Becoming Enough

How often do you feel enough? Slim enough, successful enough, loved enough, smart enough, worthy enough, accepted enough…just enough. I’m not talking about intellectually embracing the value of loving yourself unconditionally, but feeling I AM ENOUGH in every cell of your body? That’s right — if you are like many people, the notion that you are good enough is a platitude never to be reached. In fact, it’s the biggest complaint from my clients. I’d like to tell you why this untruth can feel true and what you can do to change your reality.

First, it is important to understand that though the feelings of insecurity might be commonplace, the reasons individuals hold this belief — I am not good enough — are as unique and different as your DNA because it is your individual experiences that tell you it is true. It’s like you’ve been unconsciously accumulating evidence to prove this mind-body fallacy all your life: dad criticized the way I painted the house, my parents divorced because of me, I didn’t get 100% on the math test, I was told my body wasn’t good enough — either through words or deed, I never won a spelling bee, or most unfortunate, someone told me so without any mincing of words.

The accumulation of evidence starts early in life — sometimes without the validity of testing the evidence with the rational mind — and by adulthood, the file cabinet entitled not enough is bulging at the seams.

In the same way we have a file cabinet, we also have a file clerk. The personal file clerk is charged with automatically going to the archives of past experiences in an effort to gain insight into what’s really transpiring in the present moment. When the boss at work declares, “I am disappointed with the outcome of the project”, the file clerk looks for a similar situation which transpired in the past. And, there...in the not good enough cabinet, the file clerk finds a file folder entitled not competent…and immediately informs you how to interpret and feel about today’s experience based on the content in that folder. Of course, the file clerk is also placing this new piece of evidence away for safe keeping.

This reality — that our experiences of today are processed by our internal file clerk — tells us why many well-intentioned and productive strategies don’t solve today’s experience of your not feeling good enough. Things like gratitude, positive affirmations, prayer, or even therapy are effective strategies if they allow you to make more empowering decisions. However, because you haven’t cleaned out the old file cabinets which hold the misguided evidence of your accumulated unworthiness or lack of perfection, the file clerk still has easy admittance to the files you no longer want to access.

Because these files are still available, one day you might make a conscious empowering decision, but the next day still find yourself reverting back to old unconscious behaviors or decisions that don't serve you. This pattern will continue to be your reality until a decision is made to spring clean the disempowering stuff accumulated in your old file cabinets.

Depending on one’s life experiences, the nature and depth of the file archives will obviously differ. But regardless, the process of clearing out old file cabinets is swift and easy compared to standard therapy timeframes. Even for a client who experienced trauma early in her life, the feeling that I AM ENOUGH and THERE IS ENOUGH returned after just two full-day sessions using my favorite healing modalities.

And yet, there are many paths to healing. So if you want to feel the sense of I AM ENOUGH at the cellular level, start the process of clearing old debris. There are all kinds of productive and instant healing strategies to expedite the process, all of which I’ve experienced: energy work, exploring past lives, emotional freedom technique, breath therapy, and of course, my personal favorites — the various awakening therapies I use in my practice.  I promise you, living in a world of enough is worth the exploration.

Unlearning to Wholeness

We were all born whole, perfect, and full of divine perfection. Then life happens…and little by little…experience by experience…we unlearn how to plug into this natural state of being.

I can still remember the first time I heard someone declare we are already whole and perfect. I was in the early stages of my own awakening. My internal response was something like this, “Not me sista. You must be thinking about someone else who didn’t live my life.” Oh, don’t get me wrong – I wanted to feel the wholeness, but it felt like there was an ocean between me and those words.

Part of the problem for me was that no one could tell me HOW to reconnect with that sense of being. Instead, I was being asked to regurgitate someone else's words, philosophy, affirmations, beliefs and wait for them to become my own. After years of searching for how to reconnect, I was incredibly self-aware and grateful to finally understand the philosophical benefits of loving myself the way I am. However, it was still similar to hearing someone describe the details of their favorite meal over and over again: it was intimately familiar, but I’d never tasted it myself.

Until, that is, I found the answer to what was blocking my ability to plug into THAT feeling. It was my mind. For me, self-awareness, forgiveness work, meditation - even prayer - wasn’t enough. Meditation just stopped the water in my head from swirling long enough to allow the sediment to fall to the bottom, but the moment my butt left the pillow the debris was flying again. For me personally, it became obvious I needed to remove the sediment and create a clearing.

It was my own training in NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming) and hypnotherapy that allowed me to discover what creates the sediment – unresolved negative emotions and limiting beliefs. Our beliefs send direct neurological commands to the body and, over time, give birth to programs and strategies that aren't serving us. So most of us will need to unlearn strategies to reconnect to the sense of self-love, and the easiest way to do that is by letting go of old beliefs.

Through my training I learned how to remove the sediment one limiting belief at a time…I’m not good enough…I don’t deserve happiness or success…I’m not smart enough…and I could feel myself getting more congruent. It wasn’t a feeling of wholeness, but more a sense of comfort with who I am. And then one Saturday morning things changed radically. The feeling of congruency transformed into a sense self-love I didn’t know existed.

I was on my unmade bed on a Saturday morning letting go of a seemingly benign limiting belief - I have to do things on my own because I can’t count on other people. As I released the belief and extracted the lesson using the techniques I use today with my clients, a new belief came into my awareness. It rocked me to my core.

You are never alone; God is always with you.

This notion of God seemed profound because God wasn't part of my language. In fact, I'd spent my whole life avoiding the g-word. And yet, this new belief viscerally vibrated throughout my entire body. So much so, it brought me to tears with the trueness of the statement. And, in that moment, I could feel the wholeness and connectedness of divine perfection that is also a part of me. That belief was the last mental obstacle standing in the way of knowing what wholeness feels like.

And so, the unlearning continues...

Instant Emotional Healing. Really?

We want fast food, speedy customer service, instant messaging and expedited payments. And yet, there is something about the familiar that wants us to stay connected to Freud’s old paradigm that healing, forgiveness, and letting go of old beliefs is an arduous task that will take years. So, when I declare I offer a new type of coaching that allows people to achieve more of what they want...faster...some folks get skeptical. And, that is exactly what happened at the TEDx event last night.

I was at the top of the Space Needle with seventy-five leaders who share my passion for innovation. The ideas and business cards were moving so quickly around the high-top cocktail tables we could have been at a speed dating event. Early in the evening I found myself in an engaging conversation with a consultant about his work. By the time the topic of my vocation surfaced, there was already a lovely rapport established. But when I shared what I do for a living, you would have thought I grew a third eye in those brief moments.

After some silence he said, “I believe in what you do”, but his dodging eyes and tapping hand told me something entirely different. He eventually shared he was a trained counselor by trade, which explained a lot.

The traditional therapeutic community doesn't believe in the notion of instant healing and making change easier. The field of psychology is slow to adopt the notion that we can heal, grow, and evolve more quickly with new therapies. Again, it’s interesting to me, because we love the whole premise of FAST in our culture. I wonder why it doesn't apply to the healing community. Instead, we want painstaking self-awareness to carry all the water for change. I'm here to tell you that self-awareness is the invitation to show up differently, but it's not always enough to create sustainable change.

I have to admit I was a reluctant advocate myself until a few years ago. At the time, I was acutely aware of my own themes in life. I had already come to terms with my lifetime of quick, ungraceful exits. I knew every job I left in the past was an attempt to avoid some inevitable disappointment that was outside my conscious awareness. I understood that abandoning my children was an inexcusable attempt to save them from myself. I had come to grips with the cruelness of leaving great loves while the houselights were down during intermission. But the awareness wasn't enough to change the feeling I still held in my body that I didn't deserve happiness.

I can still remember when I released undeserving from my body. I wish I could declare it unfolded in the solitude of an Ashram, but the recollection of the hotel carpet with its grotesquely over-sized flowers of fuchsia, yellow and orange still reminds me otherwise. I was in a crowded hotel conference room attending a training session for one of the healing modalities I use today in my practice. I know - lacking cinematic quality, huh? But alas, the irony of the location confirms you don't have to be in India to change the course of your life.

In a period of 15 minutes, I untethered from that old belief, captured my lessons, and experienced a sense of self-forgiveness that is still incredibly humbling. I felt lighter, at peace, and knew immediately I wanted to offer this gift to others. More important, I want to release all the other beliefs that weren't serving me. With each belief I released, I was invited to show up differently in the world.

And yet, I know it can be easy to scoff at the notion that we can resolve negative emotions, release old beliefs, and take a quick ride to instant healing if you haven't experienced it first-hand. But I have my own experiences that allow me to be unapologetic for not conforming to the framework of the larger healing community. For every person who does not believe or understand what I do, there are others who are deeply curious and courageously ready. My job is not to convince anyone, but to meet people where they are.