Zette

Feb 06 2022

Episode 24 The Story of Self-Care

Self-care isn’t just something you do…. or don’t do. It’s an expression of the story you have about yourself. It can feel like just one more thing to add to your list of ‘have to’s’ or it can be woven seamlessly into your daily experience, creating greater sense of well-being and energy. Here are some downloads to help you get started right now.

Download your free Intermittent Intensity Walking guide HERE.

Kirtan Kriya Meditation Soundtrack & Instructions HERE.

2-Minute Body Sense Meditation HERE.

“Look deeply and with kind curiosity into these mirrors of your own Soul. Embrace and appreciate the wisdom they hold. Listen from that still place in the center of your being. Hear the call of the Love that lies beneath beckoning you to come home.”

My book, Love Lies Beneath: How Reclaiming My Soul Through Story Became The Secret To Healing My Heart is available in paperback and as a Kindle at Amazon.

Transcript

Transcripts are approximations

Welcome to Love Lies Beneath. I’m Zette Harbour.

I’m glad to have you here. Do you feel like stress, fear, or pain take up way too much of your energy? Have you wondered if you’ll ever be free of that heaviness of your past? Do you long to feel as good on the inside as your life looks on the outside? In this podcast, you’ll discover the story of who you really are and how to set yourself free together.

We’re going to travel into those wild spaces of our inner landscapes and dive deeply into the rich soil of our lives. Reclaiming soul through story and healing. Our hearts. My book Love Lies Beneath is the. Be sure to subscribe to this podcast. So you don’t miss any of this enriching journey. And now let the adventure begin.

In Episode 36, I share the section of my book called The Story Of Self Care. And we’ll explore more deeply the variety of options that are available, how simple and easy it can be to begin to direct this loving energy toward yourself in a way that deepens your experience of who you are here to be. And really, you know, we often think of self-care as, oh, I’m burnt out.

I need a break. I’m stressed. Something’s wrong. I’ve pushed myself too far. You know, all those signs and signals that you have pushed yourself too far, those are real, and those are true. And it is really essential to be able to pivot and shift into a self-care mode in those moments. And then there is the idea of self-care, not as a kind of emergency medicine for when you have stretched yourself too thin, but as a way of being in relationship with yourself, where you are acknowledging that there is an ebb and a flow, a give and a take. There are currents of life energy within you. And it is equally important for you to contribute to those currents of energy as it is for you to be able to sail along in your life on those currents

The Story Of Self-Care

However you go about reclaiming your Soul through Story and healing your Heart, it is vital that you include self-care. Your body has been the archive of all of your mental, emotional, and spiritual wounds. It carries the memories within it; some buried more deeply than others. As a massage therapist in the early 2000’s, I was never surprised but would always marvel at how the body would release these stories during a bodywork session. It happened almost every time.

I would be working on a particular area, say the right leg. Suddenly, my client would recall an old story and start talking about it. The memory seemed to come out of nowhere but always had some relationship to what was going on physically. I witnessed, time and again, the faithfulness of the body in being the keeper of these unreconciled moments. It was not unusual for a specific problem in the body to be directly connected to an unattended past hurt.

This is why, as you begin your journey into the land of your Soul through your stories, it is essential to make choices about how you will honor and care for your body. In turn, it has the power to allow you to express what you find there. Creativity, movement, nurturing, and manifestation all rely on the body. Give yourself permission to include this caring partner in your transformation.

It can be completely natural to be uncomfortable investing in self-care if you have unhealed wounds. This is why it is so crucial that you are not alone with your journey. Whether you join a group or work with an individual, make the choice to be supported. Start small, go slow, and press the pause button as often as you need to. Be compassionate, curious, and forgiving of yourself.

Start with just one self-care activity and build up your repertoire. If you hear yourself saying that you do not have the time or the money or… Those are signs of resistance and are completely normal. One way to take the air out of them is to have an accountability partner. This is someone who respects the value and uniqueness of your process while you move through it.

There are many choices for self-care. Some will work better for you than others. The most important feature is the space they create. Does the practice make it possible for you to stretch and breathe a bit more? If not, decide to say no to anything that creates tightness or makes your life feel smaller.

Here are some of the practices that I have found to be among the most important for my journey. They do not have to take a great deal of time. They are low to no-cost. Most importantly, they focus on creating room for you to hear yourself with gentleness and acceptance. Start with the one or ones that you can begin today. And since the current demands on your time will not disappear just because you need them to, be sure to set time in your calendar for your self-care.

Daily Meditation

Centering your mind each morning will enable you to release unwanted mental clutter while restoring emotional balance. This can be as brief as 2 minutes with a Body Sense Meditation. Research has shown that a daily twelve-minute Kirtan Kriya Meditation brings many physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual benefits.

Journaling

Daily writing gives you a reliable space within which to allow the different aspects of yourself to come together and communicate. This is, first and foremost, a listening practice. You will develop your ability to listen, allow, and receive the thoughts and feelings in need of your attention and compassion.

Brain Supplements

Dr. Amen has developed a line of excellent brain-healthy supplements that address your brain’s specific nutritional needs. Learn about the supplements that focus on supporting the brain areas responsible for processing fearful, painful experiences. These will bolster you as you explore and reclaim those parts of your Soul waiting to be reunited with you. (BrainMD.com)

Walking

Take time each day for a walk, especially outdoors. There is an easy and fun practice that will optimize the benefits from a short, 30-minute walk called Intermittent Intensity Walking. Incorporating this technique into your walk will give you focus and a sense of accomplishment. Bonus: it is unbelievably simple and highly effective.

Ask For Help

It is important to know the difference between the types of support available to help you on your journey. A qualified professional will offer insight into whether you are a candidate for coaching or therapy. These two professions serve seemingly similar but exceedingly different purposes. Learn what you need to know.

You may have other forms of self-care that you are feeling really connected with that you have experience with that have given you the results that allow you to have a more expansive experience of your life. And I would love for you to share those in the comments or in a message to me.

In the show notes, there will be links, first to a two-minute body sense meditation that I recorded. And then also the soundtrack for a Kirtan Kriya meditation. Basically, it will guide you through it simply with the sound of a bell, letting you know when to shift and there will be instructions to how to perform that. That particular kind of meditation has actually been studied by physicians and scientific researchers.

They check in with the brain function of the subjects performing this meditation, and they have found really tangible and quite positive benefits from this. And it’s a beautifully simple meditation. It’s not a silent meditation, which I know can be really tricky for a lot of folks, myself included. And so it includes a sound and it includes motion with your hands.

And that really, I think creates a full-body meditation experience. One of the tricky things about moving into meditation can be that if you are someone who is very disconnected from your body and you begin a meditation practice that at least to you looks and feels mental, then it can take, it can make it more difficult to begin to connect to your body.

And your body is where so much of your wisdom is stored. As I mentioned, your stories have found places to live inside your body in different areas. And so when you are able to create a centering practice and for each of us, that may look different. If you, when you’re able to create that centering practice when you can include your sensory awareness and your emotional intelligence and sounds, and movement, then you, you may find that that’s a much more accessible as well as enriching meditation form.

Now, Journaling has been around for a long time and it’s no mystery. It probably doesn’t even seem all that earth-shaking to talk about journaling. And you know, when you think about journaling and myself included, when I think, oh, I should, maybe I should journal about that. It doesn’t ever feel like it’s going to be as transformative as it actually becomes when I do it.

I also mention Brain Supplements from Dr. Daniel Amen and Amen Clinics. There is so much information on his website. I have found it to be a great source of information, expertise. They are dedicated to the quality of their supplements. And I have found that they are quite affordable, which is not always the case with supplements, especially a high-quality ones. So I’ve included a link to BrainMD.com so that you can check it out there as well.

Then I talk about Walking. And there again, you’re bringing your whole body into it. If you would like to have it be a little more of a game, the technique that I offer is called intermittent intensity walking. I learned about this from a variety of sources and this is my interpretation of that. There are a lot of studies that this actually increases your metabolism and I find, and others that I’ve shared it with it have found that it’s it sort of gamifies the walk a little bit and makes increases your sense of enjoyment. So I highly recommend that. There will be a link to a downloadable PDF.

And then Ask for Help. This can be one of our toughest self-care actions. Number one, we’re not sure who to ask for help from. Often, family members who may love us and wish well for us, they have so many of their own filters that they truly may not be able to give you the kind of objective

and conscious and compassionate insight and reflection that a qualified professional can. I myself have had both therapy and coaching and find tremendous value in both.

Becoming A Coach

My decision to become a coach is that it enables me to create an environment where my client gets to connect more deeply to themselves in a very friendly, safe way. And it’s less about you’re broken, there’s something wrong, let’s fix it. And more about, there’s a lot of richness here. Let’s bring it all out. Let’s set it all out on the table in front of us. Let’s take a look at where it all came from. Let’s appreciate the power and beauty of each of these people, experiences, conditions, feelings, emotions that you’re having.

Let’s bring them all out, all these parts of you and create an opportunity for powerful communication, deeper partnering, joy, and truly, love. So I invite you to choose any, or all of the links provided, try them out. See, which ones feel the most enriching to you. And, you know, remember that if you have a message from inside yourself and the voice is telling you something that makes you feel like you have to shrink, or that you have fewer choices or less room, that you feel more constricted, you know, that that is the voice of your fear .

And if the voice you hear tells you something that lets you feel more expansiveness, that you feel you have more choices, that you can breathe with greater ease, that is the voice of your intuition. Follow her. She will always lead you exactly where you need to go. And she knows everything about you and she loves you.

She always has, and she always will.

I’m Zette Harbour. This is Love Lies Beneath. I hope you subscribe to this podcast and check out all the episodes. All the guest interviews. I hope that you visit LoveLiesBeneath.com. There’s a link in the description to the show notes.

And if you’re curious about how you can weave self-care into your life in a way that doesn’t require you to feel like you have one more obligation, reach out, set up a Virtual Coffee Date. I am happy to chat with you. It’s about 20 minutes. I get to learn more about who you are and offer what I can to help you on your way, in your journey.

Go raibh míle maith agat!

Feb 04 2022

Episode 23 Reclaim Your Soul, Heal Your Brain

It may seem like an unlikely partnership, and yet, your brain’s health and well-being are directly connected to returning to the wholeness of who you are, your Soul. Fortunately, 100,000’s of thousands of years of evolution have fine-tuned systems that can be accessed and optimized.

Download your free Wisdom of the Body guide HERE.

My book, Love Lies Beneath: How Reclaiming My Soul Through Story Became The Secret To Healing My Heart is available in paperback and as a Kindle at Amazon.

Transcript

Transcripts are approximations

Welcome to Love Lies Beneath. I’m Zette Harbour.

In episode 35, I share a section of my book called Reclaim Your Soul, Heal Your Brain. At first glance, it might seem like an unlikely partnership, the Soul and the brain. And yet, each plays a beautiful and powerful role in allowing you to really experience who it is you’re here to be and have the freedom and confidence to shine that beautiful light that is yours and yours alone, out into the world.

Reclaim Your Soul, Heal Your Brain

It may surprise you to learn that the process of reclaiming your Soul through Story to heal your Heart has some strong physiological foundations.

As you reclaim your Soul, you not only heal your Heart, you also heal your brain. Every story you carry within you, whether conscious or unconscious, affects how you think, feel, and act. Your brain is the hub of all of those operations. It takes in all the available information and filters it through your story about yourself, the world, and your place in it. What matches gets to stay and leads the way.

Anything that disrupts the status quo of belief will be held up, measured, and jettisoned. It is as if the brain were putting together pieces of a puzzle. The stories you have are the picture on the outside of the box. Your brain will only look for and lock in on the pieces to create that image. So, if your picture on the outside of the box of your life includes unconscious and unhealed wounds, your brain will sort for the puzzle pieces that keep those stories intact.

Give your brain a clearer picture and it will find what you need to make your life richer and more fulfilling.

Reclaiming your Soul through Story will also change how your brain processes negative experiences. This is because trauma stimulates certain parts of the brain to be overactive such as the basal ganglia/insula, the limbic system, and the anterior cingulate gyrus. In fact, there is a particular pattern of overactivity in these three areas specifically associated with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Using Single-Photon Emission Computerized Topography, or SPECT for short, Dr. Daniel Amen identifies a consistent display of overactivity that shows up as a diamond plus pattern in these scans.

Chronic trauma and the emotional wounding that it creates keeps that negative stimulation going until it becomes habitual. At that point, your brain will no longer understand why and how to turn it off. The process of healing through Story can allow those triggering mechanisms to be reset. This will not be an overnight, magic bean type of solution, and it is important to give yourself support. No matter how you choose to address and heal your painful, rejected parts of yourself, it will take time.

Just the act of thinking about your stories will not be enough to give you the kind of brain health support you need. While your brain is not who you are, it definitely affects how you are. Every thought, emotion, and action either originates or is processed through the brain. Even the things you feel in your gut will be sent up to the brain for your conscious mind to make some sense of it. That is why it is vital to make sure your brain has everything it needs to function at its best.

Alternate Perspectives

“Every human being has a true, genuine, authentic self and that trauma is that disconnection from it, and the healing is the reconnection with it.”
Dr Gabor Maté

You have the power to heal your connection to your true, genuine, authentic self. While the traumas from your Original Self-Betrayals and Original Woundings seem to be in your way, they are, in fact, lighting your path. They contain all of the wisdom of how to find your way home to your Original Self. Your Soul has always known what you need for this restorative work. Listen to her as you consider what to choose to support you in reconnecting to the Love that lies beneath.

Working with unhealed wounds and the stories created in response to them can take many forms. There are a variety of tools out there that are pointing in this same direction. Each one is aimed at healing the thoughts and feelings you have about yourself. The most effective modalities will be centered around compassion and mindfulness, along with intentional self-care. Follow the links below to learn more about any of the ones that call to you.

Neuro Linguistic Programming

‘NLP training is like learning how to become fluent in the language of your mind so that the ever-so-helpful “server” that is your unconscious will finally understand what you actually want out of life.

NLP is the study of excellent communication–both with yourself and with others. It was developed by modeling excellent communicators and therapists who got results with their clients. NLP is a set of tools and techniques, but it is so much more than that. It is an attitude and a methodology of knowing how to achieve your goals and get results.’

What is NLP?

Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing

‘EMDR is a psychotherapy that enables people to heal from the symptoms and emotional distress resulting from disturbing life experiences. Repeated studies show that by using EMDR therapy, people can experience the benefits of psychotherapy that once took years to make a difference. It is widely assumed that severe emotional pain requires a long time to heal. EMDR therapy shows that the mind can, in fact, heal from psychological trauma much as the body recovers from physical trauma.

A study found that 100% of the single-trauma victims and 77% of multiple trauma victims no longer were diagnosed with PTSD after only six 50-minute sessions.’

Archetypal Psychology – James Hillman

‘Archetypal psychology bases its therapeutic proposal on the exploration of images rather than on their explanation. It talks about being aware and attentive to these images until they’re as clear as they can be and contemplating them carefully until our observation creates a meaning. All of this gives place to a therapeutic process that Hillman called “the creation of the soul.

Metaphoric images are its first unlearned language, which provides the poetic basis of mind, making possible communication between all people and all things by means of metaphors.’

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

‘CBT places an emphasis on helping individuals learn to be their own therapists. Through exercises in the session as well as “homework” exercises outside of sessions, patients/clients are helped to develop coping skills, whereby they can learn to change their own thinking, problematic emotions, and behavior.

CBT is based on several core principles, including:

Psychological problems are based, in part, on faulty or unhelpful ways of thinking and on learned patterns of unhelpful behavior. People suffering from psychological problems can learn better ways of coping with them, thereby relieving their symptoms and becoming more effective in their lives.’

Tapping or Emotional Freedom Technique

‘EFT is a practical self-help method that involves using the fingers to gently tap on the body’s acupuncture points along the meridian lines of Chinese medicine. It is often referred to as ‘EFT Tapping’ or simply as ‘Tapping.’ The therapeutic effects of this technique are recognized around the world. One can use EFT tapping for anxiety, weight loss issues, pain, stress, and many other issues.

EFT Tapping helps us tune in to the negative patterns that we form around our uncomfortable thoughts, feelings, or troubling memories. We ‘tap’ on the correct pressure points while bringing the thoughts or emotions into consciousness.’ https://eftinternational.org/discover-eft-tapping/what-is-eft-tapping/

Positive Psychology

‘Positive psychology is the scientific study of what makes life most worth living. It is a scientific approach to studying human thoughts, feelings, and behavior, with a focus on strengths instead of weaknesses, building the good in life instead of repairing the bad, and taking the lives of average people up to “great” instead of focusing solely on moving those who are struggling up to “normal.”

Positive psychology focuses on the positive events and influences in life, including:

Positive experiences (like happiness, joy, inspiration, and love).

Positive states and traits (like gratitude, resilience, and compassion).

Positive institutions (applying positive principles within entire organizations and institutions).

As a field, positive psychology spends much of its time thinking about topics like character strengths, optimism, life satisfaction, happiness, well-being, gratitude, compassion (as well as self-compassion), self-esteem and self-confidence, hope, and elevation.’

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy

‘In its most basic form, ACT helps people accept their difficulties and move on, leaving the negativities behind.

Acceptance – of miseries, failures, and ailments.

Commitment – to changing for the better and following the right chain of actions.

ACT accepts so-called ‘abnormality’ as part of the human psyche and lays more emphasis on change through acceptance. The myriad of ACT techniques and interventions develop ‘psychological flexibility’ or ‘mental plasticity,’ resulting in positive actions and life choices.’

In this section, I share some of the practices and processes I have found personally valuable and helpful. There are many more, and you may have experienced a number of them yourself when it comes to reclaiming your soul through story and healing your brain. The most important practice is the one that gives you the greatest results.

And it isn’t even important that it be just one or that there be the one. It’s really more like having a balanced diet. There are so many different doorways into the soul and there are so many different systems that our body has evolved with and holds within us that can support the brain in shifting how it processes, thoughts, feelings, and actions.

And so it’s really important to allow yourself to consider receiving the nourishment from a rainbow of processes and practices. The one thing about all practices that support the restoration of the self is when you can identify how as a being, we have evolved for those systems to increase our wellbeing.

And when you can optimize a system, that’s been in place for hundreds of thousands of years, and that was designed to enhance your experience of life from the very beginning, that’s when you’re going to find that it’s, it’s going to be a little easier. You’re going to have fewer obstacles. It’s not going to require as much effort.

So particularly something like EFT, which draws upon this extraordinary system of power points and energy lines in the body and opens up the doors to this energy that your body already contains within it. This is, this is the part that I think thrills me the most about these different things is all these rich gifts are inside just waiting for us to, pardon the pun, tap into them. And so the more fluent we are in the gifts and richness of the systems that our body already contains, like the ability to create imagery, that is a natural human gift. We can all experience imagery in our minds. Now I understand there’s probably some folks who have a harder time seeing imagery in their mind, and that is related to either brain functioning or conditioning.

It’s In Your Design

But essentially the human brain is designed to be able to imagine things. In fact, in the book Homo sapiens, the author puts forth this theory that the reason that homo sapiens thrived when other species did not, for instance, Neanderthals or the other types of hominids that were on the planet at close to, or the same time, his theory is that.

As homo sapiens, it was our ability to create a fiction that enabled them to really bring groups together, focused on the same vision and it’s, and he really goes into detail pointing out the difference between being able to transmit information, which he believes that all the hominids were capable of doing, you know, sharing, you know, information about how tools were used or how, you know, food was gathered or prepared or all, all kinds of information that would have been necessary for survival.

And so that was valuable and important and helpful. And yet what made sapiens sort of breakthrough to become this highly successful species was this capacity to engage others in believing in, and wanting to put personal energy toward a story. And so our ability, our capacity to create story is truly this extraordinary gift.

And it’s one that is, is so ordinary. This is just like the ability to breathe, right. Or the ability to digest food. It’s easy to overlook and it’s easy to assume that it’s just going to happen on its own, but just like digestion. If you don’t pay attention to what you put into your digestion or how you care for your digestion, you’re not going to have great nutrition or feel nourished or have a happy body. And so your story diet is the same in the sense that you have the capacity to give your mind, to engage your brain in the creation of stories that expand your sense of who you are. You know, this reminds me of, uh, often when I’m talking to a client, we’ll talk about listening to their intuition, as opposed to fear, you know, we’ve all had that experience of hearing a voice inside and it says, either things are bad, don’t do that or go this way or stop.

Or it says, here is the way follow that. And. When we’re first learning to tap into this powerful wisdom that is within us, it can be a little confusing, which voice is, right? Is it the voice that tells me to not do it? Or is it the voice that tells me to do it? And so what I encourage them to do is to check inside and feel which voice creates a sense of expansion within them, which voice increases their possibilities and the feeling of satisfaction and which voice shrinks and constricts, their possibilities and the voice that shrinks and constricts their possibilities, that is the voice of fear, the voice that expands that beautiful power to experience and express in life. That is your intuition. That’s how you can put these biological systems to work, to support you in evolving into who you’re here to be. And all of these practices that I share in the section of the book, they all support that restoration of that connection to your really beautifully powerful, intuitive, wise self.

We all have her. And in response to external conditions that felt threatening, we shut down our connection to her little by little, sometimes, sometimes all at once. Right? Sometimes it was just a matter of letting it be unused and get rusty. So bringing these processes, you know, allowing your images to reveal their wisdom to you, tapping on these energy lines and points that enrich the flow in your own body, using eye movements, which is another evolutionary biological powerhouse for us, and many more, they all are ways for you to add variety to your soul’s diet, to your mind’s diet. Allow yourself to be nourished by all of the things you were born with. All of the things you were born to be. So over this next few days, this week, I invite you to choose one practice. I’ll include a link to a download to a handbook on EFT and something called a vagus nerve reset, which I don’t mention in the book, but it’s using eye movements to restore tone, which is another way of saying calmness and health, to your vagus nerve system. Another extraordinary evolutionary biological support for living your most rich full life. So you can download that guidebook and use those for yourself or choose any of the others that I’ve listed or that you know of. And as you do any of those practices, be observant of any stories or images that arise within you, memories, songs, things you used to enjoy doing, whatever emerges, even if it’s just colors and textures or smells. It can be incredibly valuable to write this down, to allow it to flow from you without judgment.

Again, kind curiosity. What wisdom does this have for me? Allow it to reveal itself because it is here to love you. And it is here to support you in. Restoring your connection to this brilliance and beauty, that is who you are. I’m Zette Harbour. This is Love Lies Beneath. I hope you subscribe to this podcast.

I hope that you visit LoveLiesBeneath.com because there you’ll find other episodes, show notes, links to guests who have had on the show before and also links to downloadable resources. One of the resources available is for you to reach out and set up a virtual coffee date with me. It’s 20 minutes where you can share some of your story.

I love to hear story and I would be delighted to hear what’s been revealed to you as a result of listening to this podcast. I look forward to sharing more time with you.

Go raibh míle maith agat!

Jan 14 2022

Some Kind Words

Nov 22 2021

Episode 22 Clear Your Clutter

If you find yourself feeling frustrated by the clutter of other people or bumping into the emotional, mental, even physical clutter of another person, and it’s causing you to feel bruised and tender, perhaps even knocking you down, that lets you know that you have this furniture within you. Because what you see as the other person’s responsibility or the world’s responsibility is actually just showing you that it exists within you.

Subscribe to this podcast at Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, and many more.

My book, Love Lies Beneath: How Reclaiming My Soul Through Story Became The Secret To Healing My Heart is available in paperback and as a Kindle at Amazon.

Transcript

Transcripts are approximations of the conversations

Welcome to Love Lies Beneath. I’m Zette Harbour.

In episode 34, we begin Part III of my book, Love Lies Beneath. It’s called. Get Real.

Part III: Get Real

You may think to yourself, ‘wandering around the land of Story may be all fine and good for a professional storyteller, but how does this apply to my real life?’ While they may seem archaic, folktales are valuable allies in expanding the possibilities for who and how you can be. They bring powerful archetypes alive, and as they do, your own mythic wisdom is awakened. Your Soul will draw upon whatever imagery is available to her, and these powerful storehouses have stood the test of time.

The first and maybe the hardest step is that you must accept that you are the one with the power to change the stories you tell you about yourself, the world, and your place in it. None of the rest of this process will make sense or do much good unless you do. This requires a total makeover of your mindset. This set of beliefs about what is or is not true will need to include the idea that you do, indeed, have the power to determine your stories.

Second, it is essential to understand what these beliefs are. The fear that surrounds them is actually part of the protective mechanism they serve. It is easier to banish what you fear. At one time, getting them away from you was the number one priority. When something hurts, the smart thing to do is to put distance between you and it. Put your hand too close to a flame; you will get burned. You do not want to get burned, so you make sure the fire cannot reach you. It was the smartest thing your child mind could do at the time, and I acknowledge you for it.

Unfortunately, there was a cost, and there was no way for you to know it at the time. The price for the very limited yet desperately needed safety from this emotional fire was that you had to twist your idea of who you were. To do this, you had to lop off anything within you that seemed to get in the way. Your Soul understood this and willingly took the hits. You see, Soul is the storehouse of the Story of You. It is the complete, unabridged edition of your true Self. Think of it as the Director’s Cut.

Fortunately, even though it may not always feel true, your Soul cannot be destroyed. Not even a bit of it. It can be banished, buried, and shunned. But it can never be killed, and it will never abandon you.

Your Story, Your Stuff

You can also think of this work as inner decluttering. If you have ever let your closets, drawers, or even a spare room fill up with clutter, you know how uncomfortable it is to go in there or to try to find stuff. You are less likely to want even to open up or enter that space. Unfortunately, there are real treasures buried in there, along with all of the useless junk. When you retrieve them, your whole life is made richer.

Learning to live by your own story is like cleaning out your closet. It will require you to empty it, lay all the pieces out before you, try them on for size, discard the ill-fitting or worn-out ones, and then organize what is left.

How To Get Rid Of Your Internal Clutter & Chaos

Originally published for my column, Successful Awakenings on OneIdeaAway.com

You are a palace.

And within you, there exist an uncountable number of rooms. In each room, there are many pieces of furniture. Some of them you inherited. Some you picked up yourself. Most of them, however, arrived without you knowing about it. Now, because of this clutter, when you move through the outer world, you may find yourself tripping over the furniture of your inner one.

This collection of furniture is usually scattered about without rhyme or reason throughout your palace. As you enter one of the rooms, you see that the furniture may be piled up in a heap. There may be a large piece blocking the doorway, making it difficult to get in or out. There is probably something bulky and unattractive placed right in front of a window blocking a view that you would really love to be able to see. This furniture has the power to either make your life easier and more fulfilling, or it can give you scrapes and bruises as you bump up against it.

Unless you have the chance to clear it out or put it where it makes you happy, it will continue to block your way. Moving through your life with enjoyment and ease will remain difficult. In becoming who you are today, you collected an unlimited number of stories about who you are. The various cupboards, bookshelves, dressers, tables, and armoires of your inner world are those stories. They became the furniture of your inner palace.

They help explain the kind of world you believe you live in and your place in it. Some of these stories are helpful, energizing, and loving. Many of them are not. A good number of these stories were passed down to you from family, culture, or education. They seem to have always been there, and you may not even be aware of them. Unfortunately, this does not stop them from causing you stress and trouble.

So the question is, what do you do with all of this furniture?

A few possibilities can bring more satisfaction and ease to your life in dealing with your inner furniture. You can take a full inventory of all of the rooms that you are aware of. You can start by choosing a particular wing of the palace, like personal relationships, and look in those rooms. Get to know what is in those spaces. What is in there that seems to get in your way?

Note any patterns in your life that seem to show up again and again. You may be surprised to see that what you thought were very different causes of discomfort actually share a common thread or root. Maybe you notice that you feel boxed in when it comes to intimate relationships. That is an indicator of a cluttered inner space. The emotional bumps and bruises you are experiencing seem to be caused by the other person.

In fact, when you actually take a look at what is behind the door of this particular room, you will see that you have a cluttered and chaotic inner space. With such a haphazard maze of internal furniture, it is no wonder you keep stumbling and bumping up against sharp corners and hard edges. The Herculean task of sorting through and clearing out all of it can seem overwhelming at first. That is why it is important to allow yourself to be patient, compassionate, and loving toward yourself.

You did not accumulate all of this furniture overnight, and you will not sort it all out in one go, either. It is essential that you begin with the awareness that this will be a process. This work can go deep, and you will find yourself feeling things you had not for quite some time. It is natural to reconnect to the original emotions that were present when that furniture was delivered. The stories you are clearing out may be quite dusty and even moldy. Give yourself the support you need by practicing good self-care as you work through it.

With each adjustment to your inner palace’s clutter and chaos, you will see increased flow and functionality inside and out. Be sure to celebrate your successes as you go because that will enhance your energy and commitment to continue. Over time, you will see that there is real joy in the process, as well as the resulting spaciousness and clarity of your life.

A New Lens

What sort of furniture do you bump up against or trip over in your daily life? You know, this furniture always looks like it is the other person or the situation or some external forces at work because our own inner clutter is invisible to us. And I think, you know, I can relate to this and probably many of you as well.

If you’ve lived with people or another person, you always notice their stacks of papers, mail, books, junk, before you notice your own, it’s always more frustrating to see someone else’s piles of stuff and to notice how much it is in your way. So that really offers us a pathway, a mirror in which to see ourselves.

If you find yourself feeling frustrated by the clutter of other people or bumping into the emotional, mental, even physical clutter of another person, and it’s causing you to feel bruised and tender, perhaps even knocking you down that lets you know, That you have this furniture within you, because what you see as the other person’s responsibility or the world’s responsibility is actually just showing you that it exists within you.

And it’s hard to understand that when you don’t have any sort of way to put on the right kind of lenses that let you see your inner clutter. Carl Jung said it really well. The things that bother us about other people are always something within ourselves that we haven’t yet faced and dealt with. So to start just trust that this is true.

That the next time you feel like you just stubbed your toe or got a scrape or a bruise on the furniture of your life and you look up and you see someone and you think it must be their fault. Allow yourself for just that moment to listen to parts of your body. You know, usually it’s not going to be in your head.

It’s going to be maybe in your chest, maybe shoulders, maybe your digestive area, maybe lower in your belly or your pelvis. Maybe it’s going to be in your legs or your feet. Your body will share this wisdom with you and start to guide you toward the truth about where this clutter is coming from. And then a story will appear in your mind.

And the first thing you’ll think is that story doesn’t have anything to do with this moment right now. And so I invite you to. Be curious, bring that Kind Curiosity and ask yourself if this story that’s showing up for me right now, actually is sharing some wisdom with me about my own inner clutter. What might that be?

And giving yourself the room to explore the possibilities without committing to, uh, this being a hard truth or a definite no, allow it to be a place of curiosity, exploration, and most importantly, nonjudgment. You don’t have to get this right. And you’re not going to get it wrong. As long as you are willing to tune in to these deep reservoirs of wisdom that are your sensory intelligence and your emotional intelligence.

And once you learn how to really restore the connection to these powerful sources of wisdom and information, without the need to attach some story and turn that into a thought that has feelings. You allow this wisdom, this information, this sensory intelligence, emotional intelligence, you allow it to bring you to a place of greater awareness.

It Must Be Them

So when you find yourself looking at some experience that you’ve just had and it caused you stress, fear or pain, and you want so very much for it to be the other person’s fault because it makes sense. They’re right there. They must have caused it. And it’s normal to feel that way. And yet, if you allow yourself to imagine the possibility that this is a message from your Deep Inner Wisdom, from your Soul and she is opening a doorway and showing you a path back to wholeness, a way to come home to yourself. And as I wrote in the book, it doesn’t happen all at once. If you’ve ever tried to declutter an area in your home or garage, that’s been cluttered for a long time. Pace yourself.

Be kind, be gentle, hydrate rest. And most of all, remember, it’s supposed to be a journey, not a flip of a coin. You do not immediately go from being right to being wrong or from being wrong to being right. The most valuable way to begin to look at. Your world and your place in it is to recognize that any stories that you installed, any clutter that you have within you was constructed and placed there out of a deep, deep love.

This is the evidence that love lies beneath, everything..

I’m Zette Harbour. This is Love Lies Beneath. I hope you’ll subscribe to this podcast. I love having you with me on this journey. You can visit love lies beneath.com for show notes, for any of the interview episodes, there are links to my guests. There are resources. You can download a free excerpt to my book, Love Lies Beneath, and you can also set up a Virtual Coffee Date with me.

If you’re curious about how to begin your inner decluttering so that you can move through the landscape of your life and not have these inexplicable, unexpected and unpleasant bumps and bruises, and even being knocked down by what comes into your life?

Go raibh míle maith agat!

Oct 31 2021

Episode 21 The Child of Salt

You’ve wandered in life and wondered if you’d ever feel like you’d found your way home to yourself. Knowing the purpose of the journey and the gift of not having found your true home is revealed in this simple, beautiful story. “Look deeply and with kind curiosity into these mirrors of your own Soul. Embrace and appreciate the wisdom they hold. Listen from that still place in the center of your being. Hear the call of the Love that lies beneath beckoning you to come home.”

Subscribe to this podcast at Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, and many more.

My book, Love Lies Beneath: How Reclaiming My Soul Through Story Became The Secret To Healing My Heart is available in paperback and as a Kindle at Amazon.

Transcript

Transcripts are approximations of the conversations

The Child Of Salt

Welcome to Love Lies Beneath. I’m Zette Harbour.

In Episode 33, I share a story from my book called The Child of Salt. It’s a short, simple tale. It is a profoundly rich and deep mirror within which to see yourself. It shows the path to finding your way home to yourself.

There was once a Child made completely of salt, and she longed to know where she belonged.

So, she journeyed around the world, up to the highest peaks of the mountains, then down through the valleys, and into the cool darkness of the forest. She even traveled across the most barren, sandy, hot deserts, but nowhere did she find where she belonged.

Until she came to the shore of a great ocean.

“Ahhh, how marvelous,” she said, and she put one foot into the water.

And the ocean beckoned her to come deeper.

And so step by step, she entered the ocean, and with each step, she began to dissolve.

And finally, when she was so deep that her head was beginning to dissolve, she said, “Ahhhh, now I know who I am.”

Exploring The Child of Salt

There is such simple beauty in this short tale. I found it in a luscious book called Stories of the Spirit, Stories of the Heart by Christina Feldman and Jack Kornfield. I count this book as one of my treasures.

In this story, I see myself yearning, for as long as I can remember, to know where I belonged. Like the Child, I have traveled to many places. These are the different chapters of my life. Each one has its own wonder, beauty, and even pain. They each tell me a little about myself, but none of them tell me where I belong and who I truly am.

As I wandered through the territories of my life, as a young woman, a wife, a mother, a divorced single woman, a storyteller, a coach, and so many more, I saw new sights. I experienced the different climates of these places. Each one had its own trials and joys. It seems to me now that they were essential to me reaching my final destination precisely because they were so different. The fact that none of them were where I truly belonged added to texture to who I was.

Having trekked through them, I have been given powerful gifts in the form of questions.

What might my journey have been like if I had not had to use every ounce of strength I felt I had to climb to the tops of the mountains in my life?

How was my life made richer for having to feel lost in the cool, dark forests with legions of trees, making it impossible for me to know if I was heading in the right direction?

What did I discover within myself as I wandered in the desert, parched and thirsty, left alone with only my Heart, Soul, and Mind?

Less challenging in the valleys, did I celebrate or procrastinate the next leg of my journey? Did I wish that those were where I belonged because they were comfortable and undemanding?

I learned how others might be from the forests, deserts, mountains, or valleys because of my travels. It became clear to me that we all can be at home in or belong to different landscapes. In the end, I am grateful I did not come upon the ocean on my first attempt. The gifts I received while being lost and still hungering to come home will keep me nourished and warmed forever.

Dogma

Learning our story is just like the child of salt finding her home. When you observe that place and consciously choose it, you will also come to know who you are. To the uninitiated, dissolving into the ocean may look like the loss of the self. In truth, it is what makes oneness with your true nature possible. It creates self-knowledge that allows you to merge with a more powerful reality and experience deeper fulfillment.

Having a story is like having a car. You can drive to some great places, or you can fall asleep at the wheel and crash. So, you see some beautiful vistas, some engaging sights, and you crash – most of the time without knowing why. We call this ‘life happens.’ Understanding how to see the story of your life empowers you to choose where your trip takes you. You may still crash, but you will have a better idea of why and become more adept at choosing how to avoid it.

Culturally, we have not been taught about our Story nature. It is much more common to be instructed in dogma. This becomes the model for our own way of seeing and thinking about ourselves. The difference between having a story or living by dogma is the difference between breathing oxygen or breathing carbon monoxide.

Story liberates you. Story opens up choices. Story inspires authenticity and self-empowerment. Story maximizes choice and self-direction. Unfortunately, too often, we think we are creating Story, when it is really dogma.

You can recognize dogma by its limiting nature. Dogma occurs when we forget that all of our stories are merely the best interpretations that our minds can muster in the face of the unknowable. All stories are metaphors, and if they are not, they are dogma. Details drive dogma. Story rides on powerful themes, emotions, ideas, and imagery.

Will there be details in your story? Yes, definitely, but the details will not be the drivers of your story. The details will be changeable. If they are not, how can you travel through your story to your ultimate destination? It is the themes of your stories that power the engine of your life.

An important quality of Story is that it takes investment. You will not be able to rely on someone else’s idea of who you are. The work of coming to know your story is sweaty, spiritual-calorie burning, awareness cardio, thought yoga. You can think of it as Story Aerobics. Through your’ own good care’, you will sculpt the story of you that gives you the most energy and satisfaction.

It requires that you first make a choice. Decide that you will set out on this journey. You might have thoughts like, “Do I really want to know the truth of who I am, because when I do, I’m going to have to live up to it?” Trust that the security of having others decide for you will be replaced by the vitality and alertness of designing your life on your terms.

Look Into The Child Of Salt Mirror

You have been following the call to find where you belong. It has taken you to all sorts of landscapes. You have met a variety of beings along the way. Some of them have been pleasing, others not so much. All of them have value and are a part of what makes your journey meaningful.

Perhaps you have never found a place where you finally know that you belong. Like the Child of Salt, it is your desire to find and lose yourself completely that powers your journey. It may feel like discomfort, tension, or irritation. Isolation and despair can be common feelings for those who do not realize the quest they are on. This is why being fluent in your own story, and knowing how to seek the Love that lies beneath is essential.

The Child in this story does not doubt that she belongs somewhere. It never occurs to her that the need for the journey is in any way a hardship. This story tells you that you also must seek and return to where you belong. It is okay to wander a bit and, in fact, appreciate the wonders of the landscapes in which you find yourself.

Take some time with any of these questions that call to you. What you discover will be the varied landscapes of your story. Allow them to guide you on your pilgrimage. What you find will serve you in your journey back to where you belong.

What are the landscapes you have traveled to, and what do they mean for your journey back to oneness?

How have these different places in your life shaped you?

What does your return to the Source look and feel like?

What do you think it means for the Child of Salt to dissolve as she finds herself having finally reached her destination?

Come Home To Yourself

Spend time with this beautiful story, The Child of Salt. Let it speak to you about your own journey, your own wanderings. Those times, where you felt lost, or even hopeless. Those times where you may have despaired. We have all felt like we did not belong. It’s such a natural experience, especially when we are young and vulnerable.

We are thrust into a family landscape and it’s filled with people who have expectations of us. Those people probably don’t even themselves understand those expectations. And yet when we fail to meet those expectations, the sensations of stress, fear, and pain are sharp and intense, and it isn’t until we have traveled far and wide and seen a variety of landscapes and experienced a variety of conditions that we begin to trust that not meeting those expectations was not a measurement of our worthiness.

It was not an indictment of who we are. And so understanding that the stories you may have collected about yourself because of those moments of not meeting the expectations of these people upon whom you rely for your physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual wellbeing, those stories were survival tactics, some of them were deep and enormous and scary.

Others are just bristly and uncomfortable. No matter where those stories fall on the discomfort spectrum, you have the freedom to see through those stories, to your true nature. It is in experiencing those stories, reclaiming the part of you that willingly sacrificed herself in order to save the most of you.

And to welcome her back home to you, let her know that you understand. That was the best she could do at the time. And in fact, it was from such a place of great love that you feel such gratitude and love for her, and that it’s safe for her to come back now. In the coming days, map out the various landscapes to which you have traveled and describe the kinds of conditions and experiences you had there, how it felt, what it made you think about yourself.

Track these stories and these landscapes and allow the richness of your journey to nurture and nourish you to give you strength as you return to wholeness, as you come home to your self.

I am Zette Harbour. This is Love Lies Beneath. Please subscribe to this podcast. I am so grateful to have you on this journey with me.

You can also find show notes and other resources at LoveLiesBeneath.com. There you can see links to the guests. Find any downloadable resources and you can also arrange a virtual coffee date with me. If you are ready to step into your ocean.

Go raibh míle maith agat!