What happens when you work through your Shadow and learn to stand in the space between Dark and Light with awareness and power to choose is a predictable process that you can repeat the rest of your life. When you do, change becomes permanent. You won’t pick up an old journal this time next year and see that you’re still writing the same damn stories of external blaming.
The Process looks like this and I’ll fill in some details as we go:
take action → action triggers story → emotions arise → physical sensations occur → activate presence/mindfulness → rewrite or suspend stories → take another action
Take action – any action toward any goal meaning don’t eat the sugar, uninstall the Facebook app, don’t take the bait when your partner starts up the pattern.
Action triggers story – here come all the reasons why you should eat the sugar just this once, why you actually need to put the app back on the phone and why you just HAVE to tell him/her your side of the blah blah blah.
Emotions arise → physical sensations occur – right here is where we scramble for an escape hatch – let’s overeat, overthink, over scroll, start a fight, mind fuck ourselves on social media or in our relationships.
BUT if instead we activate presence/mindfulness (there are a TON of ways to do that) and breathe into the feelings and stay with the physical sensations after a very short period of time, space for conscious choice opens up in which we can…
Rewrite or suspend stories – we can let them go, we can see where we have one finger pointing out and three fingers pointing back at ourselves, we can commit to changing what (or who) is allowed to rent space in our minds. Keywords here: CHOOSE FROM A PLACE OF POWER.
Take another action and off you go again.
What’s often missing in myself and my clients is continuing to take action. When the stories trigger emotions and sensations that’s the moment when we choose the love of our stories over our desire to make progress, we choose to engage in the pain of addiction over the pain of staying the course, we give ourselves all kinds of super creative rationalizations why it’s ok to indulge in our drug of choice for just a few minutes but at the end of the day – it isn’t. It’s not ok at all.
If you want success and the freedom that comes with breaking free of these mind games you have to choose to keep going through the Siren call of the familiar. You have to choose to learn some new skills and then you have to choose to USE those skills when shit gets real.
BreatheFeelBreatheFeelBreatheFeel and when the storm passes – choose what you want to say/think in your own mind and then – take that next action.
This really sums up how I coach and what I co-create with my clients. Book a free mini-session if you want to talk more.
