We come into this world destined for certain life experiences based on who are parents are, where we grow up, who are siblings are, and even our birth order. Our souls select these backdrops. There is no one to ‘blame’ for our challenges. We chose them in order to grow. Very early on, literally while we are in the womb, we begin to have sensory experiences. Just as soon, we begin to let these events define us, define our role in our world and whether we feel that life works for us or against us. This is our storyteller. The storyteller uses the experiences of those first years of life to define how we will perceive all of life that follows. For some this feels like a blessing, for others it feels like a challenge. No matter your perception, your circumstance is exactly what your soul needs for you to play the game of life.
My storyteller has been telling some MASSIVE lies for pretty much my entire life. I am just now, at 43, beginning to see the truth. Let’s take a quick look back at a couple of my biggest whoppers:
I am not what they want
I was the third in a family of three girls. My parents treated me, always, with love and yet no one would doubt that my parents, my father in particular, wanted a boy…at least one. I was the last hope and I came out without the stem on the apple. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that I resisted being born. As a sentient being, I knew that I wasn’t what was hoped for, even though I was dearly loved from my first breath on. I had what is known as a high forceps delivery because I never descended in the birth canal. The doctor pulled me out by, essentially, grabbing my neck with sterile salad tongs and yanking me out. This practice, due to the high risk of neck injury, is no longer performed. Not for nothing, but a respected energy healer in the Boston area told me that every brain tumor patient he had encountered had experienced a neck trauma (such as whiplash) that blocked the flow of energy, oxygen and blood to the head….think Ted Kennedy and the infamous Chappaquiddick incident.
Throughout my life I never valued myself. I assumed that no one else really valued me either and given the choice, others would choose to be with someone different than me. Stephen Parkhill, hypnotherapist, wrote in his book Answer Cancer that most of those he worked with who had cancer, when under hypnosis, realized that they felt unwanted in the womb whether this perception was true or not. This is a doozy of a lie that I am finally releasing.
I am not good enough
I came behind two driven sisters. My oldest sister was mature far beyond her years. She was organized, meticulous, competitive, serious and totally driven to succeed. My middle sister was an uber-talented gymnast, winning the New York state class IV gold medal at the age of 13. Then there was me. I had no strong drive to succeed and no special talents as far as I could tell. I reinforced this sentiment again and again early on. Other younger siblings can certainly relate to the feeling of unworthiness that comes from playing family games against siblings who are older, and therefore, nearly impossible to beat. It’s pretty demoralizing and pretty easy to give up on competition – which is exactly what I did. You have probably read that birth order strongly influences level of success in life. I don’t think this is purely because the oldest child models adults while younger siblings model other children, but also how we compete, how successful we feel and how we acquire attention within our own family dynamic.
Perhaps the best reinforcement that ‘I am not good enough’ came at the age of 8 when my sister’s very scary Russian gymnastics coach, Yuri, begged my mother to start me in gymnastics assuming, erroneously, that if my sister was that good, I probably was too. At my debut, I failed to complete a backward somersault on the low balance beam – yes, the one that is 12 inches off the ground. I cried silently as I kept trying. The humiliation was intense. Better yet, Yuri said to my mother, within ear shot of me, that she “did not need to bring me back”. Nice. At that moment, I made the unconscious decision to play the ‘supporter’ going forward. As the supporter, I would be ‘safe’ from failure. It wasn’t until both of my sisters were off at college that I blossomed. All of a sudden I became a straight A student. Hardly a coincidence. In this burst of temporary confidence, I was able to get into a very good college.
My storyteller took these early events and created patterns that would continue to play out in my life. I continued to recreate experiences and events that reinforced “I am not good enough” and “I am not what they want” in the form of not completing what I started to avoid success (if I am not good enough, then I can’t be successful), always taking the safe route, and never seeking attention. My storyteller didn’t bring me challenges to hurt me. She did this to give me opportunities to clear the lies that I had accepted as truths. There is no one to blame for any of this. This is not my parents, my sisters or even Yuri’s ‘fault’. These are my experiences and my storyteller. Anything that I perceive as a challenge is a golden opportunity to remember who I really am, a Divine being having a human experience. It’s like the movie Groundhog Day. We are destined to repeat our limiting patterns until we embrace them and change the way we approach them. All of the events that followed in my life were ‘do overs’ that I failed to recognize. The ‘do overs’ were chances to change my story, but without understanding this, to me they simply reinforced my early lies.
I finally realize now, that I am a phenomenal being of the Universe. In fact, I am creating every moment that I have. Every moment is either reinforcing my awesomeness or giving me a chance to clear a lie. When I feel uncomfortable, I dive right into the center of it. I talk to it. I send it love and kindness. I care for it as if it were a child, because that is where it comes from. I help the child to see that the monster in the closet isn’t real. I remind myself that what I am feeling is simply the lie that I have perpetuated my entire life. I appreciate it for giving me the opportunity to clear the pattern that has always kept me stuck and I remind myself of how powerful I am to have created these experiences.
What is your storyteller selling you? What stories have you told yourself that continually limit you? What patterns do you see in your life be it anxiety, debt, illness, always being let down by certain personality types, or never finishing what you start? Rather than beat yourself up, recognize the opportunity to clear the lie, dive into the discomfort (emotional or physical) and learn what it is there to teach you about who you really are and then LOVE it to death. You are so powerful. Playing small doesn’t serve you, nor does it serve humanity. Be willing to ‘go there’ and get to the bottom of the patterns that have always held you back from embracing the true miracle of you.