Who Do You Let Into Your Heart?

Because I believe that it’s our natural state to love (and be loved) unconditionally and without restrictions, I was surprised when I recently researched how people let others into their hearts and discovered that everybody has different rules about who they let in, and that many put parameters and restrictions on receiving love.

For instance, one person I asked told me that she didn’t open up all that much because “people might leave.” That person, even though she’s very self-aware, had put a restriction on what she would allow so she didn’t have to face the pain should something happen, or the friendship end, or someone leave her life.

This was a variation on a theme that emerged during my research: some people can be very open and energetically let people in, whereas others define themselves as very private and remain locked, restricting how much love they let in (and conversely, how much love they give).

Obviously, letting love in assumes there’s a foundation of safety, trust and love, as you wouldn’t let into your heart somebody who’s abusive or untrustworthy or has ulterior motives. If someone in your life is genuinely honest and loving and truthful, can you sense how open you are with them… or do you have conditions for receiving love? If a given person loves you unconditionally and completely, do you know it? Do you accept all of it or do you just let a sliver in?

One way to determine whether we are cutting off the love we receive is simply to examine our friendships and relationships. Looking at individual relationships and reflecting on how close they are and how much we feel we can share of ourselves gives us a good starting point for assessing the love we let in and the love we allow ourselves to express.

And if we find that we’re holding back a part of ourselves, something I encourage people to do is to find where the limitations lie and where they feel vulnerable. Once we know our limitations and vulnerabilities, we can choose to stretch a little beyond them and heal the parts where that stretching feels unsafe.

Also helpful for opening up is making a commitment to loving ourselves more, whether through practicing self-care or by looking at our self-talk, both in what we think and what we say. Frequently people will be very unkind to themselves, saying, “Oh, that was stupid” or “I’m really bad at that” instead of the more positive “I’m really good at this piece, and I’m going to focus on improving the other parts.” It may be surprising to realize how much negativity we can harbor, but we can receive things far better if instead of that harsh self-criticism there’s a positive focus on what we’re good at, and how we’re going to improve on the areas of opportunity.

Generally people shut people out if they fear loss or rejection. If we can dismantle the rules we’ve created for ourselves and let people in, every day will feel like there’s far more love in our lives.

Do you let your friends and your relationships fully into your heart? Would you like to live with more love but need further guidance? Please call Julie at 206.354.7090 to schedule a session.

Photo credit: I was unable to find creator of the picture

Choosing to Engage Life Consciously

Sometimes we feel like life is just happening to us instead of us making conscious choices. This—not making conscious choices—often leads to a different result than we want, and occasionally to unhappiness.

That was my situation a number of years ago. Back then I didn’t have time for myself or time for enjoyment. It was all about work, commitments, chores, keeping up the house, taking care of other people in my life, working, commuting… all of that with very little (if any) consideration for myself… just attempting to stay afloat. I was also trying to control others (the whole world, really) in an effort to achieve something better for myself. Needless to say, that doesn’t work. It took a very serious illness before I realized the concept that you have to change things within yourself and not control those around you. Then and only then did my personal experience became one of power.

I could see where I was holding a lot of anger and unhappiness just by letting life happen. I could also see that with different choices I could systematically reclaim my life. I looked at the choices individually and, for instance, I gave up a three-year relationship when I realized it wasn’t going to match my heart’s desires. That single decision meant ending the relationship, buying out my partner’s share of the home, having him and his three teens leave… all large changes, but just the tip of the iceberg in terms of the other things I had to put in place.

Often there’s fear when you’re considering making large changes like ending a relationship before another one comes along. It requires a great deal of courage to let go of things that have stopped serving you, to address the emotional pain and take the physical action that goes along with addressing the emotional pain. But these are areas of consideration and focus in the course of starting a significant healing process.

If you’re feeling stuck in how to engage life consciously, set aside five minutes to jot down items in the following lists:

1. Focus on the positive. Write down what specifically is working in your life and what you would enjoy more of. How would more look and feel?
2. What in your life has stopped serving you mentally, emotionally or physically? Next to each of these items answer the question: How does this reflect a chance to heal something inwardly? Often when we heal something within us, miraculously our physical experience of reality changes with our healing. Just today a client told me that she received a sweet note from her beloved. “The more I release the more love comes in.”
3. What is keeping you from taking the steps to release what’s not serving you? Jot down ideas, no matter how irrelevant they may seem.
4. Now that you know what’s keeping you from taking the steps, what steps can you take to have what your heart desires? Create little steps that make you feel like you’re moving forward without engaging or by healing the resistance you listed in step 3.

Whether it’s a major change like what I did or a smaller, more compartmentalized change, little by little as we’re able to embrace love, surrender our fear and take the necessary steps, happiness (which typically relates to an external environment) and joy (which typically relates to an inner state of being) become a greater part of our life. Contact Julie at 206.354.7090 should you need assistance with this process.

Four Ways to Change Your Emotional State

 I know someone who has a very serious illness. Even though her own physical challenges are extreme, she still manages to maintain lightheartedness, positiveness and even a sense of humor through her day. Her job is to deal with injured workers. She relates to all of her colleagues in a positive way and despite the fact that her personal condition is far more severe than her clients, she exhibits extreme patience, compassion, kindness, and even a sense of humor.

How does she manage to do this? Very simply: although she takes care of her medical condition, she doesn’t make her whole life about it. She focuses on what is working in her own life.

This is not just an inspiring example; it’s a reminder that we can make a choice about not only our energy but also whether we’re focusing on the positive or the negative throughout our day. Anytime we remember to check in, we can ask—what are we choosing our attitude, our emotional state, our energy to be? Is it one that is up, positive, and optimistic or is it one that is focused on the less-optimum aspects of our day?

It’s important to note that this is not about covering our emotions or pasting on a smile that doesn’t match our inner state. It’s truly about shifting that inner state. Some things we can do when we become aware that our focus is leaning to the negative (or we feel like we need a more positive charge) include:

1. Going for a walk
2. Meditating
3. Dancing – which can be as simple as be-bopping around to some music that speaks to our passion and lifts us up
4. Thinking about something that happened to us at some point that was truly terrific… or thinking about a dream coming true and feeling what that coming true would feel like. (That way you can truly embody that feeling. You could even jump up and down in celebration of that dream coming true.)

These are simple, easy ways in which we can shift our energy immediately. Embodying any of the different emotions that go with the above options switches our energy, allows our brain to think about something positive… and puts our focus, just like my friend does, on the gifts in our lives and the people around us.

Photo credit: yugenro 

How To Clear Energy Fast

There are two concepts I’ve been using with my clients lately that have been very useful in facilitating fast change.

These two concepts aren’t just mental. We can think of concepts as being mentally integrated, but in truth we have to make sure they go beyond the brain, because the brain is only one part and have the integration of all physical, mental, emotional and spiritual bodies.

The first concept is working with clients’ beliefs around how easy it is to heal.

Some people have the belief that healing or transforming is hard and that it’s difficult to let go of things. If that’s their belief, then usually that becomes their experience.

But healing is healing—it doesn’t matter if it’s a tiny thing (and they think nothing of clearing it) or whether it’s something that feels huge and overwhelming. It’s our perception that makes certain things appear to have greater weight than others. If something is tiny enough that we believe that healing it is easy and instantaneous, what’s there to stop us from applying that to the big things? Whether the large thing is a trauma or whether we’re holding on to something that’s no longer useful, healing can be done with ease, grace and be as instantaneous as serves our highest and best. It can be as easy as taking a breath in and out.

The other concept is seeing beliefs, concepts and emotional challenges, as just being energy or light. We tend to label things as good or bad, but they could just as easily be described as whether they serve us or have stopped serving us. When we release something or transmute it, we’re exchanging one form of energy for another. Sure, the new energy we choose might be lighter have a higher energy or vibration, but essentially it’s all light; it’s all forms of light in different frequencies or densities. And something that is love-centered has the ability to be lighter than things that are fear-based.

Both of these concepts have worked very well with my clients, and they were able to let go or heal or accept greater amounts of light far faster than before they had considered or integrated these concepts.

Photo credit: Ashamar 

Release Judgment to Get More Out of Experiences.

In one of my group meditations someone once told me that she felt like she was new to the practice and hence had a harder time sensing where she was holding energy. After we were no longer in a meditative state, she asked me a question and when I was giving her feedback, I inquired, “Can you feel where you’re holding energy—here and here?”

“Well,” she replied, “I can feel it here. And it’s not that I don’t believe you, but I can’t feel it in the other spot.”

“Close your eyes and focus within.”

She did, and then she said, “Oh, I can feel it now.”

I thanked her for showing everybody that sometimes you may not be able to feel something with your eyes open, but in a deeper state of focus it’s a little bit easier. “It takes practice to increase your awareness and sensitivity,” I added.

Later I learned that she had concluded that she wasn’t “advanced enough” or “evolved enough” for my class. She was comparing herself against other people’s experiences or what they had been able to do, and judging herself for her supposed lack of perception… with all of the insecurity that went with that self-judgment.

To illustrate how this wasn’t about how “experienced” or “advanced” this woman was, in the same group there was someone else who’s extremely gifted, empathetic, and really able to feel things—yet later I learned she would often experience frustration because there’s a part of her that really wants to see the energy rather than just feel it. She was caught in the judgment that seeing energy was better than feeling energy.

The fact of the matter is that wherever we are, and whatever our experience is at any given moment, it is perfect, and anytime we get stuck in comparing ourselves with others, we step out of the magic of the moment. Turning off our judgment (including judging ourselves for our self-judgment) and aligning with out heart, we can then treat everything just as information. That way, our self-doubt and tendency to compare show us where the inner opportunities exist for expansion and personal growth. And with that mindset it’s easier to have a fuller, more appreciative experience and to realize that we’re experiencing not only what is perfect but also what is ideal for us.

Photo credit:   suadoni

Working with Layers Versus Resolving an Issue all at Once

Sometimes I work with clients who have the hope or the expectation of working on something once and for that issue to be done and finished.

Whether in my group meditations or working individually with clients, I will often mention that it’s useful to think of an issue being akin to the layers of an onion. We all want to get to the root of something, but we might have to clear it in layers because we don’t have the capacity or the readiness to reach its core.

Yes, there are times when we’re able to address the whole issue, pattern, etc., because we truly are ready, and we do it and we’re finished with it. And then there are those times when we just have to work deeper and deeper, layer by layer, without judging ourselves or judging as wrong or bad that the work is gradual rather than sudden. Ultimately the pattern or the issues that we’re trying to clear may have served us up to that point in time, either as a self-protecting mechanism, or to create a sense of safety, or to hold us up or keep us alive.

If a beautiful house has rot, we don’t go rooting around and tear up the entire house, because we wouldn’t be able to live in it. The house still serves us and we can’t suddenly judge it as bad when it’s kept us alive and has been serving us. We take care of the individual boards and we maintain them, but we don’t tear everything up.

It’s the same with our healing experience. We can stay in a place of presence and joy and love and compassion, allowing ourselves to live essentially in our bodies without ripping things up or destroying the foundation. We start with an issue, and perhaps we’re able to do a minor repair or perhaps we get the entire issue or pattern all at once. It’s not I who decides what a person is ready for, and sometimes what they want to achieve with healing is greater than their whole being is ready to experience. However much we are able to clear is perfect in that moment; even if it’s a single layer that’s addressed, it doesn’t discount the progress or the transformation. We’re still lighter than when we started, and ultimately we all get to the root in our own timing. We can’t force or rush something that we’re simply unready for, and when there is full healing, we know it, because we feel a deep sense of completion of the process and an integration of all the layers.

Photo credit:   Eddi van W.