Shine Your Light, Transform The Darkness
“Transformation is often more about unlearning then learning” – Richard Rohr
When you were a little child you started forming your values based on how you were raised. As you grew older those values grew, changed and transformed based on your experience of life. Those values influence what you focus on as being important. They influence how you live your life. They reflect the reality you perceive and the behaviors you demonstrate in the daily living of your life.
“A mistake is an accident. Cheating and lying are not mistakes, they are intentional choices. Stop hiding behind the word mistake when you get caught” – The Coach from Raise Your Mind
Being imperfect, you will make mistakes along the way. You will make bad decisions, bad choices. Some of those will be intentional based on your fears. Some you won’t realize are intentional. This is because your subconscious is self-sabotaging you due to its fear of what might happen if you do the right thing.
Your values if you have chosen them intentionally, will assist you in your life journey to achieve the goals you set for yourself. Your values will also excuse or accuse your bad decisions. This is because your values can validate the difference between the simple wrong choice, and the times self-sabotage intentionally made that wrong choice. It is up to you to try, or not try to do better in the future.
At first the goals we form are all education types of choices.
- Do you finish high school?
- Do you go to college or a technical school?
- What kind of career to you want?
- Do you want to get married and settle down to have a family?
- Do you want to travel and experience life and settle down later?
- Does life happen for you or to you?
Unforeseen tragedies can shift your values and focus, such as when my nephew was murdered. Any kind of major unexpected life event can significantly transform your life. In my case, LemonadeMakers was a direct result of my own life event.
“The Hero’s Journey is a concept to describe people’s self-perception when they are in a growth process” – Unknown
When life events cause you to question everything in your life, you have entered upon a Hero’s Journey. It is common for fears to crop up. Grief creates a whirlpool of emotions, you blame yourself for everything falling apart. You question all of your life values as being incomplete, unstable, and not good enough. You push feelings deep down inside of you.
“Intentional living is the art of making our own choices before others choices make us” – Richie Norton
Transforming your life is a process with a lot of ups and downs. Intentional living can help you to sort out what values you are keeping and what values you are letting go as they were adopted as habits from those you lived with. What’s vitally critically important is that you stop standing in the ruins of your life.
Acknowledge the impact of what happened. Make choices that mean something for you in your life and “don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater”.
- Choose to live by choice,, not by chance
- Choose to make changes, not excuses
- Choose to be motivated, not manipulated
- Choose to be useful, not used
- Choose to excel, not compete
- Choose to live with self esteem, not self pity
- Choose to listen to your inner voice of intuition, not the random opinion of others
“Transformation isn’t sweet and bright. It’s a dark and murky, painful pushing. An unraveling of the untruths you’ve carried in your body. A practice in facing your own created demons. A complete uprooting, before becoming” – Victoria Erickson
The thing that you fear the most isn’t powerful in and of itself. Your being in fear of it is what makes it seem powerful. Facing the truth instead of pushing it away, takes your power back from the fear. The Hero’s Journey is a time of self reflection.
“I traded easy answers for honest questions. Replaced being judgmental with open-hearted curiosity. Stopped warring with myself and found peace with others. I burned all the old maps and then discovered my true path” – John Mark Green
Run to whatever inside of you is hiding. Pay attention to what is triggering responses inside of you. Who or what is making you angry? What is triggering the arguments you are having with others? That is what you need to follow, to find the honest answers about what inside of you is calling out for transformation.
“It’s not about perfect. It’s about effort. And when you bring that effort every single day, that’s where transformation happens. That’s how change occurs” – Jillian Michaels
This can be viewed as a spiritual journey. It is a path of recovery of those values that you should keep, and a time of personal growth for the new values that come from the release of past negative beliefs and actions you have uncovered in your transformation journey. Through the struggle of uncovering the false beliefs and values in your life you gain strength to continue your journey.
“Change is inevitable. Growth is intentional” – Glenda Cloud
It is comparable to when the caterpillar has transformed into the butterfly in the chrysalis and is ready to break out and take flight. There is first the struggle to break out of the chrysalis and then spread the wings to dry – this process strengthens the wings allowing the butterfly to gain the strength to actually fly.
The past couple of years has challenged all of us. This has been an unforeseen tragedy for everyone. There has been drastic changes in being forced to stay home. Work from home. Loss of income. If you are a first responder the fear of contracting the virus, both for yourself and your loved ones. Not being able to hold funerals for those loved ones that passed away. Children staying home from school and being home schooled by parents. So many challenges and struggles that will be continuing for some time in the future. Just not knowing what’s next.
These challenges create a lot of frustration and other negative emotions. It certainly impacts your values.
- How do you cope?
- How do make sure you have the “right” attitude for what comes up for you?
- How do you come out of this transformational fires burning away all that doesn’t belong (old values) to you?
