It was New Years eve 2011....

Lately I have been thinking back to New Year’s Eve last year. It was a rainy evening so our plan to watch the fireworks on the beach didn’t happen so my Husband and I took our bottle of tequila and went back to our hotel. When the rain died down we went outside and watched the fireworks from the little garden area downstairs. I remember the next door neighbours were having a huge party with the loudest music ever, so he and I danced to the music, drank tequila and behaved like teenagers. I had this overwhelming feeling then that there were big things to come in 2012 and I turned to him and said that this year is going to be my year. But as this year went by I thought I could not have been more wrong in saying that. But here I am realising that this year has in fact been my year, just not in the way I thought. And although it was one of the most difficult years I have ever experienced, it has been my year for transformation and for the beginning of a wonderful new journey.

I have always had a burning desire to create awareness and inspire people to do things differently, but I was never really sure how to do this, until I realised that it was through my own journey that this could be achieved.

So I decided to write about what self-awareness means to me because that's really what all of this about.

I have used the word consciousness quite a bit in my entries and I wanted to explore it more. The term consciousness is used by many Spiritual Teachers and there are so many different meanings to this word and it means something different for everyone, but for me consciousness means self-awareness. 

In my experience, self- awareness is becoming aware of everything that we are with our light side as well as our dark side. It’s about understanding what triggers us and what drives us to enter into certain behaviours and really understanding our own dysfunctions without judging ourselves. It’s being able to face up to our past, understanding where we come from and how this has influenced who we are today. It’s about acknowledging that any issues that come up are a part of life, but that they need to be looked at and not brushed off.

It’s about taking responsibility for everything that we are and for all our actions. So for example if we have an issue with someone else, perhaps we could first look to see if this issue is with them or if it is actually our issue that we have not yet owned up to and need to work on. I have personally found this very empowering because then we no longer have to be victims to other people and we can stop blaming. I know for myself that when I am suddenly angered by what someone has said to me it’s because most of the time it’s true and this is often a difficult pill to swallow.

But when we do take responsibility for ourselves it has a ripple effect and those around us begin to do the same. Everything starts with us, so if we wait for others to do it we will die waiting. We need to be the person that we wish the other would be.

Self -awareness is about being true to ourselves in every situation no matter what, even if other people don’t like it. It’s ok to choose you.

 It’s about just being human because human beings are not perfect and striving for any kind of perfection is going against who we truly are. I love the truth of the phrase, ‘’we are perfectly imperfect’’.  I know from experience that constantly wanting life to go perfectly manifests the exact opposite, maybe to teach me that this is not how things work.

It’s about listening to our bodies because the body speaks volumes but we often ignore the signs until things get really bad. Our bodies tell us when it’s time to relax or if there is something we need that we are not giving ourselves. And also knowing that we don’t always have to be doing something, we don’t have to try so hard and we can also learn to just be.

 It’s also about listening to our inner voice, but if we find that it’s not there, it’s because we are not listening hard enough. Our inner voice has the answers to all our questions, even if the answer is that right now, there is no answer. 

It’s about ditching the “people pleaser” in us because the truth is, people don’t like us any more or any less when we try to please them, they just land up depending on us to keep up the charade and it lands up taking a tole on us. People don’t acknowledge us when we are desperate for acknowledgement, but as soon as we acknowledge ourselves others start to do the same, it’s a natural process.

Self-awareness is about respecting our emotions without judgement because our emotions are our truth. For example, our anxiety and worry tells us that there are certain thoughts that are no longer serving us and that we are trying to control that which we have no control over. Our sadness tells us that there are things we need to still work through and our joy tells us that we are now living in the moment.

And through everything, we need to remember to be gentle with ourselves because any transformation in life is a process and every change that we want to happen in our lives doesn’t happen over- night. Self- love is unfortunately one of the hardest things for us to implement but it’s important to remember that it’s in our most trying times that we need to be the kindest to ourselves.

It’s about no longer being ashamed of wanting more from life or wanting a meaningful life. No one ever told me this so I am saying it now; we are allowed to have it all, we are allowed to have everything we have ever dreamt of, but also realising that things do take work. Not physical work but work on ourselves and getting rid of all the baggage that is in the way of us getting what we want. Getting rid of all the negative thoughts that we let fill our heads telling us that we are not good enough or not deserving of greatness.

And then trust; trust in God, in the Universe or whatever it is that we believe in. Even if it’s just trust in ourselves that everything that is happening now is exactly how it should be and that if we resist that which is, we land up being in a constant battle with life. Even though sometimes it doesn’t feel like it, life always works in our favour not against us and there is always a bigger picture as to why things happen the way they do.  I believe that even if we don’t see it straight away we eventually do.

Self-awareness is also about surrendering to the fact that we cannot make sense of everything and that some things are meant to be a mystery. And we need to give life that respect.

It’s about knowing what we have control over and knowing what we don’t. We don’t have control over others and their behaviour; we don’t have control over events, or time, but we do have control over ourselves and every day we can choose how we are going to behave and react in any situation. We choose what we are going to tell ourselves and what we are going to believe to be true.

Change is the only constant thing in life and we have to surrender to the fact that when it’s occurring, it’s because it needs to. I believe that life is constantly showing us how to move through the difficulties and move forward to bigger and better things and the trick is to face up to ourselves in the difficult moments because those are the opportunities that we need to grab with both hands. Life is always giving us the opportunity to come back to our authentic selves without the masks and defences and it’s up to us if we are going to accept the challenge.

We need to be ok with the fact that there are times when we just can’t be strong. There are times when we doubt everything and wonder what the hell this life is. There are times when we feel really alone no matter whose around and there are times when we want to give up on it all. In my experience it’s through these times that I personally began to find myself. It wasn’t through the happy times.

I don’t think the aim of life is to be happy; it’s about being ok with the fact that it’s not always going to be.

Self-awareness is also about love.  Although it doesn’t seem like it, it’s actually harder to be angry or carry resentment towards others and all it does is takes up all of our energy. When we operate from love and understanding it makes no space for anything else and we can feel at peace.

And lastly self-awareness is about being open to knowing that what we know and believe to be true in our lives may not actually be and so to be open to new ways of being, new experiences and new ways of thinking.

For me right now, I know that I am in fact just at the beginning of this journey and there is an excitement within me that knows that there is still so much more to come.

Here is to the New Year and embracing all that is to come for all of us.

Love and blessings

My Journey in Therapy

I would say for most of my life I lived in a melancholic, depressive state of being. I was able to be happy and excited but always by things that were outside of me. And it was always short lived. But I got out of bed most mornings and put on my happy mask and did this pointless thing that I thought was my life. And this was how I did things.

I spent years going from therapist to therapist and nothing seemed to change. The topic in all of my therapy sessions was about how people in my life have let me down and how they just wouldn’t change. And when therapy got tough I got out of therapy, and fast!

It was only until I found a special woman who was different from the rest, a woman who finally helped me to face my demons and let me feel whatever I needed to feel without shame or guilt. I would describe the process I went through as going to the darkest place of myself to see what was causing this state that I was constantly finding myself in. And for two years I cried. I cried once a week, for an hour, without fail. Sometimes I knew what I was crying about, the past mainly, the traumas, and the worry about the future, but sometimes I just didn’t have a reason for crying. And as the months went by there were little snippets of hope in my heart and the emptiness that I felt inside slowly began to be filled.

I remember sitting in a restaurant one night, (and I was right in the middle of this therapy process)  and my Husband and I were having a lovely dinner and out of no- where like an emotional attack of some sort it suddenly occurred to me that no one is going to rescue me from myself, not even him. It was the most unbelievably overwhelming feeling and I just burst into tears, in public. At the time it was not a happy realisation, it was painful. I felt helpless and un- supported and un- loved and I felt that there was no way in hell I was going to be able to pull myself out of this depression I was in, all by myself. The word fear took on a whole new meaning for me and I had never felt so alone.

During this process I would constantly go back and forth between understanding that it was up to me to help myself and still desperately wanting other people to do it for me. At one point I finally felt that I was getting there and then I had to face death this year and that’s when I hit my rock bottom. I knew there was no way out this time and I went to the darkest place of myself, but I decided that I would stay there for a while.  I made that decision consciously. The strength it took to face myself, and to let myself stay in this place of despair for as long as I needed to, took all the guts I had.

I was no longer in therapy at the time and so I had to take what I was taught over the last two years in therapy and face the darkness alone. And as it does, the deaths brought up old pain of past deaths I have faced. So I cried for my father who has long been gone. I cried for my grand- father, I cried for the pregnancy I had not yet been able to have and for every loss I ever felt. And I let myself do that, while trying so hard not to judge it. I always thought that I was being so weak but I never imagined how much strength it would actually take.

My Father in law and my little dog will never know that in a way their passing saved my life. It is clear through my other entries that God and I have had a very rocky relationship. I have blamed, I have threatened ,even begged and mostly judged God for everything. I asked why my loved ones were taken from me because I just couldn’t understand and now the pieces are finally starting to come together. We never know why these things happen but you know what for me, this is why.

The miracle was that I am finally understanding that my happiness was my responsibility even if I had to deal with the sadness first. I had to do it for myself but for a long time was stuck in believing that I had no control. There are many teachings that explain that we are responsible for our lives and we are the only ones that can make ourselves happy. Honestly I never really got that until recently. I felt that because I was so unhappy I deserved to be happy and that that would come from something outside of me. But it never did.

Through the worst pain came a joy and a peace that I never knew was possible. But I am not walking on a constant happy cloud now, because there are always new hardships and challenges but I am no longer that depressed, helpless girl. And I know now that I have the strength to face anything that comes my way because if I can do what I did, I can bloody do anything.