What Is Your Personal Shift

 “Maybe the only thing each of us can see is our shadow.”

                                                                                                           Carl Jung

October is a time in the year with a big seasonal shift. We are shifting from the heat and sun of summer to the cold and darker hibernation of winter. Even though this shift happens as part of our natural rhythm in life, it sometimes is hard to accept. 

There are many things in life which are hard to accept. Who doesn’t wish that we had a great childhood, great parents, and a happy life? Events in life happen. Patterns get repeated. We all know the saying, “s… happens.” A friend of mine likes to say, “Shift happens”. I also like to say, “shift your story, and shift your life”. It is bad enough that bad things happen to us. It is even worse that we keep repeating them in our lives. We keep repeating sayings and beliefs, we keep repeating words, and we keep repeating our family and life stories. These stories then get ingrained in our consciousness, and so affect us even subliminally.

What would happen if we were able to make a subtle or not so subtle shift in our stories where we could see them in a slightly different way?

This slight shift then allows us to move from places inside of us where we are or feel depressed, to having a new perspective, and then to finding acceptance. In finding acceptance, we then allow internal forces to move us in a new direction of health, wholeness and vitality.

I was talking with a client the other day who, through difficult recent events, was feeling sad and depressed. She was and still is, madly in love with a person who just broke up with her, and broke her heart. As I was speaking with her about how difficult and painful this is to have your heart broken, she suddenly looked angry and closed down. I asked what happened inside of her, and she told me that she just doesn’t accept it. She said she doesn’t think it is right, and she doesn’t accept it. When she told me that, she looked like a five year old girl. I told her that for her to have that internal reaction; something probably happened to her much younger that she didn’t accept. She told me that when she was four years old, her father and mother divorced and her father left them for another woman who she always has thought was awful. I put out some figurines for her, her sister, her mother, her father, and this awful other woman. I asked her what she would want to say to this woman, and she said that she would say that he was hers first. She told me she had to accept this. It is true; she did have to accept this. How difficult this was for her and for any young child. Not only that, but she had a few other men in her life who she loved and they broke up with her. No wonder she is finding the break up of this recent relationship difficult to accept. She had to accept a primary break up, with no say and no choice, and then three others. 

As a child, when we have an event where our parents break up, we think when our parents leave that it is our fault and that maybe we could have done something so they wouldn’t leave. We also think and feel that then maybe we aren’t lovable. We think that maybe something is wrong with us, and this too is hard to accept. The shift here is in seeing what was going on with dad and with mom. The break up was theirs, and between them, and yet, it feels like it is about them, the children. Looking at what happened between dad and mom, and seeing what happened in dad’s life to bring him to this life choice is important. This takes it away from the child in terms of dad’s choice not being about her, but about him and how life events shaped him and his wife. Then, we can see that what happened wasn’t because we are unlovable but because something was going on inside of dad. A change of perspective has the power to shift many things. Shift your inner story, and shift your life. Being able to do this helps us move from depression to acceptance. As we can find acceptance towards what happened and who we are and who our parents are, a whole new world can open up for us.

Recommended Resources:

I have recently put together a Body Presencing hologram where I visually, through written words, and through auditory exercises and meditations, help us go through an experience where we can be present to ourselves in a new way and move through reactions to life where we are stuck in the past, through the present and into our future. 

One example is taking us though depression with perspective and into acceptance. To experience this yourself, think of some place in your life where you feel stuck in a feeling or mood or story. Then go to my web site, www.bodypresencing.com. Click on Body Presencing, and scroll down to Body Presencing Hologram, and give this a try.