In today’s newsletter I’m sharing some thoughts about becoming aware of what you place your faith in. Faith is powerful and what you place your faith in will have power in your life. Often people I work with have faith in their lacking worth, or faith in being treated badly by someone they love is something they deserve. Calling out the faith they have placed in not believing in themselves or that they are not worthy of being loved, is often the first clue the person has in what they have placed their faith in. Then, we work on changing what they place their faith in so that they place their faith in what aligns and is congruent with what they seek to realize in love and life.
Self betrayal is a tough place to be, a place you will find yourself when you place faith in deserving to be treated badly by a lover, a boss, a family member. To move away from self betrayal requires you forgive yourself for betraying yourself, which requires loving yourself enough to forgive yourself. Self love is fundamental to having faith in yourself and life; lacking faith in life to do right by you is a hallmark of abandonment, first by others and then by yourself.
One of the first reframes I help people make when they work with me is for realizing they have been entrusted by life to create something better through taking up change. Life will challenge us in faith that we are able to transform what challenges us into something that better serves us and thus others as well. This can be a stretch for people, yet when traditional therapy has not served a person to realize their desired results, they are more willing to try something different for the results they are seeking and have yet not realized
There’s a phenomena called “what fires together, wires together” which refers to the fact that the more frequently you engage in a behavior, the more often neurons in your brain “fire-off” and create stronger, more efficient, and familiar pathways in your brain connecting the images, behaviors, beliefs, sensations and emotions with that experience. Meaning, the more often you respond to an experience with behavior that responds effectively for desired results, the more your brain will move towards automating your desired outcomes. Another way of saying this is that the more consistently you respond to an experience with behavior that results in the outcome you seek, the more often you will realize what you want. Life truly does want you to realize what you are seeking as experiences in your life.
This poem of Rum’s below reminds me of just how wrong we can get it when life challenges us. We may feel we have done something wrong or are being punished or even that there is something wrong with us that life brings us a challenge. Life, I have come to realize, is quite different in her intentions when delivering a challenge to us. She is doing so in trust and with an offer of grace as Rumi so eloquently speaks to in this poem below. We are wise to ask ourself when we feel out of sorts, “what do I need to at this moment?” and then listen carefully to the quieter inner voice of grace and not so much to the louder inner voice of fear. Grace is a mystical power as important to engage in life-especially contemporary life with all it’s noise and overwhelm-as are physical, emotional, and intellectual powers.
“Overcome any bitterness that may have come because you were not up to the magnitude of pain that was entrusted to you.
Like the Mother of the world who carries the pain of the world in her heart, each one of us is a part of her heart and is endowed with a certain measure of her pain.
You are sharing in the totality of Her pain and you are called to meet it in joy instead of self-pity”
~ Rumi