Stepping Into Real Reality = Becoming The Bad Guy

Hello again!

If you’ve not already done so, I highly recommend you go and read:

Part One

Part Two

Of this series before you read on today. The other two posts do provide some important context for today’s exploration and story so I don’t want you to miss out on that!

Today I’m sharing my personal experience with how stepping into growth really helped me in my practical world, but also led to a LOT of pain in my relationships - and how living this life of growth may also impact you.

Have a read, and of course share any thoughts you may have once you do ????

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Becoming The Bad Guy

As I was stepping into personal empowerment, as I was starting to really see where my ability to truly affect change in my life was, and as I started to live with these new foundational principals, I started to get some profound results in terms of my lived experience.

But at the same time, living this way really started to take it’s toll on my relationships - and it often made me a target of attack, ridicule, rejection and shaming.

It also led me away from a lot of what I had known.

It led me away from my family religion. From my family dynamics. From my country of origin. It led me away from the way those around me ate, worshiped, played, what they pursued, what they valued as virtuous. It led me to a totally new career, radically different ways of relating to people and to a life that most people I grew up around have no understanding of.

Again in a lot of ways, it was isolating, lonely and full of challenge and doubt.

It led to a situation where my caregivers were constantly complaining that I was ‘making them feel bad’ when I did things differently than they did, or when I pointed out that how they were doing things didn’t work and weren’t going to work.

By living in this new way, I often found myself having to do things totally differently than those around me - I was eating differently, moving my body differently, worshiping differently, responding to problems differently - and in this people were made to be VERY uncomfortable.

I was sabotaged by those around me often - things were put into my food I explicitly stated I didn’t eat. I was told I wasn’t allowed to do things I needed to do to care for myself. I was intentionally not helped.

I would be bated for ‘advice’ and then told that I was being shaming when that advice wasn’t ‘this isn’t you’re fault and you’re doing everything right.’

I would attempt to help those around me have a better experience through challenging their thinking and actions - and rather than being met with open-mindedness or happiness that I was providing a possible solution - I was met with anger, rage and attack.

I spent a LOT of my time trying to do what was right for me, as everyone around me judged me, looked for every little flaw and pointed it out as a reason why I was wrong, as those around me shamed me and blamed me, made me out to be some sort of evil monster who was just causing pain for no reason.

I was told over and over again that everything would be FINE if I just stopped pointing out all these problems. As though the problems didn’t exist before I brought them to light.

It was horrible.

It was isolating.

It was worse than isolating, because the people who were shaming, blaming and antagonizing me also had control over my life to a degree. They were my caretakers and authority figures.

Their rejection was a big deal.

And it hurt.

In a lot of ways.

But I was getting results - so I knew I couldn’t give up.

Thus I spent most of my later childhood and early adulthood feeling attacked, antagonized, isolated and like I was a shameful, hateful human whose sole purpose on earth was to make everyone around me miserable just by existing.

No one wanted to be around the truth - and thus, I was scapegoated constantly. 

The Fact That Life Made Sense This Way Kept Me Going

But even through all of this, the results I was getting were enough to keep me on the path.

But it’s also been the thing that has given me the capacity to say that I have a life that makes sense to ME. A life that works for ME.

It’s led me to a place where I don’t feel stuck, helpless or hopeless. Where I KNOW why I do what I do. Where I find actual satisfaction and clarity through my actions. Where I know I can solve problems. Where I feel capable of figuring things out.

I learned that pointing out what isn’t working, that letting go of what I have even when I don’t have something to replace it yet, that admitting when I’m wrong, that admitting where I am expecting certain results and not getting them, that owning my flaws, that wading through the unknown and allowing myself to be in the liminal space IS the key to life. That these things ARE what are required for being ALIVE.

These are the things that allow for life to be lived.

These are the things most people run from, and I believe this is what kills us.

This is what traps us.

This is what stops us from being able to grow, to learn, to evolve and to experience what we want to experience.

It appears to me that the TOTAL opposite of what we currently value is actually the key to a life where we can say we are truly alive, truly growing, truly evolving and truly becoming what we wish to become - and that’s why I’m so passionate about spreading this message.

Because at the end of the day, to be alive is to doubt, question, release, let go, challenge, point out what’s not working, to pursue the unknown, to follow our feelings to something new, to allow ourselves to admit when we don’t know and to open UP instead of shutting down and to keep allowing ourselves to evolve without attachment to who we used to be.

Compassion And Following Feeling

From here, I want to highlight that a lot of this path was about learning how to connect with and also follow my feelings.

Now I know I’ve spoken about this a LOT around here, and I know that it’s a pretty popular and maybe slightly overused and misunderstood concept in the personal growth/spirituality/self help fields in general - and that’s actually why I wanted to bring it up again here.

You see, so much of what empowered me to live a life where I was able to challenge my beliefs, where I was able to walk away from things that weren’t working, where I was able to find solutions to my problems, where I was able to figure out WHAT wasn’t working, why and what would work, where I was able to figure out the STEPS that created this life I am now living - was through following my FEELINGS.

This isn’t to say that I abdicated my mental and logical faculties - not at all - using logic, reason and on the ground, nitty gritty problem solving was and still is a MASSIVE part of my life philosophy and strategy.

That being said, in order to figure out HOW to get to the places where I was able to solve my own problems and create a life for myself that was wildly outside of anything I’d ever experienced or seen anyone else ever experience, was through trusting that when something felt terrible, it wasn’t the answer. It was through trusting that if something felt exciting, grounding, truthful or otherwise ‘right’ in my deepest core - that it was leading me somewhere I needed to go.

You see, I have NEVER seen a full vision for how I was going to get from where I was to where I wanted to be.

I’ve never had ALL the answers.

I never saw in a flash all the steps I was going to have to take to get from my country of origin to the place I now live where I can thrive.

I never saw the outline of how I was going to go from working part time reception jobs with no degree, no career trajectory and no real life skills to running my own company.

I never saw how I was going to go from a Christian housewife ideal to a truly connected, equal partnership with my husband.

I never had a full vision for how I was going to deconstruct my religion and land on a life perspective that feels expanded and aware.

I didn’t even know that the career I have now was an option 15 years ago.

I didn’t know that the country I now live in existed 20 years ago.

I had no idea about all the little organ systems, modalities, tweaks, philosophies and techniques that I would eventually adopt as a lifestyle to help me navigate this body experience 10 years ago.

I never had a full vision for what was going to work.

I never had a full idea for how I was going to create the visions I DID have.

I never had anyone explain to me how to problem solve, how to figure things out, how to take steps, what steps to take, how to create what I wanted to create.

So much of what I am living now I have never seen anyone else live.

I’ve never seen anyone else do.

I had to figure it out, one step at a time, following the breadcrumbs and allowing the path to be what it was.

And the truth is, the path from where I was 20 years ago to now, if you HAD told me what it would be like, I’m not sure I would have done it - because it was SO much more complex and multifaceted, layered, scary and risky than I ever could have imagined it would be.

There were SO  many moments where I had no idea if things were going to work out. So many times where what I thought would happen didn’t and where things I never could have imagined happening did. There were so many steps I never would have been able to predict. So many experiences I had to have that led to experiences I needed to have that led to experiences I needed to have that I was totally unaware of.

I couldn’t totally reply upon my logic and intellect because at the end of the day, my logic and intellect didn’t have access to the information I needed to walk the path I had to walk.

My mind only knew what didn’t work.

My mind had only seen and experienced resistance.

My mind had only experienced everyone around me doing what everyone else was doing.

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We’re going to take another break here, and come back next week for more on how I learned to TRULY follow my feelings and what this REALLY means.

Do you resonate with anything you’ve read above? Let me know what you think ????

<3

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