Letters From A Better Me author Rachael Wolff has written a new blog post on how she is grateful for her own insecurities and shame.
Daily Aligning with Love, Abundance, and Peace
I’m grateful I can OWN MY insecurities and shame. I just finished watching an episode of Red Table Talks on mom shaming. It made me so grateful for my journey of owning my own insecurities and shame. I learned years ago that we don’t shame or point out the insecurities of others unless we have them ourselves. We can’t shame others if we are not shaming ourselves. One of the greatest tools I learned is to look at myself when I’m judging others. That is why I start my book, where I do. We won’t be able to fix anything we are struggling with if we don’t take a look at ourselves.
When I would blame or shame others, it’s because their behavior was triggering something inside me. This doesn’t mean there isn’t a healthy way to stand up to injustices, it’s the way we do it that says if our own inner shame and/or insecurities are triggered. This is part of the reason I started writing from a loving place is to get clear on communicating with myself and others from a place of love, not my insecurities and shame (which come from attachments to fear, lack, and separation). I’m so grateful that when I catch myself judging others, I start digging deeper, because when I can find my compassion or a perspective that will help me getting to a loving place, I KNOW I won’t take on the very energy that I don’t want to be a part of. I can’t represent peace from a place of hate in my heart.
When I read the book, Loving What Is by Byron Katie, it got me to see others as my mirrors to what was really going on inside of me. It got me to see how I was choosing to view others came from my own perspectives of interpretation. She taught me to look at how my thinking about others got in my way and created blocks in my life. Her book was the catalyst that got me to read other books on codependency and shame. With my formal education in psychology, lifespan development, sociology, and cultural anthropology, got me to see, I was as healthy as the thoughts I projected onto to others, and I was as sick as the the thoughts I would project onto others. This was so essential for my healing after ten years of narcissistic abuse. Owning what I believe about myself gives me the power to change the beliefs that work against me (remember belief is just a perspective a thought that we choose to buy into). If I’m not living the internal life that I want to live in this moment, it’s because I have beliefs (perspectives of truth) keeping my prisoner.
Right now, I have to work on myself on a daily basis to make sure that I’m aligning with love, abundance, and peace. I do slip, and I own my slips. When I take something someone says about me or a group I identify with personally, I have to look at how and why their judgments trigger me, because if I react from the same place their coming from which is fear, lack, and separation, I’m just FUELING that energy out in the world. I keep having to look at myself with honesty, respect my feelings, feel them, and then if I feel called to respond, I do it from a loving place. If you are wondering how I do this, I have the voices of those who have done it before me in my head. I think often about the journey of a butterfly when I’m going through this process. I don’t just get to fly, it takes work to soar without the weight of being a caterpillar. The things that hold us down to struggle for survival, can be transformed into what gives us our wings, IF we choose to sit in our chrysalises to process and transform those perspectives of truth that are keeping us prisoner. Many come from those insecurities and buried shame. The beautiful thing about owning my shame was, once I recognized it and shared it, it had NO power over me. It became an important part of my journey of learning to be and live my life on my terms. I know for me, I can’t live from a loving place if I don’t treat myself that way, and I get little cues on how I’m treating myself by how I treat others, including my kids. They are AMAZING teachers to show me where my insecurities and shame are still hidden. I’m so grateful for the opportunities to see how to become a better me.
Today, I commit to looking at myself when I find myself judging others. I always find this exercise VERY interesting. Part one of my book is filled with letters that are meant to trigger people to see where they hold their judgments. These are many of the situations where I had to look at my own and still do at times. When we focus on what someone else is doing, we aren’t paying attention to the one person’s feelings, thoughts, beliefs, and actions we CAN change. We give our power away when we fall into someone’s else’s energy of fear, lack, and separation. If someone else’s energy takes us down—fear won, lack won and separation won. This isn’t about what other people are doing, it’s about what WE are contributing through our own insecurities and shame (fear, lack, and separation) or our empowerment, which comes from owning what is are and transforming it to create more love, abundance, and peace. Go inward today and take a look at what you see.
With Love, Abundance, and Peace,
©Rachael Wolff 2020
Letters From a better me
How Becoming an Empowered Woman Transforms the World
THE EMPOWERED WOMAN follows the belief system that is best explained in a quote by Byron Katie: “The most attractive thing about the Buddha was that he saved one person: himself. That’s all he needed to save; when he saved himself, he saved the whole world.”
The letters work in different ways depending on the chapter and part of the book.