All of us have a need to be recognized for who we are.
We learn to shape our identities through our interactions with other people, ourselves and our environment. Our whole lives, we create connections to objects, points of view, beliefs and behaviours all to create a rounded picture of who we are as human beings. We create stories to explain who we are.
One of the courses I took early on was about accountability. Accountability in a nutshell is about keeping agreements with yourself and others. It would be related to the statement I discussed in the book "The Four Agreements" around being "impeccable with your word". It is about taking responsibility for your life and how you got here without any judgement or blame.
One of the important exercises in the course was around making an inventory of all the stories that we tell to help introduce someone to who we are. They encompass all the hurts, all the important lessons, the ways that we would illustrate to a new person how we came to arrive at this point. We were asked to choose ten. They asked us to go down the list and write one descriptive line for each of our "stories". Then we were asked to read all of them and try to see if there was a pattern to what was on the page. When you realized what the pattern was ( and there always was one predominant theme), most often it was the same message in each of the stories, no matter how different the stories appeared on the surface. And the stories tended to escalate chronologically. If you weren't getting the message, the message got louder. The facilitator then gently suggested that we flip the message around to find our purpose. So for example, if your stories centered around rejections, then perhaps your learning was around acceptance. Of yourself, and of others. How facinatingly reminiscent for me of those contracts I believe we make before we ever arrive here. If we forget why we are here, the Universe creates a string of reminders to help us out!
Further on in my course work, I realized that when I had an emotion around something I tended to use stories to justify why, instead of just being with that emotion in the moment. My life coach was a great help in pointing that out. Helping me understand that the stories are like training wheels. We create them to understand who we are, and once we know that, it is okay simply to be that. We don't need the camouflage of the stories anymore. We can trust that we can share where we are in any moment with clarity and honesty. We can speak our truth without fear.
Like so many things on this journey, I am interested to step back and observe what I have needed to construct to get to this place, that I am now able to deconstruct and let go of. That is a reoccuring pattern in so many areas. Very much like needing to learn to control my environment to achieve success in my life and then stepping back to understand that in fact the biggest freedom is opening my hands to let that control go and trust in the mystery.
In love and light,
Kathryn
We learn to shape our identities through our interactions with other people, ourselves and our environment. Our whole lives, we create connections to objects, points of view, beliefs and behaviours all to create a rounded picture of who we are as human beings. We create stories to explain who we are.
One of the courses I took early on was about accountability. Accountability in a nutshell is about keeping agreements with yourself and others. It would be related to the statement I discussed in the book "The Four Agreements" around being "impeccable with your word". It is about taking responsibility for your life and how you got here without any judgement or blame.
One of the important exercises in the course was around making an inventory of all the stories that we tell to help introduce someone to who we are. They encompass all the hurts, all the important lessons, the ways that we would illustrate to a new person how we came to arrive at this point. We were asked to choose ten. They asked us to go down the list and write one descriptive line for each of our "stories". Then we were asked to read all of them and try to see if there was a pattern to what was on the page. When you realized what the pattern was ( and there always was one predominant theme), most often it was the same message in each of the stories, no matter how different the stories appeared on the surface. And the stories tended to escalate chronologically. If you weren't getting the message, the message got louder. The facilitator then gently suggested that we flip the message around to find our purpose. So for example, if your stories centered around rejections, then perhaps your learning was around acceptance. Of yourself, and of others. How facinatingly reminiscent for me of those contracts I believe we make before we ever arrive here. If we forget why we are here, the Universe creates a string of reminders to help us out!
Further on in my course work, I realized that when I had an emotion around something I tended to use stories to justify why, instead of just being with that emotion in the moment. My life coach was a great help in pointing that out. Helping me understand that the stories are like training wheels. We create them to understand who we are, and once we know that, it is okay simply to be that. We don't need the camouflage of the stories anymore. We can trust that we can share where we are in any moment with clarity and honesty. We can speak our truth without fear.
Like so many things on this journey, I am interested to step back and observe what I have needed to construct to get to this place, that I am now able to deconstruct and let go of. That is a reoccuring pattern in so many areas. Very much like needing to learn to control my environment to achieve success in my life and then stepping back to understand that in fact the biggest freedom is opening my hands to let that control go and trust in the mystery.
In love and light,
Kathryn
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