recent years it has crept in. I personally remember the creep very well, I didn’t just suddenly find myself saying those words to all and sundry, and still don’t of course, I am selective. But my world of expressing and receiving love now goes beyond romantic relationships and it was a process. My niece and I were having a conversation about what is happening with Russia and the Ukraine. To me, this is all connected; it isn’t something that happens in isolation. I was sharing with her that I resonated with one of Brene Brown’s posts where she said “We stand with every Ukrainian. We stand with the thousands of brave Russians demonstrating in protest, risking their safety to do so, and all those devastated by this unprovoked, terrifying, and reprehensible war”. It also brought up for me the hundreds of thousands of protesters around the world whose governments are not only ignoring their messages about the overreach in regards to COVID19 restrictions, but vilifying peaceful protesters in the mainstream media as violent troublemakers. I’ve seen many times now firsthand live footage of what is actually happening versus what gets reported. So, what do I think is really going on... first COVID19 extremism and now Putin invades the Ukraine, is the world going to hell in a hand cart? No I'd say not. I'd say it's more like Mother Earth is ridding herself of a poison. All that was hidden beneath is bubbling to the surface. The atrocities of 80 years ago amid the horrors of WW2, with characters like Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, Franco etc did not just disappear. The narcissistic traits that created pain and war then are still seen in many people today, in many households, workplaces and they are very obviously and sadly seen in many people in power positions. I think this is a time of taking off rose coloured glasses, and many still have them on so there could be more to come, but we are collectively starting the process of clearing out all the junk in our trunk. As I awakened to the lie that power is an external force to be complied with, and is instead an internal allowing of love from within, that is when space was cleared within me. I have come to feel this love as the powerful force it is. I think it was around the time I started to find my feet as an adult I can remember my mum saying “Love you Sho”. For a long time those words would send me into freeze mode. As I spoke to in Who Are You Protecting? Why Telling Your Story Is Powerful the relationship I had had with my mum in childhood had created a lot of anxiety as I grew. Love was not unconditional. As in most households and upbringings, there were expectations around behaviour and, if not met, there would be punishment, withdrawal of love and words such as “you should be ashamed”. So for many years I was not able to receive those three words I love you from my mum, nor anyone else outside of a romantic relationship. I would feel like a cat caught in the headlights and avoid saying anything in response and come up with other phrases to smooth over that awkward moment. It wasn’t really until I started doing my own inner work not long before my mum died that I began to clear space for the love that I am to rise up within me. There was – and is ongoing – a necessary and conscious look at all that dwells in the shadows, and a deliberate process of forgiveness and healing. This also gave rise to new possibilities, new connections and a place to receive and give those three words more freely. But perhaps the biggest gift has been the ability to feel those three words in relation to myself. As I have begun to reintegrate the parts of me I had rejected as I grew, because they hadn’t fit into what was expected or desired of me back then. In recent years I’ve been able to more easily say to my closest confidants, family members and girlfriends “I love you” with more and more ease. To me it means something like “I see you, the real you, in all your glory and pain. I’ve got your back. I trust you not to betray me. And it hurts my heart when I see you being dishonored”. And it’s also been easier to say it to my guy friends recently without that romantic overlay/entanglement. That boyfriend from my younger days is still in my world. The level of intimacy in our relationship has obviously changed over the years as we each went on to have other relationships, had kids and moved to different countries. But our friendship has endured and I love to hear how he and his family are doing, and we generally have the other’s back when life throws some pain our way. These things are not always easy, and I have to respect and honour the other people in my people’s lives. Everyone is at a different stage of their own journey and the relationship they have in terms of self love and the words I love you. I do believe that as each person finds their way back to and expresses the love that they are, it purges more and more of the poison that stops each of us from feeling and receiving the love that is there. The more we take responsibility for healing our own wounds, the less we will see of the atrocities that are happening today. We can rise in anger, and well we should, it is better than powerlessness, but we can also find the powerful force of love within and allow that to rise up and to get to know our true nature which is powerful beyond imagination. If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Why the Integration of Feelings and Logic Will Save the Human Race, How to Quieten the Inner Critic, When to Act on Possibility, Embracing the Feminine within All of Us, , What You Give Your Attention to Is Your Greatest Contribution, Connect to Your Well-Being and Could a Broader Perspective Benefit Us All Right Now? To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog. As someone who has had the misfortune to be intimately involved, both personally and professionally, with a few characters who use manipulation and control tactics such as gaslighting, triangulating, lying, invalidation, minimisation, moving the goal posts (and so the list goes on), I have learned not only to develop and hold healthy boundaries – but to take notice when my gut tells me the ground on which I’m standing suddenly feels less solid beneath my feet.
I feel like that right now in relation to the environment here in New Zealand around COVID19 restrictions and what I’m seeing happen elsewhere. Attending a parent’s evening at the kids’ school this week, one of the important topics up for discussion was how we promote inclusion around the issue of vaccination status as some fractures are beginning to rear their ugly heads in reflection of what is going on in society at large. To put this into further context, I am talking about a class of nine-year-olds, where playground and classroom talk really should not be focused on these adult issues and themes. I imagine this is particularly difficult for any teacher whose only basis for getting a vaccination themselves was in order to keep their job (all teachers in New Zealand were given a matter of only weeks’ notice to become fully vaccinated or leave). In another post I saw from a professional contact of mine, who runs a customer experience consultancy business, she was recounting a story of an elderly gentleman who had entered a store that required a My Vaccine Pass. Upon advising he did not have one, the clerk frantically and loudly pointed him to the door and ushered him out. She was making a plea to service providers to give their teams guidance on how to say “No we can’t serve you” without humiliating their fellow citizens. I responded “I suspect these are fear driven responses and, until we are able to address the fears, it will be hard to avoid this”. At the parent’s evening I heard parents respond with fears from two polarised perspectives. One was fearful of masks not being worn in the classroom because her father had been in intensive care being treated with COVID19, whereas another parent’s father and mother had both suffered strokes within a week of having the vaccine administered. In New Zealand the government announced the My Vaccine Pass a matter of weeks ago and, from the third of December, many venues and facilities became inaccessible to those who cannot show this. To qualify for one you have to be fully vaccinated and have a booster (at this stage) every 6 months, though I suspect New Zealand will follow suit with other countries who now recommend a booster every 3 months as it’s becoming less effective. The recent mandates have left many workers without jobs and many citizens unable to access services, facilities (like swimming pools and libraries), and education unless they get behind the governments drive to fully vaccinate. Now, until recently, we in New Zealand have been relatively sheltered from COVID19 which, I suspect, has perhaps made many of our citizens even more fearful of the virus. The whole of Auckland (population 1.7 million) has been on lockdown since August when the Delta variant took hold. The Prime Minister has been promising to open it up again at 90% vaccination rates. Vaccination is touted (and now mandated) as the key to social and personal freedoms. Despite this, COVID19 has spread but - to put it in perspective, we are talking (as of 12 December 2021) about 6738 active cases in the whole country (population 5 million). My gut tells me the measures are way out of kilter with the actual threat. So I took a good look at some of the statistics around the world to see what’s actually been happening and gain some perspective. Was I being too glib? I will quote the UK figures as it’s been one of the most impacted countries, and is also my country of birth where I have lots of family and friends who have shared their stories over the last year and more. Here is what I found... Looking at the stats taken from https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ total active cases in the UK right now are 1,171,000 (of 69 million population). So 1.7% of the UK population have currently tested positive for COVID19. Now while this is a particularly tricky coronavirus, it is a coronavirus nonetheless; one of the most common causes of cold and flu symptoms worldwide for centuries. 1.7% of the population having it doesn't sound that extraordinary to me. The total accumulated cases in the UK since the start of the pandemic is 10,771,444. This means 15.6% of the population have tested positive for COVID19 at some point. Total deaths in the UK (attributed to COVID19) since the start of the pandemic are 146,387, which is 0.21% of the UK population. So only 15.6% of the UK population has actually caught this virus since the start of the pandemic and 0.21% have died. Someone I know who lives there said to me the other day "I dread to think where we would be without the vaccine, this virus is doubling every two to three days!” I responded “Let's look at that, where would you - a healthy individual (who has barely ever had flu, never mind the common cold nor any other respiratory issues) - be? If you were in proximity to the virus, as you probably have been on many occasions, would you even catch it? Probably not. And if you did catch it, what are the chances of dying from it? Very little, odds are you would recover”. Then I saw a post from Esther Jacobs on LinkedIn, citing the example of a flight from South Africa to the Netherlands (where you have to show proof of a vaccine or a negative test) which demonstrates why vaccinations themselves do not stop the spread. All passengers were detained for testing on arrival in the Netherlands, 61 of them testing positive for COVID19, which means a lot of vaccinated people are carrying the virus without knowing it. Now that I am looking more widely, I’ll share the global figures. Total cases (of COVID19) since the start of the pandemic are 269,917,935 (3.86% of the human population) of which 5,316,825 i.e. 1.97% have died (i.e. 0.076% of the total global population). By far and away the vast majority of people do not catch the virus and, of those who does, the vast majority recover. So why all this fear and panic? Why all the stringent measures? Have vaccines slowed down the virus any? It is one year ago since the first Pfizer vaccine was administered to a 90-year-old grandmother in the UK. Prior to that, according to the same data source, using 4 Dec 2020 as a reference point (pre vaccine), globally 1,626,314 had died at that point, out of a total of 67,120,936 cases i.e. 2.42% (which is 0.02% of the global population). Of course I know it’s a particularly nasty virus and not one I’d want to catch anymore than I want to catch any virus particularly. Of course it's incredibly sad that people die from this virus or suffer symptoms of long COVID19, but I wanted to gain some perspective. It's hard to tell what impact vaccines have had. The first variant of the virus appeared in September 2020, months before vaccines started to roll out (from Dec of 2020) and it is unknown what the virus's natural path could have looked like. Certainly enough modeling was done to scare people into complying with public health measures and positioning vaccines as the silver bullet to social freedoms. Vaccines that are entirely new technology, different from any vaccines used before, and on the market and in people's arms in record speed. The vaccines are losing effectiveness by the day as the virus mutates and people are being asked to have more shots more frequently. I particularly like an article written by Guy Hatchard PhD who has applied in depth critical thinking on the topic and has been in correspondence with the government’s closest advisors here around the management of the virus over the last year or more, and until the last few months. One of his key concerns is the lack of any mandatory reporting about vaccine side effects. He says “The failure to alert the public that there was a measureable and significant risk to vaccination was compounded by false government assurances that there was no risk… Public perception of safety (of the vaccines) has become so entrenched that individuals posting about their adverse reactions on social media are often mercilessly trolled”. As I said to my friend in the UK “The bottom line is that, while this is a particularly nasty virus, and while there is certainly some truth in what you're being fed and regurgitating, it is not the whole truth and it's most certainly not in context or unbiased”. When I look at this reasoning about wanting to avoid an overload the health system, for example, sure there was an initial influx last year, doctors were baffled dealing with something new and it took everyone by surprise. But where is the load being accounted for in administering millions of vaccine doses and tests? Vaccines that are becoming less effective. And where is the tracking of the load being created by vaccine side effects? And if there's such a load on the health systems, why aren't governments investing in and promoting good healthy eating and lifestyle practices that support and boost healthy immune systems? Where is the investment in effective treatments? Why are perfectly healthy people being penalised when unhealthy people - so long as they're vaccinated - get to walk around spreading the virus? And all of this in the context of barely a dent on the overall global population. I don’t mean to trivialize this by any means, but if someone would have told me a couple of years ago that we would all be walking around wearing masks and segregating our society into vaccinated and unvaccinated in response to a global pandemic, with people losing their jobs and access to facilities and services for non compliance, I would have imagined a scenario where a good proportion of my friends and family had died. But it just doesn’t bear out in the facts. Meanwhile, what is very obvious, is pharmaceutical companies are making some good money, and creating some great repeat business. Governments have people divided and distracted, so I have to wonder if it’s worth checking what other legislation is going through at the speed of light while people are all looking elsewhere. I have had a look on the parliamentary website for proposed legislation and submission dates. There has been an interesting array of legislation slipping through here, from our water systems to artificial intelligence, all with extremely short submission deadlines. But now I am venturing into another territory, the possible motives behind the government and media manipulation and control tactics. This has the potential to create more fear and, since I know no further facts around it nor have any real perspective on it at the moment – and certainly no control over it – it’s not where my focus lies. For now it is only clear to me that the fear mongering around this is disproportionate to the facts, as perhaps are the public measure in place and the extraordinary drive to vaccinate. It has certainly quelled any unbalanced fears in relation to “what if” I catch the virus, or what if anyone around me has it. Regardless of where you stand on the issue of vaccination, is it worth the time to take a broader perspective right now to help alleviate any fears you many have in relation to this topical issue? And, if not this issue, what else is taking centre stage in your life that might benefit from a broader perspective? If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Be Purposeful in Your Focus - Your Glass Is Actually Still Half Full, How to Reclaim Your Freedom Instead of Feeling Trapped, When Life Is Uncertain It Feels Good to Take a Positive Step, How Do I Honour What I Believe and Care Less What You Think? and Empower Yourself - When a Difficult Reaction Sends You Into a Tailspin. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog. I’ve been thinking a lot about freedom this week, and out of interest I asked my (soon to turn teen) niece what her definition of freedom was. She responded “the feeling of relief and the feeling that nothing is holding you back in life”.
I couldn’t have defined it better if I had tried. I have heard others define it by conditions that need to exist, rather than as a feeling. But I have read accounts of people who have lived in the absolute worst of human conditions – such as the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camps - who still felt freer than others who would appear to be privileged and yet feel trapped. Freedom has come up for me both on a micro and macro level, with global restrictions in place and whole swathes of people becoming polarized against one another. And I am pondering this on both levels. When someone asked me recently about some undesirable conditions I had lived with in my life, and why I had put up with them for so long, I responded that once I became aware of my situation I had made a choice and – while staying within it for a certain amount of time – had chosen to focus on the positive aspects. Yet, as I wrote about a few years ago in Why Does She Stay? … and What Makes You So Different? it can so often be the case that people are unaware that they have a choice. Lack of confidence, shame, a misplaced sense of duty - all some version of fear – and all have a familiar resonance with feelings from childhood. For me these feelings drew more experiences that led me to wonder thoughts like “perhaps what I seek is a fantasy, perhaps this is just what life is”. I wrote at the time: “She stays because she’s rooted in fear, what is known seems safer somehow that what is unknown. The same as why the other s(he) is violent to begin with, or why you stay in that job you hate, or stick with that diet you loathe, or with that person you don’t love, it’s all rooted in fear. Life will often present you with BIG things, like near misses, disease or death, because it knows you need dislodged to get out your comfort zone and show you that you can do it… So you can wait for the slam dunk, or you can start to see the fear for what it is. It’s a thought. And thoughts can be changed. You just need to start reaching for better feeling thoughts” It’s fear that takes our sense of freedom. Over the course of my life, any time I became aware that I was entrenched in circumstances that really weren’t serving me, I usually moved on. But after decades of repeating the same experiences –the same theme with variations on the story and people – I finally started seeing patterns. This led me to look in the mirror and start to wonder who I was showing up as that kept attracting these same sorts of themes. In turn this led to a juicy and oftentimes uncomfortable perpetual journey of self reflection, awareness and growth. And so it is I find myself in 2021 with all aspects of my life in movement. Some feel good, some feel not so good, but only in the moment; I feel strongly it’s all okay in the now and it’s all headed in the right direction. Some of it is within my control, some of it isn’t. My reaction to my changing circumstances though is completely within my control. I was listening to the words of Abraham Hicks this week, who was speaking on Government Control (well worth a listen for anyone currently feeling somewhat constrained at the moment) but it spoke equally to me on the topic of feeling trapped in any way: “You think nothing comes if you don’t fight for it and we say it comes in spite of your fighting for it. All individuals have the power to feel good and to be free. But when you turn your power over to anybody and say that they need to do something different before you can feel better, you are in trouble because you cannot control them. No one has the ability to take your freedom from you, and no one does when you know that. And until you do, a 2-year old can entrap you.” Strong words. In another response to someone, who was deliberating whether to have a vaccine, Abraham Hicks said: “We are not saying to you that you can give away your freedoms and like it, we are saying to you that you are giving away your freedoms in ways you don’t even know. This isn’t about what you do or don’t do. You either line up with taking it and take it, or you line up with not taking it and don’t. Just don’t decide not to take it and push against – or decide to take it and push against – because it is the pushing against that takes your freedom and your wellbeing and your joy. Every time you push against anything you give away freedom and alignment with who you are. But there is so much more evolution and expansion than the decision you are making.” This pondering has led me to realise that, despite some obvious disagreements over the issues of the COVID19 vaccines, on both sides of that argument people are seeking freedom. Some, who have always placed their faith in the medical systems and never experienced anything negative as a result – or may in fact feel they owe their physical wellbeing entirely to medical interventions – have had no issues taking the recommended course of action from their governments. Others, who have had negative experiences of pharmaceuticals and/or the medical system, are understandably wary – or in some cases downright fearful – of the recommended course of action and mandates. I personally feel the same way about my body as I do about my levels of conscious awareness of my thoughts in recent years, in that I am far more attuned and aware of what my body wants and needs than I was in the past. It does not sit at all well with me that anyone except me should think they are qualified to tell me what my body wants and needs. Talking with a friend of mine in another country this week about the mandates here in New Zealand for teachers and healthcare works to have had their first jab by 15 November, or not be allowed to continue in their roles, I mentioned a post I had seen which said “Kind of weird I have to explain this, but taking things away from people until they agree to do what you say isn’t giving them a choice, it’s punishing them until they concede to your demands. Normally we would refer to this type of behaviour as manipulation and abuse”. He was telling me that – after having had a bad reaction to a flu vaccination many years ago – he personally would rather take his chances with his immune system. However, given restrictions on travel and a close family member’s deteriorating health (nothing to do with the virus), he felt he needed to go get the vaccine so he was in a position to get on a plane at a moment’s notice. Now, while this is far from ideal in terms of “conditions” relating to personal freedoms, it’s an excellent example of what Abraham Hicks is pointing to; and indeed what my niece said so eloquently. When faced with a choice, choose the one that gives you the most relief. And for each person, that will result in different choices. Honour that. Some people will choose to vaccinate over losing their job, some will choose to walk away from their job. Others will choose to abstain from seeing their loved ones, while others will choose to vaccinate in order to travel or be allowed in care homes and so on. And remember the statement from the Abraham Hicks’ excerpt on Government control “When you turn your power over to anybody and say that they need to do something different before you can feel better, you are in trouble because you cannot control them”. I think that's the essence of our experience here perhaps, to know ourselves in this oppression so that we can come into the fullest expressions of ourselves. It seems to me, there has never before been a time when so many are governed by so few, and the desire for freedom, be it personal, social, racial, gender identity, economic, health, education or whatever, there is a rising desire for freedom world over. Esther Hicks said, “My only hope is that ‘what is’ becomes so evident to people that it fuels their desire for freedom”. Ultimately I believe I can and will achieve freedom from the micro and macro situations in my life that oftentimes constrain me, but I’m human, and it’s fair to say I spend more time dwelling on and dissecting ‘what is’ instead of focusing on ‘what I want’ to be. And that is okay. Even in my resistance, my fighting, ultimately what is so desired will come in spite of my fighting it. As I was swimming up the lane on my back yesterday I looked at the cobalt blue sky and shining sun beyond the mass of grey and white clouds drifting past. And as I watched the sky I saw it as a beautiful metaphor for this thing called freedom. Freedom is the basis of life, it is always there like the cobalt blue sky and shining sun, regardless of what is blocking it from view. I can fight against the clouds, or the tilt of the earth, but ultimately they will continue on as they always have, my situation in relation to those is only temporary. And so that is how I choose to see any obstruction to my freedom. “Those who feel all powerful, who think they can control the outcome of your experience and others, don’t and can’t” is the final Abraham Hicks quote I’ll share. I choose to see those people or institutions like clouds in the sky. And, just as I do in my meditation each day with my thoughts, I take my attention from those clouds and let them drift on by. In what ways do you feel your freedom being taken right now? Are there alternative ways of looking at the situation, perhaps as clouds in the sky, which feel better to you? And in what other thoughts or decisions are you able to find relief? If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy When Life Is Uncertain It Feels Good to Take a Positive Step, Ask No One to Be Different So That You Can Feel Good, What Do the People in Your Life Have to Teach (Good and Bad)? and Reclaim the Sweet Spot of Being in Your Element. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog. Every now and then I hear something that feels like a fundamental truth about how life works. When I hear it, there is an internal shift, a feeling that something has just clicked into place.
One of the most pivotal things I’ve heard in my life, were these words: “YOU are the only one who creates your reality. If you knew your potential to feel good, you would ask no one to be different so that you could feel good. You would free yourself of the cumbersome impossibility of needing to control people and circumstances.” Cumbersome impossibility, those words felt richly mined from the depths of my experiences. At the time I heard them, back in 2006, I was reflecting on every relationship with every person I had ever had to that point. I could see the countless times I had not just tried to persuade people to my way of thinking on any number of things, but literally believing my way was the right way. And over the years that followed I observed it both within myself and among others. Those words have remained with me like a rod that will not be broken, pointing to a true north it cannot deny. Over the years I have slowly broken old habits and softened my stances and now generally stand in an attitude of live and let live much more of the time. There are a collection of those kinds of beliefs within me, some that are harder to articulate because I haven’t yet perhaps taken them out into the light, dusted them off and been awed with how they shimmer and gleam. But one I have always felt within me as a truth is “Everything works out for the greater good”. I mean this in a broader, collective sense. Words that speak to this, and come to mind, were written in one of Belinda Alexandra’s novels, reflected by one of the main characters: “All honourable causes eventually succeed even if at first they fail. The spirits of good people – even if they die in defeat, return in future generations to continue moving the human race forwards to higher and better things.” The same character also reflected that “Out of darkness and suffering can come hope, joy and progress”. I was asking my almost-teen niece this week what she thinks the most important thing is right now for people in the world to consider. She mentioned both that COVID19 isn’t yet gone and, separately, how she is seeing anger getting played out in ways that aren’t getting the attention needed to resolve the issues. One of the examples she gave was a 13-year old who was stabbed by a so called friend, and she was trying to fathom how a 13-year old had enough anger that he could actually kill his classmate. I could relate to this as I can recall being shocked when two boys at my own school got into a fight and one stabbed the other. As I’ve learned more about childhood trauma I’ve learned that anger is an emotional reaction that occurs when boundaries have been overstepped. And often that anger gets misdirected at someone whose actions were simply the straw that broke the camel’s back. I have often wondered, looking back on that fight at my school, what sort of emotional or otherwise abuse was going on at home for both the kids involved. I agree with my niece that waking up to that is important in our society. Becoming consciously aware of the narratives in my head, and what narratives I’m passing onto my kids either intentionally or unintentionally, has been life transforming for me as I explained in Normal Is Dysfunctional That Is the Growth Opportunity. But I feel this lack of general awareness and intentionality is actually tied to the other issue my niece mentioned, that COVID19 hasn’t gone away. How many kids around the world right now are hearing a narrative in their homes about COVID19, its effects and government restrictions? And what sort of impact is it having on them I wonder? Are these narratives ones that are making them feel empowered or disempowered? Fearful or safe? Angry or apathetic? The arguments appear to becoming more polarised and fear driven. In particular the central, single most damaging theme – in my opinion – is a narrative that says “my safety and freedom depends on your actions”. These are the very antithesis of those words I heard back in 2006, that feel to me like a fundamental truth: “YOU are the only one who creates your reality. If you knew your potential to feel good, you would ask no one to be different so that you could feel good. You would free yourself of the cumbersome impossibility of needing to control people and circumstances.” I can’t help compare that with political statements and media campaigns I’m seeing at this time in our society. Trying to persuade people that one way is right and another wrong is what has started every human conflict on the face of the planet. Going back to that same novel of Belinda Alexandra’s, which was set in the era of the Second World War, the character reflected further: “While most had not wanted war, they had chosen a path of greed and pride and the result had been war. For where else does violence begin but within each individual human heart? It started with violence of thought and action, jealousy of others and loathing of oneself. It had its beginning in the daily choices one made. Including indifference to others’ suffering and oppression. From there it escalated into a collective competitiveness, selfishness, pettiness, spite and greed. Violence of even the seemingly innocuous kind begets more violence. That was the origin of war.” While I can readily sense the violence of the 13-year old my niece mentioned, I can sense it just as much in trying to force people to do something they don’t want to. And I mean this in both senses when it comes to choosing a course of action for each individual. I have seen those who have chosen to accept a vaccine come under as much pressure from well-intentioned family members as those who don’t. “My safety and freedom depends on your actions” is the narrative I am hearing from our government. I am seeing anything that speaks against this narrative – or which even questions it – being torn to shreds, censored and outright vilified. But what about having the freedom of choice I wonder? Of having sovereignty over my own body? Has that been lost in the fog? Have people been beaten down by the endless lockdowns and loss of other freedoms? The lack of connection with loved ones? Philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche once said “No price is too high for the privilege of owning yourself”. And what is the price in this case I wonder? These issues are not going away. Final reflections from the character in Belinda’s novel might add some insight into my own way forward as I navigate these times: “Peace on a worldwide scale is determined by each of us creating peace in our own hearts and minds first, and doing our best to live in harmony with people and other living creatures around us. When we can do that, I believe we will become a force powerful enough to create positive change on a scale never before conceived.” I believe this too. But it was so much easier in easier times. Now is among the worst of times, and it may get even worse before it gets better. The most important task for me has been creating peace in my own heart and mind. And to stick to what I felt true, and still do - to ask no one to be different (or do differently) so that I can feel good. I didn’t feel it as a fundamental truth and now think “ah yes, well COVID19 will be the exception”. No, what is happening right now is not the exception; it’s simply an extreme circumstance to which the same truth applies. “Live and let live” isn’t something I aspired to in the best of times and am now going to ditch. The privilege of owning myself is one that is not always comfortable. The external world can force itself physically, but it cannot change my mind, my beliefs or my values – and the more force it applies the more it exposes its true nature. Going back to what I said in Why the Integration of Feelings and Logic Will Save the Human Race, the current world view – Materialism – is based on physical objects as the stuff of creation and yet reality remains inexplicable. In that article I shared that Deepak Chopra cites our most urgent problems as overpopulation, pandemic disease, refugeeism and climate change and says “you may hope and pray that science and technology (which have been the most urgent things in the age of materialism) will come to the rescue, but the chances are tenuous without a huge change in how we think”. All of this leads him to conclude that the change necessary is a change in self awareness. I also recall a talk by Eckhart Tolle talking frankly about the human need to be right, and the shift in self awareness required to see our thoughts as nothing more than subjective opinions. And what has been thought of collectively as “good and true” among us simply marks a point in time. Remember the widespread belief that all computers and electronics would crash as the clock struck midnight heralding the year 2000? I was even paid to do training with companies to protect them against the so-called Millennium Bug. Remember the panic in the 1970’s that oil was going to run out within 30 years? And the panic was purely consumer driven; there was zero thought about what we were doing to the eco-system. Remember the belief that Saddam Hussein was stockpiling nuclear weapons which launched a war killing tens of thousands of people? This list could go on and on and without even including the vastly differing beliefs of people in societies depending on who is in rule and which dogmas are in place at the time, and without even pointing to some of the fundamental shifts in beliefs that civil rights movements have driven. It is inconceivable to many people now that humans were thought of as unequal just because of their gender or race, and yet that oppression existed and stay plays out today in many ways seen and unseen. Therefore challenging and compelling people to change their beliefs or their actions does to me feel like a cumbersome impossibility. What if, instead, I just trust my own inner knowing about what is best for me? And trust that others can do the same for themselves? And to trust in the overall direction of life, that the human race is – even if in a snake-and-ladder type fashion at any point in time – moving forwards to higher and better things. Are you able to ask no one to be different, or take different action, at this time so that you can feel good? What would it take for you to create peace in your own heart and mind right now? Which narratives would feel more empowering? If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Do YOUR Research! Strengthen Your Character to Stop Getting Triggered by Wild Beliefs, How to Appreciate Our Differences Enough to Admire and Want to Embrace Them, Empower Yourself - When a Difficult Reaction Sends You Into a Tailspin and Make the Invisible Visible - Celebrate the Gold in Your Emotional Reactions. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog. With all the parenting advice I’ve read and heard, which has a wealth of information about understanding the different developments stages and what is needed at each, and how to manage my kids undesirable behaviour, there seems to be one huge piece missing and that is about how to manage myself.
No one forewarned me that, as Lisa Marchiano puts it “You’re going to project your stuff on your kids. There is no way that you are going to get through any amount of time with your children and not meet those parts of yourself you cut off and sent backstage (the aspects of yourself that are unconscious but we see in others, our blind spots)”. It just brings up so much discomfort and pain. The inherited patterns of behaviour in parents that children react to, and unwittingly develop patterns in response to, are essential for survival in childhood but become unhealthy patterns later in life; and will certainly get passed on unless the cycle is broken. The best description I’ve seen of these is in James Redfield’s The Celestine Prophecy, he describes four archetypes (on a scale of aggressive to passive) that are “control strategies we each develop in order to stop others’ draining our energy”. I summarised these more in Normal Is Dysfunctional - That Is the Growth Opportunity. The thing is, normal developmental trauma arises from normal parenting and remains largely unseen precisely because it is deemed normal. Yet it creates power struggles and destruction; it creates disease, chronic pain and illness; and it stunts individual and collective abilities to address systemic issues within relationships and society. That is the ultimate challenge of parenthood, the ultimate responsibility, to recognise and break the cycles of dysfunction that are still very much alive. Amy McCready of Positive Parenting Solutions says “Children have two major needs: attention and power. And if they are not getting positive attention and positive opportunities to make their own choices they will settle for negative attention and ways to gain a feeling of personal power”. Not only that, the lack of positive attention or opportunity to express personal needs and desires is precisely what leads to the kind of dysfunction that is prevalent in society today. Yet we live in a society of distraction – parents distracted by devices and responsibilities. Not to mention the pass-the-parcel of before/after school care, split families/housing. Men and women, whether parents or not, really struggle in relationships today with break ups rates higher than ever before. Where in all of that, I wonder, are we allowing for and compelling attention on our kids’ development? Relationship expert Terry Real says that the traditional walls for men and women in a patriarchal culture are changing, but are far from changed – and those traditional walls preclude intimacy. As Raine Eisler said “It’s an old fashioned word, but patriarchy really means dominion (power over) instead of power with.” I was sent one of Constance Hall’s blog post’s this week that demonstrates how patriarchy is still very active and it really resonated for me. Her main point was that every consenting partnership should consist of two adults whose working hours are equal regardless of whether they are paid or unpaid work. The original has a sort of angry rant feel to it, yet she makes some really good points, so here is a version with the emotional charge toned down a bit: “The thing about not doing your share of house work or child rearing is that is more insidious than a simple “I can’t be bothered”; domestic responsibilities do not disappear. Children do not raise themselves. Housework doesn’t do itself. Every time you sit on the toilet, eat food from a clean plate, watch on with pride while your fed, educated children smile, it’s because someone has put in effort for you to receive that privilege. And if it wasn’t you, it was someone doing your share. Remember that expecting someone else to do your workload is oppressive. It’s saying “you can have equal rights only when you’ve met the basic needs of others”. Support each other because domestic duties are about so much more than clean sheets, it’s about respect and showing your kids what is and what isn’t a healthy way to care for themselves.” I think that is a great message, but there is another side to it, which is the person who allows that to happen. I know because I am one of those people who has too often taken more than my fair share of responsibility and felt overwhelmed and overburdened and then resented the heck out of it. This represents a typical narcissistic/codependent relationship, which is also typical of the type of normal dysfunction I refer to earlier in the piece. Trauma expert Pete Walker describes this as the most common relational hybrid. Terry Real describes the same blueprint as grandiosity versus inferiority/shame-based and is the most prevalent pattern he sees in relationships also. “While women can show up as narcissistic”, he says “it is more common for men to be this way”. Terry’s view is that we don’t value relational skills in a patriarchal culture. He goes on to say “We code relationship as feminine and we do to intimacy what we do to many things feminine: we idealise it in principle and we devalue it in fact”. I know this reality well. Having worked since I was fifteen, first through school and university and then in a corporate career, I know what working long hours and having high levels of responsibility looks like. What I didn’t know was what motherhood looked like. At first I saw my corporate career as a welcome temporary escape from the monotony of those early childrearing years, but then it became clear that regardless of how I felt (which with a baby and toddler was starting to look more like burnout), my children needed me at home. There was a piece I wrote describing a typical night after getting home from work, and one day I will publish it, because it heralded the start of this journey to me, but for now I’ll just share my concluding thoughts that night: I know it’s too much. I know my child is telling me this. Yes, as exhausted as I am, as distracted by work, the long arduous and unfulfilling hours of work, it’s time. Time to uncover what the heart and soul desire, for all of us. Six months on from that I published my first blog and have done so ever week since, recording the deliberate journey to a more authentic me, which included balking and rallying against this idea of my own feminine nature and role as a mother. I was raised in an era where I was brought up to believe that women can do anything men do. But as a friend of mine said beautifully “that overlooks the essence of the feminine, the need to find her own rhythm and inner desires in her own time and in her own reflection”. We had been having a discussion about the government’s financial support for parents with low income. I find it infuriating that - on one hand - our law (through Property Relationship law) recognizes that a stay-at-home parent is equal to a full time job, yet the government will not support a stay at home parent of school age kids unless they are at least in part time work. When I recently tracked how many hours of my week are dedicated to childcare and domestic duties, it was seventy hours on a typical school week and ninety on a non school week. Bear in mind school weeks typically only represent 180 days (allowing for ten days where at least one child is sick), how many employers are happy with employees only working half the year? Recognising that encouragement of women into the workforce was an attempt to stop the judgements of not only solo mothers but women in jobs, it was however done in the context of patriarchal structures. Quite aside of keeping the toilets clean and putting food on the table, the job as taxi driver, chief attention giver, boundary holder and referee, the role and responsibility of a parent can be all consuming. One night when my kids’ father and I were talking, our youngest daughter came into the room and asked for my help with something. I thought then that this is precisely what being a mum looks like, constantly being interrupted and on duty. And those interruptions can range from an innocuous “how do I spell...?” through to world-war-three erupting in the lounge. In fact, I find distraction my biggest challenge in parenting. If I am distracted, there is no connection, and the constant pull on my attention triggers responses that are less than optimal for my kids. As the primary caregiver, my attention being on the kids is just a part of the job when they are around, from the minute they wake up to the minute they go to sleep. Adapting that attention as they grow to help them towards independence is also part of the job, but that’s on a continuum; in development terms though kids are in their teens before they can healthily handle longer periods of more independence. So while going to work as soon as kids are in school is encouraged, to me it’s not okay to be required to work on top of the typical seventy hours of attention required on the home and kids in order to receive financial help. Before the world of COVID19 restrictions we had been on a family holiday in Hawaii. In conversation with the retail assistants, hotel staff and restaurant workers, it became clear that working two jobs to support their families was necessary, and this was women who had partners who also worked. What kind of quality parenting can people give in these scenarios? Terry Real is quick to point out that both men and women are knocked out of real intimacy and connection with themselves and others from childhood. Citing the work of Jean Baker Miller and Carol Gilligan at the Stone Centre, he says:
The problem is, as author, research professor and social expert Brené Brown has taught us, we connect through vulnerability. Terry believes that “While Millennial’s (thankfully) are different, the rest of us are still suffering under the old codes. Leading men and women into real intimacy is synonymous with leading men out of patriarchy.” In Why the Integration of Feelings and Logic Will Save the Human Race I quote Teal Swan as saying “The restoration of balance within the human race is not about decreasing masculine power while increasing feminine power...it is about both rising to power simultaneously”. I particularly like the short article from psychologist Shari Derkson that explains the aspects of masculine and feminine and what integrating them within ourselves might look like. She says “There is a movement towards inviting more feminine aspects into our lives, states of being, rather than doing; such as through stillness, meditation and tapping into our intuition and creative processes. Equally, it is important for both male and females to develop the more masculine qualities of rational and logical ability, clear non-attached thought and problem solving etc.” James French, who works with rescue animals and cultivated The Trust Technique, demonstrates through his work how lack of connection in humans (and propensity towards dominion or power over instead of power with) shows up just the same in animals as it does in children. James says "Any animal displaying fear, aggression, anxiety etc is a sign of an over-thinking state, but when brought into a peaceful state you can connect through more positive imagining/feeling states instead”. What I love is his observation that sensitivity in animals or people doesn’t change, it just transforms from positive sensitivity (the feelings of connection, joy, love) to negative sensitivity (the feelings of fear, shame, guilt). This could equally be applied to children. “As a child”, as Dr Gabor Maté explains, “we are born feeling our connection to our parents and we are reliant on them for survival. Being rejected by them in any way, big or small, is devastating. So when we are rejected, we have a choice, to reject them or reject ourselves (or more likely parts of ourselves). But we can’t reject them as our survival depends upon them.” Luckily the skills needed for connection with children, and with each other, are skills that can be learned. Terry Real makes the point “There’s skills in learning to connect to yourself and others. There’s skill in learning to love yourself. There’s a skill in learning good boundaries. And there are skills in learning how to stand up for yourself with love and respond with generosity instead of defensiveness.” Changing the way we see parenting is pivotal, but that requires first a change in who we are as individuals. To begin to recognise our dysfunctional stances and structures and perhaps to look at them through more integrated eyes that include more of the aspects of our true nature without the walls we have erected around us in response to our own childhoods. If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Clear the Fog of Trauma to See the Magnificence of Your Being, How Dead Does the Horse Need to Be to Want to Get Off?, Womanhood: A Story of Our Time and Embracing the Feminine within All of Us. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog. Image by Mote Oo Education from Pixabay Someone, who knows I’m interested in childhood trauma, recently told me she thinks I should “just let go of negative memories”. Another person wondered, if something was so lacking in my relationship with my parents, how am I not experiencing greater dysfunction or even death, which he proposed was statistically more likely than being able to draw intelligent conclusions.
Interestingly I have never said nor felt that my childhood was negative, it was normal, with some good memories and some not so good memories; and I certainly had two parents who wanted and loved me. They were just two people doing the best they could, parenting in the normal way. So I decided to write this as resource for people like me who do personal work in order to move past any suboptimal wiring and fulfil my potential, while some look on in bemusement wondering why I would feel the need to do any work when I had such a normal childhood. Normal doesn’t mean optimal, and can be as traumatic within our bodies as a readily recognised trauma. In fact, I believe this is society’s biggest opportunity for growth. For a long time the predominant theme of child rearing has been about teaching children to be good and fit in. This is all very well, but it is best done after a healthy sense of self and safety has been established, and this appears to be little understood. Feeling safe relates directly to the nervous system, the command centre of a human’s flight-fight response. Neural pathways connect one part of the nervous system to the other and neural pathways do not care whether parents/caregivers intentions are good or how much they love their children; they simply start forming in response to the child’s reaction to how well (or not) their needs are met. “As a child”, as Dr Gabor Maté explains, “we are born feeling our connection to our parents and we are reliant on them for survival. Being rejected by them in any way, big or small, is devastating. So when we are rejected, we have a choice, to reject them or reject ourselves (or more likely parts of ourselves). But we can’t reject them as our survival depends upon them.” Some examples I gave recently: there is the baby who is left to cry, the baby or child who has to eat to a schedule, the child who wants their parent’s attention and will do anything – positive or negative – to get it, the child who is given no opportunity to explain their side of the story, the child who is left alone to think about their actions, the list goes on. These are all normal, everyday occurrences, not things an adult necessarily thinks of as rejecting their child. However, if I put my adult self in those shoes, imagine I am so upset I’m crying and everyone ignores me, how do I feel? If I’m not hungry (or feeling sick) and I’m made to eat how do I feel? If I am trying to get someone’s attention and they ignore me, how do I feel? If I appear to have upset someone and yet they won’t communicate with me, how do I feel? None of these feel comfortable; at one extreme they actually make me question my very existence (especially if they are regularly occurring situations) and, at best, make me feel isolated and unimportant in the moment. So it’s not hard to imagine how utterly devastating such things are to a baby or small child who is completely dependant on that adult to meet their needs. This creates a type of developmental trauma, which is sometimes known as small-t trauma. This kind of trauma is normal in our society, and it happens bit by bit over time. Then there are the inherited patterns of behaviour in parents that children react to, and unwittingly develop patterns in response to. These are essential for survival in childhood but become unhealthy patterns later in life, and will certainly get passed on unless the cycle is broken. The best description I’ve seen of these is in James Redfield’s The Celestine Prophecy, he describes four archetypes (on a scale of aggressive to passive) that are “control strategies we each develop in order to stop others’ draining our energy”. He says “It’s often easiest if you start by taking a look at which strategies your parents employed:
I suspect no one wants to feel like a victim or held hostage to their past circumstances, but rejecting the idea that unconscious reactions in childhood may have inadvertently created limitations or unhelpful belief patterns and behaviours is a missed opportunity for growth. The kinds of common subconscious unhelpful belief patterns that get perpetuated are: I’m unworthy, I’m too much, I’m alone, I don’t have, I’m powerless, I’m not wanted, I’m invisible, I’m bad, I don’t belong, I’m a burden, I’m crazy, I’m different, I’m not enough, I’m a failure, I’m not important, I’m inferior, I’m not loved, I don’t matter, I’m not safe and/or I’m worthless. Claire Zammit and Kathrine Woodward Thomas created a fantastic document that goes into each of these in much more depth and is well worth a read. This is not our only trauma of course, I just think it’s by far the most common and least recognised and – bottom line – the one that needs addressed in order to grow and evolve from the other types of trauma we create. One therapist told me she has worked with children who have no apparent developmental issues but instead inherited predispositions to emotional dysregulation (having emotions that are overly intense in comparison to the situation that triggered them). Considering genetics does, on the face of it, seem sensible. But as you may deduce from what I have written above, I find it hard to imagine that most people are not in some way affected by parental – usually well meaning – interactions in our early years. I am also not keen on the genetics argument; it feels too much like a free pass to behaving poorly on an all-too-regular basis, when I truly believe that (if you can read this) it is within your gift to change how you react when triggered, and also in fact your responsibility. Remember those neural pathways? As in the seemingly normal and benign examples I gave of rejection, these became very entrenched in my system throughout childhood, as my nervous system did what it needed to continue to do to keep me feeling safe. I can’t change those pathways that fire ever time, say, someone criticises me (which is exactly the kind of situation in which I may have emotions that are more charged than the situation warrants). However I can:
I cannot change my reactions through a decision alone; it requires awareness, curiosity, focus in learning new skills and persistence. Also bear in mind that no child is born with emotional regulation, so it’s having a parent or caregiver who cannot model effective coping skills that puts a child at risk of emotional dysregulation. Upon suggesting we educate future generations on the impacts they have on newborns and young children through secure attachment and attunement, the therapist I was talking to was concerned that would put huge pressure on parents and create a sense of blame for those who are doing their best. I believe each person is always doing their best (in any given situation, with the cards they have been dealt and with what they know). But it is the adults (not the children in their care) who have the capacity for reflection, insight and change, to develop healthier coping styles. That said, even with good intentions and good emotional regulation it is inevitable people will suffer other types of trauma in the journey through life. But, overall, people would begin with a sense of safety and self, and that would make a huge difference to the way other trauma is dealt with and, in fact, whether it is even created. Therapists like Dr Terry Levy, who runs the Evergreen Psychotherapy Centre, won’t work with children until they’ve worked with the parents. They also use a life script that gathers the kind of information that is relevant to getting to the heart of the types of dysfunctional beliefs and behaviours at play in a person’s life. For me it's not about "oh look at my trauma" in the sense of "isn't it terrible". As light-touch as my experiences are (in comparison to some of the atrocities that happen to people), they have shaped me deeply. I see how I have been limited by my own beliefs and trauma reactions within my body, it has kept me playing small, from fulfilling my potential and acting from a place of compassion. So I can wholeheartedly appreciate that if light-touch trauma can do that, what a slam-dunk the big-T trauma (sexual abuse, violence, war or political violence, natural disasters, serious accidents, life threatening illnesses etc) causes. Now the real key for me is this. Big-T trauma and its effects are becoming well recognized. But little-t trauma, especially normal developmental trauma, remains largely unseen and yet lives within almost every single person on the planet today. It creates disease, chronic pain and illness and it stunts our ability to address systemic issues within our relationships and within our society. That is why I share my experiences and insights, to shine a light on the microscopic stuff, the irritating sand in the oyster shell that are our pearls of wisdom, our key to compassion and evolution. Could I be wrong? Sure there’s always room for a misread of reality because it’s all about perspective. But if this resonates with you then I have every confidence that with awareness, curiosity, focus in learning new skills and persistence, you can fulfil your potential in every area of your life. As family therapist and author Terry Real says “We may not (right now) be able to bring peace to the Middle East or to Syria or whatever else but we can bring peace to our living rooms. So start with your life. And your life is your relationships. So learn how to do that and do it really well.” If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Clear the Fog of Trauma to See the Magnificence of Your Being, Life Really Does Support Your Deepest Desires (And How to Access Its Support), You Don’t Need to Be Perfect to Make a Breakthrough, Your Childhood Is Not Your Fault but It Is Your Responsibility and 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. A few weeks ago, at a school parent’s evening, the teacher was quoting from author Charles Covacs who drew parallels between human development and the development of humankind. This sparked my curiosity because I believe my personal growth and evolution – and your personal growth and evolution – is what will evolve our society.
Then I came across a recent article by Deepak Chopra that really underlines the need for this kind of evolution. The article begins by talking about the limitations of the current world view – Materialism - based on physical objects as the stuff of creation and yet reality remains inexplicable. He cites examples and poses excellent questions, it’s a fascinating and – for Chopra – very readable article. One of his juicier questions is “If you don’t know where the universe came from and are equally baffled by where thoughts come from, how reliable is your explanation of reality?” But, he goes on, “no worldview explains everything, and so humans must prioritise the things that need explaining most urgently”. He cites our most urgent problems as overpopulation, pandemic disease, refugeeism and climate change and says “you may hope and pray that science and technology (which have been the most urgent things in the age of materialism) will come to the rescue, but the chances are tenuous without a huge change in how we think”. All of this leads him to conclude that the change necessary is a change in self awareness. He says “We have had the luxury of ignoring self awareness for a long time and it has given us the chance to deny responsibility for the problems that no self-aware person would tolerate. A self-aware person wouldn’t go to war, stockpile nuclear weapons, harbour racial prejudice, mistreat and abuse women, and foul the environment”. So as I ponder this issue of self awareness and link back to Charles Covacs’ thoughts, he adds another dimension, one that explores the development of feelings and logic within each of us. In his book Botany, Covacs was pointing to the Greek philosophers (Socrates, Plato and Aristotle) as a turning point in human history because that is the time when scientific enquiry (as we know it) began. He explains that prior to this, in older civilisations (India, Babylon, Egypt), a myth was as valid an explanation of the world as scientific explanation is for us. He continues “the time of those Greek philosophers is the time when one could say fantasy and logic became separate and independent functions of the human mind. It is also the same time when poetry emerges as a separate art”. The thrust of his observations are the parallels between that and human development, being that we start our lives in the feeling state and, as we get older, develop logic. The relevance in that particular book is in coming to how to teach botany. In a child of ten or eleven this separation of fantasy and logic hasn’t yet happened. Children want facts, but they must be linked in a way that satisfies the feeling, the fantasy, the poetry in the child. Given only facts, he says “their fantasy, imagination and original creative ability dies and withers”. Feelings versus logic, in some ways are quintessential aspects of feminine versus masculine qualities. When I started undertaking psychometric tests earlier in my career, I was always taken down a metaphorical rabbit hole as I tried to place myself in one camp or the other. To me, I always felt human nature – and certainly mine - was more multifaceted than that. Over the years my understanding of masculine and feminine traits has expanded and deepened. Back in the 1990’s, the era in which I began cohabiting with a significant other, I remember feeling somewhat enlightened by John Gray’s infamous Men Are From Mars, Woman Are From Venus books. But it wasn’t until I heard Allan and Barbara Pease speak at a conference, and read Why Men Don’t Listen and Women Can’t Read Maps that I was really more clearly introduced to this idea that human gender is not just a duality in the sense of identifying as male or female. It’s a duality within each male and female, meaning each person is comprised of both masculine and feminine traits. In their book Allan and Barbara cite the science (of that time) of brain development in the fetus, and estimates that about 15-25% of men have feminised brains and around 10% of women have masculinised brains. However, both are a composite. This came up for me personally earlier in the week when getting some therapy to ease pain on the right side of my body. The therapist said, “Your right side simply doesn’t want to work with your left side, it’s holding on tightly”. The idea that the right side of my body is the male side, the left being the female, gives me something to work with. Note that while the idea of right side/left side of the body relates well to the theory of left/right brain thinking (as the left side of the brain supplies nerves to the right side of the body and vice versa), working with the body as an indicator of our internal conscious and subconscious psyche is not new as I discuss in What is Your Body Telling You? In terms of my own growth and development, these male and female qualities within me seem to be screaming for more attention and integration. There certainly seems some old patterns at play and it’s something I’m looking forward to delving into more. Bringing this back to Deepak Chopra’s ideas on how the future of the human race depends on self awareness, there is also an old article of Teal Swan’s where she asserts “the restoration of balance within the human race is not about decreasing masculine power while increasing feminine power...it is about both rising to power simultaneously”. She takes this further by addressing the elephant in the room (as she is apt to do), also known as the “Wait, men have been in power for thousands of years” thought. Her response? “Far from it. Instead, they’ve been stripping power from women for thousands of years. There is a big difference between gaining power in and of yourself and stripping power from another.” As with everything, I suspect the extent to which male and female qualities show up within us is a mixture of both nature and our life experiences. I particularly like the short article from psychologist Shari Derkson that explains the aspects of masculine and feminine and what integrating them within ourselves might look like. She says “There is a movement towards inviting more feminine aspects into our lives, states of being, rather than doing; such as through stillness, meditation and tapping into our intuition and creative processes. Equally, it is important for both male and females to develop the more masculine qualities of rational and logical ability, clear non-attached thought and problem solving etc.” So as we begin to look within ourselves at how to integrate both our feeling states with our more logical states, this begins the kind of self awareness that is perhaps more suited to addressing our most urgent problems for the human race today. If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy How to Find the Courage to Let Us Hear Your Heart’s Voice, How to Appreciate Our Differences Enough to Admire and Want to Embrace Them, Kneel at the Doorway of Your Heart to Usher the Dawn of a New Era and Embracing the Feminine within All of Us. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog. There is a Scots expression about making a “helluva caffudle” which translates as “a lot of confusion” that sprung to mind this week when dealing with the corporate office of the online grocery supplier I’d used for many years.
The conflicting replies I received were indeed confusing, on one hand sympathetic and responsive, on the other contradictory, uncaring and disingenuous, which pointed to a culture that isn’t exactly customer driven, the experience depending entirely on the individual who I happened to be interfacing with. Not much different to most places right? To be fair, it’s one of the key reasons I exited the corporate world. It gave me a bit of a litmus test of where the customer experience has evolved to (or not) since I last worked in that field. And I realised that, after all my study and experience of human potential, psychology and dysfunction, if I were to liken most organisations to a personality, it would be a narcissistic one. To explain what I mean by this, I’ll quote from a few sources to explain what lies at the heart of most dysfunction among humans, and thus at the heart of most organisations of humans – lack of attunement. Dr Dan Siegel says “Attunement is the process by which we form relationships”. When we attune with others we allow our own internal state to shift to come to resonate with the world of another.” One of my all-time favourite articles happens to be on this topic, and the crux of the issue is summed up exquisitely by Teal Swan: “Ask yourself the following questions...Do I feel like my parents understood me when I was little, or even tried to understand me? Did they see into me and feel into me and have empathy for me and adjust their behaviour accordingly or not? Did they acknowledge how I felt or did they invalidate it, telling me I shouldn’t feel that way? How did my parents treat me when I was cranky, frightened or upset?” When our parents were not attuned to us, we went one of two ways to cope with the terror of the experience. We either learned that our survival depended on:
She goes on to explain that neither state is healthy. “It is not a fulfilling life to spend all your energy obsessively trying to keep yourself safe by attuning to other people at the expense of tuning out to yourself. But the destruction on this planet owes itself to those people who have learned to cope by retreating into the egocentric bubble...You cannot attune to someone and say the wrong thing to them. You cannot attune to someone and stay in denial about his or her reality.” So let me tell you the story about strawberry jam, and you can judge for yourself how much a lack of attunement contributed to my online grocery company losing around $25,000 per annum of our business... I’d been having trouble with my online grocery shop for the last year and things seemed to be getting worse, with more and more items appearing to be in stock at the order stage and then not getting delivered because they were out of stock on a regular basis. This was resulting in regular trips to other stores to get what was needed, far from ideal. While it is plausible that, between me ordering, and the store picking my order from the shelves, other customers may have come off the street and purchased those items each week, it seemed to me that it was happening with such regularity that something wasn’t right. Somehow, behind the scenes, the demand didn’t seem to be informing the supply. Calls to Customer Service, and discussions with people at the store directly, resulted in no change. So I did what I’ve learned is most effective when I want to get to the bottom of root cause issues, and I contacted the Managing Director. This is usually an excellent entry point to find the person in the organisation who can investigate and help fix the cause of chronic issues. All I really wanted to know was whether the company had some management, process or systems issues it could easily fix, or whether this was a good as it gets for now. It was a disappointing start, having contacted the Acting-top-bod (whose day job is looking after the online offer, which I thought fortuitous at the time) but having had no acknowledgement after week, I had to follow this up. This, however, led to a phonecall from one of the online managers, who assured me this was not the level of service that I should be receiving. She investigated and found some process issues and she also mentioned that the area’s online store should be the one offering the widest variety to customers, which makes absolute sense to me. She asked if I had any other issues aside of the ones I’d mentioned so I brought up the topic of the strawberry jam. I buy a particular brand that has no refined sugars added and, about a year ago, the online store mysteriously stopped supplying the strawberry option. It still offered the raspberry, blueberry and apricot, but no strawberry. However, the same company have another store a couple of kilometres away who offer a much wider variety but don’t do online deliveries (begging the question “why not?” apparently it’s something to do with loading bays, though it’s not entirely clear to me). However, what they do have is stock of the strawberry jam. So this told me – and the online manager - the company itself is obviously not having supply issues around this particular product. So I allowed a number of weeks to pass to see whether the process issues would be sorted and I could rely more on stock levels. This was a bit hit and miss, but certainly there was no reappearance of the strawberry jam. So I decided, last ditch attempt, to go to the newly appointed top-bod and see whether this could be resolved. This was delegated to another digital manager who replied: “The size of the store means that unfortunately the full range is not available. Unfortunately the review of the spreads range won’t take place until March next year (i.e 10 months away), but we’ve made a note of your feedback... It’s always our intention to provide our customers with a great online shopping delivery experience – feedback like yours will ensure we can continue to improve this service.” Then there was the matter of their other store, the bigger one with more variety, not being the online store. Aside of loading bays, the response cited “the location of the store is in relation to the suburb demand to keep our carbon footprint small.” While this might seem sensible, I should point out one store is 6.7 kilometres away, while the other is only 6.8 kilometres from our suburb. I will confess this response tipped me over the edge, eliciting from me frustrated expressions like “Seriously?”, “Give me a break”, “Shame on you” and “Utter utter garbage, what a complete waste of my time”. By this point, I’d come to the conclusion that this was the best I was going to get from my online shopping experience with this company. While in some ways it would be awesome to have a one-stop-shop for all our consumable needs, it is a bit like saying it would be awesome to have a partner who meets all my emotional needs. Neither is really realistic nor, actually, desirable since life would then likely lack variety, growth and expansion. So I decided the best way forward was to register with another online grocery company and split our business between the two, thus insuring a wider variety of product availability. Despite the time consuming process of registering and filling that first virtual trolley, it was worth it to have options. I will say that my spluttering response, while not actually eliciting a response from the Managing Director directly, did result in a response from their leadership team; the person who is in charge of the company’s public relations. Those of you not familiar with corporate set ups might not know that this is the person usually responsible for a company’s reputation via the media; it’s quite a different field from those who deal directly with customers. For someone who has worked in both fields, I would have preferred and appreciated an authentic response from someone directly involved in the leadership of the day-to-day operations and customer supply chain. I then received two crates of strawberry jam, some cereal and the promise of a discount voucher for my inconvenience. Despite the generosity and immediate follow up, I would have just preferred an explanation for the disparity in previous responses if I’m honest, and clarity on the real issues. While I’m not wedded to the idea of a response directly from the person I’d written to, I would have expected an answer coming from, or being delegated by, a leader to be an honest reflection of the shortcomings. As I concluded on this question of character last week, people who own up to their faults and weaknesses are to be admired, and so it is with business. I will never forget when I left the railway industry in the UK, one of the extremely frustrated customers I had spoken to many times over the years said “while I will probably never like the service (since it was prone to delays and failures on occasion due to infrastructure issues that were not quick fixes nor within the direct control of the company), your honesty has made it tolerable and I have felt that at least the issues were tabled and someone cared”. It is my experience that behind the customer interface of most well established companies, quite aside of political agendas, is a veritable feast of legacy systems and spaghetti junctions of often cumbersome processes to manage, the archetypal swan on water. Knowing the limitations and being able to articulate them goes a long way. There is no doubt that, on my wish list for online grocery shopping, I’d want a reliable system to capture not only the customer demand failures of the stock the company does offer, but which products the company does not and customers’ buy elsewhere (i.e. opportunity). While that seems a long way off based on my recent experiences, it would certainly create more loyalty. What I had come to realise though in the years I did work in the field of customer experience was, whether the customer is on the agenda (from a universal experiential perspective, rather than the individual hit-and-miss interactions) entirely comes down to whether its leader is attuned to the customer needs. By leader I mean the person who actually determines a company’s culture, which is not always obvious. It can be the local Managing Director or Chief Executive, or a Group Executive or at Board level – and that not only changes from company to company, but at different points in time within companies as well. For example, I’ve found its pretty common for many local chiefs to be left alone so long as they are meeting Shareholder expectations. In times of economic or political turbulence the screws come on. Having worked behind the scenes in a few large organisations, and had exposure to many more inside views of corporate structures, systems and processes through colleagues and consultants in the field of customer experience over the years, I came to the conclusion that organisational dysfunction will only resolve and evolve once people – in particular the leaders of organisations - start to do their own personal work to evolve beyond the dysfunctional patterns of behaviour learned in childhood. And, so, it seems on the face of it, that this is where society remains still. That said, I have great hopes as we move forward with initiatives like the Inner MBA Programme (a Sounds True collaboration with LinkedIn, Wisdom 2.0 and Mindful NYU) leading the way. And how do those of us who are not the true culture leaders of these organisations make a difference? How will we get organisations to meet our needs? Get healthy. By recognising and rinsing out our dysfunctional ways of relating to others, attuning to ourselves and each other, developing healthy boundaries, and learning to communicate them and holding others accountable with grace, it is inevitable that organisations will start to attune more to those whose needs they serve. If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy You See What Happens When Leaders Are Not Grown Up on the Inside, What Do You Want The Prevailing Global Culture to Look Like?, Stand in Your Own Truth and How to Be True to You When Life Pulls You in Different Directions. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog. My young niece had shared with me a powerful poem she has written about women, in part of it she wrote: “Imagine a life Where she wouldn’t look over her shoulder And see a man doing no work But he will still be paid more than her” I longed to be able to say “We’ve evolved beyond that” but, while many men do of course work (and work hard), it gave me pause knowing this was an observation from our next generation and correlates with many of the facts and statistics I’ve read about ongoing inequality. She gave me permission to share it and a good friend of mine responded: “It is true, our hearts are somber that our young rising women look out and see a world that works only for a few. However, we, the elders, know there is good work to be done, and we eagerly pass on the baton encouraged because we can now hold better reflections and conversations than our elders did.” This is so true. When I was invited to speak as an influencer at a summit for woman this week, an interesting mix of emotions ran through me. I was grateful for the opportunity, surprised to be thought of as an influencer and excited about the prospect of women taking a fresh look at themselves. But while speaking fits with my longer term vision, I had to step back and really assess whether this is something I’d like to say yes or no to in this moment. My gut told me “Not yet, I’ll be over extending myself”, my mind niggled “Am I just making excuses? Am I afraid?” I sat with these questions for a while. I can’t deny wondering how I’d measure up, but I generally enjoy public speaking. I find it easier to express myself when I know people are actually interested in what I’m talking about and the platform is mine uninterrupted for a while. So I laughed at myself and thought how ironic that the true issue lies at the heart of an aspect of my feminine side that needs to be honoured. Having operated in the corporate world for many years running from meeting to meeting, which plays to the masculine aspects of my nature, I now try to keep everything as fluid as possible because so much of my life still revolves around the kids’ schedule, which in turns revolves around school (again a very masculine way of working). I’ve discovered I need time that is fluid so I can dial it up or down depending on how I’m feeling. For example, I was reflecting in a conversation this week on how I see a woman’s monthly menstrual cycle in terms of my energy; to me it’s like four seasons in a month. There are days when I feel decidedly Spring-like and want to get on with more physically-taxing tasks, there are days that are Summer-like when I feel very social, then there more Autumnal days when I turn inward and reflect,and finally the Winter days when I really do not feel like going out at all and want to rest a lot more. Why is this talked about so little still? The whole female physical structure gears up month after month, for four decades of a woman’s life, to create and host another being. And having brought two beautiful little beings into the world, I know it’s nothing short of miraculous. The whole process is not an aside, it’s inherent in my existence as a female, and I feel the beat of my life goes way more smoothly when I can go with that rhythm instead of a man made one. I was reflecting on my life changes further after having a quick e-catch up this week with a publisher I haven’t spoken to in quite a while, who was wanting to use a quote from an old article I’d written. I was asking her how she is finding motherhood and, in return, she asked – other than busy – how I’ve been? I know that seems like a routine kind of exchange, but given the topics I write about and the ones she publishes, I thought more deeply “how have I been?” The ten years since I began my own journey into motherhood flashed through my head. In that time everything has come under a spotlight, no stone left unturned. When the pressure is on – and it was, the heat higher than at any other time in my life, everything came into sharp focus. I had a short, pointed reminder of my old life a couple of weeks ago when I found an old schedule of my day I’d written out when the kids were very young: You can probably guess by the schedule I quickly lost patience and energy for the career and corporate world I had worked so hard to attain success in. Motherhood demanded the more feminine aspects of me to come to the fore, the children needed me to really see them and be able to hold their space emotionally.
The codependent relationship style I had unwittingly entered into as a child and unconsciously adopted in adulthood became untenable. My strong desire for my children to be who they truly are, forced me to identify and take responsibility for my people pleasing ways. Becoming healthier and creating better boundaries has shaken all my primary relationships to the core. It’s been nothing short of a metamorphosis, one I’m still emerging from. It left me depleted and, while I’ve found more balance, I’m only really starting to rebuild strength from that more authentic platform. But the thing that struck me was just how intense and polarizing the middle years were, suddenly thrust into the realms of watching my mother die (from colon cancer) while simultaneously dealing with violent outbursts and constant tantrums from both kids over a period of a few years as they started school and struggled (neurodiversity can be subtle). I swung from one extreme to the other in my close relationships. No longer able to give others the attention I once had, being hyper attuned to their needs, I became much more self centred out of necessity; getting angry and resentful when my boundaries were trodden upon. While I survived, it was painful. I see this in a similar way to the male-female balance having swung to an extreme as women have tried to reclaim a more worthy sense of place in the world. So many women, in the name of equal rights, have swarmed to university, to jobs and a world that was predominantly the domain of men. In the process a new archetype arose in our collective consciousness, the superwoman, she who can do it all. In truth, having been one of those for a while, I feel it was nothing short of torture, and I was certainly not comfortable in my own skin. I think men too have become confused and resentful about their roles. What’s the answer? What I’d dearly love to see more than anything, is the needs of the newest born of our race being recognised far more than they are so the emotional pandemic and dysfunctional cycles of human existence are broken. In those earliest months and years, if I had known then what I know now about healthy attachment and attunement, I would not have shipped my children off to someone else while I went to work, no matter how wonderful she was. But what my kids needed wasn’t just their mother present in body, they needed me fully present in myself, not the wounded child in an adult body that I was. As Teal Swan so eloquently says “You cannot be attuned to a child and have them grow up narcissistic or codependent. You cannot be attuned to someone and drop a bomb on them or shoot them. You cannot be attuned to someone and say the wrong thing to them. You cannot attune to someone and stay in denial about his or her reality”. If a woman wants to become an engineer or a CEO, sure, why not. Or if a man wants to become a stay-at-home-parent or a hairdresser, fantastic. Or, possibly even more controversially these days, if a woman wants to stay at home to look after their kids while the man wants to work, let’s make that work. But I think the key to all this doesn’t lie in equal rights or opportunities the way it’s been played out, the key seems to me to lie in each of us stepping into conscious awareness of the dysfunctional cycles of thinking and behaviour that appear to get played out generation after generation. In short, while I was hyper-attuned to others, I had to learn to tune into my own needs and desires. As I have become aware of and ferreted out that dysfunction in my thinking and habits, I’ve rediscovered that the only true power exists within me – a fact I suspect that man-made power constructs like schools, health systems, governments and economic systems would prefer I am not acquainted with. I can only imagine as people begin to attune to and honour their own unique needs, talents and desires, men and women will see each other through fresh eyes. My niece wrote: “Imagine a world United at last The thick fog of inequality Raised at last” I believe the inequality of opportunity that exists will melt away in a world where we attune to ourselves and others. We will become comfortable enough in our own skin to be able to admire and embrace the diversity around us. The structures of success will fall away and morph into structures that support the many, rather than the few. This is not a conversation about male or female, this is a conversation about re-parenting ourselves, creating healthy boundaries, truly seeing ourselves and others and fulfilling our potential as unique, wonderful, strange, marvelous beings. If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy How You Are Complicit in the Oppression of Others, Womanhood: A Story of Our Time, Even in Grief There Are lessons to Be Learned, How to Stand in Your Truth and Be Heard Without a Fight, Take Back Your Power - Only One Thing Need Change for You to Feel Good and You See What Happens When You Learn to Speak Your Truth. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog. I’m going to go for the short answer upfront: no. However, I will admit there have been times in my life I’ve found it hard to really hear what someone has to say when I’ve known they hold a different set of beliefs or opinions than I do. Why is that? Honestly it’s a question of safety.
To take an extreme, could I bring myself to listen to one of Hitler’s speeches or read Mein Kampf without any kind of a veil or judgement? I’ll admit I could not, I’d find it repugnant. Yet when I read one of his quotes “If you tell a big enough lie and tell it frequently enough, it will be believed” it feels like a truth; I can think of many examples beyond his where people have been (and continue to be) manipulated like this. In my own case, it did not feel psychologically or emotionally safe for me to have my own beliefs and opinions (that were divergent to the pack) as I was growing up. It seems to me it was (and still is) the norm. I certainly wanted to fit in, be accepted and feel validated. Despite being well-intentioned by my parents, teachers and other key influencers in my life, it was damaging enough that I no longer recognised my own inner voice; I would often feel fear, guilt or shame and was inadvertently trained to look outside myself for answers. This is where my strong sense of calling comes from, to help others hear and trust their inner voice. The irony is, by not living life from my own authentic standpoint and not even really knowing I had one of those (it was more just that life could often seem heavy or off), I attracted all sorts of painful circumstances into my life. Now I’m an adult with curiosity and critical thinking, and I’ve figured out all those circumstances were pointing me somewhere – back to the real me. And it has taken a while to really figure out who that is, and what I actually believe about life. So it was interesting to me that, when I wrote ” a central theme of my authentic paradigm is that there’s no one truth, we each hold within us our own truth” in How to Find the Courage to Let Us Hear Your Heart’s Voice someone I know felt really challenged by that. The context of my sharing that belief was not a teaching, it was a vulnerable disclosure of a desire that I had felt on my journey, a desire to feel validated by those who had brought me into the world, to validate my inherent right to my own worldview. Having someone feel challenged by that view was a wonderful opportunity for me to check in on how I’m travelling. The key benefit was the triumphal recognition of the old defence patterns that momentarily kicked in, and then drifted away on the tide as I dropped out of flight-or-fight mode, and into the space of the adult who has done some healing, and has the experience and wisdom to now deal with this kind of questioning. I was intrigued by what these questions would awaken within me. I realised I’m feeling quite secure in my paradigm and I liked the answers that came forth in response to questions about absolutes, right and wrong, good and evil and so on. For me, it is all a matter of perspective. I am aware of myself as a consciousness inhabiting a human body, but I am simultaneously aware of myself as a far more expansive consciousness – as I am aware of all others in just the same way. Now that, right there, would challenge many people’s paradigms. I am okay with that; it’s my own experiences of this that have led me to my views. Do I think in terms of absolutes? Not generally. I find absolutes constricting. But if there is an absolute, and people are able to learn again how to hear and trust their authentic inner voice, I trust this absolute will reveal itself within the sovereignty of their soul. I see right and wrong as judgements, and wonder “who is the judge?” There are many sides to each story, many hurts, many intentions. For example, how many believe it was right to execute Saddam Hussein? Can killing someone ever be called right? I suspect many people have differing views on the matter. The same could be said of Al Qaeda’s attacks on the West. I remember wondering as I watched in shock at the twin towers falling, feeling the horror and desperation of the situation and wondering “what drives people to do this?”, yet some part of me understanding that there must be another side to this story. As to good and evil, was Hitler evil, or were many of his acts evil? Some see no difference in the two. But I can’t help but wonder from what place of inner pain does someone incite such heinous acts? If you are a child growing up right now in Afghanistan, Iraq, the Yemen or any of the other conflict-torn places in our world today, who seems good and who seems evil, who is right and who is wrong? And how to do we respond? With revenge, retaliation, punishment? Now these examples are all what I’d call big-T trauma, they are the kinds of examples commonly recognised as life threatening and harmful in physical, psychological and emotional ways. These are acts that affect whole generations of collective peoples. I see polarisation around who is condemned and why, depending on the perspective. To me, acts of harm, harm all. If I hurt you, I hurt myself. If I hurt a creature, I hurt myself. If I hurt this planet, I hurt myself. It is all connected. All I see is that pain begets pain until the light of conscious awareness is shone upon it. So where is the compassion, the rehabilitation? And how does all of this link into the life I am living, with a partner, children, a family, a community, colleagues and so many other versions of relationships, with whom I can disagree vehemently in what they believe and in how they conduct themselves and in what harm I feel within me in these interactions? And why do I feel harm? Why do I get so upset? Usually because that person has accidentally tripped over my paradigm, my view of myself and the world and what is right and what is wrong. As Teal Swan says “When we fight from two different perceptual realities, we only end up strengthening the current beliefs and values of the other, causing further polarisation. Instead we must shift our focus to the vulnerability that the other side may be feeling.” I see answers to reducing harm by creating awareness, understanding and education in how we indoctrinate our newborns into this human experience. When I think, for example, of Gabor Mate’s insightful descriptions of the first year of an infant’s life in his book Scattered Minds, and how they link to our neurobiology and behaviours, there is much pain created in this world from an inadvertent lack of attunement. And I see answers in how we help those who have misguidedly learned that their power comes from taking it from others, they will never be able to take enough to satisfy themselves; the power is within. As an adult I see it as my responsibility to re-parent myself, to create a sense of secure attachment and attunement and learn to interact with the world from that standpoint. Which brings me back to becoming aware of the unhelpful thought and behavioural patterns that exist within, and cause harm. I am talking about the often subconscious beliefs I might have about feeling invisible, or powerless, or not enough, or too much, or unworthy, or being unwanted, or not important, or different, or inferior, or wrong, or alone, or bad, or deprived, or worthless, or a failure,or a burden, or crazy, or that I don’t belong, or I’m not important, or I don’t matter, or I’m not safe. The journey to me has involved – and continues to involve – questioning the validity of these subtle little suckers that can create so much misery. These thoughts got planted there from the earliest moments and they simply do not serve who I am today. As I have become more conscious of these, I have observed myself and others living in very unique, self-created and self-centred webs of protection that out-served their use long ago. As I confront these and integrate past experiences with the person I am today, I become less defensive, more open, more able to really see and hear others. I believe a more conscious world is a kinder and wiser world (to borrow a Sounds True tag line), I believe that we can evolve beyond the kind of atrocities that I have talked about in here, and beyond the insidious day to day reactions to the petty disagreements or comments or actions of other people around us. Do you need to have unified beliefs to be able to really listen? No, but I believe you do need to have clear sight of your authentic self and feel safe and comfortable in your own skin in order to truly see the perspective of another. If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Want to Make the World a Better Place? Tune In, You See What Happens When You Learn to Speak Your Truth, Let Us Hear Your Unique Perspective – But Be Kind and Be Wise, How to Stand in Your Truth and Be Heard Without a Fight 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. When the kids and I first met the character Reyna Avila Ramirez Arellano in Rick Riordan’s Heroes of Olympus series, it was the observation of her by another character that really struck me, because it could have been someone describing me for most of my life:
“Annabeth recognised something else in her face too – in the hard set of her mouth and the deliberate way she raised her chin like she was ready to accept any challenge. Reyna was forcing a look of courage while holding back a mixture of hopefulness and worry and fear that she couldn’t show in public.” Later, in the Trials of Apollo series, she reflects, as I have reflected in recent years: “My whole life I’ve been living with other people’s expectations of who and what I‘m supposed to be...But you showed me how ridiculous the whole situation was. That’s what healed my heart, being able to laugh at myself again, at my stupid ideas about destiny and fate...That allowed me to break free. I don’t need to wear anybody else’s label. I need time to just be me, to find out who I am.” As I have been on this journey to me, I have uncovered quite a few self destructive beliefs that have been lurking in the shadows of my mind, driving my thoughts and actions like a hidden force, When I get triggered about something in my life, I take this as a signal to explore those hidden beliefs and bring them into the light of day for a good shake down. This week I retuned to do some work using Brandon’s Bays Emotional Journey process when I could feel myself getting irritated by a sense of giving too much to others. What I discovered in the process is that giving too much stems, for me, from this subconscious idea I’m not enough. My true state is actually receptivity, openness and warmth and the guidance (that came from a deeper part of myself) was to remember I am not the personality or the experiences, but the benefactor of the growth that arises out of those. In fact, the wisest part of me said “You are love itself and there’s always enough love, in fact that’s all there is.” Another aspect of my hidden belief structure that I had been experiencing lately was a sense of feeling under-valued, unseen and under-used in my gifts and capacities. What I uncovered in the process is my true nature, which is radiance, standing in my own power. I can choose to combat and play small, or compassion to play big; to see others as comrades not combatants. In this scenario the wisest part of me said “Be expansive. There are many things that you know you know, live those.” I understood that I must have compassion for myself and others to grow beyond this unhelpful belief pattern. I have also been reading another beautiful (fictional) book by Anthony Doerr called All the Light We Cannot See that weaves together the backdrop of the lives of a young orphaned German boy who was eventually drafted into the Hitler Youth at the age of twelve or thirteen, and a young blind girl who lives in France with her widowed father. The story slowly wraps its way towards a point in which they briefly meet in occupied France just before liberation. It then continues to unfold into the years following the war into the present day, demonstrating how those events became so interwoven into the lives of the sister of the German soldier (who did not survive) and the French girl (who lived to a ripe old age) and her family. It was nothing sort of tragic, as I am sure it must truly be for anyone directly touched by the ravages of war, regardless of side there appears to emerge only tortured souls. In this I felt the utmost compassion and the sense that these two enemies were kindred spirits who had found themselves wrapped up in circumstances beyond their control. While I’m not wading in that extreme of life, I certainly find myself unconsciously creating us and them scenarios, both in my personal life and as I look out into the world. For a completely different kind of example, I’ll use the recent Harry and Meghan interview with Oprah. This sort of hyped razzmatazz is not my usual fodder, I don’t tend to actively follow any kind of current affairs or news, but I'm like a little meerkat who pops my head above ground every now and then to get a gauge on what's going on out in the magical mist called the media. Growing up in the UK in the 1970’s and 1980’s, Charles and Diana's wedding, the births of their sons and Diana's death, were all moments I remember well because of the vast media storm that accompanied them. Not least I recall the haunted faces of the two young boys made to walk behind their mother’s casket in the funeral procession. All I know of Harry and Meghan is what the media lines have fed us for last few years, which my dad aptly summed up after he exclaimed “You watched the interview!” by words like self serving, egotistical and manipulative. That's exactly why I listened to it, I like to hear and see people speak directly because it gives me a much better gauge on what is going on than a third party account. I had also read a book by one of my favourite fictional authors, Lucinda Riley, a year or so ago that was based around the British royal family and a huge cover up that stemmed back decades to the early part of the twentieth century. It was all about the 'old firm' and the security services that surround the family. While it was a captivating story, the most interesting aspect lay not in the fiction but the facts around the book finally reaching print. As a young author she had much interest in the book when it was first written. It even had a publishing deal but the deal got withdrawn and all doors were closed. It is only several decades later and after the successful publication of later books, it finally reached print. I'm guessing the fiction was too close to the truth. This idea of the velvet curtain has always intrigued me. So I found Harry in particular interesting in the interview, although Meghan I think was better able to explain how it works. It gave me pause as I thought about what it must be like to be born into that machine, to not know a world any different. Now what is their agenda? Well that's an all-sided question. Certainly I start with the media who have had some very strong opinions on Ms Markle. I don't know her from Adam, and she could be a sociopathic narcissist for all I know, but I wanted to hear her voice. And she made some very interesting points. As for Oprah, I like her. Does she have her own agenda? Sure. Don't we all? The only thing I felt about Oprah's interviewing was that it missed something quite key. While she fully explored the racist component about why little Archie wouldn't become a Prince, it missed completely exploring the idea that it could be because she was a divorcee, something that has caused so many issues within the royals. That said, does it serve the needs of our society to dismantle white supremacy and white privilege, absolutely. While talking about it with family and friends afterwards reminded me of the kind of polarisation I looked at in The Internal Shift You Need to Help Solve the Social Dilemma, it was, I felt, probably one of the most true-to-life looks behind the velvet curtain that I've ever had, even if (like everything in life) it was serving multiple agendas. I understand my call to watch it was an extra layer of my learning around compassion at the moment. In every crevice I am finding compassion; from the echoes of the ravages of war, through to something as distant to me as the media swirl surrounding royals, and as personal as those deep shadows etched on my own soul. The message is clear, embrace compassion over combat and step into your true power. If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Be Compassionate and Curious to Live Your Best Life, What Do You Want The Prevailing Global Culture to Look Like?, How You Are Complicit in the Oppression of Others, Let Us Hear Your Unique Perspective – But Be Kind and Be Wise 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. As 2020 draws to a close, I was reflecting on a piece of news an old colleague of mine had posted about a lovely surprise holiday her husband had booked to a tropical location at the end of next year. Probably like many people, I am unsure whether that kind of travel will be possible again by then, but I started to wonder whether that was even the right question to be asking myself.
In his article 15 Great Quotes on the Importance of Asking the Right Question Mitch Ditkoff states how, as a consultant, he continues to be astounded by how few organisations have any kind of process to press pause, reflect and make sure they are coming up with the right questions. Setting aside questions about COVID19 itself for now, I started to think back to those early lockdowns, when much of the world seemed to stand still. It was a time when we as a family got to pause, reflect and take stock. I can understand people wanting to get back to holidays and social activities, but what did that pause shed light on? There were reports of Venice’s canals running clearer, the clearest they’ve been in sixty years. An article in Science Direct sadly concluded (after research looking at the effects on the environment during the first global lockdowns) “Coronavirus itself is Earth’s vaccine and we humans are the virus”. Talk of holidays and “getting back to normal” evokes in me a sense of frustration. I’m going to ignore the expression “the new normal” for the moment, because that seems to be more associated with control and fear, and that is not the kind of future I’m envisaging. But this idea of life going back to the way it was before the global pandemic seems ridiculous to me. It has amplified so many issues about our environment and our social, political, economic, technological and personal challenges that it is a time in history ripe for change. But having witnessed the relatively quick return to a lack of human connection between commuters in London after terrorist attacks in the early part of the millennium, I know how quickly distraction sets in. During the lockdown here back in March through May, I revelled in being able to stroll out my front door and walk peacefully through our neighbourhood. But as soon as the restrictions were lessened, road traffic increased and the peaceful walks became crowded with road noise and traffic fumes, so now I have to get in my car to drive elsewhere if I want to take a peaceful walk. I loved that my car did not get its tank refilled for over two months, it weighs on me that I consume fossil fuels. Yet, like many people around the world, I have commitments that would be extremely difficult to meet without running a vehicle. How can I find ways to change this? How many governments and major political parties right now are even thinking about the lessons this crisis has taught us and have evolution on their agenda? That said, I know my most effective voting takes place through the money I spend and the things I give my attention to. So where am I placing my attention? What am I spending money on? Am I using my resources in a way that would encourage the kind of change and transformation that could be for the benefit of not just me or my family, but for all of humankind, the creatures and the living planet on which we all reside? I learned this year that I have white privilege. What other privileges do I hold? How can I give other people the benefit of my privileges? How can I help dismantle the systems of oppression within myself and for others? I also learned from The Social Dilemma documentary that social media is six times more effective at spreading false news. Since conspiracy theories have abounded in 2020, I’ve watched friends and family become polarized on important topics to a degree that neither side seems able to hear the other. I’ve had to ask myself, am I using social media as a tool? Or am I letting it demand my attention and manipulate my thinking? And where is my own resistance to hearing others’ opinions? I learned that, in a time when our country faced a health risk, our government cut off the supply to my chosen form of healthcare and made only pharmaceuticals available. What can I do to ensure I maintain a freedom of choice in my healthcare even in times of crisis? I learned that I was absolutely spot-on in my self assessment that I am not cut out to home school my children. Yet being able to give them and their schoolwork such individual attention led me to asking the right questions that uncovered their neurodiversity, and still more questions to find the right support and training so they can flourish. I wonder how I can support all children in their uniqueness to flourish? I learned the importance of self sustainability. With panic buying, a lack of groceries and no access to garden supplies, keeping emergency supplies and a variety of fresh things to eat growing in our garden became more important. It highlighted all the problems I had known about with mono-farming and the way we currently source goods and services from around the world. What more can I do with our budget to encourage local and organic businesses? I learned that reconnecting with my partner and children was simultaneously challenging and liberating. It brought about a huge amount of personal change in terms of consciously shaking off old beliefs and behavioural patterns that weren’t serving us. Where to next on that I wondered? And then I got one of Claire Zammit’s emails that asked seven power questions:
It reminded me that, while I have learned a lot about myself this year, the road ahead lies wide open for me to keep learning. 2020 is a year that I think of as catalysing. It has led me to ask more questions than it has produced in terms of answers. I’m always impatient for change, and I know as I look back change will probably seem quicker than it feels right now. Am I asking the right questions I wonder? So long as I keep taking time to pause and reflect on the bigger picture of my own life, I’m confident the right questions will arise. The question is, with holiday season almost upon us at the end of this landmark year, what are the right questions for you to ask yourself right now? If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Change the World One Day at a Time, Want to Make the World a Better Place? Tune In, What Value Are You Adding to the Currencies in Your Life?, How You Are Complicit in the Oppression of Others, You See What Happens When Leaders Are Not Grown Up on the Inside and The Internal Shift You Need to Help Solve the Social Dilemma. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog. This is the question before me this week. As someone who desires to aid in our evolution, it has been thought provoking and uncomfortable for me to confront some of the ways in which I have unconsciously been complicit in the oppression of others.
If asked, I would have sworn I am not intolerant towards any particular group, so it’s been eye opening and refreshing to look at myself from a different angle. Certainly throughout my life I’ve observed the many ways in which people who are deemed different are treated differently and I’ve been thankful not to have faced their particular challenges. The sorts of things that can divide us are unlimited, but the common ones are gender, race, sexual orientation, existential beliefs, political beliefs, religious beliefs, social class, economic status, physical abilities, mental abilities and so on. The earliest examples that come to mind from my schooldays are the way people (whose brains don’t seem wired for typical classroom education) got dubbed as unintelligent, disruptive and/or naughty, sensitive people got picked on and those with a disability of any nature were hidden away. The biggest intolerance I was aware of in my early West of Scotland upbringing was religious. The first question when I met someone new most often being “are you a fenian or a proddy?” (meaning of the Catholic or Protestant faith). There were kids on our street not allowed to play among those of different faiths and there were separate state schools for those of the Catholic faith. I first noticed my own discomfort when around those with sensory disabilities. Working at the checkout of a drugstore, or on the information desk at the travel centre, I suddenly found myself wondering how to best serve those who had hearing or visual disabilities. It wasn’t that I harboured any known prejudice towards people who faced these challenges, it was more that I had no experience or education on the best way to assist them, and it seemed rude to ask, especially since the whole transaction was quite time pressured with queues to serve. I also remember my extreme discomfort when sitting next to people on the public bus who had mental disorders, on the long journey to university each day. I’d often see people getting on the bus and feel my stomach clench and start breaking out in a cold sweat thinking “please do not next to me, please do not sit next to me”, having never integrated with anyone facing those challenges during my school years, again, I was ill equipped. In fact, last year when our family visited Hawaii, I was again confronted by those old fears when taking the public bus around Waikiki. For those who are unaware, there are a large number of homeless people there, who seem to be a mix of people with mental disorders, people with drug addictions and other people who have fallen on hard times but who are otherwise of sound mind. Suddenly I wasn’t just navigating life in my own individual experience, I was doing it in the role of a parent, well aware of my desire and the weight of responsibility to be a decent human being and show my kids how to traverse the social fabric of life in a kind and safe way. If there is one word this comes down to it is fear. I am scared to say or do the wrong thing. Why? Because that didn’t go well as a child. As I mentioned in How to Stop Being Triggered by What Other People Think being a child of an approval/disapproval, right/wrong and punishment/reward style upbringing, in order to avoid disapproval, rejection and/or punishment, I became a people pleaser and a perfectionist. There are probably a number of other self limiting behavioural and thought patterns that would play into the root cause of why I might be unconsciously complicit in the oppression of others, but it can definitely be summed up as fear, and mainly through a lack of understanding on my part. “Shallow understanding from people of goodwill is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will.” Martin Luther King Jr “The lesson”, says Layla F. Saad, “is that if you believe you are the exception, you will not do the work, you will continue o do harm even thought that is not your intention.” Do I want to be involved in any scenario in which I directly or indirectly subject a fellow human – or any creature for that matter – to hardship or abuse? Of course I don’t, but I can think of far too many ways in which it happens, especially now that I’ve started to look through the lens of others. Perhaps this, more than any other motivation I might have for addressing my own fears and limitations, is the most compelling. If I do harm to myself, that is one thing, but to affect another in such a way is not acceptable to me. I can see that we are all interconnected, that “for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction” as Newton put it. If I allow one part of the whole to be treated as less than, I diminish the whole. That is exactly how wars, genocides and other atrocities happen. People allow themselves to dehumanise others in the name of a difference and everyone suffers. People allow themselves to think they are better than for any number of reasons, but I am going to say it all comes down to fear, fear of differences. I’ve been reading an excerpt from a paper written by Peggy McIntosh back in 1988, in which she lists fifty ways she benefits from white privilege in her daily life. She tried to choose conditions that, in her case, attach somewhat more to skin colour than to class, religion, ethnic status or geographic location (though notes that all those factors are intricately intertwined). Some examples are:
I have also found Layla F. Saad’s book Me and White Supremacy an excellent read so far. It presents a step by step reflection process as a 28-day challenge to become aware of where I might be consciously or unconsciously supporting systemic racism. But each step of the way, as she addresses issues like fragility, tone policing and staying silent, I can see the parallels into every other area of human difference and where I may be unwittingly contributing to oppression of those within society. The obvious area where I have personally felt oppressed within my own life would be related to being female. But I am sure that everybody has experiences of being different on some level and can, if only in a minor way, begin to relate to some of the challenges fellow humans face when subjected to both overt and covert prejudice. When I read one of Layla’s prompts on “staying silent (or making excuses/changing the subject/leaving the room) when your family members or friends make racist jokes or comments” listed under how white silence shows up, I reluctantly admitted to myself that I have done this on many an occasion. I wondered why I do that, and find it is because I am not wanting to make waves. This is likely tied into my own anxieties about what people think (as I mentioned earlier), and the associated trauma and patterns there, but there is definitely a patriarchal element too. I actually don’t trust myself at this stage to get into a confrontation without getting angry. This is one of the key aims of me doing my personal inner work, because I do want to be able to converse on important issues, making people think about their views rather than entrenching them further in beliefs that create oppression. But I do know how it feels to listen to jokes stereotyping people with blond hair, or Scottish people, for instance, and how those that tell them don’t bat an eyelid to their insensitivity when I’m sitting there. Little do they know the magnitude of how angry it makes me. Then there’s the objectification of women and the pornographic ‘joke’ videos that get freely sent around on social media. I only have to think of those, and think of my daughters and then I have instantly invoked the wrath of generations of oppressed females in the collective consciousness into my psyche. I read Thomas Hübl’s story this week and how he found his life’s work in healing collective and intergenerational trauma, I’m looking forward to reading his book on this topic in the coming months. I suspect though the answer begins within each of us and doing our personal work. A good friend of mine’s daughter does a lot of research and advocacy around the Maori world view, and just this week I saw she has co-authored a new book Indigenous Research Ethics: Claiming Research Sovereignty Beyond Deficit and the Colonial Legacy. The thing I admire most about her, is her ability to challenge people through questions without getting riled. It’s actually a thing of great beauty to watch, and I hold that as my example. But I also resonate with the chapter in Layla F. Saad’s book about tone policing. I can well imagine how it would feel to hear a racist joke, anything where there is intergenerational trauma and oppression invokes a much greater sense of anger than just a personal affront. She makes the point that telling someone you can’t hear what they are saying because they are saying it in an angry way, is another way to silence those being oppressed. At first I was conflicted, because it’s true that it is hard to hear someone’s anger. Anger elicits my old self defeating thought patterns and behaviours, meaning that instead of an open-minded adult, some old inner hurt part of me is at the helm. I notice this is often the same when I speak in anger to others, they reciprocate with a hurt part of themselves. Yet I hear Layla’s words when she says “To be human is to feel. To talk about pain without expressing pain is expecting a human to recall information like a robot. When you insist that a black, indigenous or person of colour talk about their painful experiences with racism without experiencing any pain, rage or grief, you are asking them to dehumanize themselves.” So I have come to the conclusion that if I would like to make progress it falls upon me at this point to both be able to hear another’s anger in these matters and to learn to express my own anger in a more palatable way. In the words of Layla F Saad “You do this work because you believe every human deserves dignity, freedom and equality. You do this because you desire wholeness for yourself and for the world, because you want to become a good ancestor.” It’s important to continue to challenge myself in all the ways I might be unintentionally complicit in the oppression of others, because it seems fundamental to our evolution. If we can accept and embrace our own and others’ differences, this will create strength and compassion within the whole of humankind. This creates a shift from competition to cooperation, fear to love, prejudices to preferences, and can only be to the benefit of all life. If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy How to Live in Conscious Self Awareness in the World, The Internal Shift You Need to Help Solve the Social Dilemma, You See What Happens When Leaders Are Not Grown Up on the Inside and Change the World One Day at a Time. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog. When I watched Tristan Harris in The Social Dilemma documentary recently, recommended by my partner, it had a similar impact as watching Al Gore in An Inconvenient Truth back in 2006. While I already had a little insight into the additive quality and manipulative effects of social media across the various sectors of our society, I learned a lot from listening to those who created today’s popular platforms as they voiced their grave concerns.
Through a series of interviews with Silicon Valley engineers and executives who designed the technologies they now fear, the documentary explores this topic in an eye opening way, taking us through exactly how these platforms make money. As the documentary makes evident, it’s confusing because it’s simultaneously utopia and dystopia, trapped by a business model and shareholder pressure that makes it difficult for these companies to do anything else. The answer therefore lies outside of these companies. While introducing better laws and regulations, adapting the technology and the economic incentives seem obvious answers, there is a long way to go to catch up and I’m not yet seeing the sense of urgency and scale of action to achieve this in the near future. On a personal level though, there are some immediate actions anyone can take, the most important of which is an inner shift to help navigate these sometimes treacherous waters. Firstly though, it’s worth understanding just what the real issues are. For this I highly recommend watching the documentary and doing some research. But given the little understood and perhaps unintended consequences of social media, I decided to include the key take outs I got from the documentary as I believe it’s one of the most important issues of our time. If you have watched the documentary, feel free to scroll past the sets of bullet points and article continues below them. To start, here is an outline of the social media business model and how it works
This leads to a number of key points around the unintended side effects regarding our self esteem created in the bid for our attention:
And now that these platforms have our attention, this has lead to perhaps another unintended and insidious threat, the potential and ease for manipulation:
What perhaps struck me the most is that the inherent design of social media makes addiction and manipulation not only likely but necessary based on today’s business models. Here’s the final wrap up and conclusions:
When I thought about all this, I realised my own experiences with my children and the sheer pervasiveness of YouTube, not to mention its inappropriate content and addictive nature, were just the tip of the iceberg. My kids used to watch YouTube Kids, but it was just too easy for them to interconnect with YouTube at so many turns. For those who think there are parental controls for Youtube, there are not. YouTube has one restriction mode and that is it, and it basically is an 18 and over restriction that you can click on or off, and all videos on restricted mode cannot earn money on You Tube, so it's basically only effective for porn type stuff. Other than that the options are to sit with them and watch everything with them, or continuously go through and delete history, unsubscribe etc; there is also a complaint button. To block channels you have to create your own channel, and none of it is straightforward. How did we go from a society that only allowed mature content after 9pm and all content was screened to be age appropriate to this monster of a free for all? My kids started to watch YouTube for EllieV and her lego building, which had mysteriously vanished from YouTube Kids for a while, and from there they discovered YouTube family channels i.e families that post fun games online, like their family navigating obstacle courses etc. However, then it took a more sinister turn. The YouTube families (there are probably hundreds of them, but my kids liked to watch three or four in particular) started doing these Dollmaker videos, where they received a doll that seemed to come from a mysterious Dollmaker and took on a life of its own. Some dolls were good, some were just weird and creepy. So there were my kids, age six and eight at the time, watching good clean, healthy family fun, then suddenly these weird creepy dolls turn up and the families play along like they are trying to get rid of these dolls but can't, then a member of the family gets possessed by a doll and will become a doll, and my children are wondering "is this real?" I could not believe the blatant manipulation, nor the fact that I had no reliable way of allowing my kids to watch any of the content they enjoyed without falling prey to scary nonsense like that. Since then we decided no more YouTube. But its not easy unless they have zero access to devices, which they both use for listening to audiobooks and playing games for a couple of hours on the weekend. I have had to go into the administrator function on our modem and block every conceivable YouTube web address I can find on their particular devices, and the devices only connect to the wifi while I download new audio books or games for them, so I am constantly having to connect/disconnect the devices. It requires a lot of hands on management to regulate their viewing, something I could rely in being regulated through TV or movie theaters. I also thought of a good friend of mine saying one day during our lockdown that she’d “swallowed the red pill”. I vividly remember that she had then spent the best part of the night way down deep in a rabbit hole, over her head in conspiracy theories about COVID19. Ever since, through her, I have become more aware than ever of the conspiracy theories that exists and the lack of trust and fear they perpetuate. It is easy to see the division and polarization that is happening; vaccines are a case in point. That I might question the efficacy of a vaccine all too often results in an automatic and derisory label of being an anti-vaxxer. Knowing how sublimely our immune systems work when supported by the right diet and lifestyle, the fact that my kids had twenty vaccines by the age of four as a matter-of-course should be something I’m encouraged to investigate and question; it seems like a lot of intervention for burgeoning little bodies. But instead there appears little objective welcome on either side of the debate, there is however a lot of anger and fear. So what is the answer? The advice of the technologists is to uninstall apps that are wasting our time, turn off all notifications on anything that is not timely/important right now, and not to accept recommendations on Google search but to scroll down and choose your own and to think twice, three times, before hitting emotion buttons, likes and shares. Reflecting on these recommendations, these were actions I’d already taken some time ago. I don’t generally tend to participate in media of any kind, except when using it as a tool, because I know I can lose hours of my life. I know there is as much misinformation out there as there is information (although this documentary has perhaps taught me there may well be a much greater proportion of misinformation), and I only want to be sifting my way through all that when I’m actively interested in learning about something. Even knowing this I still catch myself checking for new email or messages often. The key question I began to ask myself with my device is “Am I using it as a tool? Or am I letting it demand my attention and manipulate my thinking?” But why is it that I had come to those conclusions already I wondered? Well, in part, I had learned the lesson about not engaging in media decades ago when I was self employed. Because it’s designed to be sensational and pull me in, I decided it was a time waster. I want to stay positive and focused on my own goals in life, not pulled into dramas I have no direct control over. The other thing that has really helped me navigate the fears (of 2020 in particular), which are being fed by and prayed upon by social media in my opinion, is quite simple. It is an internal shift, the practice of observing my thoughts. This has allowed me to notice when I’m thinking things that are putting me in a fearful state, which then empowers me to take action to bring myself back into balance. It’s like the game of hot and cold, the more fear I feel the colder/further I’m getting from my truth. The warmer/closer I am to my truth, the more peace I feel. Examples would include topics like vaccines, or government conspiracy theories. As I sit here typing this I am aware through others that tomorrow is the date banded about online by which New Zealand would come under martial law, and a separate theory that it is also the day on which we will plunge into darkness as planet Earth shifts on its axis. Now, if you are reading this it means we are past the date and we will either be in apocalyptic chaos or, well, we will be trucking along in the more chronic kind of chaos already well outlined in here. I do know someone though who is stocking up their food reserves just in case, and who urged me to do so because they do genuinely care about me. How do I navigate situations that? I can feel the tension and fear in my body rise when these conversations are broached. I have to take some time to myself afterwards and really sit with the feelings and sometimes do a little research to figure out whether there is something I need be concerned about or not. I wish to remain objective, and I know that to do so I have to work hard at creating space between me and the hype. So when a documentary comes along like The Social Dilemma, I have the head and heart space to take it in. To achieve this I meditate daily. As I discuss in Meditation – the Cornerstone to Your Success, it’s a practice of noticing when I’m thinking and letting those thoughts go, in short I become the observer of my thoughts rather than completely swept up by them. I also make sure I take regular walk in nature to clear my head, practice yoga for my mind and body also, go for a swim to help me defrag, and so on. Actively making regular space in my calendar for these things gives me space on the inside. Making that internal shift gives me perspective, keeps me objective, able to explore alternative views, and helps me maintain focus on the bigger picture of not just my own life, but life here on Earth. As Jared Lanier wisely comments in the The Social Dilemma, even if only a small percentage of people change their social media habits as a result of the documentary, it’s at least creating space to have a conversation about how we navigate our future. Will you make the internal shift and join the conversation? If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Your Answers Are Within, What Do You Want The Prevailing Global Culture to Look Like?, Stand in Your Own Truth and How to Be True to You When Life Pulls You in Different Directions. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog. Image by Світлана Саноцька - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0 Whether as a politician, parent, teacher or someone’s coach, manager or advisor, if you are an adult you are a leader; our future generations are watching...
Part of me wanted to post a few pictures of many of today’s leaders to highlight my point, but it is more pervasive than that, and I wanted to look at what could be done to evolve us past this point of blatant immaturity. I’ll tell you some examples of the kinds of things I’m seeing; examples of what I’ll call unconscious leadership. Given my belief that I have not only the right, but the obligation to question decisions our government make, when I started to wonder about the rational for our current government’s decision to maintain an elimination strategy for COVID19 in New Zealand, I began to search for some answers. Now, this article is not about challenging the efficacy of New Zealand’s current response to COVID19, it’s not about COVID19, the global landscape on this issue of whether and how to control the virus is complex and constantly changing. However, in my bid to understand why we are where we are, I came across an article by Bridie Witton quoting Professor Michael Baker (one of the main advisors to the government on this matter), Dr Rod Jackson (a professor of epidemiology at the University of Auckland) and Dr Simon Thornley (a public health physician at the University of Auckland) who – like many – is questioning whether elimination is still the right strategy. Keen to hear responses to the valid points Dr Thornley raised I was appalled to read Jackson has little time for Thornley’s arguments and says “they should not be given any oxygen”. He says “Thornley is the only dissenter in the epidemiological community. We are all advising the Government, and we speak with one voice. And you have got a junior epidemiologist who is presenting a different case.” Not exactly mature. The same could be said when I watched footage of Nicola Willis (a Member of Parliament in New Zealand’s main opposition party) make a speech to Parliament in August questioning the Government on how the recent COVID19 outbreak had come about. While she hit home on some key points, her speech ended in a way that – to me – is indicative of what undermines confidence in politicians. It was the “on this side of the house we would do it better” argument. Honestly, it is like listening to a school playground. I want to say “Grow up, make your points and work together.” The same could be said when I noticed that another national politician - whom I knew from my time in local government, and worked with about a decade ago – had left his position as Chief Whip in the opposing party’s office and continued as an independent. He had done some whistle blowing and, of course, the political party came at him. They deflected by focusing on his extra marital affairs. Again, this is very tit for tat playground behaviour. I was then personally quite disappointed in the Member of Parliament’s response to his affairs in a radio interview. He said “the rules of the game have changed; we are now looking under the bed sheets”. The assertion he made is that affairs among members of Parliament are rife and part of the culture, but there has always been a tacit agreement they remain secret. I mean, really, this level of maturity is not what I am looking for in those vested with the job of making critical decisions for our country. All of this seems to get amplified within the realms of social media, as our viewpoints are being increasingly manipulated to a degree never seen before, as eloquently described in the Netflix documentary The Social Dilemma. It’s little wonder that there is so much polarisation and confusion and, ultimately way less progress (on key issues that affect all of humankind, the creatures on this planet, and the planet itself) than is possible if we were all pulling in the same direction. What does it mean to grow up? To me, it means self responsibility, to take deliberate action to mature on the inside as well as the outside. I am talking about taking responsibility for that part of me that reacts when I get triggered. I do not mean that I take steps to behave in a more polished way, like media training. In the examples I’ve given above, it is clear to me that Dr Rod Jackson may well be considered a loose cannon for making such obviously derisory statements about another colleague. I know from my own media training that there is a certain way I should respond to the press so I don’t embarrass myself or the organisation I represent. The same could be said of the Personal Development training that many executives undergo. The best of this usually at least achieves one of the prerequisite steps in maturing on the inside, and that is self awareness. I found the better training and coaching an uncomfortable unfolding, and witnessed the same in my colleagues, to see ourselves as others perhaps might; the good, the bad and the ugly. From there I have observed that many just get better at magnifying the good and hiding the bad and the ugly. There are few I have witnessed really doing the internal work it takes to recognise the roots of these internal triggers that set off the immature behaviours and heal them. As I said in Your Childhood Is Not Your Fault but It Will Be Your Limitation, aside of the trauma we all experience to varying degrees in our life, there are also the inherited patterns of behaviour in our parents that we react to, and unwittingly develop patterns in response to. These are essential for our survival in childhood but become unhealthy patterns later in life, and will certainly pass on unless we take action. James Redfield describes these control strategies quite succinctly in The Celestine Prophecy. They sit on a scale of aggressive to passive and he describes four archetypes; it’s often easiest if you start by taking a look at which strategies your parents employed:
For example, Intimidators create Poor Me’s appealing for mercy, or, the child will endure until they are old enough and big enough to fight back, creating another Intimidator, and so the cycle continues. It is not just in politicians I see this level of immaturity, it’s everywhere I look: executives playing one-upmanship in boardrooms, teachers shaming kids in order to control the classroom, parents repeating the same cycles of shame, guilt and fear over and over. I know, I’ve been on this journey, pointing fingers at others and – most destructively – inwardly, berating myself for not being better. To move past this, in every walk of life, starts within each individual taking self responsibility to mature on the inside; I have to take responsibility to become conscious of the damage I do, to myself and others. Imagine a world where leaders have healed their negative patterns, where people are not denying, suppressing or disowning their authentic self, and are free to fully express the best of who they are? That is the world I came to live in, and it starts with me. What about you? If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Leadership: Why Trust Leads to Better Business Outcomes, What Do You Want The Prevailing Global Culture to Look Like?, Stand in Your Own Truth and How to Be True to You When Life Pulls You in Different Directions. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog. I’ve had a sense of bubbling euphoria this week as I’ve been moving through day to day life. It comes from some work I completed over the weekend that really helped me to crystallise where I am on my journey, with a definite sense that there is light at the end of the tunnel.
The journey to me has been a deliberate and painstaking pursuit, taken in small steps over a number of years. But I get the sense that the metaphoric dark night of the soul is drawing to an end, it is the dawning of a new day. Along the way there has been a diverse range of literature and teachers whose work has provided much needed guidance, most of whom (if not all) have been mentioned in my weekly musings. I am nothing if not resourceful, and on each part of this rushing river downstream it has seemed that the right thing has appeared just at the right time to help me navigate whatever tumultuous waters I was in. Claire Zammit’s work on self actualisation, the latest piece I’ve been diving into, ranks among my favourites for its ability to capture and and categorize (into eight distinct areas) what aspects of life one might have deeper yearnings for, not feel fulfilled and want to evolve in. Her work in recognising why this is the case and how to break through the barriers is well thought out; and a blessing for those of us who are really serious about realising our full potential in any area of life. Being asked to talk about self awareness last week gave me the opportunity to review the stages of the journey. First there was a desire to develop and succeed in a more unconscious state, then there was an awakening to the bigger context of life. This illuminated the burdened state in which I was attempting to move through each day, so there then came the more deliberate reclamation of my authentic self. Don’t get me wrong, do I think this is the end of my journey? Heck no, more of a breakthrough, moving onto the next chapter. It will be interesting though, each week as I sit down to write these and reflect on what I’ve learned, to see if and how the flavour changes. So back to the breakthrough, it came from going through a 73-page document that Claire Zammit co-authored with Katherine Woodward Thomas; it goes through the twenty one self-limiting thought patterns that create our more burdened identities, outlining the common thoughts, beliefs, gifts and so on, that comes with each. To be clear, I’m not saying you can just read this document and – whoosh – you’ll have the same epiphany. It’s possible, but bear in mind there are many roads to the same end, and each journey is unique. This happened to be the one that, for me, was the perfect tool given the culmination of everything I had experienced, read and learned to that point. In fact, I’d been subconsciously searching for this list. Ever since I’d heard Teal Swan talk about Fragmentation, referring to the parts of us that fragment off in relation to our essential self. An example she gives, from memory, is about being brought up in a family where it wasn’t okay to express your anger, and how that might affect who you show up as in the world over the years; perhaps even to the extent that you become a person who doesn’t recognise you ever feel anger because it has become so denied, suppressed and disowned. Anyway, in her various talks on the subject, Teal mentions that with each fragment we each split into many parts (she has seen as many as over eighty), with a minimum of twenty two. It struck me as a very specific number. So when Claire Zammit mentioned the twenty one thought patterns she had identified, I immediately connected the dots (21 parts plus the essential self being twenty two). I have no idea if their lists are the same, but the point for me was this represented more of a totality of what could be at play within me. For the last few years I’ve been healing patterns that reveal themselves through whatever is triggering me in the moment, and it has served me well, but I was wanting a litmus test of how far through that dark night I was. So I went through the 73-page document highlighting every single statement that resonated and looked at where the clusters were. What became very clear was that my two main themes were in relation to my own feelings, needs and desires and my uniqueness, calling and contribution. Specifically how to name them, assert them in a way that garners support and maintain a healthy balance between giving and receiving. Having done a lot of work this year on healing my boundaries, and recognising my people pleasing and co-dependant tendencies, it made a great deal of sense to me that being able to fulfil my potential in the area of clearly and confidently expressing my thoughts, feelings, needs, desires, ideas and visions to others, has been a key step towards fulfilling my potential in terms of being able to recognise and contribute my gifts in ways that are meaningful and have a positive impact. Knowing that I had already begun working on these things, I realised this was my sense check that the change in light was indeed the dawn of a new day and not an oncoming truck about to hit me square in the eyes. I also checked in with another lady I know, and who knows me well, whose chosen field is in helping people work through these barriers who affirmed I am well through the continuum. What has made the most difference, in my little bubbling, euphoric state, is recognising how l feel when someone else around me is triggered. I was at lunch with some friends, one of whom gets really triggered on certain issues, and I accidentally stumbled into one of those particular topics. Even though she knew we were each well aware of the issues on both sides of the fence and hold the same vision, it was as though all the oxygen had been sucked out the room as a tirade ensued. It was an amazing experience of having a mirror held up. I am no stranger to these tirades; I too have been a tirade queen on many issues that are important to me (just ask the kid’s school). What I have been able to see clearly now for a while though is that my anger is only spinning my wheels in the mud on any topic. Other people can’t hear me because my anger instinctively makes it unsafe for them, triggering those around me into flight, fight, freeze or fold. Also, what lay at the heart of my anger was something else entirely, in my case it was the childhood pain of my opinion not mattering, among other things, and I came out fighting, determined no one would put me in the corner again. It was that I had to work through so that I could begin to communicate more clearly and calmly. Claire’s core message in unlocking our potential is:
My bubbling euphoria isn’t because I feel entirely clear of my past, it’s because I’ve now got awareness of and am working on the biggest pattern that has been standing in my way. As I recognise and work to integrate those parts of me I’d denied, I can feel a seismic shift in my own energy as it starts to orientate itself towards the very thing I’ve been yearning for, my contribution and calling. Do you feel a deep yearning for something more in your life, an elusive potential within? Perhaps you’d like to more clearly express your authentic self? Or contribute your gifts to others in ways that are meaningful and have a positive impact? Or feel safe, valued and supported in your romantic relationships to become the best version of yourself? Or feel you have all the resources you need to thrive? Or feel connected to your creative expression? Or to your deeper knowing? Or feel energized, well, healthy, at peace and at home in your body? Or to make a difference in the lives of others? I want all of these things, and what I’ve discovered is – while I need to recognise there’s work to do, and do it – I don’t need to be perfect to make a breakthrough, and neither do you, you just need to begin. If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy I Am Worth It – Are You?, Why Projecting is the Best Tool for Self Awareness, Honour Your Story but Free Yourself of Its Shackles and How to Heal the Past so You Can Live Your Best Present. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog. As I lay in bed this morning enjoying a quiet five minutes of my mind freely wandering, I was also acutely aware that my bubble was about to burst when the kids awoke, and the duties of the day began. I knew that it would only be when I sat down to type later in the day that my mind would have free rein to wander again.
That is the biggest obstacle for most of us, I believe, the feeling of more than enough time. When I watched a video from Sustainable Human on Why Everyone Deserves a Basic Income, I think the point was well made that we are so busy labouring to live that we don’t have enough time for the things that matter to us, which are often the things that would help us live in harmony with each other and the planet. I can see where it begins, my kids are kept so busy with schooling (which they are not all that interested in) and are often too tired to pursue things they would rather be exploring. Yet I often think, as I drop them off at that cookie-cutter machine each day, they didn’t come here to fit into this world, they came to change it. But for that matter, so did you and I. Listening to a friend of mine talk about the less than desirable state of governments today, and how much we had lost in moving away from local communities, I agreed with much of what was being said. However, I did not want to dwell on it, nor fight against it; it just feels like too much resistance. What came up for me instead, were questions about what could replace these outdated systems. How could we maintain global infrastructure in a more localised world? Was that even the right question? What I know for sure is that watching more videos, reading more articles or listening to more speeches to raise my awareness about today’s problems feels heavy on my soul, I’m already aware; the issues are huge in so many facets of our lives. What I’m interested in is a vision of what it could look like and how we get there. When I sat down to meditate and clear my mind, I had this vision of me sitting at an architect’s desk with a huge jigsaw puzzle spread across the table and only two or three pieces in place. All around me on the walls were white boards and notice boards, with lots of notes and questions posted all over them, a little like the crime or medical investigation rooms I’ve seen on TV. I knew this was me sitting down to start to piece together a vision for myself of what the world could look like. I started to wonder if anyone had ever written a book as good as Frederic Laloux’s Reinventing Organisations, but focused on reconstructing the way in which public services could be provided. Then I realised much of what he had written, at its core advocating organisations that are set up with autonomous individuals who have collective responsibility for outcomes (rather than employees with delegated authorities and limited access to information), was and could be applied to public services. I also realised the question needed to be broader, in the sense of how each person in society who had an interest in that arena (be it roads, communication, education, healthcare, economics, justice etc) could participate to the extent they desired. My mind was on a roll with questions and people who might have answers, and the boards in my imaginary investigation room were rapidly filling up with notes and insights. It’s something that deeply interests me, this question of what society could be like if we can function together in more conscious awareness of who we truly are. While creating a vision of a new society is certainly one way to step towards a new world, it’s no more valid than anything else that people might do that brings them joy. For my partner, his mind wanders to the forest where he can bike, or the activity in the night sky he likes to track, or the renovation work he is doing. I really think that time to ponder what we love is key for positive progression. When I feel unhurried, free to pursue what I’d like, my whole system is more relaxed, more in tune with the things I truly want out of life. It’s easier to eat in ways that are healthy, to think about planting my own food, to take regular exercise, and to take the time to notice how my neighbour is doing. These are all things during our lockdown earlier in the year that became very evident. It was a time of self reflection, of seeing negative patterns and revisiting what is important in life. Sometimes it’s all too easy to get caught up in the doing, which feels like a distraction from the main event of being who we have come here to be. Whatever you truly enjoy and feel passionate about, pursue it as much as you can, as often as you can, take one day at a time. Even if it feels trite, or that it won’t change the world, it will change your world. Then imagine a world full of people pursuing their passion, which is a world changed for the better. If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Take a Broader Perspective, Profit, Purpose and Personal Fulfillment Can Thrive Together - A Remarkable New Organisational Construct, Be An Evolutionary, and The Hidden Ingredient in Really Effective Problem Solving. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog. I took my daughter and her friend to see a movie this week whose theme was Our Differences Make Us Stronger. I truly believe that our differences do make us stronger when they are embraced. This applies equally to my own differences as it does to that of others.
As I have listened to podcasts with people talking about diversifying our social circles in order to expand our hearts and minds it rings true. The point is well made that, if I interact with people only like me, I have a limited view of the world. I also have come to understand that I only attract those on the same vibrational wavelength as me. And it has really opened my eyes these last few years, as I have shared my angst and insights on the journey to me, those of you who resonate with the vibe of my own life lessons come in an astonishingly wide range of forms and circumstances. It seems to me that many of our similarities and differences are those that can only be seen and felt by the heart. Interacting with people I don’t know is easier though, particularly if we have been drawn together through mutual trials and tribulations. Knowing more about someone seems to create more barriers, as per the old saying familiarity breeds contempt; more experience of someone (including myself) can make me so aware of my own or their faults I become scornful. I remember hearing a story recalled from Jerry Hicks about his wife Esther, watching her having the most marvelous fun with another passenger at the airport trying to retrieve their luggage. He was chuckling to himself thinking “if only they each knew who the other was, the fun would soon turn sour.” As I recall the man was a preacher of some sort and, when his adverts played, it would impel Esther to stand up and shout at the television set in indignation. But until I can embrace my own differences and preferences, be relaxed enough to communicate them in a clear and calm way, I find it is hard to feel safe listening to other points of view; I often have this unspoken sense that my listening will indicate a tacit acceptance of their views as my own and am preparing for the attack on mine if I express them. For the longest time I have had a quote from Stephen Covey displayed on my bookcase Most people do not listen with the intent to understand. Most people listen with the intent to reply. For me this is because I struggled growing up with my own differences and didn’t feel accepted. Despite good intent to listen, I still seem to do far too much talking. With awareness, I have known it is because I don’t want anyone to attempt to steer me away from my truth, I often jump in and state my views to erect a barrier of protection; a throwback to my childhood when I was always told what I should be thinking, feeling or doing. As I read Mona Miller’s words this week about conflict and confusion, in her book Invisible Warfare, that entanglement began to make more sense. She says “Most of our educational systems are set up to train us to provide answers, not to question. Many times these answers are created to please someone else, so we lose the capability to check-in with ourselves to see what we actually think or feel about the information we are getting.” I’m finding it is particularly tricky at this point in my journey where I’m learning to heal my personal boundaries. With decades of defensive wiring, just getting a clear view of any particular scenario is oftentimes a challenge. However is it one steering me towards a win-win. Certainly I have been challenged by a couple of conversations with people close to me this week. With all the awareness I could muster I traversed both conversations with trepidation and determination to honour my own boundaries while respecting theirs, for both these people are dear to me in their separate ways. What came up for me was the question of how I can listen, understand and respond to someone when their truth doesn’t resonate with my own and I feel, because of the way they are expressing it, I need to go into defence, attack or hiding. This is where Mona’s writing on conflict and confusion helped clarify “whether someone is lying (it may be to you or to themselves) or telling the truth doesn’t matter. Lies can help you see the truth as you move towards understanding.” She explains “We are trained to either be know-it-alls or stupid; people who speak in statements or not at all. Yet a wise person knows there is always more to learn and this creates confusion and conflict.” When I feel a twist in my gut as someone interacts with me, that is a signal from my body to let me know the views or desires they are expressing are not aligned with my own. This triggers the flight or fight centre (as per the childhood wiring) and my rational brain shuts down. Unless I can catch myself in a brief moment of awareness, the best I can manage is “boundaries… must defend”. Yet whether someone is trying to persuade me to their view or not is no longer, in my adult life, an actual problem or danger to me in any way. As a good friend reminded me this week: I am a sovereign being and an intelligent woman, no one’s words can influence me anywhere my soul doesn’t already want to go. It feels to me that I’ve known the basics of good listening skills for a long time, certainly since the early years of personal development work over two decades ago. True listening is about asking open ended questions with only an attempt to understand another perspective rather than control the outcome. Yet in fear of another person trying to control me, I have often been unable to truly listen and shut down, making my position clear to create a defensive barrier. While I want to feel understood and accepted, the cost of fitting someone else’s mould is too high, and the desire for authenticity from within is too strong. What I’ve really taken to heart this week is that neither what I think, nor what another thinks of me, matters as much as the weight I give it. It might if I was in a job interview or something similar, but even then, why would I want to attract anything other than a vibrational match to my authentic self? But in the normal course of day to day interactions with friends, family and those who are more acquaintances or part of my life in some other working relationship, there is no real reason to avoid understanding our differences. Looking into this shadow I have seen that I had a propensity to seek sameness, for a subconscious fear that any differences would put me in danger. As a child this danger of not fitting in would have been too risky, the approval of my family and teachers as I grew was central to my survival as it is to us all. And, frankly, old habits die hard. Seeking common ground is healthy, it helps me relate to others, but that is different from being the same. I imagine I could seek the whole world over and never find anyone the same, I could no doubt go back through the generations of the entire world’s population and never find anyone exactly the same. And I can project forward into the future and believe no one else has had or will have my unique combination of heritage, wiring and experiences. Embracing differences, therefore, is necessary to thrive in this world. It starts with embracing my own differences without the need to defend them or even state them (unless I’m actually being asked about them and feel comfortable doing so). Getting relaxed with who I am in this way helps me open up to who others are and, of course, that is what will make us stronger. If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Want to Make the World a Better Place? Tune In, Do You Need to Heal Your Boundaries?, Be at Ease With the World Around You and I Am a Recovering Approval Seeker and Control Freak. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog. |
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