3 Healthy Options - Responding in a time of Disruptions (just before the January 6 Attack on the Capitol in DC)
Wow. What a week! We began 2021 with an attack on the US Capitol - which was upsetting and unacceptable, but only from one perspective. There are other perspectives to be considered that will allow it all to make sense.
This attack has come at the end of a year of interruptions — one that forced the whole world into a time of deep unknowns. (And that, too, is perfect from the perspectives of the awakening Soul on the planet.
Naturally, people are upset, confused and scared. Fortunately, many have been reaching out, wanting to know what to do with all of their confused feelings.
Keep in mind that reaching out for help and guidance is a healthy choice. When we don’t have clear answers that allow us to find some peace and a healthy set of responses, we need to reach out -- to find out what perspectives will allow us to turn these events into empowered new choices and commitments in our lives.
This post on my blog is to introduce 3 Healthy Options in a time of tremendous disruptions.
If we are going to get through all of the change that is afoot, we need to prepare ourselves with healthy tools and perspectives. And ultimately, those tools need to support our great need to both nurture our feelings and to communicate with one another. That is the foundation that is REQUIRED if we want to get through this time of shake-up and transition into a time of improved, more fulfilling lives.
Without those tools, the common alternatives include becoming habitually caught up in fear, shame and blame. We know those choices well and tthose choices won't help. That is why I am thrilled to have spent my life learning how to resolve layer after layer of fear, shame and blame in my own life. That is what has allowed me to help thousands of others into healthier, more effective options.
I know that we are all the same… and that we all have the potential to wake and getting on with the natural process of learning together. That is what the world needs to realize, if we want to turn things around
For those who don't reach out and gather healthy tools, this event will merely trigger feelings that get stirred up, incite fear… and then the moment will pass without learning from it, without discovering what it can inspire in us. If that is what we choose, we will be no better off when the next moments of challenge occur. And they will!!!
I am glad you are here exploring. I am grateful to have a chance to plant some seeds of possibility.
[SPECIAL NOTE: I am doing (have done) a Facebook Live Medition on Sunday, January 10 at 1pm ET / 10am PT to offer a healthy context for all of the events that are taking place.
No matter when you are reading this, you can either join live or watch a replay of that share by joining my private FaceBook group. cFind out how this can be a crucial time of coming together, learning how to put these “crazy” events into a healthy context, combined with exploring some healthy options that can be used moving forward.
I encourage you to also tell your friends. We all need the comfort of greater clarity. JOIN HERE to get a notification.]
I feel such compassion for our world. More and more we are seeing signs that people are feeling confused, frustrated and afraid about where to turn and what we can actually believe. Some are hunkering down and others are acting out. We have seen a clear manifestation of what happens when we DON’T have healthy tools for dealing with our frustrated feelings.
As a starting place for responding to these crazy events, I will say that every event that occurs in our lives creates an opportunity for us all to learn, to evaluate and to improve our own approaches and capacities to create solutions in our lives.
In this case, I feel that the attack on the Capitol is giving us a powerful example to see how entrenched the world has become in opposition and duality. The true solutions to duality come from learning to value who we are as individuals, followed by learning to value other individuals.
Most of the people I have taught over 25 years were never taught how to truly value themselves or how to resolve the inevitable conflicts of our lives in reliable, healthy ways. And when we lack these skills in our individual lives, we can naturally expect to find those same limitations reflected on bigger world stages.
In the process of healthy living that I teach, there are almost always two steps required for creating reliable, lasting solutions: (1) the first involves identifying what any situation is trying to show us about our own lives and choices; and (2) the second involves evaluating what grounded, practical steps we might take that encourage practical resolutions in the world around us.
I will explore some of the outer choices we can make on today's Facebook Live. For now, let's get clearer about what we can do in our own lives right now. Something I will repeat later is that we can all make a difference in the world, without needing to figure out how to impact the world stage. Change starts with you and me, and how we live our day-to -day lives.
Healthy Option 1:
Returning to the empowered premise that we all have the opportunity to learn from every event that takes place in our lives, we all need to learn to evaluate what choices are working well in those situations and which ones are not.
It is important to consider that it is how we respond to what is taking place in the world around us that determines our ability to make a real difference in the world. We don't need to change things on the world stage in order to make a difference.
We can to that by applying healthy options right where we live.
Even when we disagree with choices like the attack that has taken place, it is important that we seek to understand WHY others might be acting the way that they do. The easiest way to do that is to look directly at our own lives.
Rather than getting caught up in pointing fingers at others whom we would rather blame or judge, a more powerful approach would involve looking at how we might have been making similar choices -- even if those choices were not done on such an extreme scale.
Whether we have ever pushed back, invalidated, ignored or condemned others with whom we disagree, these are still reflections of acting out, crossing boundaries and not treating others with respect. If we make those same choices, even on a smaller scale, then we have not set ourselves up well to ask others to make healthier decisions.
I know I have made each one of those choices during my years of learning how to communicate more effectively. There need be no shame in admitting that we all have learning curves and we all make mistakes.
When one of my friends wrote to share how sad she felt about the things that were taking place, I wrote back to express that I can certainly understand the sadness -- which I believe is shared by a huge number of people in the world -- when we see people acting out.
However, I was reminded that when any of us acts out it is because we don't know HOW to deal with certain feelings that we are trying to negotiate. Perhaps we feel frustrated or unheard or fed up with something that we don't know how to resolve. When that is the case, we can easily find the wounded part of Self acting out.
Over time, each of us must eventually realize that the choice to act out never works, heals or resolves anything. Acting out simply never makes us feel any better either.
When I first looked at what was taking place on January 6, 2021, the personality part of me would have loved to get caught up in making "those people" wrong -- for not knowing better; for not being able to recognize certain deceptions or corruptions that I might be perceiving; for breaking the law; or for being more concerned with personal agendas than being willing to see the needs of the Whole.
I then realized how grateful I am to have a wiser part of me that recognizes we are all here learning lessons together -- whether we happen to be on the wounded side of the fence in a particular moment or whether we are fortunate enough to have learned a particular lesson and find ourselves observing what is taking place from the integrated side of the fence.
No matter where you find yourself at this moment, a great place to start is by acknowledging that none of us has gotten through our learning curves without making some questionable choices, discovering too late that we were about to make a terrible mistake or finding ourselves wrapped up in the throes of wounded narcissism.
Healthy Option 2:
If we can at least start from a place of understanding that all of us can allow frustrated feelings to build and then act out in ways that are unacceptable -- which is NOT the same thing as condoning the behavior -- then we have a starting place of compassion.
The more of our own unhealthy choices that we identify, the more we can begin to make healing shifts. And that will allow us to make a real impact in the world around us.
Once we discover some of the specific mistakes that we have made from time to time, we can take the next step: starting to take some responsibility for those mistakes.
If we do not, then we are not in a clear position to ask others to take responsibility for their mistakes. No worries. This can be done rather simple by:
(1) identifying some specific new choices that will set us up better the next time we encounter similar situations. Some of those might be to get some education about healthy communication and setting some healthy boundaries about our own behaviors.
Preparing ourselves with proactive new choices is a powerful way to begin feeling really good about ourselves, too;
(2) making amends to the people who have already been impacted by our learning curves up. To apologize is not weak. It is a strength that will inspire much more resolutions than sticking with "who is right and who is wrong." It is rarely that simple.
(3) learning to forgive ourselves for even having learning curves.
Healthy Option 3:
Once we have begun to embrace the fact that we are all human learning together, and learn how to set ourselves up well, taking responsibility within our learning curves, the final step in this healthy approach involves becoming more proactive in sending out healthy intentions for everyone.
We are all in various stages of learning -- no matter what part we might be playing in a particular situation. Rather than beating someone else up for being in a level of learning that is like being in an earlier grade in school than we happen to be, let's begin to send healing intentions to every person.
Even when it is clear that someone is still faced with challenges that you may have already moved through, it is important to remember that each of us needed support when that was us -- whether it was in this lifetime or at some earlier stage of our Soul development.
So practice sending out some love, wishing for each person to wake up within their learning curves. It will certainly come more likely through compassion and encouragement than through blame and shame.
I don't know if any of you saw my Instagram post last week, but on the final full moon of 2020, Appropriately, I was standing between the White House and the Black Lives Matter Pavillion sending out some love with a couple of good friends who are also committed to healing shifts into the awakening Soul.
Standing between the WHITE house and the BLACK lives matter pavillion was like standing in the center point of duality… and sending out love from the heart.
On that night, we were practically the only ones on the streets in DC and the setting was serene. We then joined our energy and sent out our best wishes and heartfelt intentions for peace and healing for all of the players on the world stage. What we did was send out love to ALL parties involved, no matter what roles they were playing in the unfolding. Donald Trump, the potential rioters who were threatening to come, and those who are choosing to search for solutions and wiser approaches that consider and value ALL people.
This is one example of choosing to show up and align with the intentions for a better world. We can all do the same. We don’t have to travel to DC to do it. The world is in a tremendous time of waking up or shutting down. The choice is ours. If you apply these 3 Healthy Options in a time of tremendous disruption — as ONE example of a healthy response — then you, too, will be making a real difference in the world.
As one person, I thank you for showing up. You truly matter! We all do, if we will wake up and take our places in love, value and mutual support. It is okay if we do it one clear step at a time. God bless us all.