How many times have you taken the option that you know?
Maybe you’ve had previous experience of it, or you understand how it might turn out?
It’s so common.
The only challenge with this is: certainty is a myth.
You cannot know precisely how things will turn out, and even if you claim that some of your experiences have been that way, you’re probably ignoring the minutiae that didn’t go to plan. The things that got in your way; the challenges you had to navigate to get to that point.
It’s so important to have a vision of how you want something to turn out because things are never certain.
When you can approach life flexibly, and also align to a vision of what you want to achieve, you can stay on track.
The biggest reason that you, or I, settle for certainty and misery is we don’t feel worthy of going for whatever it is that we’re searching for; we feel ashamed.
Another reason is that our relationship with uncertainty needs evolving.
We live in an uncertain world; it fluctuates in its very nature.
The pendulum swings back and forth and the overarching rule of physical matter is entropy. Everything decays. You decay, I decay, we are all on the inevitable march towards death.
Rather than that being a bad thing, it can be a motivator to lead a more vital, and visceral, life. To live fully, without regret. To show love to the people in your life that deserve it.
In ‘The Top Five Regrets of the Dying’, Bronnie Ware illuminates:
“They say though that we do more to avoid pain than we do to gain pleasure. So it is when the pain becomes too much that we finally find the courage to make changes.”
Shame
Coming back to shame, it’s the feeling that you’re not good enough that stops you from embarking on your soul purpose.
Think of the thing that you intensely yearn for, as an experience, say it to yourself, then notice the primary ways that you talk yourself out of it. These are the shame voices, and we all have them.
They come from the ways that you perceive your finiteness as a child; if someone told you that you couldn’t achieve something, or you interpreted a message from the culture in which you grew.
For me, it was that all artists are destitute. No one said this to me explicitly; it was concerning the words that are paired alongside artist, in western society, like ‘tortured’, ‘mad’, and ‘starving’.
The three facts of the shame gremlins that stop us from doing are these:
- We all have them.
- No one wants to talk about them.
- The less we talk about them, the more we have them.
Here are three ways that Brené Brown’s research says that you can navigate shame:
Shame resilience
Moving away from shame is essential, you’ll never deal with it by going through it, like the third way suggests because shame grows exponentially.
The phrase ‘shame spiral’ captures this precisely. It’s a close feedback loop.
People with shame resilience have these things in common:
- They can name their gremlins.
- They use reality checks; critical awareness around shaming narratives.
- Reaching out and sharing a shame — they call shame shame. Identify shame, humiliation, and embarrassment correctly.
- They know when they’re in shame. For example, when I’m in shame, my forehead feels heavy, my throat goes dry, and my gut feels unsteady.
The relating experience around shame needs to be empathetic, so next time you call up that friend, who you can relate to in that way, how about you mention that you’re experiencing some shame gremlins? Then share what it is. You might even get through the shame, and be able to laugh about it later.
Humiliation is different from shame in one aspect, deserving.
If someone goes through a challenging experience and thinks they deserve any of the criticism that they get, they’ll be in shame. Instead, if someone goes through the same situation and feels that the person involved was unfair, and they didn’t deserve the treatment, that’s humiliation.
Response to shaming
There are three responses to shaming:
- Move away — disengaging or withdrawing from someone out of survival.
- Move towards — people-pleasing.
- Move against — shaming others to fight shame.
Understanding which one you exhibit most is an incredible tool to get yourself out of shame; it is these unconscious habits around shame that keep us stuck in shame.
If you can develop awareness, and some space, then you can develop choice consciousness. The choice being to go to someone you trust to have empathy for your situation, that loves you and can hold space for you.
The knowledge that it grows exponentially
Shame grows exponentially in the right environment. Someone who lives in shame (I am a terrible person), and exists in these environments, will stay in shame for their entire lives
The shame environment thrives on:
- Secrecy
- Silence
- Judgement
It’s impossible to get out of the feeling in this atmosphere.
Integrating thoughts
When dealing with shame, it’s important to have empathy.
Bronnie Ware, also states:
“There is a fine line between compassion and a victim mentality. Compassion though is a healing force and comes from a place of kindness towards yourself. Playing the victim is a toxic waste of time that not only repels other people, but also robs the victim of ever knowing true happiness.”
I can’t count the number of times I have conversations on social media that devolve into a competition around who is right, myself included.
It’s like we get set in our ways, bound by what we’ve already expressed. Unable to back up, pivot, be flexible, apologise for something and still keep our dignity.
Being right doesn’t make you a ‘good’ person; it’s just another experience, the same as being wrong.
Living in gratitude is all we need to do to live a fulfilled life.
Wholeheartedness is to have the courage to be wrong, to challenge your identity around something. It is deeply unsettling and requires a knowledge of the nature of uncertainty.
It’s also incredibly freeing and leads the way to peace.
Give it a go.
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This post was previously published on Peter Middleton’s blog.
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