2-3-4 Friday 20 December

‘Seeking to spark the most potential within you per word of any online newsletter’

This is a follow up to the training I had with Tong Yee, of And, between 18 to 22 November. 

1 thought

You wouldn’t have wanted to meet me in June this year. That month, I had gone for a week-long training. At that training, no one seemed to want to be my friend.

I felt so outcast that I would sit and eat lunches alone in the room of 32 people.

I was a ball of anger, waiting to lash out at whatever was around me. If you made any form of real contact with me, peeled beneath the layers, I would have thought,

Who the hell do you think you are?

Outwardly I would have looked nice and smart, funny and eloquent. But inwardly, I was a mess.

No one wanted to come into contact with that.

Recently I went for a similar training course where there were some of the same students. Some said I had changed.

Funnily enough, one said I was ‘bearable’.

Don’t laugh.

I was that unbearable.

What changed?

As helping professionals, we often hear of this term ‘self-work’ to indicate the work we need to do to stop similar patterns and conflicts from appearing in our lives.

And you might seem on the surface, to be engaging with the process of self-work. You’re going for therapy, going for personal development courses, silent retreats, and deep down, you think something is happening.

You hope something happens.

But then the same patterns repeat.

Mind you, I don’t have a magic formula. But in reflecting on my own journey, I realised the two things that were important was to:

1. Know what you’re working on (know the work)
2. Own the work
3. Accept the work

What often gets in the way in our understanding of the work we need to process is our tendency to project our pain onto something, or someone else.

For a long time, I was unable to make headway because I insisted on putting the blame onto my parents, or the systems I was in. Whatever emotions I felt within me were stuck, and never released because I did not allow them a channel.

Please don’t take this as me being unempathetic. It may be your parent’s fault. Or your partner’s. Or your

But their errors don’t have to stay stuck with you. When you own your power to change the hurt you’ve felt from them, you begin to find the change you seek.

1 talk

You can’t think your way out of suffering.

Just as your suffering was first felt, you also must feel your way out.

1 tip

I encourage you to take some time to feel.

To truly touch what’s deep within, and to feel it at the heart, and gut level. What do those two parts say? Often we try to intellectualise what we are experiencing by adding theory and therapy, hoping for someone to intellectualise and conceptualise our pain.

But sometimes, just the mere act of sitting with your pain, naming the emotions that bubble up, and working through those can bring a lot more healing.

Let me give you my own example.

For a long time, I was hurt by how small I felt in front of my father. I never knew why he couldn’t accept me despite me achieving more than most. One traumatic incident came when I had first started my business, and he asked,

how long can you last?

Ouch.

But I never allowed myself to feel the pain, choosing instead to blame him for his insensitivity.

But when someone finally named the silent anger within me, something clicked. I began to allow myself to feel the anger within me.

And when I finally contacted my deep, unbridled anger, there finally came release, and a better resolution.

Don’t just intellectualise your pain.

Feel it.

John

Live Young, Live Well - Work Your Love

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