Braving the Hot Mess

Tips For Shifting If You're Negative Or Complain A Lot

8/19/2019

At times we can all find ourselves feeling negative, complaining about life, things or people that are frustrating us. Some of us are just naturally more pessimistic, more negative and resort to complaining on a regular basis.

It can be easy to get sucked into negative thoughts and stories, complaining to ourselves or to anyone who'll listen. At these moments, it's useful to have some go to shifters, some practices that will help retrain your brain toward being more optimistic and recognizing the good things, the positive things happening in your life. Here are some tips for retraining your brain:

Be grateful: Each day identify 3 things you are grateful for and the include as much detail as you can as to why you are grateful. I love to do this before I fall asleep each night. Every time we practice gratitude, our brain is being re-wired to notice more things to be grateful for. When we practice gratitude, our body releases chemicals into our body that cause us to feel good.

In my opinion, gratitude is the most powerful tool to shift and to retrain the brain toward positivity.

Savor a good experience: Take a moment to pause and bring to mind a good experience that you've had. Replay all of the details surrounding the experience...what happened, who was there, what was said, how did you respond, what were you wearing, etc. Our brain doesn't really know if an event is really happening or if we are envisioning it happening. We get a download of feel good chemicals released into our body and our brain is being trained to see more goodness.

Catch yourself: Don’t wait for your friends or family to tell you you’re complaining, pay attention to your thoughts and words.
If you’re complaining, work to shift your energy toward finding solutions and/or lessons to be learned. It can be easy to get trapped into the cycle of complaining, especially in a group setting focused on a common "enemy" or "problem". Work to gear your thoughts and words to productive solutions versus unproductive complaining, blaming, judging, gossip, or negative stories that quickly spiral out of control.

Shift your mood: If you feel overwhelmed or challenged in some way, remove yourself from whatever you’re doing and work to shift your mood. This can be as easy as practicing gratitude or savoring a good experience. You can also practice a other mindfulness techniques like the S.T.O.P. technique. S...Stop, T...Take 3 deep breaths, O...Observe what you are thinking, what you are feeling and what's going on around you, P...Practice gratitude. Another one of my go to techniques is to put my hand over my heart and inhale to the count of 5 and exhale to the count of 5 for a series of at least 3 more more breaths.

Shifting a mood, a state of mind, and retraining our brain takes intentional practice. Having awareness is a key step. Being aware of your thoughts, beliefs, feelings, moods, stories, etc. and then intentionally and consciously engaging in practices to assist in moving to a different path. This takes effort and discipline, but the rewards are huge.

0 Comments

Stop Yourself Before The "But"

8/13/2019

0 Comments

Do you have dreams and passions that you are ignoring? Maybe you're convincing yourself that you can't possibly do it. Does that little voice in your head give you all kinds of "buts", all kinds of reasons for why you can't possibly do what you are dreaming of doing? Things like:

-but, I'm too old.
-but, I'm too young.
-but, I don't know enough.
-but, I'm not smart enough.
-but, It's already been done.
-but, I don't know the right people.
-but, there are people who do it better than me.
-but, I'm not talented enough.
-but, no one will listen to me.

In an interview by Marie Forleo with Amanda Lacount, a professional hip hop dancer, choreographer, model and body positive activist, Amanda suggests in striving for your dreams that you, "Never let yourself get to the 'but'...". Amanda was told at the age of 10 that she didn't have the right body type to be a dancer. She didn't listen to her critics. Instead she kept dancing and pursuing her dream until now, at the age of 18, she has scored several prestigious dance gigs.

Most times, it doesn't even take an outside critic to dissuade us from accomplishing our dreams, usually we take care of it ourselves with the critic inside our head. Our own fears, self-doubt and negative self-talk keep us paralyzed from living out our dreams. Flipping the switch and stopping ourselves from engaging in unproductive self-talk is important. Flip the switch to an affirmation like, "I am enough", "I am courageous", "I am brave", "I am strong", "I am confident", etc. will help to curb your fears.

Our belief system is also super important to whether or not we choose to go after our dreams, it either helps us to believe that our dream is possible, or it help us to believe that it's impossible. Our belief system is mostly derived from what we have experienced to be true based on the examples in our own life. If you've seen, heard, or read examples of people who have done something the same, or similar to what you are hoping to accomplish, then you will typically believe that it's possible for you to accomplish it as well. This is a huge hurdle in overcoming our fears and self-doubt.

So what can we do to help ourselves believe it to be possible? One key step is to surround yourself with as many examples as possible of others who have accomplished something similar. Read books, watch videos, talk to people, interview people, find out as much as you can about how they did what they did.

Next, write down your dream, or your goal, and then the next small step to making it happen. Don't get overwhelmed, just write down what the next small step would be in the direction of achieving the goal. There is so much power in writing it down and breaking it down into manageable steps. Small baby steps that will move you in the direction of achieving the dream. We more easily convince ourselves to take small baby steps. Once you obtain some movement, you get off square one, it'll be a little easier to keep taking the next small step and the next small step.

Don't wait until you've achieved what you think is the perfect amount of knowledge, or skill, or experience to begin going after your dream, if you do chances are that you'll never feel good enough or "perfect "enough. Experts did not start out being experts, they started out as beginners, as apprentices and they became experts. What if we just get started and learn more as we go, become experts along the way? What if we just started where we are and go from there? At a certain point, let good enough be your rule.

Steve Harvey said in an interview, "Surround yourself with dreamers. Surround yourself with like-minded people. Stop telling your dreams to small-minded people." Keep around you people who love and support you and your dreams. People who challenge you to be all that you can be and more. People who will encourage you even when you may fail. People who are also dreamers and who are aspiring to lead an extraordinary life. Live BIG, live interesting, live extraordinary, create magic. Why not? The world needs ordinary people leading extraordinary lives.

0 Comments

Soul Searching

8/4/2019

2 Comments

Amidst the mass shootings of this past week, I encourage each of us to do some deep soul searching. Stop and ask yourself, why is this happening? Let's challenge ourselves to go deep and consider all of the many issues that might be causing this situation, not just scratching the surface, but working our way down deeper to the root cause.

We need to dig deeper than just gun reform and mental health. These are definitely key issues that we need to address immediately in my opinion, but I believe the root cause is deeper. Until we get to the root cause we are just putting a bandaid on the wound.

I believe that the deeper cause, the root cause, is that we have let fear control us. We have bought into the perception that we need to fear instead of love and this is the deeper rooted issue. We've been conditioned to believe in scarcity and the survival of the fittest. These conditioned beliefs are based in fear and create a whole host of responses centered in fear, in protection, in separation, in us against them, etc.

Fear-based thinking is how our mind works when we’re in a state of fear. Fear-based thinking creates a state in our brain that narrows our focus, restricts learning, blocks compassion and creativity. This ultimately causes us to be more self-centered and judgmental. Fear-based thinking makes us vulnerable to manipulation and interferes with problem solving, leading us to form rigid, emotionally based opinions that neglect input and logic.

Fear-based thinking stops us from asking questions and questions are the key to understanding. When we are in a fear-based mode we don't listen or attempt to understand, to be curious by asking ourselves and others hard questions.

Psychologist and social worker, Bob Van Oosterhout, explains that, "Fear-Based Thinking develops and deepens when we receive repeated messages that stimulate fear. Since fear gets and keeps our attention, it’s a useful tool for the media and entertainment industries. Fear is also a highly effective political tactic. It is easy to manipulate voters when fear keeps us from taking time to understand issues, question assumptions, or look beyond talking points and spin. When we’re in the grip of Fear-Based Thinking we tend to look for a strong leader to keep us safe without questioning whether he or she has our best interests at heart. Fear-Based Thinking leads us to process information in Dead End Categories of either/or, right/wrong, and good/evil. We reject all immigrants, all liberals, all republicans, all people who are different or disagree with us. This creates dependable voting patterns but leads to a break-down of communication and cooperation."

Fear-based thinking leads to separation, to hate and ultimately to violence. It disconnects us from others and leads to isolation and exclusion. Fear is the opposite of love. Where there is lovelessness there will inevitably be chaos and suffering. Fear causes us to lead with our head versus with our heart. Our heart contains the wisdom. Our heart contains the empathy, compassion, kindness, love...and solutions.

I encourage each of us to challenge our thinking, to dig deep, to consider the question...Is what we are currently doing working? Let's open our minds to consider a different path.

Let's use this as a wake up call, a challenge to wake up and be more conscious. A call to stop skimming through life. A call to live with more awareness and intention. A call to set aside fear and lead with love.

Let's recognize our commonality, our connectedness and our interdependence. Let's recognize that when one suffers, we all suffer, and honor that we are all one. Let's choose to ramp up our muscles of empathy, compassion, love, kindness, generosity, service, forgiveness, gratitude and grace.

Don't allow yourself to get desensitized to the occurrence of these events, or to get overwhelmed to the point where we throw our hands up and say the problem is too big for me to impact, or let someone else do it. We each can do our part, no matter how small and inconsequential it may seem to help heal this wound.

2 Comments

No One Is Perfect

7/30/2019

0 Comments

I'm not perfect, you're not perfect, no one is perfect and it's okay. We are perfectly imperfect and we are a work in progress.

I mess up a lot. I work to be kind, but I'm not always. I work to be loving, but I'm not always. I work to be patient, but I'm not always. I work to not lose my cool, to not raise my voice, but I don't always. I work to be forgiving, but I'm not always...and on and on and on. I strive to not just talk the talk, but also walk the walk and it's hard and I mess it up...a lot.

In our effort to improve ourselves, it can be easy to get caught in the trap of the pursuit of perfection. We can easily get down on ourselves for not being perfect and not having it all figured out.

This thing called change, or personal improvement, or spiritual growth, or whatever you call it, is messy, it's tricky, it's challenging, it requires diligence and it's never-ending. Once upon a time I thought I would get to a point where I would have it all figured out, where I would be to the other side, where I would be done. Well, that notion it turns out, was a silly one. I seem to manage to keep needing to learn and relearn and practice and grow and stretch and practice. It can be easy to give up or get down on yourself for not being perfect, but that's not how it works. We are students in this thing called life.

Our job, as I see it, is to keep plugging away. To keep moving forward, continuing to learn, practice and grow and loving ourselves through it all, as you are in this moment perfectly imperfect striving to do your best and learning from your mistakes.

I just keep working to do better, working to do my best, whatever that is in this moment, today. Learning from my mistakes and working hard to not make the same ones again.

In The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz, he states in the fourth agreement, "Always do your best. Under any circumstance, always do your best, no more and no less. But keep in mind that your best is never going to be the same from one moment to the next. Everything is alive and changing all the time, so your best will sometimes be high quality, and other times it will not be as good."

If you keep putting one foot in front of the other, take small steps in the right direction, love yourself in the process, always do your best, no more and no less, and know that you are a beautiful work in progress, perfectly imperfect, then that's all you need to do.

0 Comments

Pain Is A Traveling Professor

7/23/2019

0 Comments

Are you struggling with something painful in your life? Most of us at any given moment, day or week, face painful experiences and challenges. Physical pain, emotional pain, financial pain, relationship pain, however you cut it, pain and suffering is plentiful and it's easy to get stuck in its vicious cycle.

If you're like me and a lot of other people, you avoid the pain, you numb it, deny it. Most of us are afraid of pain, we think that it's our job to avoid it. Often we'll engage in numbing activities to avoid the pain. We'll attempt to sweep it under the rug and deny it. We'll engage in endless conversation, either in our head or with others, trying to figure out the why...Why is it here? Why me? Why is this happening? Why is he or she doing this? Spinning the endless, age old question why, why why?

Some people deflect the pain and discomfort with unkindness. As author and activist Glennon Doyle explains, "All unkindness is pain deflection. Folks who think pain is a hot potato toss it to the next person so they don’t get burned. That’s all. People who are unkind just believe they can’t handle the pain that comes their way. "

I propose that attempting to avoid, numb, deny or deflect the pain only causes us to get more stuck in it. And here's the thing about pain...it can be our greatest teacher. Pain is a lesson disguised as suffering.

As Glennon Doyle writes, "Pain is not a sign that you’ve taken a wrong turn or that you’re doing life wrong. It’s not a signal that you need a different life or partner or body or home or personality. Pain is not a hot potato to pass on to the next person or generation. Pain is not a mistake to fix. Pain is just a sign that a lesson is coming. Discomfort is purposeful: it is there to teach you what you need to know so you can become who you were meant to be. Pain is just a traveling professor. When pain knocks on the door—wise ones breathe deep and say: 'Come in. Sit down with me. And don’t leave until you’ve taught me what I need to know.'"

What if everyone that we meet are also our teachers? Everyone...the good, the challenging, the uncomfortable, the toxic, what if they are all teachers for us? Would it be possible to more readily see the difficulties we might encounter as trainings for our heart? Maybe instead of someone being an enemy they're actually a good friend that taught us many lessons.

Pain, if you let it, typically comes, stays for a while and then it leaves. When it leaves it tends to leave us better, stronger, wiser, softer, kinder, more empathetic and compassionate. It's not something to attempt to avoid, it's something to sit with, embrace even, and allow to pass through.

Next time pain comes knocking at your door, invite it in like an old friend. Sit with it, be still, look it in the eye, know that you are strong enough to handle it, and find the lessons.

0 Comments

Magic And Illusion

7/16/2019

0 Comments

This past week was my extended family's annual vacation gathering. Each year we get together in July to connect, enjoy each other's company, have fun, relax and create memories. This year we hired a magician to entertain the group during one of our evening gatherings. The magician started out by addressing the question..."Are magic and illusion the same the thing?" This question reminded me of my post from a few weeks ago on "The story I'm telling myself is...", so I decided to explore it a little more.

An illusion is an image that deceives the mind by producing a false impression of reality. Magic is defined as the art of producing illusions as entertainment by the use of devices. Magic and illusion are often considered to be the same thing.

Illusion is something that looks or seems different from what it is, something that is false but seems to be real. Illusion creates a false image in the mind of something that does not exist in reality. It is a false impression caused by the trick of sight and sound. Mirage is a perfect example of an illusion. It is the mind of a person that is tricked into believing something that is not real. Optical illusions and magic tricks shown by a magician are few examples of illusion. We know that the trick the magician is doing is not possible but he or she creates an illusion and that looks real.

I propose that life is an illusion of sorts. Sometimes we think we see or hear something based on our perception of the situation and we convince ourselves over and over again that the way we see it, our perception, is reality. Our mind is easily tricked into believing something that may not be real. We then create further stories in our mind to justify this reality and our brain looks for additional examples to help support the story.

Social media complicates our view of reality. Perceptions are created based on carefully crafted messages and images that cause us with limited amounts of information to form realities, most of which are truly just illusions.

Text messages can also be easily misconstrued without the benefit of hearing tone and seeing body language, causing us to create an illusion as to what we are seeing and hearing in our head. Something that is false, but appears real based on the made up stories in our head.

In the post a few weeks ago, I shared with you the idea of asking yourself the question…“The story I am telling myself is...", this week I invite you to also consider adding the question…“The illusion I am creating is…”. Being aware and challenging the stories and illusions that we are moment by moment creating, believing, and causing to be our reality can be difficult and yet liberating. It can help us get out from underneath the binds that fear and our perceptions create.

0 Comments

Faith

7/2/2019

1 Comment

Do you have faith? If asked about faith, I think most people would say it has to do with religion and your faith in God. It can also mean faith, belief and trust in yourself, others, the universe, etc. If we don't have faith, what do we have? It seems like it would be a pretty desolate life, and state of being, if we were absent of faith.

In the bible, in Matthew 17:20, it states..."Because you have so little faith. Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there,' and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you."

Here is another way to look at faith from Hebrews !!:1, "Faith shows the reality of what we hope for; it is the evidence of things we cannot see. If you have faith then you have hope.

I believe that everything is more powerful when it starts with faith. The door is opened for the best things to occur when you let go of your fears and hesitations and just move forward with faith. This can be challenging to do. Faith takes practice, it's like a muscle that you can strengthen through practice.

Our faith can be tested when we experience hardships, illness, disappointment and loss. It's at these difficult times that we can either rely on our faith or turn from it. By holding onto our faith, its possible to see hard times as part of the journey and not as a punishment. Belief that everything happens for a reason. It's a belief that there's more to life than what's in this physical world. This concept can lead us into all kinds of related discussions about lessons, and karma, and the law of attraction, and about purpose and evolving.

Faith is about trusting the journey. Believing that there's a greater plan. Within this plan there are lessons and choices. Faith is about being in a place of yes. Trusting your instincts, your intuition, and sense of knowing that what you believe will unfold. Faith is about letting go, surrendering control and fear and living in a place of trust.

Do you practice exercising your faith? I need to daily remind myself to have faith, to not live in a state of ego and to not relinquish to fear. Tools that help to keep strengthening my faith muscle include on-going learning and reminders through reading about and listening to others who are also practicing their faith, my meditation practice, sharing and teaching faith and other spiritual practices to others, and by having the power of faith demonstrated to me on a regular basis.

Since I've been more actively exercising my faith muscle, life just makes more sense. The challenges of life make more sense too. I'm better equipped to accept them, even if I don't like them, and know that it will all be okay. I'm better able to look at the challenge from all sides and determine why it's being presented to me and what lesson is in it for me.

How do you exercise your faith muscle? What is your faith practice? How has faith enhanced your life? Have you experienced the power of faith? I would love to hear from you and learn about your faith journey.

"Your belief determines your action and your action determines your results, but first you have to believe." Mark Victor Hansen

1 Comment

The Story I'm Telling Myself Is...

6/25/2019

2 Comments

What are the tools you use when you are feeling fearful, frustrated, threatened or vulnerable in some way? Do you have tools in your toolbox to pull out and use? I want to share with you a powerful tool that I learned from research professor and author Brene Brown.

When we are in a fearful state of being the brain wants a story. Its main job is to protect us, so if it senses a threat the brain says give me a story, help me to understand what's going on. It wants to know, "Who are the bad guys?" and "Who are the good guys?", so we create a story in our heads about what is happening. According to Brene Brown, "The brain loves a story about bad guys and dangerous things, and in fact if you give it a really good one, it'll reward you chemically. "

Our minds are always thinking...we are a thought factory. We have between 67,000 and 120,000 thoughts per day and most of them are re-runs. Our thoughts create our reality more than anything else. While we can't control what thoughts arise, we can choose how we react. It's our conditioned reactions to our thoughts that quickly influence us and begin to create the story that we tell ourselves.

We think we are our thoughts, our sense of self is created by the stories in our minds and we are very selective about the stories that we choose to play. Making stories up about ourselves and others that we tend not to question, but rather believe.

And most of us tend to ruminate, to replay the same negative stories over and over again in our head. We get stuck in replaying these same old negative stories. Rumination is repetitive, negative thinking about the past, and it's a big factor in sustaining depression.

The more we replay these stories, the deeper the groove becomes in the record in our brain. Neuroscientists tell us that 95% of our thoughts are controlled by our preprogrammed subconscious mind. Instead of actually thinking, you’re looking at a “movie” of the past. Our habit is to lay over the top of the present moment our past experience.

Resilience play a key role in our ability to lead a happy life. People with high levels of resilience ask themselves, "The story I'm telling myself is?" and then get curious about the answer. Try this anytime you are feeling threatened. Lead with it when you are entering into a difficult conversation about how you are feeling. It forces you to examine what your internal dialogue is and present it to the other person to see if it’s what they intended. It's an open-hearted, honest, brave and vulnerable way to address a situation and your thoughts and feelings about it.

Most of the time the story we have made up and are telling ourself isn't an accurate one. Be brave, courageous and pause to challenge your stories, to get curious about them. Frequently ask yourself, "What is the story that I am telling myself about this?" and be willing to look at it with perspective.

2 Comments

What's Good For The Soul?

6/18/2019

0 Comments

What's good for the soul? The answer is simple...laughter, good old fashioned laughter. I love deep belly laughing, or crying and laughing at the same time, or laughing so hard that you end up snorting, laughing so hard that your stomach and cheeks hurt, man those are the best!

Do you get enough of it? I know I don't. Can you ever truly get enough of it? Remember the old saying, "Laughter is medicine?", well I believe that it is. I believe that laughter is good for our soul, our mind and our body. Laughter reinforces and brings about a positive emotional state of which promotes overall well-being.

Studies indicate that laughter boosts the immune system and triggers the release of pleasure-inducing neurochemicals in the brain. In the central nervous system, the brain also releases endorphins as a result of laughing. Endorphins are natural, morphine-like compounds that raise the pain threshold, produce sedation and induce euphoria. We feel better when we laugh because endorphins reduce physical and mental pain. Laughter lowers blood pressure, increases blood flow, reduces blood-sugar levels, relaxes the body, relieves tension and stress and burns calories.

Sometimes we may laugh by ourself while watching a funny movie or when we do something silly, but most of the time laughing involves other people. Laughing brings people together and bonds them, it's a great way to connect with others and connecting with others through laughter is therapeutic and promotes well-being.

Did you know that you can even do a laughter meditation? You can do it by yourself, but it's easier with a group. All you have to do is just start laughing, yep that's it just laugh. It will feel awkward and forced for a few seconds, but pretty soon you'll start to genuinely laugh at how silly the attempt at fake laughing is. You only have to do it for a minute of so to reap the benefit. Notice how you feel before you start and again when you are done with the laughing meditation.

Give yourself permission to laugh. Look for the opportunities to create laughter for yourself and others. Be light, be playful, be silly. Turn on a funny movie or stand up comedy act, turn up the music, dance, laugh and be silly, reminisce and share funny stories. When you hear laughter, move toward it, ask what's so funny. Laugh at yourself and share with others your funny, even embarrassing moments. Spend more time with funny, fun and playful people. Look for the humor in challenging situations. Give yourself visual reminders to be playful and laugh.

Life can feel serious, weighted, heavy, overwhelming and busy if we let it. Loosen up a little, have some fun and don't take life so serious, interject some laughter instead.

0 Comments

The Practice Of Holding Space

6/11/2019

0 Comments

What can we do when someone is upset, going through a challenge, is suffering and in need of help? You know those many times in life where you maybe feel at a loss for what to do for someone, you don't know how to help. Or maybe you have some thoughts, some ideas, but your advice was not requested. Can you conjure up a few scenarios like these in your head? What can you do in these moments?

Sometimes the best thing we can do is to hold the space. What does it mean to "hold space"? I love how coach and facilitator Heather Plett describes it. She says, "It means that we are willing to walk alongside another person in whatever journey they’re on without judging them, making them feel inadequate, trying to fix them, or trying to impact the outcome. When we hold space for other people, we open our hearts, offer unconditional support, and let go of judgement and control."

We might be holding the space for love, for understanding, for compassion, for empathy, for forgiveness, for light, for miracles, for suffering, for faith, for peace, for joy, for connection, for listening, for learning, for growth, for strength and ultimately for healing. Sometimes the best thing to do, the wisest thing to do, is to just hold the space. To be a space holder for whatever is truly needed. Sometimes in doing what seems like nothing, we do everything.

When you hold the space for someone you are allowing them to feel safe. Safe to feel, safe to explore, safe to listen to their own internal guidance system. It's an opportunity for self-exploration. It's not always easy, we have a natural human tendency to want to fix people, to give them advice, or to judge them. You are giving them the gift of your presence, your complete undivided attention and without judgment, you are opening up your heart and allowing another to have whatever experience they are having without trying to control the outcome.

Holding space is truly about allowing experiences and emotions to arise and pass away. It's about making a safe space so people can actually feel their emotions and see their thoughts. It's trusting that as they allow themselves to fully express what's happening, deeper healing is already at work.

Holding space for someone can be easy and yet so hard, simplistic and yet powerful. I believe that holding space is an intentional practice and a spiritual practice. Like so many other practices, the more you practice it, the better you will become at doing it. I am working hard to practice holding space for others, sometimes I do okay and sometimes I mess it up.

Heather Plett further explains, "To truly support people in their own growth, transformation, grief, etc., we can’t do it by taking their power away (ie. trying to fix their problems), shaming them (ie. implying that they should know more than they do), or overwhelming them (ie. giving them more information than they’re ready for). We have to be prepared to step to the side so that they can make their own choices, offer them unconditional love and support, give gentle guidance when it’s needed, and make them feel safe even when they make mistakes."

Heather offers the following helpful tips for how to hold space for others:

1. Give people permission to trust their own intuition and wisdom. This our own internal guidance system.

2. Give people only as much information as they can handle. Too much information can leave someone feeling incompetent and unworthy.

3. Don’t take their power away. When we take decision-making power out of people’s hands, we leave them feeling useless and incompetent. There may be times when we need to step in and make hard decisions for other people (ie. when they’re dealing with an addiction and an intervention feels like the only thing that will save them), but in almost every other case, people need the autonomy to make their own choices (even our children).

4. Keep your own ego out of it. This is a big one. We all get caught in that trap now and then – when we begin to believe that someone else’s success is dependent on our intervention, or when we think that their failure reflects poorly on us, or when we’re convinced that whatever emotions they choose to unload on us are about us instead of them. But that doesn’t serve anyone – not even me. To truly support their growth, I need to keep my ego out of it and create the space where they have the opportunity to grow and learn.

5. Make them feel safe enough to fail. When people are learning, growing, or going through grief or transition, they are bound to make some mistakes along the way. When we, as their space holders, withhold judgement and shame, we offer them the opportunity to reach inside themselves to find the courage to take risks and the resilience to keep going even when they fail. When we let them know that failure is simply a part of the journey and not the end of the world, they’ll spend less time beating themselves up for it and more time learning from their mistakes.

6. Give guidance and help with humility and thoughtfulness. A wise space holder knows when to withhold guidance (ie. when it makes a person feel foolish and inadequate) and when to offer it gently (ie. when a person asks for it or is too lost to know what to ask for). This is a careful dance that we all must do when we hold space for other people. Recognizing the areas in which they feel most vulnerable and incapable and offering the right kind of help without shaming them takes practice and humility.

7. Create a container for complex emotions, fear, trauma, etc. When people feel that they are held in a deeper way than they are used to, they feel safe enough to allow complex emotions to surface that might normally remain hidden. Someone who is practiced at holding space knows that this can happen and will be prepared to hold it in a gentle, supportive, and nonjudgmental way.

The space becomes a circle where people feel safe enough to fall apart without fearing that this will leave them permanently broken or that they will be shamed by others in the room. Someone is always there to offer strength and courage. This is not easy work, and it is work. We cannot do it if we are overly emotional ourselves, if we haven’t done the hard work of looking into our own shadow, or if we don’t trust the people we are holding space for.

8. Allow them to make different decisions and to have different experiences than you would. Holding space is about respecting each person’s differences and recognizing that those differences may lead to them making choices that we would not make. Sometimes, for example, they make choices based on cultural norms that we can’t understand from within our own experience. When we hold space, we release control and we honor differences.

0 Comments

<<Previous

Tips For Shifting If You're Negative Or Complain A Lot

Stop Yourself Before The "But"

Soul Searching

No One Is Perfect

Pain Is A Traveling Professor

Magic And Illusion

Faith

The Story I'm Telling Myself Is...

What's Good For The Soul?

The Practice Of Holding Space

Archive

Please sign up to receive weekly new blog posts.