self-acceptance Archives

Self Acceptance is the Key

25 February, 2014 — Posted in: How To Tame Your Inner Critic Leave a Comment

My inner critic used to be very loud and pretty much ran my life. It told me I couldn’t do many of the things I really wanted to do, that I was too small, too unprepared, too opinionated, or just not good enough. This voice told me that I needed to change, that I wasn’t good enough just as I was. I had grown so used to the incessant negativity that I really believed I was deficient in some way.

But not anymore!

I have tamed my inner critic and you can, too. I have found the peace and contentment I craved. I know that I’m fine just the way I am—no, I’m better than I ever expected to be!

I listen to a new voice now, one that fills me with love, compassion, and gentleness. I am comfortable in my own skin, (finally!!) liking all parts of me, even those not-so-perfect parts. As a result, the relationship I have with myself and with others has blossomed. This voice is my Spirit, my true essence talking directly to me. By listening to this new voice, I am now expressing my unique life purpose and living the life I was meant to live.

How did I do it? This month we are focusing on the tools that I used to clear the energy of others from my space. I’ve introduced you to grounding, calling back your own life force, tapping, and blowing up roses. As you learn to listen to your own internal truths, you will become less concerned with the “shoulds” of the world. What your neighbor thinks and the baggage you’ve been dragging around since childhood will take a back seat to your own internal wisdom. You will refine ways to set your attitude, consciously choose your thoughts and feelings, and stay grounded alongside other people’s energies. I truly believe that energy travels between people and that the thoughts and feelings of others can get “stuck” in our bodies, causing us to lose track of our own internal wisdom.

As we close out this month, spend some time thinking about how you want to treat yourself. What qualities are dear to your heart? Kindness? Gentleness? Compassion? Whatever comes to mind. Spend some time with these qualities. Look back over your Name Web and be amazed at how different you are already. Think of how easy that was once you committed to becoming a conscious creator of your own life.

Accept that you too can be gentle – compassionate – and kind to yourself.

Yes, YOU!

Give yourself permission to be as kind to yourself as you are to others. Be as compassionate with your ups and downs, personal foibles and idiosyncrasies as you are with those around you. Remember that what you think and feel you will become.

Be you – shine bright!

Filling In With A Golden Sun

21 February, 2014 — Posted in: How To Tame Your Inner Critic Leave a Comment

golden sun

Have you listened to your inner dialogue lately? Is it full of phrases of unworthiness and self-doubt? Have you ever wondered how it got to be this way?

This month we are uncovering the mysteries around why we treat ourselves so terribly and what we can do to turn that around, to befriend our inner critic and calm the voice of self-doubt and unworthiness.

You may be discovering that some of your negative self-talk is not even true! It is the product of incidences that have happened to us, and stories other people have told us, about who they think we should be and what they think we should do.

Maybe you’ve even worked with some of the tools (grounding cord, blowing up a rose) to remove the foreign energy from your body and aura. As you remove the shoulds and expectations of others from your energy field, you empty out. And as you know, nature abhors a vacuum. So instead of filling right back in with more of the same nasty inner critic energy, you can consciously “fill up” with energies more in alignment with your own true essence. As you consciously choose to align yourself with energies that feel good to you, there’s less room for foreign energies to reside.

Here’s the past post with the exercise of how to fill in with a golden sun. I use this tool constantly. Anytime I feel a little bit depleted or not quite me, I consciously think of a Golden Sun filling me in with self-assurance, peace, tranquility, or whatever quality I would most like to have at that moment. It’s free – it’s easy – and it’s oh so comforting.

Try it!

Blowing Roses – Demagnetizing Negative Energy

14 February, 2014 — Posted in: How To Tame Your Inner Critic Leave a Comment

By now you know that most of your inner critic’s dialog are the “shoulds” of the world; the statements are not truly representative of who-you-really-are. It is foreign energy residing in your system, your aura. Remember that what you think and feel emanates from you out into the cosmos. One of the universal laws is this: like attracts like.

You really are a giant magnet attracting to you events and circumstances that are in alignment with your current set of thoughts and feelings. This is why it is so critical to remove the negative self-talk and replace it with belief statements reflecting your true nature.

When I begin down the road of destructive thinking, I use a tool called Blowing Up A Rose. (See post here). It’s fun, it’s easy and oh so very powerful. See what you think.

Defusing the power of the story allows you to remove the negative internal dialogue and replace it with something that is more current, more who-you-really-are.

So blow some roses. Drain out some negative self-talk. Tap on a story that no longer holds your truth. Spend some time clearing out the negatives that no longer work for you. Nurture yourself.

P.S. – The Universe certainly has a sense of humor! I hadn’t planned on the specific timing, but posting this on Valentine’s Day has a certain irony, don’t you think?

Grounding to the Earth

11 February, 2014 — Posted in: How To Tame Your Inner Critic 1 Comment

Woman-grounded

Do you ever find yourself in the middle of a conversation with someone and all of a sudden you start to feel off-center, spacey or just a little bit “not you”? The person you are speaking with didn’t say anything mean or nasty but you just “felt” like they did. Well, guess what? That person may have thought an angry or judgmental thought and sent it your way. And you, accommodating person that you are, unconsciously accepted that energy into your space. That’s why you are feeling off-kilter. You just got whacked!

Don’t worry – it’s fixable. Every day we are bombarded with other people’s thoughts and feelings. Some of it good, some of it not so good. The negative stuff, the “shoulds”, the judgments, the expectations of what you should do or who they think we should be is the genesis of our inner critic’s voice.

The problem is that this “junk energy” is just like a sticky note! It stays in your body and your aura mucking up your system. Pretty soon we start to believe that these stories of how you are stupid or dumb or unworthy are a true representation of our divine nature.

STOP! It’s time to realize that these are just stories – upside down energies mucking with your self-worth. And what came in, can go out. Yes, we have the ability to clean up and remove this baggage energy from our aura.

Cleaning our aura may sound a little funny, yet we brush our teeth every day, removing the foreign particles (food and bacteria) and leaving behind a fresh, clean mouth. The same is true of our aura. Cleaning the aura will remove foreign energy, allowing our unique thoughts and feelings to shine.

It’s helpful to use a tool that, once activated, will continue to work the entire day keeping your energy system free of other people’s thoughts and feelings. This tool, called a grounding cord, is an energy cable that securely connects you to the center of the earth. Through the force of gravity, it efficiently drains any energy from your body and your aura that is not your own. (See previous post on one way to ground).

Oftentimes I visualize this energy cord as literally roots tethering my body to the earth. Every single day as I do my morning meditation I attach my grounding cord and intend for all the thoughts and feelings of others that are not in alignment with my inner knowingness to exit my body and aura through the grounding cord.

As I’ve done this, day after day, year after year, I’ve found that my inner critic’s voice has diminished. I won’t say it’s all gone, but WOW! is it less bothersome.

Now, instead I can actually tune into my own thoughts about what’s best for me.

Exercise: Grounding

Sit in a chair with your feet flat on the floor and your eyes closed. Take a couple of deep breaths and visualize a wide, hollow tube connected to your hips. This tube falls below your feet, through the floor and continues down to the center of the planet. Feel this cord anchoring into the core of the earth. Feel a slight upward tug on the cord as it lets you know that it is completely anchored and secure. This cord could look like roots of a tree trunk, or any visual that feels comfortable to you. The purpose of this cord is to serve as a vacuum cleaner sucking foreign energy right out of your aura and returning it to Mother Earth where it will be recycled and returned to its original essence.

Imagine energy, the thoughts and feelings of others, the shoulds and expectations of the world, drop right out of your body and fall down the grounding cord. Let it all go. Give your body permission to release all that stress, all that foreign energy. You don’t need to store it in your body. Release it all.

This grounding cord stays in place the entire day, continually vacuuming up all the gunk in your aura and returning it to the earth. Take a couple of deep breaths, open your eyes, get up, and walk around. Imagine your grounding cord still in place. It moves when you do allowing you complete mobility.

Anytime during the day that you begin to feel tired, scattered, anxious, or annoyed, imagine this grounding cord removing those toxic thoughts and feelings from your energy field. Feel the rush as all that foreign energy leaves your aura and moves back to the earth.

This is what I call a “foundational tool”. I ground myself to the earth every morning and intend for this personal vacuum cleaner to help keep my aura clean and clear of other peoples’ thoughts and feelings of who I should be and what I should do.

The Shoulds of Life: Shake It Off

7 February, 2014 — Posted in: How To Tame Your Inner Critic 2 Comments

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Most of our inner critic’s voice is made up of what I call foreign energy—other people’s “shoulds” of how they think we should behave. Next time your inner critic starts in, pause and really listen.

Listen to the words – listen to the phrasing. Maybe memories surface of a particular time and place when someone said those words to you. That’s foreign energy – someone else’s thought or feeling of what you should do or how you should behave. These shoulds and judgments of others pile up and pretty soon, your inner critic’s voice – is spewing these shoulds right back at you.

So how do we deal with this foreign energy?

Are we stuck with these shoulds floating around in our heads for the rest of our lives?

I don’t think so! I believe that energy can be moved. After all, we weren’t born with an inner critic. We acquired it. And so, if it came in, it can be moved out. We just have to know how.

And actually you do know how, you’re just not aware of it.

Maybe you’ve walked away from a particularly offensive conversation by literally shaking out both hands or shrugging your shoulders to remove the “icky” after-effects of your conversation. On the other hand, you might have felt like rinsing off in the shower or like shaking your body, much like a wet dog coming out of the river. Either way, you were unconsciously removing foreign energy from your aura.

Not all encounters with foreign energy are as dramatic. Simply brushing the energy off your arms, legs, head, and back as if you were removing a layer of dust from your skin might be sufficient. Or, you might literally expel foreign energy from your body by inhaling deeply and then exhaling through your mouth with force.

These methods work well if you’re consciously aware of picking up energies from others and choose to expel the energy right away. See if they work for you. In the coming days we will talk about other ways to remove foreign energy from your space.