restoredsoul5 – Jody K

What would you say is the key ingredient needed to Restore Trust in yourself?

Click here for photo credit – it’s also a great article

When you see something that speaks to your heart, you spend time pondering it.

I’m going to tell you a little story. Why? Because of a quote I read.

Thank you #empathrefuge for sharing this on Instagram.

I knew the moment I read these words I wasn’t alone. That my life journey set me up to not trust myself because that is how life goes. I had so many life experiences confirming WHY I couldn’t trust myself and with each experience validating that as a truth to my soul for many years.

I am confident anyone who is reading this could share that same statement because their life experiences made trusting difficult too. However, in the end, let’s talk about ways you can release and restore that destructive distrust and safely open up to fully trusting because now you can. Again, I’ll share what set me up and the analytical thinking that got me out of this space. First, here’s the quote that started all this:

Here’s my story of what set me up that took me from zero trust to full trust.

I spend time writing out my thoughts. This shows you what my full trust looks like, um, you’re reading this right? I write to organize my feelings, emotions, thoughts, inspirations … all of it. Where the distrust began is in the irony or opposite of that statement – I’ve never been a strong writer, English is not easy for me. I should clarify, grammar is not easy for me. I think I was in my late 40’s when I realized the words ‘is and are’ meant the same thing but one was singular and the other was plural. I’ve come along way to be in a space to admit that because it was easier to hide that part of my world. My first memory was writing letters, apparently, letters with penpals were expected at seven years old. Of course, my mom began reviewing them because she didn’t want to be embarrassed which ended up with her correcting them. I swear she expected them to be a literary masterpiece and in my head, I was just writing. The idea that I was stupid was planted.

So I stopped (my coping skill).

I stopped for years (holding strong to that coping skill)

Let me take you back to my beginning of what happened after this seed of doubt was planted and how my immature thought processes nurtured this distrust over and over.

From my seven-year-old little girl self, I got by in school. I did much better in math than English. Junior high was when my challenges really showed up. I didn’t keep up, I slid along. Not sure how I passed. Maybe at that time, schools just passed all the students because that is how I remember high school too. I rarely went to my classes, I was good at hiding and not being seen.

It’s still embarrassing to tell this story of my Freshman year in college, I had just turned 18. You see, I ‘tested’ to be in the remedial English class. I wasn’t upset at that because I thought I’d actually learn how to use proper grammar. However, after pouring my heart into an assignment the instructor handed mine back with a very large F on it, then said directly to me while I was in class, “I don’t even know why you’re in here.” Well, that didn’t boost my confidence much. I wanted to run and hide. Do you think I ever wanted to write again? Would you have trust in yourself if you were me?

Why am I telling you all this? What was it about these words, in the quote above, that held such an impact for me?

The impact came because I’m always in a space ready to heal. I continue to have the courage to stop hiding. I AM ready to be heard. My journey has taken me full circle, or so I thought. I have learned to take away blame, blaming all the bad things that happened to me. I’ve overcome procrastination – one of the hardest addictions I’ve had. I had spent years giving up being a victim of my circumstances because I finally got pissed off enough to say STOP! So when I read these words and how they pierced my heart, I knew I had one more layer to release…. damn it!

Seriously, the ‘circle’ only expands, it doesn’t close. Remember, life is a journey, not a destination.

If you’re still reading this, it’s time to ask yourself these important questions:

Do you want to be heard?

Do you want to take ownership of your life and no longer be a victim of your circumstances? Good!

Those feelings are telling you it’s time to tell your inner bully it’s about to get its butt kicked.

Here goes me sharing my analytical mind and my random thinking again, my random-ness that gets my thoughts sorted out. I laugh out loud when I begin because I hear those who will read this and say, “she doesn’t make any sense or that sentence should have had a period, semi-colon, or whatever.” I visualize myself flipping them off – sorry but I am so done being told I’m stupid BUT then I want to hug them because they care… On the flip side, my heart fills with joy and gratitude for those of you who read this with their heart. Maybe you gain something from my random-ness, maybe it gave you permission to just map out your feelings to get an idea of where to start. Either way, thank you for being here!

Let’s dissect this, shall we?

Energetically you know exactly what to do in every situation

First, every time I hear, read, or see the word energetically my mind inserts the word spiritually. Energy = Spirit. Energetically = Spiritually. Can you see why I read the words written but read with my heart; spiritually I know exactly what to do in every situation?

That confirmes I’m on my correct path. I believe with all my heart we come to this earth KNOWING who we are, we have an understanding of what trials and challenges that we will face.

Now the second half: You just question it because you were taught not to trust yourself.

I don’t believe we were just dropped out of heaven, abandoned. Our life was given to parents, some parents are all with it and others are clueless. Some were a cherished gift while others were seen as an obstacle. No matter who your parents are or what they’ve done (yep, even the suckiest and rotten ones out there), they’ve done their best, period! AND …. that holds no effect of who you are and the purpose of why you are here. However, it leads one to that nagging question of why me? Am I right?

I also believe the purpose of this ‘earth’ life gives us experiences with people who play a role in our lives. Every person who crosses our path plays a role, a good or bad one. It all depends on what emotional filters we came with, what challenges we agreed to overcome, and what lessons we are to learn. Lessons are there to teach us. Are your lessons teaching you to trust yourself or not? Maybe the real question is are you distrusting YOU, LIFE, or GOD? Maybe you say you trust God but you don’t trust your intuition. Isn’t God and intuition one in the same? Let that sink in for a minute. Powerful connection uh?

Read the definition below and see what comes up.

Dictionary’s definition: The feeling that someone or something cannot be relied upon. Doubt the honesty or reliability of; regard with suspicion

For me, I couldn’t rely upon my brain. Therefore, leading me to distrust myself.

As children, we have less life experience to understand how to handle certain situations, therefore, we create coping skills. Coping skills teach us how to handle situations based on the level of understanding we hold. Coping skills gives us something to rely on, something to trust. My coping skill of hiding began as early as that seven-year-old little girl. I didn’t know any different at that time, right? I knew I didn’t like to be judged so I avoided that situation, yep, by hiding. Does that make sense?

What coping skills do you recognize you’ve created?

I liken the idea of coping skills and explain how I see that, mixed with my belief from a story I read in the book, The Millionaire Mind by T. Harv Ecker. His story told of a person typing, printing off the paper, and reviewing it. Once a typo was found, they found ways to erase the typo. They reprinted the paper, but again the typo was found, it wouldn’t go away. His point to this story is you have to erase the typos in the blueprint, not the printout. The printout is your experience, and how you’ve processed it. You can’t pretend these experiences didn’t happen. You don’t have to go back and relive them. But, in the same breath, you don’t have to accept them either.

Here’s the secret on how to correct them. The blueprint is who you really are, the author is the one who originates the paper, right? So, I ask that you go back to source; whatever you call your higher power. I call mine God. I’m confident there are typos, but now you know how to fix them, right? To change the typos you go back to truth, which I call source. The truth you are a spiritual being having an earthly experience. The people in your life, those who have crossed your path have scribbled a bunch of lies on your paper and up to this point, you’ve believed them. Believing them keeps you in victimhood so STOP IT!

Other people are not the author of your story, who is?

Exactly, YOU and your energy, your light source, your higher power.

Here are some suggestions on how to begin shifting your mindset from printout to blueprint … once you do this, healing, understanding, awareness, acceptance all begin to flow through you.

Believing you are a spiritual being FIRST gives you the confidence to discern between spirit and ego. Your physical body houses the duality of energy within you. It’s not out there somewhere. It’s WITHIN YOU! Spirit is the author of a higher vibration. The ego is the author of a lower vibration. Spirit is love, kindness, acceptance, and unity. The ego is separation, fear, and conflict. Exercise: You can begin by paying attention to your inner thoughts, how many thoughts do you feel go on the spirit side, how many go on the ego side. This alone is eye-opening. Like an accounting of which energy you lean towards. Take a small notebook with you for a week and separate your pages with a line down the middle; write Spirit on one side, Ego on the other. Be aware, this takes a great deal of awareness, it’s like counting how many times you blink in a day. So if you are an ‘all or nothing’ type personality, you must know you’ll never account every thought you have, because your thoughts happen all day long. Just tally the ones that come to your awareness. Tally as many as you can, there is no right or wrong amount. Once you complete this for a week, it’ll make more sense when you hear me say, please be careful and mindful of your self-talk from now on.
Knowing your coping skills hold emotional attachments gives you a clearer understanding of why they are difficult to release. Exercise: write out all the labels you place on yourself. Are you a mother, daughter, aunt, sister? Do you work at home, outside of the home, what is your profession, are you a boss, employee? What labels define YOU? At #restoredsoul5 we go into all this in detail. Join us on Instagram and be the first to get all the details of what we have planned.

That should get you started. Just knowing I have the power to change MY blueprint, and no one has the power or authority to decide my feelings, my perception, or how to feel. That is on me, all of me, and I love that freedom!

How to bring the Invisible Visible; say what?

First I want to thank SammyJ for her blog. You can find her by clicking here. I also added her link to the photo.

My friend, Kristen Holland shared an insight with me that has had me pondering for a few days; “Greatness Lies within all of us ~ sometimes we just need to shift perspective to make the invisible visible to restore peace.”

Here’s what came up for me when I received her text. First, what is invisible that I’m attached too that I still haven’t found. I fully understand I can only heal what I have brought into awareness ~ so here’s my rambling mind: the invisible is just that, invisible which means I can’t bring an awareness to it because I can’t see it, which means if I can’t bring an awareness to it I’m not able to heal it. If I’m not able to heal it, the pattern remains active.

All this rambling is the justification of my conditioned mind, that ego mind that keeps me in my comfort zone. Once an awareness is brought up, my comfort zone has just become uncomfortable. For me it feels like I’m going to get caught doing something and get in trouble. A huge condition that has stayed with me living with an unstable mother. I never knew when I would get in trouble, I could be doing some thing good or not, it didn’t matter.

Can anyone relate to this?

We all strive to become a better human. I also believe we all strive to eliminate conflict from our life, as much as possible. Right? We are conditioned to be ‘good’ to overcome our ‘bad.’

During my pondering, I decided I wanted to score my life. Where do I feel I’m at right now. Measuring my level of happiness, my fulfillment, etc. I came up with the #6 out of 10. I have come a long way. I have overcome many challenges. I have went through difficult experiences to get to that #6.

Where do you score yourself?

Here’s my point. I am seeking to become even better than that #6. If I have invisible attachments, I stay in my rut. That #6 doesn’t change.

Remember that saying, “If you do what you’ve always done, you get what you’ve always gotten.”

That’s my point. The value of bringing those invisible attachments visible is the only way one can begin ‘bettering’ their life, the only way to increase your score of life happiness.

Here’s a few things I strive to undo … bring the invisible-ness visible so I have the power to shift my perspective in my life.

I am conscious enough to know there is more to this life. I know there is more happiness to be felt! Now how to find that next step.

I have grown children and I’m striving to ‘better’ my relationship with them. Now to learn how to communicate my love to them.

I had many negative emotions swirling around for years as I was a caregiver and I felt I was a better person already. I do energy work. I do many things each day that keeps me grounded and feeling ‘lightened,’ if you will. BUT, you see, if I was a better person I wouldn’t have felt those strong negative feelings. Now to continue to embrace my humanness and appreciate what I’ve been given. Remembering this is my life journey not a destination.

I chunked all these thoughts down and what came up for me was, obligation.

Obligation was the key attachment that NOW is visible.

Obligation is a sister to expectation. Obligation is like drinking or breathing out of a small straw. It’s difficult to get fully engaged because I’m already struggling to survive. This was where my negative emotions stayed.

So I said to myself, get a bigger straw.

Um, duh! You see, I have been figuring out how to survive with that small straw. I would change things up to give me a break, try something new BUT the whole time, it’s still the same small straw.

Are you getting my point? Is this making any sense?

What I’ve learned! Bringing the invisible visible, it gets messy. It may not make sense and it may not be logical. That’s how healing is done. It doens’t have to make sense to my conditioned mind, it only has to make sense to my highest self, that divine part of me where all healing resides.

I know who I am. I know my divine nature. I know that I am a spiritual being first having this physical experience. EVEN KNOWING this, I still have room for growth!

Follow #RestoredSoul5 on instagram to find a safe space to let go without judgment, expectation or obligation OR check out www.restored-soul.com

Namaste

What’s the correlation between addiction, happiness, & healing? part 1

Ok, so this is a scientific type blog post on understanding an easier way for breaking bad habits.

What’s the correlation between addiction, happiness, & healing?

CHOICE connects all three! So it’s about CHOICE!

Not just how we choose, but why we choose and how that affects our behavior and ultimately our desire to heal.

Basic psychology comes into play here but then I’ll relate how that connects to energy work, then you can ‘choose’ where you land within these two concepts.

Here’s some background of why I feel this is so important to share at this time. At the beginning of my Evolutionary Psychology course, I was stumped. I felt I was to understand the big bang theory and how that relates to humans today. I seriously didn’t know where to begin. Some of you reading this may be thinking or judging me on that but oh well, it is what it is

First, I had to realize the big bang theory is PART of our human existence. It’s not the creation of our existence. Some may disagree but read through the end to see why I’m stating this, this way.

Deal?

Great!

One aspect of Evolution is about 1. Pleasure, 2. Pain avoidance, and 3. Energy conservation. Psychology terms, the Motivational Triad.

The easiest way for me to understand this is to relate it to something I know. I know a baby will choose a bottle over the breast to feed every time. WHY? Because 1. eating to fill their bellies is a pleasure. 2. avoiding the pain of hunger is the drive. 3. it takes less energy to get full with the bottle versus the breast.

You can add in other scenarios within this Triad and see how this makes sense. But why am I writing about this?

Because choice is led by motivation. What effects motivation? Now we are getting to the bottom of this Motivational Triad.

First, you have genes. You hold a certain DNA make-up that holds physical characteristics, eye color, hair color, medical history, etc. I refer to this as your physical blueprint.

But, you also have a spiritual blueprint. In church do you remember hearing how each one of us holds gifts and talents? What comes easy to one and what doesn’t, right? I know my sister holds musical talents and no matter how much I strive to develop musical talent, I don’t hold that gift. My gift is intuition and the gift of tongues. To be clear, the gift of tongues in my definition is I can understand how others perceive and see the world so I can bridge this understanding when I teach.

This spiritual blueprint we hold includes emotional filters for how we understand, how we perceive situations and how we interpret life’s experiences. For example, if I have the filter for victimhood, it will become easier to view my situation in a ‘less than’ way and I’d be prone to blame. I would see the world as happening TO me versus happening FOR me mindset. Now if I have the filter for spiritual understanding, I would see the world in a whole different way. This isn’t to say one way is right and the other wrong, it offers an understanding that we ALL hold unique spiritual filters within our blueprint and the gift of this world is to recognize that and embrace our differences.

Second, you have neural circuits or another name is neuropathways. These are the neuropathways that have been developed over time. In animals, it’s like unto instinct. Important types of Neural pathways for this discussion are; monosynaptic reflexes, corpus callosum, reward pathway, pain pathway, visual pathway, dorsal column medial lemniscus pathway, pyramidal tracts, cerebral peduncles, etc.

Let’s focus on the reward pathway. For me, this is the pathway that connects directly within the Motivational Triad.

Now third, you have thought. At this point, ADD in spiritual blueprints to the mix of understanding and you get where ‘thought’ comes into play. How we think, and why we think and what we do is directly correlated to our spiritual blueprint.

Fourth, you have feelings. Feelings validate neuropathways and support spiritual blueprints.

Lastly, at this point you see behavior play out. So what can you do to alter behavior? Exactly, you go back through this chain and locate where the most significant chance for change exists.

That’s what energy work does!

Do you find yourself choosing bad partners?

Do you find yourself feeling buried and betrayed by the world?

Do you find yourself unseen, invisible, not validated, unheard?

Do you find yourself stuck in a bad pattern?

Do you find your giving personality gets you into bad situations and in the end feeling used, frustrated and unhappy?

To rewire your neuropathways it takes energy work to rewire thought processes which then promotes healthier feelings and supports changed behavior.

Testimonial: “As a Vietnam Vet, I spent fifteen years in therapy which is why I was so scared to schedule a session with Jody. I had buried my emotions so deep, I couldn’t imagine going through that ugliness again. I’m so glad I dared to call and get a time scheduled, where were you forty years ago? The peace I feel is amazing. I had the best night’s sleep after our session and the greatest gift I received is the ability to forgive myself. Thank you for everything!” ~ F.D.

Click here to read more Testimonials

So if it’s that easy, why don’t more people gravitate to energy work?

It comes down to the all-powerful Dopamine our bodies produce, and what signals it to spike. Healing and happiness lead to shifting thoughts and feelings; where addiction comes from not knowing how to ease the pain of said thoughts and feelings so the behavior is to drown them in drugs or alcohol, shopping, emotional eating, or whatever one uses to dull the pain. Remember the #2 pain avoidance? and #3 energy conservation? Humans find the easiest way to avoid pain. When a person goes into rehab, the best place to find is one that deals with the feelings that triggered the dulling coping skill behavior. Once you find that then the need to dull is removed and healing takes place. However, the habit may remain and without conscious shifting, it may return out of habit. For example, take a hoarder. If a person comes in and cleans up the house then put the hoarder back in, the reasons for hoarding were never addressed, that hoarder will go right back to hoarding quicker and faster to get back to the space that served them, no matter how skewed that may sound. So the importance of being present during energy work is crucial for healing, make sense? The ‘healer’ is not the one who does the work, the ‘healer’ is the one who guides you through the work in a much more efficient way.

You need more to understand this complex matrix? Using energy terminology; what’s important to know is that the Ego continues to look for any likely hood of survival – seeking pleasure or pain, something to keep our human psyche in balance, with the main focus in keeping one separated from their divine self. The Ego is ruthless and will do whatever it takes to keep up the illusion of artificial pleasure (like unto the hoarder example), i.e. addiction.

Click here for a great TedTalk on Dopamine

Don’t worry or stress. There is a way, an easier way to becoming your best self!

I invite you to check out the Restored-soul retreat! This is a place that gives you a chance to take a break, a breath of emotional fresh air and recover your sensitivity to your true spiritual nature. A simple place to be unquestionably YOU. Your Divine Self! Without judgment, or expectations.

Jody and Kristen are leaders in holding a safe space, offering you space to spiritually refuel, recharge and reconnect to source.

Namaste,

Jody K