Stop the Fight

Today I was inspired to write this blog post because of a stimulating conversation on Facebook with Mac McDougal, a soon to be new found friend.  It was brought up by a mutual friend of ours that he was having a very stressful day-like happens so often.  Mac and I had somewhat “opposing” schools of thought on how to handle stress but I can honestly see from both perspectives from personal experience.

Have you ever been like me and almost every day is stressful?

Boy about 3 years ago I could say without a doubt that most of my adult life was filled with stress unless I was under the influence of something-lets be real ok-I know I’m not the only one out there.

I hadn’t accomplished much in my life, to the degree that I know I have capabilities of.  I hadn’t touched the lives of my fellow humans like I know I could…everything seemed to be A FIGHT.  A fight for money, a fight for cars, a fight for a house, a fight, a fight, a FUCKIN FIGHT.  (yes I did just drop the F-Bomb…whoopdee doo-get over it-it’s not worth the fight)

I’m not saying that life right now, 3 years latter doesn’t have struggles…that’s totally incorrect.  HOWEVER, the struggles mean something totally different to me, plus they don’t show up in the exact way they used to-and here’s how.

Curiosity Never Killed the Cat, Curiosity Brings Insight

Ok so my parents taught me growing up that “everything you think about expands”.  Meaning that wherever we bring our focus, that is where our attention goes, where our attention goes-as is life.  So let me some this up…if I’m stressed out, then I should think about not being stressed out, about being happy, excited and what not and eventually the stress will go away.  This has worked for me most of my life-HOWEVER, only temporarily.

Ya see, one of my greatest teachers, Jana Fleming, taught me that anything that keeps showing up in our life over and over on the “outside” world is a sign that we have work to do on the “inside.”  Furthermore, lets use this example we are going with-Stress-If I continue to say/affirm how awesome my life is, how in the flow things are over and over for months during stressful times and the stress still continues to breathe down my neck-then obviously the affirmations are working against some “software” that’s running unconsciously.

So how do we “fix that”?

My number one suggestion is to just get curious and ask yourself questions…that’s what helps me.

~What is causing this stress exactly?

It’s that I can never seem to please anyone-no one is ever happy with my work…I don’t feel appreciated for the work that I do.

So, now we are getting somewhere…

Understanding the concept that we can’t every control what’s going on outside of us, only what’s on the inside and how we think…Now it’s time to roll the sleeves up and be totally real with ourselves.

~When was the first time that we remember feeling this way-unappreciated?

Well, I remember growing up that I did _________________ and my parents never appreciated me.

AHHHH…so this current situation at your job reminds you of childhood wounds.

Maybe you don’t have an answer like that at all….so another question you can ask yourself is:

~When do I not give appreciation to others?

~When do I not appreciate and give myself attention?

Ya see, when we begin to ask ourselves questions on a deeper level, then we bring light to the subject that allows us to begin to heal this part of ourselves that maybe we judge, we dislike, or we were totally unaware of before self exploration.

It’s a Process

It’s kind of like this…instead of affirming everything away-or trying to-like the way I was raised-we acknowledge the issues and work through it so it doesn’t keep showing up in our lives in the same way.

Take stress for instance, if it’s always there and we basically ignore it and throw around some fluffy wonderful affirmations then it’s like holding a massive beach ball down under the water-you know that sucker is going to keep poppin’ up, no matter how hard you try.

So, there is some great work by Debbie Ford at the Ford Institute that’s brought so much healing into my life, it’s called Shadow Work.  Basically, the premise is being able to have black and white steps to physically and mentally do when we are “triggered” by something or someone.  Triggered meaning it stresses us out, makes us angry, upset, etc…

The Shadow process is just that, a process that’s too intense and detailed to explain in this post…however let me just say that I do shadow work constantly in my life and I’m a better person because of it.  I still believe 100% in affirmations, I just now know that affirmations work when we don’t have unconscious/conscious “software” running in the background fighting it.

So when something pops up in my life over and over again, I know it’s the Universe saying “Sharla, this is something that needs work-you can’t change people around you, you can change you though.”

Perceptions of Life

The comment was made in this facebook conversation that “hard work pays off”.  I agree and disagree with this statement.

If I’m totally stressed out at work, over and over again…the only thing hard work will bring is more stress, a compromised immune system and misery.

However, I personally get stressed out, over and over in any given situation then I choose to work hard on myself, then I feel that my life isn’t such a fight, it’s not always pleasant, and is hard to face at times but much better than trying to fix the outside world to fit how we think things “should” be…

Take for instance me personally.  I don’t get stressed at work because I haven’t had a job in 7 years, I’ve been working for myself.  HOWEVER, in working for myself I deal with people all the time and people can trigger me for sure.  Where I get that red hot feeling, my heart flutters and I want to beat someone up…yeah I have self control thank goodness and never physically done it, but mentally I have.

Well in situations like this I step back and do the Shadow work…it usually centers around my childhood and usually around my father. (who is a great person he’s just one of my biggest teachers-we are so much alike that we clash a lot-so I’m learning and growing from that).  I find that after I do this work then even though some situations arise that I would normally want to react to or be triggered by, they still exist but I’m not effected by them like before.

When we do internal work and change from within the outside world appears to have changed, when really it’s our perceptions or deceptions that have changed therefore the outside world looks different!

“The deepest work we will ever do is on the inside-it’s the biggest gift we can give to ourselves and the world around us.” Me