Taking Control of Your Life: Questioning What You THINK You Know About Yourself

[I had the opportunity to speak at several events this-past Fall. This article is an overview of that talk. It was printed in Inner Tapestry online magazine on October 27, 2015.]

 

This summer I had the pleasure of being with both of our young-adult daughters. They suggested we go see the new Pixar movie “Inside Out”. The story line is about a girl whose emotions “Joy”, “Fear”, “Anger”, “Sadness” and “Disgust” basically are running the show inside a control room inside the girl.

“Joy” is pretty much the leader until the family makes a cross-country move. There’s a power struggle of the emotions with an eventual emotional shutdown. Along the way, insights are provided into core memories, formation of values, etc. After the movie, our elder daughter shared that her friend, a young mother, felt the movie had created a way for her and her children to discuss emotions. The characters were so cute and recognizable; the children could talk about their own versions of “Joy”, “Fear”, “Anger”, “Sadness” and “Disgust”.

I really enjoyed the movie and am glad that this type of acknowledgement of the power of our emotions has been created. I’m sure many will benefit from reading beyond the amusement of the animation. The movie failed to convey that we, the human being with the emotions, don’t have to be the victim of our emotions. We have the ability to shift control up one level … from the position of the emotions controlling us to the position of us controlling our emotions. When we are able to do this, we go from being mere actors to being the playwrights, directors, set managers AND actors within, of, and through our lives. Awareness = The Power of Choice, The Power to Change.
Who’s Bullying You?

The issue of bullying others is no longer underground. Our public schools, to a large degree, have confronted the issue of bullying point-blank. There are also ongoing efforts to eliminate bullying online … cyber-bullying.

Yet there is a much more insidious form of bullying that needs to stop! What I’m referring to is the incessant motor-mouth bully that resides within many of us. For different people, there are different tones to these bullies … self-doubt, fear, remorse, guilt, grief, jealousy, envy, unworthiness, etc.

Perhaps there is a part of you that feels you were never smart enough, pretty enough, muscular enough, thin enough, curvy enough, outgoing enough, clever enough, creative enough … enough is enough! I want to invite you to try to look at things from a new perspective. In each and every now moment, you can make the decision to change your perspective … to see and feel that you ARE enough.

Truth is, you were actually born enough. I believe one of the reasons that people fawn over babies is that, perhaps on an unconscious level, we recognize the pure perfection and unlimited potential of the newborn soul … a soul which has not yet been shown, told, repressed to be less than he or she merely IS. One of the ways to move forward to health and wholeness is to reconnect with that pure perfection and unlimited potential. I promise you, it’s still there! Awareness = The Power of Choice, The Power to Change.

Whose Voice is That?

Isn’t it ironic that many times we, as parents, end up hurting and damaging our children when we’re really just focused on the virtuous path to “protecting them” from “the world”? For example, we tell our daughter something doesn’t look good on her because we don’t want one of her peers laughing at or ridiculing her. [Can you see how, in doing this, we are actually taking on the role of the one who ridicules? We become the ones inflicting the hurt, rather than the hurt happening at some hypothetical future point by some “other”.]

Or perhaps our son goes rock climbing and comes home announcing he’s going to be a professional rock climber. How wonderful if dad could join him in that vision and see his son at the top of the world, realizing that son will probably find a new dream or vision for himself soon. Yet, without hesitation dad announces, “You’ll never be able to support yourself doing that. Think again.” In one moment, son has gone from King of the Mountain to pushed off the mountain by none other than dad.
Why can’t we just support our children fully and then be there for them IF others squelch them and/or their dreams? I think it’s because there’s someone else running the show. It’s the internal bully, jumping to center stage. When you consider how much we probably hated when squelching happened to us as children, how can we blindly continue the same abuse in the guise of love? Awareness = The Power of Choice, The Power to Change.

That “Thing” May Actually Be A Strength!

We teach our children to blend in, hide their differences. Yet, I believe, it is our differences that are the reasons each of us are here. We each have something unique … a singular note to play in the symphony … a thread in the tapestry of life … that no other being can contribute!

Most of my life I have disliked my voice. To me it seems very monotone … not really high … not really low … just kinda blah. Since I’ve embraced all that I am and started working with people doing intuitive energy healing, I’ve made a crazy discovery. My voice is actually part of my gift! Others are soothed by it. In fact, some people tell me they are healed to some degree just by listening to my mp3 or by coming to my workshops! [I have archives of my 14-week radio show available as resources any time you want to go and take a listen.]

Finding the love of my voice has been part of my healing process back to SELF. I actually was in RI All State Chorus when I was in Jr. High. Yet I stopped singing … somehow I got to hate my voice. Was I dreaming of being a singer and someone “protected me” from a world in which I may not succeed as a singer? I honestly don’t remember. What I can tell you is that when I started going to Unity of the Seacoast (Dover, NH) in the summer of June, 2011, the music was just so good I couldn’t stay in my seat. They needed people in the choir and I couldn’t stay seated, so it seemed a logical fit. In the 4 years I have been there, my singing voice has totally transformed. Logically, I know I still have the same voice, but my feelings about my voice have changed and so the expression of my voice is different. I often have people tell me I have a sweet voice or “the voice of an angel”. Imagine if I’d kept it cloaked in self-loathing?!?

Perhaps you have a similar love/hate relationship with something about yourself. What if that aspect of Self is actually at the core of something that makes you special, something that sparked a dream in you very long ago. One of the keys, I find, in moving forward in the positive direction is to look back through your life and try to see when your attitude about this aspect of yourself changed. See if there is some reframing and healing of that part of yourself you can achieve right now from a space of self-acceptance and self-love. Awareness = The Power of Choice, The Power to Change.

Wait A Minute … This Inherited Story is NOT EVEN REAL!

Then there are the self-criticisms we are handed on a silver platter by “our genetics” which we blindly accept to be fact. To illustrate, I was born with “The Pero Toe”. On only my right foot, rather than the “big toe” being the longest, the adjacent one is the longest. Most of my life, my feet were a source of self consciousness.

Yet, as I came to love myself more and more unconditionally, choosing to see myself from a Higher Knowing of my Self, this hate-affair unraveled. One day I was sitting in my dining room, with my bare feet on the laminate flooring.  My feet were positioned so that the plank seam of one board was just beyond my feet. I made an “Earth Shattering Discovery”!

“The Pero Toe” I had spent much of my 50-something years maligning was the same size as it’s mirror toe on my left foot. However, my “big toe” and middle toe on my right foot were MUCH shorter than their counterparts on my left foot. WHAT? How could I have missed that my whole life???

I missed it because I believed what I’d been told by generation after generation after generation. What I discovered when I actually looked on my own, with a neutral perspective, was that this “Pero Toe” was more likely the unsung hero of the right foot … potentially working overtime to help me balance given that my “big toe” was truly a bit too small to pull his weight. [Read my blog article on this topic.]

Isn’t it ironic that one of the things I most disliked about myself, my voice, is actually one of the things that makes me special in this world? How could I have been so wrong about myself? And my toes … they’ve been on my feet my entire life … how could I have never noticed the TRUE relationship going on in right-foot-toe-land? These questions are somewhat baffling to me now, but I think it is about awareness, focus, and self love.

This self-hatred was inherited. The past way to handle this may have been to have anger toward my relatives. Yet, that’s not the answer. Those who didn’t see the “Pero Toe” in its magnificence (or your own inherited story that YOU are going to debunk) deserve love and compassion and forgiveness. We can do that because we can be the ones to change the story. We can heal the feelings for the entire bloodline in that instant we truly see the beauty of that thing that was maligned.  Awareness = The Power of Choice, The Power to Change.

Who’s In the Control Booth?

Many times when I am working one-to-one with a client doing intuitive emotional healing for physical, mental and/or emotional concerns, the client’s child self of a specific age comes forward with a cornerstone to healing. Often we can quickly see how that wounded child self is at that root of the problem in his/her current adult relationships with self and/or others. Together, we reframe the role of that wounded child through my Perspective Reboot® process. Once we see what we are doing and/or realize we have a choice to take control of our thoughts, feelings and emotions from our childself/childselves we have a choice and we become empowered.

Unfortunately, my dad passed on when I was only 36. Although his passing was unexpected and heartbreaking for me, it was not without its own miracles. But shortly after his death I realized that my wounded child self had been running my relationship with him for 30 years. If I had been able to see that sooner, I wonder what that changes that would have made in his and my lives. [For further details, read  “You Know My Name … Not My Story” here.] Awareness = The Power of Choice, The Power to Change.

Rekindle and Follow Your Dreams 

Perhaps you realize that the bullying voice can now be silenced. Perhaps you realize it isn’t  your voice, it’s one you just temporarily agreed to carry. Perhaps you were also told who you could and couldn’t be. Perhaps you had special things about you as a child that you were told to shut down so that you could blend with others. Perhaps you can see now that the things that make you different can be taken out, dusted off and celebrated. Perhaps you see that it’s time for your adult self to take full control of your life … past, present and future … right here, right now. Awareness = The Power of Choice, The Power to Change.

Please take a few minutes and observe your life from each of the subheads within this article. See what comes to your awareness. You can change yourself just by changing the way you see yourself. Look through the eyes of love. Be the best YOU, you can be! That is ultimately why you are here.

Love and light,
Kristi

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Image included here were created ©Kristi Borst, all rights reserved, for this article. My metaphysical healing artwork images available on my site.