Get Out of Your (s)Hell by Being Who You Are

Life isn’t about rewards. It’s about being who you are. But if you still want a really great reward in life, look at it this way: Be who you are and allow other people to be who they are. There’s no greater reward for we humans than being exactly who God made each of us to be.

Stop existing in the hollow shell of who you “should” be. Many people are stuck there. They spend a lifetime hiding inside the false shell of you “should be” a good boy or good girl. This shell requires that you deny your dark side. Family, society and church created this shell (remove the “s” and notice that the word becomes “hell”). They decided who you “should” be. Then they told you how to act, what to wear, what to say, what to believe, who to trust, etc. And they often used fear, guilt and shame to coerce you into conformity with their will.

As adults, we have to grow beyond this (s)hell. We have to take responsibility for our lives. We have to decide what’s acceptable and what’s not acceptable—for us. This means we need to work at accepting our dark sides by bringing them into some sort of balance with our light sides. Balance requires that we explore and embrace our dark sides; learn from them all they have to teach us about the “real” us; and then take that knowledge and integrate it into being the completeness of who we truly are.

Life is constantly changes and we need to change with it. We need to grow beyond our childhood (s)hells by growing into the completeness of who God created us to be. Growth requires risk taking. We have to learn to think outside of the (s)hell we’ve been comfortable in. We need to try new things, especially those things we have always had a deep curiosity about or passion for, but were too afraid to try. If we’ve been afraid of dipping our toes in water, maybe we need to jump in feet first, laugh and splash about with total freedom. If we’ve been afraid to travel and open-up to the completeness of the world, maybe we need to spread our wings and meet life at its many doors. Or if we’ve been afraid to strut our stuff at work, maybe we need to open up, express our creative ideas and tell others to move over—we want part of the limelight now.

Express yourself. Express your “true” self, that is. Flaunt your perfections and imperfections. Embrace those who embrace you and let the rest of the world go on spinning as it chooses. It’s better to know who loves you for the “real” you. And it’s better to know it NOW. Those who loved the “fake” you may attempt to guilt and shame you into going back inside your (s)hell, but that’s OK. Treat them with compassion. Pray for them and for others who also choose to remain in their (s)hell. And if these (s)hell people choose to cut you off for being the “real” you, allow them to do so. Allow them to go be forever “fake” with someone else. The real loss will be theirs, not yours.

Embrace your Higher Power. Embrace your dark and light sides. Find balance. Be yourself. Express yourself. And allow your soul to shine!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

No One Can Calm Your Codependent Crazies, But You

Image
Ah, the codependent crazies. Those needy, needy feelings. I remember well the deep emotional pain in the pit of my stomach: The throbbing sting of shame, fear, loneliness and anxious desperation. Those feelings that are like fingernails on the blackboard of your soul. They eat you alive from within as they dig deeper and deeper into the black hole of your inner-emptiness. Yes, I remember them well. And I remember evenings of mental and emotional insanity-- squirming with a magazine, pacing back and forth, indulging in chocolate, chasing up and down the stairs hoping the doorbell would ring, and staring endlessly at the telephone for a sign of hope. All I needed was a call from my false higher power; a call that would help me to know that I was OK, that I was needed, that I was worth thinking about in some good way. I was dying to be emotionally caressed on the head like a poodle desperate for the attention of his master. And certainly I had made that other person into my mas...
Read more

Happiness is Something We Cultivate and Share

Who makes you happy? In reality, no one can make you happy. People in your life can enhance your happiness through sharing your interests. Or they can add to your frustrations by pushing your buttons. But no one can be responsible for your happiness or your misery—aside from you. One of the biggest problems for codependents is that we too often enter relationships looking for everlasting happiness. We expect that the person we choose to attach our dreams to should be responsible for making us happy. In our minds, we fantasize that he/she will be focused solely on us, will spend every waking hour with us and will do everything in his/her power to insure that we are as happy as we can possibly be. In other words, we assume this person will meet all of our mental, emotional, physical and spiritual needs in the same way that we plan to meet all of his/her needs. In our little dream world we will smother each other with attention and we will both drip with the honey of happiness. R...
Read more

Where There Is Kindness, There Is Goodness

Image
Author’s Note: The next few meditations will be from a retreat I directed recently called The Good News According to Disney . If you aren’t familiar with the films that are referenced, I’d suggest to take time to see them and to look for the deeper meaning within them. Many people today still live by the biblical adage “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” They actually believe that they will be at peace if they achieve revenge or restitution for any mishap that has befallen them at the hands of another. They believe they will reclaim their personal power once they have achieved their revenge, but this is impossible. Disney’s Cinderella (2015) reveals the true secret to owning one’s personal power and to retaining it no matter what we experience in life: “Have courage and be kind.” On the surface this motto looks a bit simple and wimpy. But in reality, it holds great power. That power comes from the heart of a person, or in this case Ella, who sees the world not a...
Read more

Become the Person You Want to Spend Your Life With Everyday

Image
I really don’t have to say much about the above quote. It says it all and it’s so true. We are too often taught faulty ways of thinking as children. So many of us get the wrong message at very young ages: Love is about finding the right person to love you. Looking back I realize I wasted many years trying to find that “right” person— the one who could love me into loving myself— instead of trying to BE that “right” person myself. It never occurred to me that I needed to love myself, nurture myself and accept myself enough to become the right person— the person I really needed most in my life. After all, what is my life without me? Now I know that I’m what’s been missing from my own life for years. My life is empty without me and without my spiritual Higher Power. This is true for all of us.  Once We find ourselves, become the “right” person God intended us to be, and become the person we want to spend the rest of our lives with, then we attract others into our lives who ca...
Read more