I recently read an excerpt from the first part of a woman's survivor memoir about feeling BIG in a world she felt wanted her to be small and quiet and uncomplicated to the point of almost disappearing.
What if deciding between continuing to grow or trying to shut it all down so she fit, was not even a question worth asking, let alone considering? What if she knew that what she was being aware of was the bigness of her energy, her consciousness, her heart, her soul? Not her body. What if she knew that as a Fire element, her Higher Self is as big as the sun? What if she knew that the bigness she was becoming aware of at the age of 10 was her expanding her energy field around her body to let more of her soul's sacred light in? What if she knew that you don't have to change your physical body's size or shape to make room for the real YOU? What if she knew that to invite more of YOU into your physically focused self, all you have to do is expand your energy field?
What if people knew that many weight and body image issues have nothing to do with self-esteem or food or addiction or mental illness or emotional problems or the pressure from the "world" to look or behave a certain way? What if they knew that who they really are is as big as a star or a constellation, a galaxy or a universe? What if they could expand the energy field around their bodies and let all of who they are, in? Who then could they be, for themselves and for each other?
Fix You
When you try your best, but you don't succeed
When you get what you want, but not what you need
When you feel so tired, but you can't sleep
Stuck in reverse
And the tears come streaming down your face
When you lose something you can't replace
When you love someone, but it goes to waste
Could it be worse?
Lights will guide you home
And ignite your bones
And I will try to fix you
And high up above or down below
When you're too in love to let it go
But if you never try you'll never know
Just what you're worth
Lights will guide you home
And ignite your bones
And I will try to fix you
Tears stream down your face
When you lose something you cannot replace
Tears stream down your face and I
Tears stream down your face
I promise you I will learn from my mistakes
Tears stream down your face and I
Lights will guide you home
And ignite your bones
And I will try to fix you
~ Coldplay
Much of the counseling or therapy out there is focused on finding the problem and “doing the work” to fix it. Fix you. Self-help books, personal development workshops, talk time with friends or hiring a life coach are other ways you might try to fix you. If you are a man, romantic relationships and marriage are ways women try to fix you.
But what if you are not broken? What if you don’t need to be fixed? You know how the old adage goes, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. Well, what if you don’t need to fix you?
What if you don’t need therapy? Years of expensive hourly sessions of talk time in which some “the-rapist” attempts to “fix you”. Headshrink you. You know, get you to lie down on the couch and talk about yourself, your problems, your childhood, your abuse, your feelings. Reveal your innermost thoughts and darkest secrets carefully hidden behind your depression or addiction or mental illness or emotional instability. Super messed up, right?
Or are your “problems”, reactions, albeit unhealthy and destructive ones, to an awareness you have about yourself?
Therapy tends to be a one-size-fits-all approach. There is a clear definition of a healthy psyche, acceptable levels of healthy mental and emotional states. And a standard treatment that is applied to these help seekers the way mood altering drugs and pain meds are prescribed to a patient. If you have this problem, then this is the certified and approved remedy – weekly therapy sessions for life or at least until the therapist deems you are better or are a better person. Tools and tricks and techniques and training to talk yourself back into or out of a relationship, down from the overpass or back up off the bathroom floor.
People who think they need a lifetime of therapy the way people with stents think they need to be on statins forever, must think there is some kind of a prize for suffering. That their history of abuse or inconsolable loss or buying the lies the world is selling them or their false and limiting belief systems entitles them to wear their battle wounds and pain bodies and hurt feelings like some kind of badge of honor or at the very least, courage. That they have to do the work, preferably inside an air conditioned therapy room on a comfy couch.
Pain is inevitable. Unavoidable. Just as certain as death and taxes. Part of the human condition. Not only that, but being able to feel our feelings and letting those feelings provide that quality information about the life we are living and the thoughts we are thinking, is what makes us uniquely human.
Suffering, however, is optional. It’s a choice. A choice some people indulge in. Something they make the hero or heroine of their life story.
People who are in therapy, or drag their husband to therapy or send their kid to therapy or talk about their therapist like they do a doctor on call or a lawyer on retainer, might be working through their pain. Or they might be a long-suffering martyr who doesn’t know or want to know who they are without their pain. They might be learning how to process and express their emotions in a healthy way. Or they might need the negative attention they get from being the broken and bruised, battered and bullied person they claim to be. They might be practicing non-violent communication and learning how to express how they feel with words. Or they might need the focus to be on the other people in their relationships so they don’t have focus on themselves. They might need the talk time with someone they trust, in a safe place, to empty their basket, think out loud or bounce their ideas off of and come to their own conclusions or make their own realizations. Or they might need someone to tell them what to do instead of learning how to trust their inner self. They might need their ego shrinked, their personality altered, their behavior modified, their mental process changed, their emotional makeup stabilized. Or they might need for someone just to tell them, they are perfect in this moment just the way they are and that a healthy balanced life with happy and harmonious relationships and fulfilling and rewarding work begins with understanding their unique energy and honoring their needs and values.
When you try and fail. When you have everything you’ve always wanted but none of what you actually need. When you love the person you are married to, but not the life you are living with them. When you lose something you cannot replace. When you get lost or make a mistake. When you get to a point in your life where nothing has worked out the way you wanted it to and you can’t go back, when you don’t get a do over and you don’t know where to go from here. When you are tired because you cannot sleep. When you can sleep but wake up tired because it’s your soul that’s weary.
When you don’t know how to cope with being human. All the hard parts, all the hard places, all the hard knocks, all the hard lessons. All the lessons learned the hard way. All the disappointment in yourself, or your spouse, or your kids, or your life, or your marriage, or your career, or your business, or the world. All the scary questions. All the scary answers. All the heartbreak, the betrayal, the distrust. All the blunt trauma and open wounds. All the sadness. All the madness. All the devastation, all the desperation. All the turmoil. All the terror. All the loss of faith in humanity, or just in yourself.
When the tears come streaming down your face. When you are numb and can no longer feel the pain. When you throw your hands up in the air and cry out in utter despair. When you are cut open and keep bleeding.
When you define yourself by your battle wounds, or even worse, your war stories and combat scars. When you never completely recover or heal your body or restore your soul. When you traumatize yourself with a drama or a disease or a divorce. When you keep yourself stuck somewhere or in some holding pattern or in some habit and use the illusion of fear and the illusion of control to immobilize you.
You find someone to fix you.
Therapy takes you back to the start. To see where you went wrong or your life went wrong. To find something or somebody to blame. To find a reason, an event, a moment you can pinpoint and then point to. To look back in the rear view mirror. To put your life in reverse and keep you running in circles for as long as it takes. To fix you.
I made this mistake during my first year of feng shui consultations. Optimistically expecting that my highly customized offering, a beautifully feng shui'd and perfectly balanced environment would fix whatever my client had hired me to feng shui. I falsely assumed people wanted what was best for themselves and their loved ones. And I arrogantly assumed I knew what that was. I quickly found out that people do not always have good intentions for themselves or others. Nor do they always want to save their marriage or heal from their chronic illness or make their business a success or even go on that dream vacation. No. People are a little more complex than that. And I realized that not everyone wants the same things or would choose the same things someone else might want or choose.
We think there is a common base line of conditions or a set of circumstances that would make everyone at least, comfortable. Not rich and ecstatically happy, but content. Good enough. Well enough. Fine enough. Happy enough.
But there isn’t. People are different. So unique, in fact, that each one has their own set of personal values to be honored, life lessons to be learned and soul’s purposes to be fulfilled. Like snowflakes, no two are the same. And no one style of therapy or system of thought or specialized treatment is right for all of them. One size does not fit all.
After my divorce, I attended some workshops about relationships that taught that men are like this and women are like that. Although there is some truth to characteristic male and female ways of being, I find that a person’s masculine or feminine energy is a more accurate way to look at human behavior. Classifying people solely based on their sex can be misleading, confusing and in many cases almost completely the opposite of what’s true.
Before you read a book or attend a seminar, see a therapist or hire a life coach that comes highly recommended, determine if that author’s or speaker’s or psychologist’s or coach's world view honors your values. Before you ask for or take someone’s advice, consider the source. Before you go out looking for the teacher or technique for you, determine how you learn best. (Are you a visual learner or more hands on?) Before you find someone to fix you, ask yourself if you are broken. Before you spend several years and thousands of dollars on letting someone else get to know you, get to know yourself. Before you let someone shrink you, realize that who you really are doesn't need fixing and certainly won't fit inside your physical body or mind no matter how many years of therapy you sit through. Before you shrink yourself, recognize that an infinite being won't fit into a body, into your physically focused self and that you have to expand your energy field, not shrink you.
Profiling people. It's what I do. You can't write about personality types without being observant of similarities and differences, strengths and weaknesses, tendencies and traits, potentials and probabilities. You can’t study people and their personal energy without discovering the patterns that reveal how people think, what they value, what they might prefer and 9 times out of 10, choose. With continuous observation and study, I am able to predict behavior instead of just recognize and understand it.
We are constantly taking in information about our world and the people who live in it with us. We pay attention to how they behave, what they say, how they choose to live and who they choose to live it with. They tell us who they are with their words and actions, with their life and living.
But what if we could turn our inquiry about the way people are, around? Look within. Profile ourselves. Understand ourselves. Bring some awareness about ourselves, to ourselves.
That’s what I do. It’s also what I help other people do. I share with my clients my observations about their personal energy and the dynamics within their relationships. I don’t fix you because, you are not broken. I don’t prescribe decades of therapy because, there’s nothing wrong with you. I am just a light that guides you back home to yourself. I reflect back to you who you really are. I share about who you have chosen to be in this life. I provide the information and insight you need to know yourself so that you can be your fully embodied and expressed authentic infinite self.
Some elements need a little more hand holding than others. Some want someone just to fix them. Some need cuddling. Some need coddling. Some need tender loving care. Some need to be the center of attention. Some need undivided attention. Some need words of encouragement. Some need words of wisdom.
Feng Shui Yourself is personal energy mapping. It’s like the energy blueprints of the unseen energy of a space that you get with your classical feng shui consultations. The essential information you need to balance and harmonize, remedy and enhance your space or in this case, your life. In Feng Shui Yourself personal energy and relationship dynamics coaching, I give you the map. Then, you get to set off on your journey, map in hand to determine if it is true to your terrain. What you will find as you explore your world, look at your relationships with new eyes and examine your life is that you already knew the truth about you. That there was never anything wrong with you that a little awareness couldn’t fix. That there was never anything holding you back except your belief that you were broken and needed someone to try to fix you. That the answer to your "problem" was here, inside you, all along! Yes, indeed!
Haka
What is right is always right!
Indeed!
Be true to yourself, my son.
My concerns have been raised about you, so pay attention.
What is this problem you are carrying?
How long have you been carrying it for?
Have you got that? Right, let’s go on.
So son, although it may be difficult for you
And son, although it seems to be unyielding
No matter how long you reflect on it
The answer to the problem is here,
Inside you.
Yes, indeed!
~ Waimarama Puhara
☯
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