Podcast

Mar 16 2022

Episode 26 Hidden Elements

There is so much wisdom within me and you. Everything you need is already within you. And, you are exactly where you need to be at this moment. My wish for you is that you set out on this journey. Reclaim your Soul. Befriend your Stories. And heal your Heart. As you do, you will walk into your next chapter, hand in hand with the Love that lies beneath.

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 38, I read from the final section of my book, Part V Hidden Elements. And even as the book comes to a close, the true adventure is just beginning

Part V Hidden Elements Beneath Everything

Beneath Everything

The biggest question I can ask and have asked myself is…

if everything is coming from a place of Love and is designed to help me reunite with myself… then doesn’t that make even the painful stuff a gift?

This is what I hope to have explored in this book. It is my hope that I have held up a faithful mirror in which you can begin to see your answer to this question, too.

Another reflection I hope I have successfully created for you is that it is ultimately the Truth that everything in my life calls me to discover and recover my true self and my true nature, born out of Love. All those tough experiences were and are sent to me out of loving-kindness. Deep, sometimes really deep, down, I know that. I see what I think is reality but what also exists is everything I cannot see. In some ways, what I cannot see is more powerful than what I can.

One of the compelling discoveries in quantum physics is light’s ability to behave like both a particle and a wave. One way to think about this is that if I were to pick up a stone, I would see it in particle form. If this were occurring on the quantum level, when I throw it, that would translate into that stone suddenly occupying every possible position between me and where it will eventually land. Imagine how astonished I would be to see the rock, as an object, suddenly transform into a wave of rock energy. Eventually, the rock does land, with a thud, in a specific spot, thus eliminating every other possible outcome.

For me, Story is much like that. I can allow myself to have the possibility of an unlimited number of outcomes. Or, I can choose one and settle in on a form. My story can be rigid and unyielding, or it can be spacious and curious. I believe that allowing for both is the key to being enriched by life. At their best, my stories define, not confine, me.

I must take form, but I must also remember that I come from ‘not form.’ So I have to loosen my grip on the stories I have chosen about who I am to be more brilliant, expansive, and powerful. In the flow between the two states of form and ‘not form,’ I tap into the vitality of the source of life. If I am stuck in either one, I stagnate, and life feels like a struggle.

The goal of reclaiming your Soul through Story to heal your Heart by finding the Love that lies beneath will allow you to move into and out of form and ‘not form’ with ease. As you do, you will experience your life as more energized, fulfilling, and meaningful. This will give you greater satisfaction and enable you to move with greater freedom in the world. In fact, the world becomes more like a story, and your choices about who you will be in it become limitless.

Armed with this new awareness and, the now-conscious skill, you will craft a life worthy of you. This book offers the required initiation to dive down and understand the deeper layers of your story. In gaining knowledge of what you find there, you, the heroine, acquire the items needed as you return to ordinary and present-day reality. This cracks open all of your stories. In their full, rich forms, all layers are seen and serve as treasure troves from which you construct your enriched, new life.

There are treasures hidden in the depths, and it takes a particular kind of journey to dive down into them to gain their riches. It also requires the type of strength, endurance, courage, and just enough foolishness to believe that you are capable of it and deserve to do it. These qualities must be present for the journey to be undertaken. You know there are risks. Fortunately, you don’t actually know the full extent of what they are, or you might not go.

Into The Woods

“If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.”

Albert Einstein

When Rumpelstiltskin reignited my love of folklore, I shared my excitement with a musician friend. We would often talk about Campbell and Jung, archetypes, and soul. Now, we explored this wondrous tale as if it were a powerful, epic journey with universal images and meaning. This tumbled into the idea of telling it and other stories in performance.

I had no idea that anyone actually did that sort of thing, although I did know that the local bookstore periodically listed storytellers on the events calendar. And this is where the ‘just enough foolishness’ comes in. I decided to do some research and called the event coordinator.

“How do you go about hiring your storytellers?” I asked.

“When do you want to come in and perform?” was her reply.

I was faced with at least two options. I could decline, hang up, and put an end to this foolishness, or not. I made my decision in the microseconds hanging in the air at the end of her question. I booked a date about thirty days away and hung up the phone. I was deep in Story now, and there was no going back.

I could not have seen what waited for me on this path. There was no way to know how much delight, heartache, camaraderie, betrayal, joy, and deep wisdom would come my way as a result of that one, simple, instantaneous decision. That pivotal moment has taken me on a truly unexpected journey.

Because of that moment, I have performed at festivals and with symphony orchestras. My audio recordings have been aired on NPR and have garnered awards. In my workshops, I have been awed by witnessing the awakening of others to the power of Story. I have been a facilitator and presenter for university and business organizations, nonprofits, and many others.

And now, here we are. I have written this book because of the immeasurable gifts Story has brought to my life. I had no idea when I made that phone call that it would lead me here.

Release the Kraken

I have wanted to write a book since I was twelve years old. Back then, it felt like being an author was the best thing I could do with my life. I imagined it would be a peaceful, meaningful way to live. That was the complete opposite of the world I lived in at the time. It also felt like a pipe-dream and probably the last thing I thought I deserved. Everyone around me was suffering. Many of them suffered much more than I did, and I felt tremendous guilt for dodging those bullets.

It took my first thirty years just to get the lines of my life untangled enough to make it possible to see what had really happened. My stories about myself and my life had been necessarily clouded. It was too overwhelming to make sense of what seemed like a bloody train wreck. Only once I could get enough perspective would I be able to consider the work of making sense of it.

That has been my vocation over the last twenty-seven years. If I had asked my thirty-year-old self how long it would take me to recover from the trauma, she would never have imagined this. In fact, I can remember thinking and feeling back then that I was nearly done with it all. This makes me smile at myself because now, I know that there is no such thing as being done. The roots of my Soul run deep and wide, and I will be able to find places to reclaim and restore as long as I am alive.

Understandably, this perspective would not have been available to my thirty-year-old self. I could not know that the voice calling me to find my way home would be a lifelong companion. At this point in my life, I am so grateful to the voice. I would not want her to leave me. I rely on her every day now. And I love her.

Writing this book has been a deep and sometimes daunting experience. So many of the places I share have been a part of me for many years. Some of them only made themselves visible as I wrote this. No matter when I made the discovery, each place held its own demands and gifts. During this book’s birthing, my two coaches have been lifelines in navigating my discoveries.

A Finger Pointing To The Moon

Let me share some closing thoughts about the power of Story and language. They are faithful bearers of Truth. They can also play the part of the Trickster. A word makes us think that it is the thing it represents. Stories lure us into believing that they are the point of themselves. In my understanding, neither of those things is true.

The word we use to describe a thing is never the thing itself. D O G is not the lively, loving, playful being that greets us with unconditional love at every moment. The story we use to describe an experience or an awareness is never the iridescent, will-o’-the-wisp moment itself. When I tell you about my camping adventure, I may be able to regale and delight you, but we are not actually there.

Words and Story are the candle; the flame is the Truth they make possible. With that in mind, I have done my best to use words well. By that, I mean that I want my words to point to a Truth and not get in the way of it.

For me, this is best reflected in this Zen Buddhist quote.

“Truth has nothing to do with words. Truth can be likened to the bright moon in the sky. Words, in this case, can be likened to a finger. The finger can point to the moon’s location. However, the finger is not the moon. To look at the moon, it is necessary to gaze beyond the finger, right?”

It is my hope you look at the finger, my stories, only long enough to see the moon to which they point. For me, the moon is made up of those rich and transcendent moments of intimacy and true oneness with the Love that lies beneath. It is made even richer by the relationships I have restored with the many parts of me that bravely accepted banishment to make my life manageable so long ago. What I experience there does not have to be the same as what happens for you. Your moon will be made of different stuff than mine.

Begin Simply

In my work with my clients, and in my own experience, I have worked with a variety of techniques that can get you started on the path to reclaiming your Soul through Story. Here are just a few that you can explore. There is no one-size-fit-all when it comes to restoring your connection to the Love that lies beneath. Approach your own journey with curiosity and compassion.

I invite you to give any of these a try. If you want to know more about them and about my work, we can get together for a Virtual Coffee Date.

S.E.A.L.

There is a simple, painless practice for empowering your emotions. S.E.A.L.: See. Embrace. Appreciate. Love.

Step 1: I See You

So often, the first response to something negative is to push it aside, bury it, or disown your experience of it. Rather than freeing you, this is how being sabotaged by stress begins. The real truth is, in order to stem the tide of discomfort and unhappiness you are feeling, the vitally important first step is to say, “I See You.”

Yes, let the unpleasant emotions, the difficult people, and the unsatisfying circumstances know that you are willing to acknowledge that they exist. You do not need to say it out loud because the power of this comes from within you. Just the fact that you are expressing a willingness to see whatever is causing the difficulty will create a shift. At this point, you are not trying to change how you are feeling, it is enough that you accept it. By not burying or pushing aside the stress and its source, you make it possible to begin to dissolve the power it has to sabotage you.

Step 2: I Embrace You

This step melts the defensive walls that have enabled you to be sabotaged by stress. Normally, the last thing you would want to do with something distasteful and unpleasant is to wrap your arms around it and give it a BIG hug. On the one hand, you have probably heard the saying, ‘warts and all,’ but on the other hand, no one really wants to hug a warty toad. So, how can you embrace feelings that are uncomfortable, if not truly painful?

This is not about denying your feelings or perceptions. You certainly do not need to give up your initial dissatisfaction or displeasure. All you are doing at this point is saying (to yourself), ‘I Embrace You’ which is a way of making your feelings welcome. At first glance, this can seem like a tough request, yet, once you practice it a few times you will see that it is actually not that bad. In fact, in time that toad will likely become one of your most cherished companions.

Step 3: I Appreciate You

Now you are ready to explore making a shift in your feelings toward the unpleasantness. It might seem like this step will cost you a lot emotionally. Instead, realize that saying ‘I Appreciate You’ is not the same thing as saying ‘You are right’ or ‘I am wrong.’ It also doesn’t mean that you do not deserve something better. You can practice appreciation and still be your own best advocate for transforming the conditions of your life.

One reason this step works is that often what causes us stress actually creates an environment for growth. Think of an oyster. It is the irritation and grit that gets into the oyster and makes it possible for it to produce the treasured pearl. You may not be able to see it right now, but what if the stress you’re feeling is really an invitation to grow something beautiful in your life? When you allow yourself to feel appreciation for even a seemingly negative something, you will be amazed at how it transforms.

Step 4: I Love You

By now, hopefully, you have witnessed some unexpected results from employing the first three steps of S.E.A.L. Perhaps your willingness to really see, to embrace, and to appreciate the stresses that felt like they were sabotaging your life has created surprising and positive improvements. If so, taking the leap and telling your negative emotions and whatever triggered them ‘I Love You,’ may feel pretty effortless.

On the other hand, if you are just starting out or if you find this idea preposterous, say the words whether or not you feel the feeling. It may surprise you to learn that this works just as well, regardless of your emotional status. This is because for the most part an emotion, which is a blend of neurochemistry, thought, and environmental conditions, is temporary. The practice of saying ‘I Love You’ can be performed in the abstract yet still create the desired result.

Declaration of Story Independence

The idea that you have the right to decide what Story you want to live out may feel unfamiliar. You may even feel uncertain as to whether or not it is true for you. One valuable practice is to have an articulated declaration that you can post or look at frequently.

This is your own personal declaration of story independence.

I believe that at my core, I am a collection of stories.

I believe that I arrived here with the right to choose what those stories are.

I believe that empowering, inspiring and evolving stories let me see just how many choices I have and how powerful I can be.

I believe that Love lies beneath all of the stories I have created about myself, my world, and my place in it.

What’s Next

I invite you to take some time over the next days or weeks and experiment with the S.E.A.L. Process. I see you. I embrace you. I appreciate you. I love. Test it out in your own life and see what your results are. And if you have questions and want to understand more deeply what this can mean for you and how this can support you in living a more expansive spacious story, I invite you to reach out and set up a virtual coffee date with me.

Because this podcast was to be a way of diving deeper into my book, Love Lies Beneath: How reclaiming my Soul through Story became the secret to healing my Heart, moving forward I’ll be opening up fresh new perspectives on everything that I’ve talked about over the past year. In the coming months, I’ll be sharing seven foundational principles.

These are thoughts, that when you are able to perceive them clearly and experience them freely, allow them to guide you, you will see your life utterly transformed. You have a powerful vision for how the world can be. And you know that you are someone here to create that impact, to make the world basically a better place.

And that you have given so much of yourself to create this vision, to bring it to life. And for whatever reason, maybe it’s your emotions feel strained, maybe your body’s giving you messages. Maybe you’re carrying weight that you can’t get rid of, or you don’t sleep enough or you don’t have energy or you have aches and pains that are chronic.

And at this point in life, the way you are able to be successful is no longer working for you. You’re realizing that you cannot be at the bottom of your own list anymore. And yet sacrificing your own wellbeing in service of this vision that you have, and this commitment you have to being a force for good in the world.

It’s what has allowed you to live the life you’re experiencing. And so if your emotions or your mind or your body are telling you that something needs to change, then these seven foundational principles will open up amazing possibilities for you. Right now, you might be thinking that you’ve done the best you can, you know a lot, you’ve probably done a lot of personal work along the way, and still the burdens of your past weigh you down despite your best intentions not to let them get in your way. And it’s a little bit like you’ve been really skillful and successful in not having the burdens from your past scattered in front of you for you to trip over or to be stopped by instead, what I see is that you have forged ahead in life and those burdens are tethered and they drag along behind you.

And it’s time now. You actually are giving yourself permission to stop dragging those burdens. And that message is coming to you through your emotions, through your body, through your sensations, through your thoughts, even through the conditions around you, which you may think have nothing to do with what’s going on inside of you, but in actuality, every difficult

or unpleasant or, or even painful person or relationship in your life is a message from your deep inner wisdom, from your soul, letting you know that you are ready to come home to yourself, you are ready to restore all the parts of you that patiently wait for you to see them, to embrace them, to appreciate them and to love them.

And I’m here for you. I believe in you.

I’m Zette Harbour. This is Love Lies Beneath. I hope you subscribe to this podcast so you can join me on every part of this adventure you can visit LoveLiesBeneath.com and there you’ll find links to show notes to other resources.

And also to my calendar where you can set up a virtual coffee date with.It’s 20 minutes and it’s for me to learn more about your story and the story you want, so very much, to be living.

Go raibh míle maith agat!

Feb 12 2022

Episode 25 Emotional Mastery Journey

Begin to see that who you think you are and who you think you have to be is so very different than your true self. Taking this Emotional Mastery Journey allows you to truly begin to see with such clarity the story of who you’re here to be. You get to see a lot of the things that have gotten in the way of you living as your true self.

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 37, I share the section of my book called Emotional Mastery. If you wanted to explore Yosemite, you would first want to have a map that would show you all of the really exciting, beautiful, and important landmarks that you will want to be able to visit or pay attention to along the way. Our own inner journey is exactly like that.

And in order to truly feel a sense of mastery over our emotional experience, we first need to understand the territory. And when I talk about mastery, I do not in any way mean that you will never feel stress, fear, or pain ever again. And I also don’t mean that you will get really good at stuffing it away or ignoring it or shutting it down.

None of that is emotional mastery. Emotional mastery is being present to the moment. No matter how stressful, fearful, or painful it may be learning to decode the message and truly connect to the Love that lies beneath. Because everything that happens in life and in particular, those things that we find to be unpleasant or negative, they are all messengers from our deep inner wisdom.

And they are the map showing us the path to come home to ourselves. And so as we look at this map of your emotional mastery journey, remember to bring along your kind curiosity, listen for the story, wisdom and trust that your Soul knows exactly what you need for you to return to wholeness.

Emotional Mastery Journey

In my work, I have observed and defined a pathway that makes it possible for your stories to empower you. There are three main destinations to which you need to travel, to live with joy and freedom. You will need to spend time at three specific landmarks along the way to each one. All together, completing these nine steps will ensure that you live your life of freedom.

Envision: Discover what your stories are really telling you about yourself, your world, and your place in it

Embody: Activate and renew your relationship to your Soul

Emerge: Live out your most powerful, affirming Story

Envision

Rejuvenate Your Mindset

Move from uncertainty to confidence. If you have had to dismember parts of your Soul, it makes sense that life will feel stressful and unmanageable. Outwardly you may appear to be an accomplished, positive person. Unfortunately, inwardly you carry a heavy burden of self-doubt. You spend much of your energy coping with pain, fear, and stress without the hope of life getting much better.

By rejuvenating your mindset, you achieve increased self-awareness. This allows you to feel curiosity about what is truly possible. From this vantage point, you can begin to see the light just beginning to emerge over the horizon. Now you understand that maybe things are not as locked in as you had believed them to be and that this means you can hope to enjoy your life and yourself more.

Create Core Intimacy

End the feeling of aimless wandering and find clarity of vision. Here you will learn why sometimes life seems to go well, and other times it is frustrating and disappointing. Without this clarity, life choices are made by guessing, trying to meet others’ expectations, or by your hidden limiting stories and beliefs.

This knowledge becomes a compass revealing which directions to move toward, as well as where to focus your energy, time, and money. The clarity you attain at this step makes it possible to continue, knowing what nurtures and empowers you. Life becomes less stressful and painful.

Heal Betrayal

Feel yourself transform from worthless to treasured. Here you discover how you abandon yourself whenever a thought, feeling, or action is unpleasant, painful, or does not fit who you think you are supposed to be. As a result of being cut off, shunned, and forced to remain locked in suffering, that part of yourself becomes an increasing source of pain and stress. This may even manifest as severe physical illness or other major life trauma.

Create awareness that self-betrayal is a natural and normal part of human experience, especially in times of vulnerability and distress. Become willing to look with compassion at your undesirable thoughts, feelings, and actions. Here you discover that in allowing them to remain as accepted parts of you, your unhealed wounds become legitimate and worthy of your acceptance and love.

Embody

Expand your Archetype IQ

Shift your life from meaningless to meaningful. A lack of knowledge of your archetypes leaves you feeling empty, and as a result, there is more pain. You struggle to feel a sense of power over your life’s conditions and feel isolated in your suffering. You are not able to tune in to guidance that can give your life more meaning.

In this step, become aware of how being conscious of your archetypes makes you more powerful in your life and how not understanding them causes pain. Here you acquire the essential skills of listening for and to your archetypes. You learn how to put their messages to work to help you achieve your goals and desires. These potent allies become sources of energy and power.

Master your Soul Connection

Move from confusion to successful communication. If you do not understand the nature of your communication with your Soul, you will not understand why painful stuff keeps happening or how to stop it. You will feel at the mercy of life’s stressful or disappointing moments. This will leave you believing that coping is the best it can get and feel powerless to improve your life conditions.

In this step, you learn how pain and stress are a language from your Soul. Discover that the Soul does not use words as much as it uses metaphors in the form of thoughts, feelings, and actions, which generate results that are either pleasing or painful. Become conscious of what language you are teaching your Soul to use. Let the quality of your results and the conditions of your life help you learn to measure the success of your communication with your Soul.

Empower Emotion

Transform your self-criticism into self-acceptance. Right now, your criticism and lack of acceptance of yourself dominate your life. This creates feelings that you are unworthy and unlovable. You suffer from a lack of gratitude toward yourself. Knowing that you do not actually love yourself is painful. You have judged yourself, and you have come up short.

Being seen is the beginning of healing how you think, feel, and act toward yourself. Welcome unpleasant thoughts, feelings, and actions as valued messengers. Then, experience genuine gratitude without judgment of your worthiness. Finally, express love of yourself, warts and all.

Emerge

Story Wisdom

Heal feelings of being fragmented and move toward wholeness. Without the ability to tap into the wisdom of your stories, you will compartmentalize parts of yourself as a way to manage pain and stress. This will lead to a feeling of brokenness. You will remain at a loss about how to heal internal and external fragmentation in yourself and your life. This will leave you feeling powerless in the face of painful or stressful thoughts, feelings, and experiences.

In this step, you learn what Story Wisdom is and how it plays a role in healing your fragmented sense of self. You will discover how to access the wisdom in your story to heal and move toward a sense of wholeness. Understanding what a particular event is telling you and how it can support you in becoming your fullest self brings peace.

Transform Fear

Free yourself from fear as a way to attain wisdom. Seeing fear as an enemy to be defended against or conquered limits you. This conflict-oriented posture leaves you powerless and deflated. Your default reaction is that fear is to be avoided or dismissed.

Learn the true nature of fear and the role it plays in growing your wisdom. Become adept at transforming what appears to be a weakness or an enemy into a source of power and wisdom. As you do, you will master the ability to glean the gifts of fear by understanding its true nature and power to deepen your wisdom.

Embrace Power

Evolve from feeling limited to enjoying spaciousness and freedom. Being blocked from your power leaves you limited in your ability to freely and whole-heartedly show up in the world as you wish. Despite desiring more, you lack full conviction about why it is important to discover your life’s meaning, deliver your gifts, and have an impact. This creates feelings of regret and disappointment in yourself.

As you claim your most powerful story and how you want to be, you affirm the importance of discovering your gift, meaning, and purpose. You will celebrate how to live meaningfully, deliver your gifts, and make a difference in the world.

See The Story

There is so much to talk about when it comes to each of these landmarks, the three different levels that you will move through. This is where you get to truly begin to see with such clarity the story of who you’re here to be. You get to see a lot of the things that have gotten in the way of you living as your true self.

And while those things that get in your way do cause pain, they were created and installed from a place of great love. And so as you learn to recognize them, you begin to shift your relationship to them, and that begins with your mindset. So you will begin to see that who you think you are and who you think you have to be is so very different than your true self.

Our next stop is create core intimacy. And this is where you will come to know what it is that fuels your life. What has been driving your life already that was invisible to you and yet had complete power over you? And when you become intimate with this knowledge, you suddenly have the ability to allow this incredible force to let you know where is it right for me to go and how can I get there with ease and purpose?

And after that, it’s time to look at the landmark called heal betrayal. Every single human being understands what it feels like to be betrayed, some of us much more than others. What I have learned is that something happens when we feel betrayed by others, and really, betrayed by the world.

What happens is that we actually learn to betray ourselves in that moment and we cut off, we shun, or we lock away the part of us that is suffering. And when we do this, We actually are building a barrier to our own healing and it keeps us from restoring ourselves to wholeness. It makes these betrayals actual traumas rather than events that can be a source of great wisdom for us.

And then we move into the Embody layer and that begins by expanding your archetype IQ. Understanding archetypes is incredibly powerful for eliminating isolation and loneliness. You may be familiar with the term. You may have heard it some point in your life, or maybe you’ve even studied them more deeply. I invite you to consider that an archetype is less a label or a definition, and it is more an expression of a state of being. It’s an attempt to describe an experience and like all attempts to describe, which are stories, it’s easy to become confused and think that the story is the thing, but it’s not.

So the words we use to describe archetypes are never the archetype itself. The archetype itself is the sensations and the emotions and the thoughts and feelings that occur every time something happens to us. And the more archetypes you have to choose from to help you sort out your life experience, particularly the painful ones, the more ease and expansiveness you will have.

And then you move into mastering your soul connection. You know, soul, as I’ve described before, it is the rich soil of who you are and this rich, deep wisdom that you were born with and that you will never, ever lose, even if you lose your ability to connect to it, is a powerful source for you to guide you through your life.

And when you understand how you have unknowingly taught your soul to speak to you with negative or painful thoughts, feelings, experiences and people, you then learn, you have the power to teach your soul, that you will listen to much quieter, much gentler, much softer language in order to understand the direction of your life.

And then it’s essential to empower your emotions. So right now, even if you on the outside look confident and look like you, um, have things under control, no doubt that you have a strong awareness of your inner critic. I’m sure she shows up at all hours of the day. And most particularly when you feel vulnerable and would prefer that she not.

So when we learn how our emotions are genuinely sources of not just wisdom, but power for us, we begin to shift and you actually will find that you can begin to welcome the unpleasant thoughts, feelings, and actions, because you understand their true nature. And again, this isn’t to say that they’re going to feel good, you know, discomfort, stress, fear, pain, those are all natural human experiences. Where they become a problem is when they are translated into some sort of story.

And next you will Emerge. This begins with story wisdom. And when you are able to begin to partner with your stories and you understand their immense value and power as a way of managing trauma, unhealed pain, unhealed wounds, that you begin to understand that they have always been there as a partner, as a part of you that from a place of that deep love created these stories to protect you. And once you understand why they’re there and how you got, how you put them there and how valuable they are, then you can begin to shift the stories that you create, which takes us to transform fear.

Fear feels so overpowering. It feels so scary. And we’re never going to not feel fear. Fear is wired into our biology. We have a sympathetic nervous system that kicks in whenever we feel threatened. And if we, especially when we were younger, experienced, overwhelming threat, either physically, emotionally, mentally, or spiritually, and we were not given the proper support or tools to process it, to integrate what we needed to from it and to release it.

Then it is lodged in our body and there can bring up all kinds of feelings of powerlessness and fear as well as physical disability or illness. So when we are able to, again, understand that nature of fear and really see through the message and the messenger to the source that sent it, it gives us the opportunity to tap into our deepest wisdom.

And then finally you get to embrace power. It’s so hard when we feel like we do not have our full power and there’s a lot of conditioning throughout life that tells you do not be powerful. When we were children, it didn’t have to even be adults who wished us harm. It could simply be parents or teachers or whoever else thought that it was their job to guide us, who imposed their rule on how you could be, or even who you could be.

And so we learned so early and so often that there’s a lot of danger in embracing the power of who your true nature is and how you are here to be in the world. And this really makes it difficult to truly understand your life’s meaning to be free, to deliver the gifts that you brought here. And it prevents you from having that incredible impact on the world that you know you are to give. And when you embrace your power, that means you are able to claim your most powerful story. You’re able to not just share your gifts, but enjoy your gifts, revel in their meaning, joyfully celebrate your sense of purpose. And all of that allows you to make the difference in the world that you know you are here to make

I’m Zette Harbour. This is Love Lies Beneath. I hope you’ll subscribe to this podcast. I hope that you visit LoveLiesBeneath.com. Check out the links to the show notes, the interviews with my guests, the links for all of the resources that I offer here on the podcast. And in my book, Love Lies Beneath: how reclaiming my Soul through Story became the secret to healing my Heart.

And I welcome you to set up a virtual coffee date with me. It’s about 20 minutes long. You will get to tell me where it is you want to go in your life, who it is, you know, you are here to be until then,

Go raibh míle maith agat!

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.

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!

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!