Day 150: The Stories We Carry Become the Energy We Live In

I believed I was damaged and I would never be ‘good enough’.

And yet by the time I was 22 I was amassing plenty of evidence that I was smart, and talented, and I could be very successful in real estate.

In fact, the broker of the office where I had been working with an agent to buy my first house, offered me a paid apprenticeship there to guarantee that if I decided I wanted to leave my current job and go into real estate, I wouldn’t go work for another office.

That was not something that was done and became the talk of the weekly MLS bus tours as agents from other companies tried to figure out what made me worth being paid in advance of even being licensed.

And it turned out that broker was right.

He saw in me qualities I didn’t notice in myself until I was around other Realtors and realized things that seemed like common sense and as easy as breathing, never even occurred to them.

I grew up in a situation that was difficult for me and I spent a lot of time watching people, trying to gauge their moods, paying attention to how adults interacted.

I subconsciously was discovering behavior patterns about what makes people do what they do and what makes them change. What makes them be happy now and sad or anger later.

I started to draw the lines back to this time decades ago when I read in one of Wayne Dyer’s books about how having a father who abandoned his family and ending up in an orphanage was the training ground he needed to learn the lessons that made him so successful.

I thought that was a much more healthy way of looking at things than the victim mentality we are taught.

Every person experiences pain, betrayal, disappointment, or wounds that could become the foundation for a lifetime identity of victimhood if we allow them to.

But A Course in Miracles says, “I am not a victim of the world I see.”

And after starting to read physiology books in high school, then moving on to personal growth, manifesting, spiritual growth and eastern philosophy books, it was A Course in Miracles, that for me, brought it all together.

It was a culmination of everything I had read for decades and tied up all these Universal principles in a nice bow.

All I have to do to not be a victim of the world I see, or the meaning I had given to my experiences in life, was to see things differently.

And I would say that ever since 1991 when I became a daily student of ACIM, I have made that my priority.

I have been able to see the patterns in what made me successful on the outside while internally and personally I was still battling my dragons, and life situations, in others areas of my life.

At times it felt like there was two of me. The outside professional, successful woman, who had a life other people I knew told me they envied.

I knew that if they saw the reality of my life, they certainly wouldn’t be saying that. But being so good with the masks I wore was part of the price I paid.

I never stop reading and studying and looking for a way to integrate these opposites experiences of my life.

I realized I need to shift my perspective. But how? All of those things that were my burden to carry, that I would never talk about to anyone, they were real.

So, wasn’t I denying truth if I changed my perspective?

No.

That took me years to really understand because for a long time, I thought healing meant either pretending painful things didn’t happen, or even worse, reliving them.

The real burden we carry is out is our own blame, guilt, fear, self-sabotage, and victimhood we cling to.

We keep telling a self-defeating story over and over until it becomes the focus of our energy and just brings us more of that same low frequency.

And that is our life.

We live at the frequency of the energy we put out in the form of the stories we tell that become our truth about who we are.

And that same thing is the beauty of how simply it can be to begin to shift our perspective.

It only takes one small crack of opening the door to the possibility of a shift in perspective for everything to begin to shift.

I’m living proof of that.

To be very general about it, the last 35 years of my life, living from my soul, having been very different that the first35 where I was still trying to find peace and forgive myself, others, and the world for the early hand I was dealt.

One small thought, one little step, on reaching out of your hand to say I’ll give it a try.

That’s all that’s necessary to begin the shift.

It breaks the pattern and begins to allow your energy to vibrate at a higher level and bring better feelings into your life.

They say enlightenment is an inside job. So is happiness, love, joy and peace.

It’s a gift only you can give yourself.

And you can start today.

Today’s Gentle Practice

Notice today if there is a story about yourself you’ve been carrying for years that may no longer be fully true.

Not the facts of what happened.

The meaning you attached to it.

Maybe it’s:

“I’m not enough.”

“I’m damaged.”

“I’ll always struggle.”

“I can’t trust myself.”

“This is just who I am.”

Then gently ask yourself:

“What if this story is not my identity, but simply a perspective I learned to survive with?”

Sit quietly with that for a moment.

Sometimes healing begins when we loosen our grip on the old stories that shaped us and allow ourselves to see our lives through a different lens.

One small shift in perspective can begin changing everything.

With you,

Lynn