Soulshine

Freedom from shame means being “on our guard” or aware of our feelings at all times. It means being able to catch ourselves when we are being swept down a dark alley of emotional pain fueled by shame. When we are aware of our shameful feelings, we are able to make a powerful choice between addictive acting out, or facing the feelings. When we choose to face the feelings, we can challenge the ugly thoughts that fuel them, and we can take our personal power back from shame. Facing our feelings requires that we be “courageous” enough to embrace them. It also requires that we be “strong” enough to ask for the help we may need to feel safe enough to fully recover our personal power. We know that help is available to us. We can seek help through our Higher Power and we can seek help from family and friends that we are able to trust. We can also seek help through professionals, like therapist, spiritual directors or clergy, and we can seek help through support groups. If we are ...

What does it take to be happy with yourself? What does it take to love the person God created you to be? TOTAL SELF-ACCEPTANCE. Complete, unconditional self-acceptance is the doorway into self-love. Self-acceptance opens the flood-gates and it allows self-love to flow in and naturally fill-up your inner-emptiness. Self-acceptance means we have to become aware of, dismantle and let go of all the judgments we have made against ourselves over the years. It also means that we have to begin living our lives authentically, which requires us to throw-out all of our “SHOULDS.” Shoulds and negative self-judgments go hand in hand and they cause of to feel shame and guilt about our natural selves. They force us into living through idealized, false selves that betray who we really are and make us feel even more inadequate. “I should look like this” (You look just fine as you are!), “I shouldn’t act like that” (People who really love you will see beyond your behavior and love you anyw...

A life without expectations is a life lived in freedom. Expectations are nothing more than the demands we place on ourselves, others and life—and they gum-up our lives with disappointment and misery. Expectations bind us to many of the wants in our lives that can never be fulfilled. When our expectations aren’t met, when our wants don’t materialize, we are left bitter and resentful and angry. Expectations are head-games. They’re how we put our wants into motion in our minds. We expect that we should never make any mistakes at work; or we expect that our boyfriend should know that we want a certain bracelet for our birthday; or we expect that eventually we will meet the right person and live happily ever after. Sometimes we expect that people should always agree with us or that everyone should like us. And we expect all of these sorts of things because we mistakenly believe that our happiness is dependent upon them. So when our expectations fall through the floor, so does ...

“A life lived in fear is a life half lived.” Spanish Proverb Living a life based in fear is as normal as breathing air for many people. And this is probably twice as true for those of us who have addictive personalities. As children. we embraced one major fear—“I’m not good enough”— and then found ourselves buried under an avalanche of life-destroying anxiety and worry. It wasn’t long before “I’m not good enough” developed into a mile-long laundry list of all the many reasons why we weren’t acceptable people. All of these fears were then further complicated by another major fear: Fear of abandonment. Once we deemed ourselves as unacceptable, it didn’t take us long to realize that we now had deep-dark secrets we needed to hide from others. After all, if people we loved found out just how defective we were, they’d say a swift “Goodbye” and never look back as they quickly ran away from us—or so we imagined to our great detriment. So life became on long series of fear-d...

“Healing doesn’t mean the damage never existed. Healing means that the damage no longer controls our lives.” Anonymous Healing and forgiveness go hand in hand. We never have complete healing of the damage that’s been done to us until we reach a point of acceptance, of letting go and of forgiveness. Acceptance means we admit we can’t change what happened   and that we don’t have to be the lifetime victim of what happened. Letting go of the damage frees us from our victim mentality and provides us with internal-peace.   Letting go allows us to take our power back from the damage and the person who inflicted it. Once we let go, we’ll find we no longer feel resentful toward that person. Instead, we feel empowered to stand up to that person and to take our power back from him/her in positive ways. So, I’m not talking about revenge here. I’m talking about coming to the realization that the person who hurt us is in some unhealed-way hurting too. His/her unhealed bro...

"I want to hold the hand inside you. I want to take a breath that's true." Mazzy Star, Fade Into You Lasting relationships have strong foundations, and those foundations are built gradually from within. They’re built by two people who are willing to be sincerely vulnerable—emotionally naked, completely honest and genuinely truthful-- before each other. They’re built by people who recognize their individual limitations, and own them the same way they own their personal assets. These are people who honestly say to each other “Here I am. This is the REAL me. Love me as I am and I will love you as you are. Together, let’s build a strong relationship that will weather the sandstorms of our shortcomings and thrive on the rainbows of our strengths. Accept me as I am or walk away. I don’t waste my time with fakes.” Before such lasting relationships can be built, however, both persons involved must be emotionally mature; meaning they’ve taken the time to go soul-deep inside the...