It's Not You, It's Me
Page 3
Another common behaviour to be aware of is being judgemental and critical of others and of yourself. This time-consuming and energy-zapping behaviour happens subconsciously for many people and can adversely affect your relationships, including the one with yourself. If you were raised in a family where it was common to judge everybody, this will be the norm to you. Through coaching and hypnosis I’ve seen great healing for my clients once they became aware of their judgemental behaviour and how they had learnt this from their parents or people around them as a child. Allowing yourself to be kinder and compassionate to yourself, and less critical of others, is so freeing and something we will work on in the self-acceptance and self-love chapters. It is often said you are your own worst critic, but if you want people to stop judging you and find harmony within and in the relationships around you, start by letting go of needing to judge yourself for everything and swap it with a newfound awareness and curiosity. Chances are you will inspire the people you meet to do the same.
“When you judge another you do not define them, you define yourself.”
Wayne Dyer
YOUR TOOLBOX: RELATIONSHIP INVENTORY
Which relationship would you like to heal right now? Which one is frustrating, draining and confusing you? Look at the checklist below and work out what resonates with you right now.
My relationship with
• Money
• My body
• My partner
• My business partner
• My colleague
• My father, mum, sister and so on
• My…………………
Okay, let’s take a look at how we can kick-start the healing here and start peeling back the layers to find the root cause of what is actually coming to the surface to be healed. It’s not the person or thing, such as your money, that you need to look at, but what it triggers in you as you’ll discover in the next exercise, Thought Mapping.
YOUR TOOLBOX: THOUGHT MAPPING
If you have read any of my previous books, you will know by now that I love to reframe. Being able to reframe on the go in our minds daily is really helpful and I will talk more about that later on page 116, but for now let me share one of my favourite tools with you to help you map your thoughts and then reframe them.
Let’s get to work. Are you excited to start connecting the dots?
1. Grab two pieces of paper. (For this exercise, it is better to use scrap pieces of paper, so you can discard one at the end of the exercise. You might, however, want to write up your reflections in your journal afterwards.)
2. Draw what looks like a sun. In the middle, write the relationship you want to heal – the one you wrote down in the relationship inventory exercise on page 21. So it might be the person’s name – perhaps it’s your partner – or it may be your body, your work, money. It’s best to focus on one relationship at a time and then repeat the exercise if you need to. Then on lines coming out from your sun, write the emotions and feelings this relationship brings up for you. First write the negative feelings (see examples, below) – we will focus on the positives in a moment.
Examples might be:
• Anger
• Frustration
• Upset
• Exhaustion
• Not good enough
• Unfair
• Broken
• Tired
• Not heard
• Misunderstood
• Controlling
• Negative
• Rude
• Less than
• Not important
• Sad
• Anxious
Or you might want to write whole sentences about how the situation is making you feel. Just write exactly what comes to mind.
3. Now consider…
Is this the first time you’ve felt this way? Try to see if you could swap what you wrote in the middle of the sun with another person or situation at an earlier time in your life.
Take a moment to reflect back over your life. Put on a relaxing song, consider the words you just wrote down and just let thoughts flow in and out of your mind. Simply observe here. Allow yourself to connect the dots without forcing it or rushing yourself.
If it’s a love relationship, you might find that it actually represents a previous relationship that didn’t feel good – one that made you feel unhappy, stuck, lonely, controlled, sad etc. It’s common to realize that this pattern has been around for a while and that your current situation is once again highlighting an open wound within. Joining the dots and having this deeper understanding can help to dissolve the situation altogether and release the power it has had over you.
4. Now go ahead and take another piece of paper.
We are now going to reframe (see page 8). Draw another sun and write in the middle the same as for Step 1. However, this time create your dream situation – write how you would ideally like to feel in this situation using positive feelings and emotions. Examples might be:
• Happy
• Respected
• Content
• Heard
• Calm
• Trusting
• Loved etc
5. Ask yourself:
What would healing this relationship or relationships mean to you? How would healing this or these relationships affect your life in a positive way?
Taking back control
There’s often an element of control in relationships – one partner might be more controlling than the other – but what I’m really talking about here is having given someone else the control to hurt, disappoint or frustrate us. This often happens when we believe that someone will fill some sort of void within us. That they will fill the part of us that feels lonely, lost and not loved enough. The danger, of course, is that we are handing over the control, literally giving someone else the remote control to our emotions. This is a huge responsibility to put on someone else – that they make you feel happy, worthy or loved – because that also means that they can take this feeling away from you at any point. Imagine the emotional freedom and the kind of relationships you will attract when you feel happy, worthy and loved with or without that relationship. Suddenly you are in charge of your own emotional remote control and can choose your own frequency and levels – now that’s empowerment.
Many people hold onto relationships and jobs, even put up with unacceptable behaviours, for far longer than is necessary because they are scared of facing the reality of needing to fill a void the person would leave or having to create financial freedom for themselves. It may be that you are staying in a relationship with someone who you no longer love because you are scared you won’t meet anyone else or in a working relationship that no longer fulfils you. However, what I often explain to clients is that by staying they could be prevented from meeting the greatest love of their life or finding a better job. They will never know what could have been and are likely to end up feeling alone or lost in the relationship or dissatisfied in the job anyway. This is the time you might want to weigh up whether the pain would be greater by staying or leaving. Ask yourself: If I stay in this relationship or keep interacting with this person, at what expense to my own health and wellbeing? Then, if it’s a relationship or situation that you can’t avoid, ask yourself: How can I make sure I protect and respect myself?
YOUR TOOLBOX: RELATIONSHIP CHECK-IN
Check in with yourself for a moment and ask if these statements are true for you in relationships:
• “I don’t need to be with you, I choose to be with you.”
• “I am whole and complete with our without you.”
• “I don’t need to be working here, I choose to work here.”
Notice what comes up as you consider these statements. It might help to write down your feelings around these.
Finding my voice
The first time I found myself in a relationship that made me feel so bad I could hardly get up in the morning was in my first real job as an appr
entice in an estate agents. The lady who owned the firm believed in ruling with fear; we feared that if we didn’t do it her way we would be fired. I’d never been in a situation like this and I had to figure out what to do about it. When I thought about other times I had felt this way, I remembered being bullied at school and how I had not spoken out because I was worried about the consequences. What I was feeling now was just like the hurt and sadness I felt back then. I had connected the dots. This situation had come around again in my life so that I could heal that scar, giving me an opportunity to ACT in a new and different way.
I weighed up my options: I could stay and be miserable or be brave and walk away, even if that did mean being out of a job.
At that moment, something within me clicked into place and I chose to fully respect myself. I realized that I couldn’t expect others to respect me if I was allowing someone to treat me this way. When the lesson became clear to me, I stood up and said straight to my boss’s face, “I don’t accept being spoken to in this way. I’m quitting.”
Then, instead of sitting at home feeling sorry for myself, I called the nearby estate agents and asked if they were looking to take on an apprentice. I had three interviews within the week and three offers. Working for the one I chose turned out to be the most magical years in a fantastic environment. That situation taught me that lessons and chances to evolve are all around us and that when we truly respect ourselves, our values and our beliefs, we attract into our lives people who respect us. I believe that the universe rewards us when we have the courage to live our lives authentically, and it did so for me by giving me the opposite experience – working with fabulous people who treated me well. I don’t even want to imagine the miserable time I’d have had if I had stayed in that job or how bad I would have felt, because, trust me, even after being there a short time I was starting to feel drained, unwell and moody, and that would only have got worse. I had a lot of phone calls from my colleagues saying how I had expressed what many of them had dreamt of saying for years. Looking back, I can see that this experience was literally the power of reframing lifted off the paper and into real life.
“No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”
Eleanor Roosevelt
Dana Michele’s story
“When I first walked into Camilla’s office, I was so annoyed and had a pit in my stomach because I truly believed my boss had it in for me. I worked in a highly competitive environment as an executive producer and I had to deal with a lot of egos and different heads of department every day. It was like being a juggler most of the time and deadlines were tight, so the last thing I needed was a boss that seemed to hate me. I was completely convinced he was not supportive of me and definitely didn’t respect me.
When I began doing the reframing exercise (see page 22) with Camilla, I started to connect the dots. I discovered that the situation I was in at the moment was in fact highlighting a situation from way back, and making me feel exactly the same way. Once I realized this, we started working on what pattern I was replaying here and what I needed to learn from the situation. After a few sessions I wasn’t as bothered anymore about the way my boss was treating me. I gave it less of my energy and attention, as I had decided not to take it personally and I knew I was doing a good job. I focused on what I was there to do, instead of on his behaviour towards me. To my surprise when I finished the project the boss I thought hated me, invited me out for lunch to say thank you for the amazing work I had done and even bought me a thank you present.
What I learnt from this situation is invaluable to me. This work relationship highlighted to me a deeper traumatic situation from my past that I had not fully dealt with, where I was not able to stand up for myself. It had made me fearful of uncomfortable situations, like this one, where I felt unsafe emotionally. If I had carried on believing that my boss had it in for me and had taken everything personally throughout, I would have made life and work for myself way more difficult than it needed to be. Instead I tapped into my self-worth and learnt to stand in my own power, believing in myself, my skill set and the value I was adding to the job.”
“If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude.”
Maya Angelou
An opportunity to grow
I regard bestselling author Marianne Williamson as one of the best spiritual speakers in the world. When I was writing my first book Strictly Inspirational I had just moved to Los Angeles and I was thrilled to learn that Marianne was doing weekly talks at the Saban Theatre nearby (you can listen to her talks online – see page 170). At one talk she spoke about a person who she didn’t really see eye to eye with. She said the last thing she wanted was to constantly run into that person, but it kept happening over and over again. When she thought deeply about why the universe kept bringing her together with this person, she realized that each time was a new opportunity for them to heal their relationship. One day she took that opportunity and the relationship was healed by finally having a conversation. What I took from this is something I have passed on to my clients many times since. I tell them to have that conversation they have been putting off, but to remember to come from a place of compassion, with a desire to heal the situation. They must be prepared to listen and to apologize for their part, because if they choose to have the conversation to prove they are right and the other person is wrong they are putting up barriers to healing instead.
When teaching the principles of A Course in Miracles Marianne says, “Relationships are assignments made in order to increase the maximum soul growth of both people… It is as though a giant machine somewhere sees where you are wounded, and then picks out the person and situation in all of the universe in combination with whom you would most likely be healed.” Doesn’t this challenge us all to look at every relationship in a different way?
Marianne continues: “The ego sees the assignment as someone who will give me what I think I need to compensate for the lack that exists in me. But the universe is invested in your soul growth, not in your imagined need. The universe knows you have no need other than to remember you already are and have everything.” Choosing to believe these principles has helped me look at even the most challenging relationships with optimism and curiosity, knowing that they are aiding my growth on a soul level rather than just annoying me and making me feel bad.
Negative self-talk
I often refer to the brilliant, and in my opinion must-have book The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz; it’s one I tell all my clients to read. I have learnt some invaluable life tools from it, which I use daily. Two of these things are “to be impeccable with your word” and “don’t take anything personally”. One of my coaching methods is based on Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) (see page 8), which also teaches the importance and power of how we use our words and communicate and how this can either hinder or help us.
I help my clients to become aware of choosing words to help and support them rather than restrict and limit them. Self-talk is one of my favourite things to focus on with clients who are trying to heal a relationship. I really listen to the words they use to describe themselves, or their situation or issue, and then encourage them to do the same. An example might be making them aware of saying, “I’ll never change that” instead of “I haven’t changed that yet” – the first is a strong statement, a belief that something will definitely never change, whereas in the second statement the person is open to possibilities of what could happen. Another one might be a keen runner saying, “I’d never be able to run a marathon” instead of “I hope to run a marathon one day”. Or “All my relationships are the same, they never work out”, “The people I meet always end up letting me down” – these are both very strong statements with no room for hope. They could be swapped with, “I used to struggle with relationships”, “I used to meet people who would let me down but now I choose differently”. Saying “used to” helps frame it as something that happened in the past instead of something
happening currently. The examples I have used here are likely to be said casually at first, and then they become the story you tell, and believe about, yourself. This then turns into a limited belief that restricts your possibilities in life, holding you back from what you desire. Negative self-talk can also be horrible things you say about yourself like, “I’m not enough”, “No one loves me”, “I don’t like the way I look” and so on.
Later in the book I’ll ask you to become even more aware of your self-talk and get you on a positive path by constantly reframing any negative self-talk into positive (see page 116). For now I would simply like you to become aware of how you speak about yourself and others and the words you find yourself using a lot about the relationship you want to heal. These words will be very revealing and help you eventually improve your self-talk.
So many everyday issues can be resolved with good, honest and clear communication, whether that’s with others or yourself. Sometimes when I’m working with a couple it’s magical to watch them solve their differences and issues right in front of me by simply being mindful of the words they use. Many problems occur because a person’s ego gets in the way, preventing them from being open and honest, which leads to misunderstanding. Often we might not want to “lose face” – we might fear looking stupid or just need to be right or take the credit for something. When people seek relationship coaching or therapy, they are able to move into a space beyond the ego to find a more neutral common ground where the main aim is to resolve the issue. In this safe space, they can listen with compassion and actually understand where the other person is coming from. Even if they don’t agree, they can usually come to a place of understanding or acceptance. I wrote a whole chapter on ego in my last book Reinvent Me. If you want to read more about whether your ego is getting in the way of your healing and stirring things up for you, check it out.