THIS RESPONSE TO A CLIENT GOING THROUGH A VERY DIFFICULT DIVORCE WOULD NORMALLY JUST APPEAR ON OUR “LETTERS TO MYSELF” BLOG (THAT INCLUDES MY TEXT OR FB RESPONSES TO FOLKS), BUT IT WANTED TO SHOW UP HERE!
I don’t want to wake you with this text, but I’m seeing that in some ways you are just using our time with me to focus on one emergency after another. And while you always let me know that it is helping a lot and I see you evolving through this hardship, I also see that it would be so much more meaningful, in the short and long term, to put yourself solidly in the practice of this work. You would develop confidence in yourself and what life is handing you, feel so much better physically, be so much clearer about decisions, and have a way to support and evolve yourself with every roller coaster ride life sends your way.
PUTTING OUT FIRES
It is common for people going through divorce, or any difficult life event, to just be putting out fires, focusing on the next “thing” they think they have to do to save themselves, and it feels like that’s all you can do. Yet I am seeing (with others going through traumatic circumstances) how important it is to let the practice of questioning your thinking come first.
When you care about your own happiness more than you care about getting it right or focusing on what another is doing wrong or trying to predict or control the outcomes, you get to USE your reactions to your circumstances to create the no-matter-what kind of safety and unconditional support you’ve been seeking.
Once you REALLY get this, you can go through this divorce and go through the rest of your life in a state of connectedness, clarity, and thriving by constantly using your reactions to wake yourself up to what YOU—not anyone else—are doing to the littlest parts of you when you blindly believe a fearful “This is the way it is” or “This is the way it will be” thought.
CONNECTEDNESS, CLARITY, and THRIVING
When you do not put yourself in a committed practice of stopping to observe what “believing that thought” is doing to you, you continue to abandon yourself. Life will continue to be a series of putting out fires on the outside. You will not be creating from within and receiving what is already here to support you (ironically, that support often shows up as your next problem).
This creating and receiving becomes the end of focusing on changing your circumstances or judging another’s actions. Taking these simple steps to neutralize the thought behind the pain–by turning it around–reveals your tailor-made path to peace in that moment.
For example, if you are telling yourself “this bed is going to make my back pain worse,” when you turn it around you get “this bed is not going to make my back worse; I am going to make my back worse” (by believing my thoughts about the bed–or about someone else and making this into a not-nurturing place), or “I am going to make this bed worse” (your thoughts and fears will make the bed worse than it is).
MY HUSBAND (or…?) IS PUSHING ME AROUND
Another complaint you had, “My husband is pushing me around and making me agree to things I don’t want” (substitute life, a spouse, a child, my job here). Work this one deeply and in the specific ways you feel what they are doing what they’re doing in order to find how “I am pushing myself around and making me agree to things I don’t want” (giving up my own house, considering staying with spouse, believing I will be in a wheel chair and need spouse to take care of me, taking a job I don’t want).
Find how you are creating these repeating patterns in your life by seeing clearly how “I am pushing them around.” Find for yourself the ways you use coercion and subtle (or not so subtle) efforts to control others. How do you try to get them to ease your pain and meet your needs (i.e., pushing them around)? You may even be using coercion by waiting a long time for them to do the right thing on your behalf. rather than just openly asking for what you want.
Free-Fall into FREEDOM this Fall!!!!
It’s time to really let this new way of being with life and your own emotions help you. Don’t be hard on yourself when you discover the ways you’ve been creating your own worst outcomes —just know that it is new to you to make decisions for yourself about your life without getting tangled up in what others want or are doing “to you.” Just notice it and come back to yourself and make decisions from a happy vision, not from fear of lack.
Whatever upsets you holds the key…. That means freedom, as you are either loving life or using it to wake yourself up to the beliefs that are the only cause of your suffering. You see how it works… you’re just not really USING it yet to help yourself to happiness.
A STATE OF UNSHAKABLE SAFETY AND SELF-SOLIDARITY
If you put yourself deeply and squarely in the practice of questioning every stressful thought that is driving your reactivity around your divorce (or any other stressful situation), you can begin to build unshakable safety right there in that moment. How? By humbly taking a look and finding the ways you are (and have been for a long time) doing to yourself and others what you thought they were doing to you, and how you are whatever you see them as (if you think they are acting callous and unfeeling, then find the specific ways you are doing the same towards them and especially towards the littlest parts of you).
As you find your own innocence and see that you are always doing the best you can, given what you are believing, you gradually move into a state of unshakable inner advocacy and support I call SELF-SOLIDARITY.
I am strongly recommending that you put yourself (for real) into this practice by being part of one of my groups. It creates the shift by putting you in a place where you learn this practice, and hold yourself in the fun and transformative exercises as you take the time to consciously dismantle your most disempowering mindsets.
A FULLY EMPOWERED, NON-VICTIM, CONNECTED, CREATIVE, JOY INFUSED PARADIGM!
You are at a point where you have a phenomenal opportunity to use the reflection of others in the group as well as your own work to step into a new, fully empowered, non-victim, connected and creative, joy-infused paradigm that will sustain you for life.
But you actually have to do it. As much as I want to help and I love the relationship between us, I can’t do this for you. You actually would have to put yourself into this practice of proactively helping out the thinking that is causing the pain and confusion and caused the years of inertia, denial, and futile efforts to control—the resulting sense of victimhood.
No one else can do it for you, not even me—no matter how much I care and want that for you.
Stand with, by, and for yourself, NO MATTER WHAT. Find out for yourself through committed, tenacious, self-inquiry that you are and will be okay–NO MATTER WHAT. Let yourself be held by me and others in this practice as you learn to truly hold yourself and others.
Everything becomes an opportunity to shift old patterns by waking up to the thinking that is driving them. Part of you is going to want to run and tell yourself you have more important things to be working on like the divorce, but nothing will save or evolve you like putting yourself in this practice for real.
INVESTING IN YOU THIS TIME
If you say it is too much money, it seems unfair to yourself to not know that you can give this to you, and find a way to make it work. To be going through this time without this is unnecessary suffering and prolonging patterns; to be going through this time with it is an investment in yourself and a much happier future. Just make it part of the support you advocate for in the divorce, and don’t wait for someone else to give it to you. Give it to yourself.
We could keep going with the private work, but I see that the groups are what really let you get this as a practice for yourself.
You can do this!
XXOO Shawn 🙂
P.S. In my groups you can:
