Ep #67: How Self-Pity Keeps Us from Our Own Great Power

“What we choose to fight is so tiny. What fights us is so great. If only we would let ourselves be dominated, as things do, by some immense storm, we would become strong too and not need names.” That’s from the poem The Man Watching by Rilke, translation by Robert Bly.

I told you last week that there was going to be an exciting part two to this conversation about self-pity. So, what does self-pity have to do with that stanza from Rilke about what we choose to fight being tiny and what fights us is so great?

Well, today, I’m going to continue this conversation about self-pity. And the contribution I have for you here, the insight I have is how our immersion, how latching into self-pity helps us escape our own big energy, our own great power and also the big energy that wants to move through us and work on us in the world.

So, listen in. We’ll tie it back into that poem some more and we’re going to talk about the ways in which you might be self-sabotaging and limiting yourself, holding yourself back and subconsciously limiting, diminishing your power and your ability, your efficacy to create the exact results you want in your life by engaging in self-pity and victim mindset. It can show up in ways that are not obvious, so listen in, my friends. I think you’ll love this episode.

You are listening to The Art School Podcast; a show for artists and creatives who want to become the next greatest version of themselves. Learn how to cultivate an extraordinary way of being and take the mystery out of making money, and the struggle out of making art. Here is your host, master certified life coach, artist, and former lawyer, Leah Badertscher.

Hey, everyone, and welcome back. I just had the nudge to start this episode – right now I had this nudge – with this question; what do you want to create no matter what in the next year or the next three years? And I would really like to know the answer to that. So, email me at leah@leahcb.com and tell me, what’s your dream to create in three years and what part of that do you see happening in this year?

And it’s actually related – I see now why I wanted to ask that because it’s very related to the subject of this podcast, the underlying subject, which is about helping you to become the creative powerhouse that you’re meant to be, to help you cultivate that extraordinary way of being in mind, body, and spirit that makes extraordinary results inevitable.

So, I do want to hear from you; what extraordinary results do you want to be inevitable? That helps me know what to talk about on this podcast, how to help you cultivate that way of being that makes those results inevitable. That’s the work that I get to do with my clients.

And I’ve had some time to reflect on this, especially this last several weeks. And then especially over the course of the last week because I was thinking about what I most want from a coach and what I bring to coaching. And I think what I most want from a coach is what I do for my clients.

So, if somebody comes to me and they’ve had a dream of not only writing their novel – maybe it is and they haven’t done that yet, I know I will get them to the place where that’s done. If they have the sacred dream of publishing it, I know I and work to find within them, if there is that golden kernel of truth that that’s their sacred dream, I know I can hold the space and offer the tools and guidance to help them get there.

And I think too, it’s this part of the importance of holding a safe space. So that’s what we started talking about last week, the importance of creating this sense of safety and how empowering that is. Because, in a sense, when you have the sense of safety, then it’s this paradox where you’re able to be all things, including weak, including the beginner, including a failure, including a person who hasn’t done it yet, including the person who’s tried many times and not figured it out yet.

When you can have that kind of safe space, then we can get to work because it’s not just about you showing up with bravado and bully-forcing yourself, white-knuckling yourself to think the thoughts you’re supposed to think, and again, just white-knuckling and forcing your way to a result. What’s really available with profound deep masterful coaching is the shift where you’re safe to be all the things, and in that place, it’s such a paradox where you feel your most powerful.

So, that’s the kind of space I want to continue, to try to provide via this podcast, even though it’s not a one-to-one relationship. It’s why I’m using this winter, I’m not offering The Art School this winter because I’m taking the past four Art School sessions that I’ve run and I’m going through all the materials, all of the content I’ve created, each class, each coaching call, all of the written caching I’ve done, all of the written materials and content I’ve created for this podcast, and honing in on what are the most powerful tools and practices that result in shifts and creating case studies, because that’s a way – it’s kind of like group coaching, when you can learn from a case study. And group coaching is such a powerful dynamic.

So, I’m really dialing in The Art School to be the premiere creative coaching training program of its kind. Again, I love the analogy and thinking about, what would an Olympic caliber creative training program be? What would Olympic caliber creative coaching look like? And then having that be the gold standard; no pun intended. But having that caliber of coaching and training and then results be the gold standard.

So, I want to hear from you. What are your dreams? What are your challenges? You could be just starting out. You could be at the top of your game, at the top of your industry, and now you want to take it to the next level, you want to do something that’s never been done before, something legendary.

You know you’ve got it in you. You know you have what it takes. And you are just looking for the right mentor, the right guidance, maybe the right community and support. I’ve been dreaming up possibilities for a high-level artist mastermind, so let me know, because I love going to work on how to make that happen for you, what you can do to make those results inevitable and in a way that enhances and strengthens all areas of your life.

Which brings me back to the topic of today’s episode, again, how could self-pity and victim mindset lead you to a more empowering place? Well, as I shared last week, it led me to look more closely at my own experience and see what’s missing from the conversation. And I see this holding back so many people and to be an ongoing struggle for so many people.

And the conversation that I started last week was to first create this sense of safety, that the opposite of self-pity is yes, love and compassion, but greater than that, it’s this expansive sense of safety and creating that. And then the part two of the conversation that I wanted to have about self-pity and victim mindset today was to offer you the awareness that’s self-pity and victim mindset may not be this just perennial chronic character flaw of yours, but very likely is just a fear-based response to you coming into the greatness of your own true power, and also coming into contact with success.

A patterns that I see again and again is we can use self-pity and the victim mindset as self-sabotage, as this self-violence we inflict on ourselves when we start to get too big, when we start to become too powerful or engaged with something that’s got this great, vast, big energy, even if it is the stuff of our dreams, that we use self-pity and victimhood to escape our own big energy.

So then, what do you do about that? I’ll get to some examples and illustrate this point in a minute, but first, what then do you do about that? That’s great to know, right? Well first is just to have that awareness. And I think also the liberation and the freedom and the relief that comes with knowing that this is not just something that is wrong with you, that you have been engaged in, looped into a self-pity or victim mindset because I think that’s just one more way that it perpetuates, self-perpetuates, is then we feel pitiful about being self-pitying.

And then we think, “Oh there’s just something wrong with me…” it’s a character flaw. But instead, to have an awareness that it is a fear-based response to you coming into your own true self, which I think is also your own deepest source of natural power.

I have shared before – I think I have, on this podcast – the story from Dr. Valarie Rein’s book, Patriarchal Stress Disorder, where she talks about the study with the mice, where they put mice in this cage and they piped cherry blossom fragrance into the cage and then, at the same time simultaneously, applied a mild electric shock to the mice to their feet. And then they did all the biological marker readings and studies and the mice exhibited, obviously, a stress response and a fear response to having that electrical shock.

So, the second part of the experience was there was no electrical shock, but just the fragrance of the cherry blossoms piped into the cage. They did the same test. The mice were exhibiting the same stress response and fear response.

And then, what gets wild is then they did this study with the offspring of those mice, but they applied no electric shock. They just piped in the smell of the cherry blossoms. And the offspring, who had never experienced the electric shock, exhibited the same stress response and fear response as their parents had.

And then, it gets even better because they did this study again with the grandchildren of that initial group of mice. And with the grandchildren, they again introduced the smell of the cherry blossoms but applied no electric shock to their feet, and those grandchildren mice also exhibited the same stress response and fear response.

And she ties this into the phenomenon, for women in particular, saying throughout most of history, and you could argue still today, whenever a woman has reached for power, it’s been a punishable offense. And I don’t think this applies to only women. I think it applies to people reaching for their own innate, coming into their own innate creative power in general, that that has been a punishable offense, to think for yourself, to think outside the box, and, for women in particular, to become powerful.

And something that came up at the retreat, and I’ll just share this in broad strokes so as not to share any personal information, but there are many different experiences people could choose from at the retreat. And one of them being an Equus coaching, horse whispering coaching experience.

And one of the women had this amazing insight into a pattern where the metaphor for horse work is that it’s not about the horse, that however you are engaging with the horse is really just a reflection of what your patterns are in the world, how you engage with the world. So, the task in this Equus experience is you approach the horse and then you pick up its hoof to clean out its hoof.

And so, this woman approached and everything was fine, she picked up the hoof, started to clean out the hoof. And then, in her words, she freaked out. And then Wyatt Webb – this amazing horse whisperer coach who works there, and he helped her identify that this is a pattern in life; that she gets excited about something, she approaches it, she’s all in, she’s courageous, brave, she shows up, and then the dream is right there and she freaks out and bails, to use her words.

What was even more fascinating though was that when we got together in the group and she and she was sharing this story that she had already shared with me, another woman in the group who is an extraordinary amazing coach, she picked up on something when she heard this story. She picked up on that the freak out actually happened after this other woman had successfully completed the challenge.

The assignment was to pick up the horse’s hoof, approach the horse, pick up the hoof, clean out the hoof, and that’s the assignment. She pointed out that the woman had successfully done all these things and from a clear strong courageous place, and it wasn’t until she had actually successfully completed everything, and then she freaked out. So then, her story that she bailed was not even quite accurate because she didn’t actually bail on the assignment. She followed all the way through but her brain had so convinced her that her pattern was bail and then therefore be unsuccessful.

But what actually happened, the facts were that she completed the assignment. So actually, she was successful, and then she bailed. And I thought that was such a powerful catch and a powerful insight, because I think it’s what we do over and over again. We tell ourselves that there’s some gap between us and having the power within us to create everything we want to create, to be who we want to be.

Actually, we create that gap, that artificial gap in our mind, and then we self-pity because then we don’t actually have to hold that powerful, powerful vibration of who we really are. So, my very simple but profound, pragmatic tool for you is that this is about conditioning yourself to hold the vibration of your power and your ability to create everything you want longer and longer and to notice you patterns of going into self-pity and victimhood right when you’re coming into your power as a way to escape your own big energy and to kind of release the pressure valve.

So, an exercise that I led the women through this weekend and one I have been practicing myself is the period pause. So, this actually brings me right into the part of the podcast where I want you to do more than just listen. I want you to lean in, really work with me, and coach with me.

This coaching is about conditioning yourself to have a greater capacity to be a stringer channel and a vessel for your own power. This is about conditioning yourself to make it safe for you to be as successful and powerful as you need to be. And when I say that, that doesn’t mean that things go right and there are rainbows and daisies and dollars in your bank account right away, but making it safe for you to be successful and powerful means it is also safe for you to fail. It is also safe for you to risk all sorts of things that right now you might be using as middlemen or gatekeepers.

So, making it safe for you to be truly you, parsley, powerfully, authentically, fully expressed you, and then letting yourself risk all sorts of things that, in the past, may have felt like the very things that are the gatekeepers or hold the keys to your success. So, being creatively empowered, taking all that power back, means making it safe for you then to maybe trade being nice and accepted for being powerful and true.

It means being safe s this deeply loving space, and then what you’re willing to do is risk not being accepted, and even more, risk other people judging you, hating you, so in their eyes, risking them thinking that you are unlovable, risking being wrong, having your commitment to being so true to you, so loving and safe to yourself, that you’re willing to be wrong. And I think self-pity comes in so much more when we are still very much giving power to these gatekeepers and middlemen because when who we are and what we’re able to do hinges on other people, then we start again to slip into that victimhood mode.

We feel self-pity because we’re not good enough in someone else’s eyes. We’re not good enough in popular opinion, we haven’t been accepted yet. All of that self-pity energy I think is a sign that we’re still very much giving our power away from the middlemen and have room to go in creating this safety for ourselves, where in the meantime we do allow things like self-pity and self-loathing come up. As a Course of Miracles says, “Love brings up anything unlike itself in order to be healed,” and allowing yourself that there will be layers and layers of that work to do.

But again, creating this safe space for yourself so that the things that you used to think were the keys to your success, realizing that they may actually be what’s holding you back, they may actually be keeping you imprisoned, rather than the keys to setting yourself free.

So, here is that tool for the coach with me. Here is the tool that I’m going to offer that you can use to condition yourself to carry the current of your own power, to carry the increased – if you think about you wouldn’t hook up a real car battery to a remote-controlled car. If you want to carry that wattage, you need to upgrade your whole system. And I think that’s an upgrade that you approach from – you take a holistic approach too, in mind, body, and spirit.

And here is an exercise that I think conditions you on every one of those levels. So, it’s the period pause. So, with my client, who reached the horse’s hoof and held it in her hands, and when we were talking, she was sharing how she could really see the power in this metaphor of the horse being this big beautiful creature that represented so many of her most beautiful and cherished dreams for herself and that it was right there and she was then being hard on herself for freaking out and then this being her pattern. So she said, freak out and bail, whenever it was right there.

So, last week, I introduced you to the concept of opposite action, so this period pause is a takeoff of that. So, if you feel like you have- this sort of self-sabotaging pattern going on where you slip into self-pity and victimhood or procrastination, however it shows up to you, whenever you get so close to this big dream – and maybe for some of you too, it’s you get shiny object syndrome, you get so far into your project and then you’re like, “Not feeling it anymore,” that’s another way that this can show up.

So, instead of doing that thing you normally do, which again, to paraphrase, her words are perfect, it’s like, freak out and bail. Whatever freak out and bail looks like for you, let there be a period there, just at the end of the sentence, “I’m right here, this close to my dream. I am right here feeling my power,” and then not having this comma but. Because the period pause is the opposite of what I see so many clients do with a comma but.

We’ll be working together and they’ll be making great strides. I have a client say, “Oh my gosh, I just had my biggest month ever,” and that was after consecutively building on the biggest month evert for the last two months. And then she will say, “Comma, but I still have that loan to pay off.” And then it’s like it has erased the energy of everything that she’s done. It’s like she’s just taken herself down a few notches.

It’s like that mouse who smells the cherry blossom and is like, “Oh my god, I better pull it back. I’m actually not that good. How good could it get? Well, it can’t get that good and I’m going to bring myself down before something else happens that brings it down for me.”

So, the period pause is an opposite action to continuing along that line of, “I’m making great strides, I’m going for it, I’m healing, I’m doing this thing, but it’s not enough yet.” Because that comma but is, again, what continues to create that perpetual gap between you and your dream, between you and that inevitable result that you want, between you and being as powerful as you, in your heart of hearts, know you are meant to be in the world.

And then I think where self-pity and victimhood come in is that instead of realizing that we are creating that gap, we are the only ones creating that gap. And where so many of my clients, this is how they describe the gap. They’re like, I almost get there. I almost do it and then it doesn’t happen, or then I screw it up, or then someone else passes me by or someone else gets the job, the gig, the promotion. Someone else gets my dream. I’m almost…

And it’s this almost energy that then tortures them. And again, that’s another reason your brain will have to pity yourself, “Clearly I’m getting in my own way or something’s wrong with me,” and then it leads down that victimhood spiral because what this is doing is being an escape from your bigger energy and your success and your power. It’s a pressure-release valve. It’s an escape hatch.

And you might be thinking, “Why would I want to escape from my dreams?” But practice this. This is also along the lines of, if you’re familiar with upper limit work and how Gay Hendricks’ book, The Big Leap, this is also a tool that I use to condition ourselves to move beyond our current upper limits.

So, try it. try holding that vibration of your power and notice how your brain will fight you. It will argue. It will argue for your limitations. It will argue for why you’re not successful and why you never will be successful. Notice how hard it is just to stay within the energy of your clarity, the energy of your power, the energy of being relaxed and safe, having it be safe being you in the world and powerful and fully expressed.

Notice how hard it is to hold and sustain that energy and how much your brain wants to fight for that comma but, that second half of the sentence that contradicts and diminishes the first, which is all about contradicting your truth and diminishing your power and your power to create. And notice where this plays into your own tendency to perpetually create this almost gap, your almost breakthrough, you almost get it but you don’t.

And so notice, if you have maybe an addiction to this cycle – and notice how the brain will argue with you that nothing so simple as pausing, putting a period there, and breathing and holding, sustaining just a little bit longer and a little bit longer the energy and the essence of your truth and your power. Notice how your brain will argue that that’s never going to make a difference, that that’s never going to work, but also notice that that’s the talk of self-pity and victimhood.

So try it, and try it again, and try it again, and again, and again. This is that part of training yourself like an Olympic athlete, coming back to it again and again, conditioning yourself to hold a greater frequency of your own true power, just like you’d condition yourself over time to run a marathon. You’ll build up the cardiac strength, you’d build up your stamina, your leg strength. Approach this over time, you are conditioning yourself to hold that big energy that is who you really are.

One last story, a personal story on this note – I noticed this opportunity to condition myself to my own power, to condition myself to that answer to the question, how good are you willing to let it get? Even just as recently as a couple of weeks ago.

I had told you that we went to the Brandi Carlile concert at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, my husband and I. And I bought VIP tickets for the soundcheck. It was amazing. I bought front-row center tickets. I think I even forgot to tell you the part where they came forward to the front of the stage and sang right there. I could have grabbed their ankles, but I’m not a stalker.

And so, they sang. And so my husband was dead center, and then she knelt down and smiled and winked at him and handed him her guitar pick and I just about died of jealousy of him. I wanted the guitar pick. I don’t care if she winked at him. And even my brother, who is a huge Brandi Carlile fan, was giving me a hard time saying, “Maybe if you had married somebody who was a little less good-looking, the woman who’s married to a woman wouldn’t have winked at him and given him her guitar pick.”

So, such a phenomenal night. And I felt to alive. That was so awesome. I think the other part I don’t think I shared of this was when I found out that these VIP tickets were available, I signed up right away. And then, a week before the show, the sent out some information about how to show up to the soundcheck where you’re supposed to go, rules, all that kind of stuff.

And there was a little note in there that said, “You can bring gifts.” And I, for the longest time, have wanted to send the band – I’m going to be a nerd here and just talk about feeling safe, creating this sense of safety for yourself because I for sure feel like a geek telling you this. I wanted to create a painting for them.

Their work has meant so much to me and was like the soundtrack to my growth, my journey, my evolution as an artist. And I just wanted to make a painting for them. But then I thought, I don’t have an address. Where am I ever going to find out how to mail it to, who to mail it to, or where to send it?

And then, boom, there’s a little line, “You can bring gifts.” And so now, I didn’t want to make them this huge painting because that’s assuming I love my art. I’m pretty sure they would love my art too. And yet, you don’t gift somebody, like, a humongous painting. I didn’t think I wanted to do that anyway, and they’re on the road. So I made them a mini victory painting and I poured a lot of personal meaning into it and I wrote a letter and it just felt like, “Oh my gosh, here’s my invitation. I’ve wanted to do this. Here’s the door open.”

And so I did that and I brought it along and I gave it to their manager and she said thanks, and they’ll get it after the show. So that’s awesome. So there was that. And I’m like, oh my gosh, I’m doing all of the things. And that’s what I kept thinking, like, I’m doing all the things, this is all happening. I said I wanted to make the painting, and here the door opens. I get to make them a personal painting. I’m doing this VIP soundcheck, I’m there with my husband, I’m so – we had such a great time together. It was a night to remember.

And then, the next day, maybe you can guess; I felt terrible, terrible, terrible. And again, it felt like, this is so strange. This feels like I’m feeling sorry for myself. And I was very curious about it, at the same time, feeling so pitiful.

And I was feeling it, I could not quite figure it out. I thought, did I expect something? Did I expect, like – I don’t think I expected anything, because what could they have done? It’s not like I put my phone number in there or anything. But was I expecting a thank you? No, I really was, like, it’s a gift.

And I believe in giving gifts from the heart and not expecting things. And I actually feel great about that because I feel vulnerable sharing my art, and I shared it. that’s something I’m proud of. I set up this whole amazing dream night. That feels amazing.

So it occurred to me though, at the Miraval retreat and working with my clients, I’m like, “Oh, I was vibrating on such a high level. I was really feeling so deeply like myself, and wow, I created all of this. This is my life. This is what I’m doing. This is so amazing. This is how good it can get.”

And then my comma but the next day was, like, self-pity just wanted the way in somehow. It wanted me to come down a few notches. It was like, this is too much. This is too much to hold. We should certainly feel bad and sorry for ourselves about something.

So, I’m going back through that whole scenario and just practicing my own, “I created all of that, I received all of that. I am so fortunate. I’m so blessed. And I am so powerful, period, pause.” Take it in, condition myself to what it feels like to feel safe and powerful, to create, receive, to be grateful and with a period pause, and not do the self-violence of coming up with some reason I better feel bad.

So, that’s another just personal story that I wanted to share in case it resonates with any of you out there who are confounded by this loop in what we do to ourselves, and so you know too, it’s ongoing work and there are many layers.

Thank you for listening to another episode of The Art School Podcast. I hope you’ve enjoyed this episode. I hope this podcast has been useful for you. And if it has, the best thing you can do to pay it forward is to go to iTunes and leave a review. That helps me make sure this work reaches as many people as possible. And if you want to take this work deeper, if you feel like you have a pattern of that almost energy, where you allow yourself to be so powerful and yet for reasons that are frustrating and unclear and maddening even to you, you let yourself get so close, like you’re almost there, but then never quite break through or hold it or are able to sustain it or repeat it over and over again so that the extraordinary becomes the new normal, then sign up for my mailing list.

There are two different ways to work with me this year. I am taking on just two new clients in March and two new clients in April. And then that will be it for private clients for the rest of the year because then I’m focusing going all in on Art School and the masterclass, the mastermind that goes along with Art School.

So, the Art School, if you’re not familiar with my work, it’s the only program of its kind, that trains you both in the specific mindset and also the holistic process, the holistic creative process you need in order to be an artist that’s in demand and thriving, successful, fulfilled, and healthy.

So, the next session takes place in fall of 2020, but enrollment’s limited and we are taking applications. So, now is the time to sign up to be on the waitlist, and then you’ll be the first to receive details on applying, as well as some special bonus pre-trainings that we’ll have available only to those that are on the Art School email list.

So, you can sign up for that waitlist by going to my website, www.leahcb.com, and if you’re interested in one of those four remaining private coaching spots, you can email support@leahcb.com with discovery consult in the subject line.

So, to close the podcast today, I wanted to offer something else that you can use as an alternative to self-pity or going into victim mindset loops. And that is that whatever you’re going through that’s hard, yes, there is the invitation, there’s the opportunity to self-pity and to have any of those old loops of victimhood or self-loathing come up, and again, holding this safe space for yourself to allow that to happen, I think, is of paramount importance.

I also know it’s very powerful to also know that there are other possibilities to consider, that when you mind wants to go there, wants to go into victimhood and self-defeat, consider the possibility that instead you’re going through this thing that’s hard because that’s what you’re built for, and that the transformation that you’re seeking is done through this hard process, not just as something that you have to get through and what you want is on the other side, that it’s very necessary.

And I think that poem that I shared the stanza from at the beginning, The Man Watching, speaks to that so beautifully. So, I wanted to close today by reading the poem in its entirety. And I highly recommend that you look it up and that you print it and that you read it through yourself, you see the words, and that you read it aloud to yourself.

The Man Watching. “I can tell by the ways the trees beat after so many dull days on my worried window panes that a storm is coming. And I hear the far-off fields say things, I can’t bear without a friend, I can’t love without a sister.

The storm, the shifter of shapes drives on across the woods and across time. And the world looks as if it had no age. The landscape like a line in a psalm book is seriousness and weight and eternity.

What we choose to fight is so tiny. What fights us is so great. If we could only let ourselves be dominated, as things do by some immense storm, we would become strong too and not need names.

When we win, it’s with small things, and the triumph itself makes us small. What is extraordinary and eternal does not want to be bent by us I mean the angel who appeared to the wrestlers of the Old Testament. When the wrestlers’ sinews grew long like metal strings, he felt them under his fingers like chords of deep music.

Whoever was beaten by this angel, who often simply declined the fight, went away proud and strengthened and great from that harsh hand that needed him as if to change his shape. Winning does not tempt that man. This is how he grows, by being defeated decisively by constantly greater beings.”

I wanted to share that with all of you listening because if you’ve chosen this pioneering visionary path of creating your dream, of creating your life on purpose in a way that’s in integrity to you, even if it doesn’t look like what anyone else has done before, if you’ve chosen to walk this path of believing in yourself more than anyone else, you have chosen the hero’s journey and there are going to be challenges.

You have said yes. And some of the things I think we’ve said yes to, I maybe don’t think we’ve said yes to. Maybe it’s we’ve battled depression all of our life or anxiety or something that seems out of our control. Maybe we’ve had this dream inside of us and we can’t seem to give up on it and yet we also, it doesn’t seem like we have what it takes to create it.

And then, we go through these cycles of self-loathing, self-doubt, victimhood, self-pity. And it can feel like so many dark nights of the soul. What I love about this poem is that I think that night that the wrestlers of the Old Testament were being wrestled with by the angel, to me, that speaks of a dark night of the soul.

But to have that reframe, to know that you can make meaning that it’s not for nothing, that it doesn’t not count, but as the poet said, you know, sometimes, this angel, we get beaten by it. But hey, that angel chose you to fight with and that’s an angel that often simply declines the fight. Like, that person, not worthy of me.

And then also redefining what it means to go through that, that you are transformed by that experience, the way he wrote about whoever was beaten by this angel went away proud and strengthened and great from that harsh hand that kneaded him as if to change his shape.

So, think about that. Whatever you’ve been through, how has it kneaded you as if to change your shape and how has that change been necessary so that you’re conditioned to be the vessel that you need to be to channel the energy, the creativity of who you’re meant to be in this world, of the work you’re meant to do to show up as you’re meant to show up and contribute what you were meant to contribute?

How have all of your experiences, even the hardest ones, especially the hardest ones dominated you in such a way that nothing else ever could have, that changed you in a way that you never would have elected for, you don’t think so anyway, consciously and raised your hand and been like, “Yep, I’ll sign up for that,” but that was so necessary for you to become more truly powerful? And by powerful, I mean more naturally at home and safe within yourself being who you really are in the world.

So, I want to close this podcast by asking you to look back on anything that has seemed like a torment to you or a meaningless struggle or a difficulty and look at it through the frame of, “Was that the angel choosing you to wrestle with, choosing you as a worthy, not only opponent, but someone worthy of being kneaded and changed and transformed to be a vessel for an even more powerful energy?

Can you look back, and instead of choosing to self-pity or engage in victim mindset, can you instead look back and see it through that frame that you were the wrestler the angel chose? And I want to invite you that you too can stand up and walk away proud and strengthened and great from that harsh hand.

Have a wonderful week, everyone. Feel who you really are, feel your power, pause, hold it, hold it, hold it all the way to next week and I’ll talk to you next time.