Soulshine

“… I leaned into my longing. I felt the sadness and emptiness in my soul that came from years of buying into the story that I am not good enough, something I’d been trying to avoid for a long time.” Chris Michaels, The Power of You In The Power of You , Chris Michaels refers to the belief of “I’m not good enough” as being like a beast in the center of your being. Anyone who has ever suffered from addictive behaviors is familiar with this beast. It’s the Beast of inherent shame and there’s no feeling on earth as bad. Many of us have tried desperately to tame this beast through our addictive acting-out. We may have used alcohol, drugs, sugar, shopping, people, gambling, sex or many other self-destructive forms of behavior to quiet the beast. All of them failed time and again—and they always will fail. Addiction is a means of running from the Beast. We never conquer anything we run from. Once we start running, we never stop because the beast is always one step ...

What’s missing from your life? If the answer isn’t “you,” in other words, if you’ve been showing up for yourself, but there’s still a sense that something’s missing, what is it and how do you find out? A good way to start is to look to your feelings. What makes you sad? If we feel great sadness about something, it could very likely be the missing piece. For example, often times the missing piece is hidden because we aren’t being truthful with ourselves. Maybe we’re comfortable with befriending ourselves now and we’re happy spending time alone with ourselves. We’re busy at work, probably busier than we’d really like to be. We keep in touch with family and we make time to have dinner or a cup of coffee with friends here and there. Everything seems good on the surface, but now that we’re really getting in touch with our feelings, we realize that there is a deep sadness inside. It’s a sadness we’ve been ignoring because it represents a difficult truth. And that difficult truth i...