“You are not suffering because of the things you are experiencing. You are suffering because you think that what is happening is not supposed to be happening.”- Teal Swan
How true! A change in perspective can be so powerful, and this weekend I had a wonderful introduction to Teal Swan via her interview with Jessica Ortner on the Hay House World Summit 2015 – I want to love myself but I don’t know how. She’s brilliant and it was perfect timing for me! I can see that her wise words are helping me change perspective already. I love her! Her story is so inspiring and I love the way she talks about love, acceptance, forgiveness and everything else. I promptly followed her on youtube and listened to some of her short videos. I may also have pinned a few of her quotes in Pinterest 😉
I’ve been tapping (EFT) for quite a few years now, often on my own and often with my mum (a trained psychologist who loves EFT). A few weeks ago when my body gave a little shake I decided to change perspective. I lay on the couch crying to Harlan and he told me that I could do all the health things in the world, but that if I didn’t work on the way I am with myself, then all of those would simply be bandaids. I took it on board and we talked more. I realised I seriously needed to put some good old fashioned energy into pampering my mind.
Over these years I’ve become much better at pampering my body, and even though I’ve been working on the mind aspect, I think that’s a never ending journey for most of us. So I booked in 3 tapping sessions with my EFT tutor in America, Deborah (1 weekly). I’m not good with commitment, so that was a biggie in itself. I have done two already, and a lot of my own bits of tapping in between and how it is helping. I can feel a shift in my perspective and that feels beautiful! I can’t describe how beautiful it is actually after 32 years. May I always be willing to shift my perspective.
Last Tuesday we worked on my fear of failure which tied in with me beating myself up.
What led to this was while discussing my perfectionist tendencies with my mum, she told me that in the first few weeks of school I came home one day and asked her what druip meant. She said that it meant to fail, and I asked her what that meant. I had never been exposed to that concept up until then and she saw the look of shock on my face. From then on it was hard to draw me away from my school work. Once carefree and a barefooted nature baby, I was determined never to fail at school. My parents would coax me away from the books, but it was a hard job and never lasted long.
You see when I went to school at the age of 9 (after 4 years of home-schooling), I was very new to systems and rigidity, coming from a remote farm in South Africa where we did maybe 2 hours of school work a day, and the rest of the time I was outside doing real-life learning. I was also the only English speaking kid and one of the only ones who mixed freely with the ‘coloured’ children on the farm (another story for another time). Anyway, early in that year I have a very clear image of one of the boys coming back into class trying to look brave, even though he was limping and had tears streaming down his face. He had failed a maths test and been sent to the headmaster to be caned.
Reflecting during tapping I realised that this could be a key to why I have spent most of my life beating myself up. Is it because I am so scared of failing and being beaten up by someone else that my subconscious decided it was safer to do the beating in-house so that there was never a chance of failure? Who knows, but I’m now exploring these notions with the desire to change perspective and clear beliefs that no longer serve me.
Of course there is no such thing as failure, only lessons learned.
So when I am judging that what I’m doing in business isn’t good enough, is less than, could be better, is bad, and as a result turning into a manic perfectionist stress ball, roll in a little change in perspective. To be fair, I’m most likely doing the best I can at the time with what I’ve got! But what would be really useful would be minimal energy spent on judgement of good or bad, something I’m sure many of us work towards. And rather simply an acknowledgment of the situation. How nice would it be to use that energy to flow as healing through my body or love and kindness directed inward to encourage me flourish?
What changes in perspective have helped you on your journey?