Play With Spirit

Shame? No way, you might say. It is the fear of not belonging, after all, which means it’s inherently about others. It’s an evolutionary thing made to help us stay save in the cave. It’s our emotional hardware to keep us in check. And yet, is it? What if it was possible to develop a different, nourishing view?

I personally have lived with shame storms for a long time. So pretty much whenever I did something socially courageous, I could be sure of an intense aftermath. I accepted it as unavoidable and began to arrange my life around them. Meaning I would either avoid feeling the shame in the first place (mostly). Or put up with long, gruelling recovery times (sometimes).

At some point & with the support of my coach, I began to choose more into sitting with the impact. My ability to sit with my own shame grew, and it did lose some of its power over me. However, it still sucks to sit with the storms. And recently, with my own breakthroughs around spaciousness, trust and flow, I felt like I began to outgrow my own old shame story. Impossible things kept happening and I became curious.

What if shame didn’t have to be the unavoidable default at all?

And… what if shame actually wanted to tell me something, something about myself? What if shame whispered a story into my ear, a story about abandoning myself, and not so much about abandoning the others at all?

I mean it doesn’t even evolutionarily make too much sense to be terribly afraid of not belonging to some random stranger, does it? Even with friends – do I really make sure I belong more when I go home and beat myself up for everything that might have been out of (some made-up) line?

So… What if shame – especially the intense and stormy kind – actually showed up because I’d abandoned myself and my values to please others? And – to bring it back to belonging: Not “just” with myself, but on top abandoned my own tribe, my own people?

What if at some point my own inner knowing resorted to slapping into my face, because otherwise I just wouldn’t listen?

Do you have to courage to ditch the old and create something new?

With old patterns running it’s always worth having a look at why we kept them and how they used to serve us. So if you’re curious what it has given me to feel all of this shit at this point, the answer is quite simple: A sense of control. When I relate to my social interactions as something I can control, I “only” need to be good enough to succeed. It allows me to hustle, to DO something – instead of slowing down, going inwards.

Getting curious in the moment and be open to feel what’s there to feel in the moment, no matter the momentary discomfort. Say the scary thing in the moment. The only way is through, and it’s not an easy choice.

I have created a vision for myself. A vision in which I hold shame in reverence. A reminder made to help me see where I abandon myself, where I speed up and seek control.

A vision in which I am deeply present with my people and serve them with all of me – rather than have a part of me constantly hiding away, making sure I’m only saying those “right” things.

I am incredibly excited about exploring this future 💖

I just caught myself. I wrote about what spoke to me this week. I liked the topic – too much. And the last couple times writing went well – too well, so my expectations were a thing.  I ended up stuck. Disconnected. I blamed being tired.

But actually, my own perfectionism got me. I wanted to like my own writing. I wanted to get attention. I wanted it not for myself – not to express my art anymore. I wanted it to get validated. To gain something I couldn’t actually influence.

And this is usually the point where my art quits. My muse goes elsewhere.

I feel bruised. I feel the aftereffects of trying to force myself into the container of likeability and external success. I used to not even be aware of this – Instead I would feel blocked, sometimes for a couple days, but usually I would end up in a vicious circle, hurt myself for weeks if not months on end.

I’m really present to how blocked I used to feel, utterly puzzled why it happened again. I used to get *completely* *utterly* *extremely* disconnected from *any* creativity whatsoever. I never realised it’s Mr Perfectionism sneaking back in after a while, so well camouflaged I didn’t even notice.

Even what I write here feels really tender right now. The voice of reasoning is back on loudspeaker, telling me how pointless this is, how no one is going to like it, and how it’s going to hurt my career. I let it back, enter my mind, my thoughts, my writing process.

And you know what? It’s okay. It’s okay to be bruised once in a while. I get the voice. It has helped me many times in my past – navigating a world full of expectations. That is, if I choose it to be. I choose no longer into fulfilling others’ expectations of myself and there I am.

I am even going to hit publish, because I think it may serve someone after all. Someone who feels just as blocked as I used to, blocked, puzzled, helpless and desperate.  I am grateful I’m not stuck there anymore. And I want the same for you.

And the “how to” is deeply counterintuitive. It’s about letting go of the manifold expectations we aren’t even aware of. And even if I speak about external ones, they might have been, but we have long since internalised them, and shoved them into the subconscious – thoroughly.

So what do you do, if you are a stuck creator?

It’s simple yet so difficult. Go out there and do something. Sit with the resistance, the fear, and do it anyway. For a couple minutes, that’s enough. Just (re-)create a tiny habit. And don’t make the mistake of pushing your own voices away. Let them have their place – just don’t let them take the driver’s seat. Also: Don’t get discouraged if it works. It’s probably tougher than that. Need help? Don’t hesitate to hit me up – I feel you  💖

… Or maybe rather: It lies in who you are when you experience loss and failure. And since we all do, you might as well go look for the magic right in front of your nose when things don’t go as planned.

We can get super-stuck in our negative experience, get all wound up in the discomfort around things not going the way we want them to – or we can find the magic in loss and failure.

Accept what is.

Is your life full of “should”, too? If only you had X and things finally were the way they should be, you would be happy/fulfilled/good?

And have you ever noticed it’s a trap and the goal is constantly moving?

And guess what: Even if you never suffered major loss or failure ever, you still would experience it  all the same. You’re “should-ing” on whichever level you are – whether you have all that money, an awesome job/relationship/friends/body… And consequently you will always experience failure

My point is: There’s absolutely no way to escape acceptance of loss and failure and all the shitty feelings that come with it if you want to live a fulfilled, meaningful life.

If you aren’t totally resigned and living a life within very tight boundaries, just to stay safe, you will experience  failure and loss. Sadness, frustration, fear, anger.

You are always going to experience the stuff that sucks, and as long as you try to numb, manage or escape the feelings, you actually feed into them. They persist, linger, hang around much longer, waiting to be processed.

As long as you’re thinking “I shouldn’t feel this way” on some level, you are stuck. And the first bit of magic lies in doing the opposite: Accepting, processing, venting and breathing your way through what just IS your reality in this moment.

Alter who you are.

After I created a breakthrough around acceptance,  I personally went through a time that felt quite dire. I created failure, I experienced anger, sadness, frustration. I sat with it, again and again – and it wasn’t fun.

Only over time I became curious whether this is what life has to be about?

A disclaimer before I dive into this: You cannot alter without accepting, first. Otherwise, you’re going to act on top over some avoidance strategy and it’s never going to create the transformation you’re looking for. It’s going to be a surface-y fix of your experience, but the underlying unrest and fear is sticking around. It’s going to be another thing you’re “shoulding” about – guaranteed.

But there’s something beyond acceptance, and that’s what I call altering who you are with loss and failure.

Shit happens, accompanied by all those feelings you don’t really want to feel. Always will. And knowing it’s there to be experienced, you feel your way through it. Every. Single. Time. And it sucks…

Until you shift your focus, seeing there are things like your own courage and persistence, too.

Until you return to trusting the universe, celebrating life and everything you’ve got.

Until you return to the beauty of the present moment, and it’s not so much about this current failed endeavour anymore, but about a fully felt human experience.

Ok, I admit, it still sucks. But altering who you are about loss and failure has two bits of magic in it:

#1 It’s less about wallowing in all the stuff you feel. It still is, but less holding onto and ultimately magnifying, giving the stuff even more space than necessary. And while it’s easy to abuse this one as a fix, and it may always be a tightrope to walk, it also can give you access to what you actually need, one layer behind the pain. Trust, love, letting go of the past.

#2 The Depth you gain. Even loss and sadness are an intricate part of living life fully. It doesn’t just mean dire feelings of loss, end of story. It also means you have loved and been willing to let your heart be broken. It means you tried and worked for something. And even if we can’t see it in the moment – it’s the magic that creates not only the lows, but also the heights. You need the dark moments to co-create the light.

And in this magic, I find solace. What about you?

There’s a lot of supportive people around me and they keep encouraging me to share my stuff (thank you ). When they tell me, it sounds wonderful and fascinating and worth sharing.

But not really like me.

Why would I share more from my “poster life” in the Alps if there’ so much of the dark stuff, too? It doesn’t seem honest. Why would I share personal development I think I should have managed months ago? Why be one more person sharing the insights others have talked about so much more eloquently than I ever could?

It’s tough to remain open and awake for possibility. I sometimes wonder if it’s another smart people thing that makes things worse (I don’t know?): Seeing all the stuff you can’t do yet (but you know is within reach somehow). Intuitively “getting” masterpieces and how they might be achieved – only to become discouraged by the huge pile of work to get there. And forgetting about what you already have to offer.

I think many smart people live in “full immersion” – being open, curious and learning, oh my, beloved learning. And oddly, there’s some different sort of comfort in that life “out of the comfort zone”. By focussing on what we can’t do yet, we turn this blind eye to what we already can and how we might share our genius with the world (no no no, not good enough yet!)

So, the default option often is to either “be the learning student” or some sort of “the all-knowing master” (What a discomfort lurking in that one!). Consciously bridging them and being both and sharing from this vulnerable place – that’s breaking the pattern at least I am set up to here. My coach Adam says you have to embrace the vision of potentially being the “bad” thing in order not to keep creating workarounds to avoid it (yep, definitely true for me here) – So, well… here is to the all-knowing master Anna who knows how life works