coaching – Inner Clarity Wellness and Coaching

Body, Heart, Mind, Spirit, Uncategorized, Wellness Coaching

I Thought It Was Love

I did some reflecting today on some of the things that sometimes feel like love, but aren’t:

Being “chosen”, or “winning” the affection of a partner who is taking (sometimes extended) time to decide on his feelings between you and someone else.
Intensity: because they wouldn’t be upset about things if their feelings weren’t hurt, and their feelings wouldn’t be hurt if they didn’t care about me, right? It means he’s really in-touch with his FEELINGS, right? He told me he loves me on our 3rd date and expected to move in after being together for 1 month because he loves me and he knows I’m the one, right? Wrong.
Proximity: sometimes when something feels familiar and is accessible in our day-to-day lives, we develop feelings even if it’s a partner we wouldn’t otherwise choose.
Unavailability: It’s easy to fantasize about someone who is unavailable, either because of distance, emotional unavailability, or committed to another relationship. By choosing an unavailable person as a love object, you won’t have to face your own fears of commitment and intimacy. You won’t have to face the fact that your partner is a real person with their own wants and needs, and annoying habits, because you subconsciously know the relationship will never get there.
Loneliness/ Attachment: if you like the fact that you’re with someone more than you like the person you’re with and/or you are terrified of being alone, it may be clouding your perception of if this is the right partner for you.
On/Off, Hot/Cold, Push/Pull Dynamics: do they love me, do they not? It’s not love you’re feeling, but emotional addiction to a pattern of inconsistent attention and affection. It will hold your attention, but ultimately won’t bring you a high quality love relationship.
Projection: Do you really love this person and all the amazing qualities they have? Or are you just afraid to claim these qualities in yourself and projecting these qualities on to them.
Relief at a reconciliation: When you’re just so happy that they’ve stopped being angry with you/ignoring you, etc. and are treating you like they love you again, sometimes its easy to confuse this with loving them, but it’s just relief. Don’t underestimate how powerful this one is as it can trap people in toxic dynamics.
Wanting to fix or help someone become the amazing person you KNOW is in there but they are just having trouble seeing it themselves.
Butterflies: it’s not a magical sign that you’ve met the right person, this can just mean your wounding has been triggered.

These things all can feel like love, unless we know better. Sometimes these patterns feel more real than anything you’ve felt before, with ecstatic highs (and crushing lows). But really these are just someone’s behavior activating our own core wounding, which is why it can feel so familiar and so intense.

Healthy love feels calm. Healthy love creates a safe and stable foundation to build and explore physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual connection together. It’s clear about it’s interest and intentions, it mutually respects boundaries and is self aware enough to effectively communicate needs and feelings openly. Healthy love comes from knowing you are inherently worthy and seeing other people the same way.

Spirit

Remember Who You Are

You have forgotten who you are, and so forgotten me. Look inside yourself. You are more than what you have become. You must take your place in the Circle of Life. Remember who you are. You are my son, and the one true King. Remember who you are. Remember.
The Lion King. (1994).

Hear these words differently than you’ve heard them before. If you listen without the previous concepts of what you think it means or meant, it points to something beautiful and true. It is the part of you that is knowing speaking to the part of you that has forgotten. This message is for you; and it is true for everyone. You need do nothing except remember who you are. You have forgotten who you are, and the only goal worth pursuing is to know thyself. You are more than what you have become.

You are love, peace, and joy. The truth of your identity cannot be adequately put into words, so without experiencing it directly you can open your mind to this experience by understanding what you are not.

Your identity extends beyond the events of your life, your body, your emotional experiences, and your thoughts. You are all of these things, and yet none of these things.

The power is not in understanding this conceptually, but in the worldview shift that is a result of seeing from this perspective. Imagine how your everyday experience changes when you filter your life through this lens? I can guarantee it will change how you treat the events in your life, other people, your body, and the earth.

Who are you? You will likely arrive at the wrong answer to this question. But each time you genuinely ask it, a little more of what is untrue will fall away, your answer will become a little more refined. Your experience of the world will tell you if you are on the right track. The knot will unravel a little further until one day the rest unravels all at once and you see what was there all along.

We are not the creators of truth. As one of my teachers says, “you don’t have access to your own source code”. You can’t mess things up. You can’t delete something important or add something inappropriate, you’re just running the software. Which program are you running? The one that knows or the one that appears to have forgotten? We are each pulling the formless into form. I ask every day that I may be the clearest vessel for expression of what is real and beautiful and good. There is nothing else. There is nothing else to do and it is such a relief. Remember.

Body, Heart, Mind, Spirit, Wellness Coaching

Living Your Best Life

It doesn’t make the challenges disappear, but dealing with the challenges can become easier when we are fully resourced. Imagine what your ‘best life’ would look like. How would you feel? What kinds of things would you do day-to-day that you can actually incorporate NOW, that look and feel like your best life? These can be tiny!

– a cup of herbal tea in the morning
– listening to a podcast on a subject you find inspiring/stimulating
– getting some early morning sunshine on your face
– lighting some incense
– eating a meal that makes you feel great
– playing with a pet

Allow yourself to feel grateful and proud of yourself for anything you are able to do today to take care of yourself. Even if some days this means ‘just’ getting out of bed.

If you’re ready to level up, consider these highly impactful activities:

-a walk outside
– a yoga flow
– some light breathwork

These activities will help you work with your mind, your nervous system, and your lung capacity — all critical to health and healing. Youtube has some great (free!) guided yoga and breathwork, and in the future I am considering sharing some of my own practices here.

I have found that when I’m in a negative cycle, it can be hard for me to remember to do these activities! So, I recommend pre-planning. I keep a list of the activities I know help me connect with joy and contentment present in each moment. I can pull this list out when I need a reminder.

These aren’t just “fluffy feel good” activities in the watered down version of “self care” I’m sure we are all tired of. There are real psychological and physiological reasons these things help to center us in tough times, and I look forward to exploring this more in future posts!