by Dr. Heléna Kate | Oct 18, 2018 | Dr. Heléna Kate's Blog, Empowered Action, Self Awareness, Uncategorized
As one of the primary emotions, shame is a part of the human experience you’re your struggling with feelings of shame, use these quotes to spark some gentleness with yourself, and gratitude within.
Mistakes Are Okay
\”Even the knowledge of my own fallibility cannot keep me from making mistakes. Only when I fall do I get up again.\” – Vincent Van Gogh
There\’s an ebb and flow to life, and everyone is in it together. We all make decisions that lead to outcomes we\’d rather not experience. Sometimes, we act from a place of fear or resentment, or intentionally cause harm to those around us. Sometimes, we are naive or have inaccurate information. While mistakes are inevitable, what action do you want to choose from here?
Consider Inner Vs. Outer Factors
\”You cannot change the wind, but you can adjust the sails.” – Bertha Calloway
While the circumstances that triggered your feeling of shame may or may not be in your control, your choice to hang out in shame is within your control. We can honor the moment of shame but not linger there. How can you take care of yourself so that the shame can shift?
What If…
“You’re braver than you believe, and stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think.” – A.A. Milne/Christopher Robin
Shame can be rooted in untruths told to us by others. What if your courage, strength, and brilliance is greater than you\’ve ever believed, and the only thing stopping you are your thoughts?
Consider the Ripple
“Every action in our lives touches on some chord that will vibrate in eternity.” – Edwin Hubbel Chapin
Whatever the reasons for your experience of shame, remember your positive impact as well. Your choices will ripple out and likely far outweigh your mistakes. What impact do you want to have on others?
Shift to Gratitude
\”Sometimes we should express our gratitude for the small and simple things like the scent of the rain, the taste of your favorite food, or the sound of a loved one\’s voice.\” – Joseph B. Wirthlin
One of the easiest ways to change our emotional experience is to come into our hearts. Look around and consider what you can feel grateful for in this moment. Then – and this is the trick – don\’t just think about gratitude, but actually invite in the feeling. What can you feel grateful for now?
Hang Out with a Dog
\”Dogs have boundless enthusiasm but no sense of shame. I should have a dog as a life coach.\” – Moby
We can learn a lot from animals, and dogs are a great example of (usually) living without shame. It\’s possible to draw energy from a memory of an animal or person you admire for their shameless way of being. What memory makes you smile?
Looking for more inspiration to overcome shame? Check out my personal share about >>> \”Self Love.\”
by Dr. Heléna Kate | Oct 14, 2018 | Dr. Heléna Kate's Blog, Empowered Action, Self Awareness, Uncategorized
I have been forged in the fire of doubt, lies, and forgetfulness, and I am made of self-love.
In addition to granting us the ability to be happier and make a greater positive impact in the world, self-love is an inoculation against some of the most challenging experiences in life. It is the armor of the seekers, the healers, and the transformational mavericks of the world.
For me, this knowledge was hard won. While I can look back to my childhood and find a connection with the divine starting as early as I can remember and an unrelenting urge to help and heal for just as long, self-love was virtually absent.
The earlier part of my life was dominated by pain. Everything hurt, but I did not know how I felt. Although I had people around me, I had little feeling of connectedness with them. And, I believed quite completely that there was something inherently wrong with me.
The first insight that I got about self-love came about when I had my son. I simply wanted more for him than what I had myself and I knew I needed to learn how to get it so I could teach him to do the same. To this day, I know that if it weren’t for my love of him, I very likely would have stayed mired in my pain.
Inspired by my son, I set out—destination unknown. Before too long, I discovered that what I was looking for was love: pure, undeniable love of the self.
Lack of self-love can show up as unhealthy choices, judgments about our unhealthy choices, an unrelenting ache, or a feeling that we are not quite expressing our full light. But at its root there is a belief that there is something inherently wrong with who we are.
This is the place where no self-love is present.
Otherwise, why would we simply just not let ourselves be who we are?
Signs that we truly love ourselves are unconditional acceptance –even of the messy or seemingly inconsequential parts, staying on our own side regardless of what happens, holding ourselves accountable only for what is truly ours, and loving ourselves regardless of our mistakes.
If we pay attention to what is underneath when we are not doing these things, we see in these shadowy moments of self-negation where our self-love is most needed.
Here in the crevasses between the more positive and accepted parts of ourselves, we can find the (sometimes) hidden belief that something is wrong with us. It is perhaps the most powerful lie that we can believe in the course of our lives –and many of us do.
Not only is it debilitating in our own inner experience, but this lie can be used to get us to back down, back off, or give up by anyone who is looking to co-opt our light, serve their personal agenda, or stop our forces of healing and transformation.
So, let us, each one of us, set the record straight.
Each one of us is an ideally crafted expression with a purpose and place. There are no mistakes. We are not all supposed to be 5 foot 10 inches tall, with brown hair, and good at math. Nor are our insides supposed to be the same, or our emotional expressions, or our ways of perceiving the world.
But it is not enough to know this in our minds – which most of us do. It must be etched on our bones and woven into our soul. Without that, it is a hollow shell of a belief that we merely try to hide our lack of self-worth under.
Fortunately for us, life has a built in tool to help us learn to love ourselves more and more completely. The difficult moments of our lives are not designed to show us what is wrong with us but rather to show us the path back to ourselves by displaying the illusion. In this process, we learn what self-love truly is.
When facing the difficult circumstances of life, we can use them to feed the part of us that believes that there is something wrong with us or we can use them to help us see what we are not loving about ourselves and learn to love ourselves more completely. When we do this we become healthy, happier, and more resilient.
My prayer for you is that you can pause your usual interpretations of yourself to see the perfection of who you are and that you are willing to lovingly seek out the environments that support your most positive expression.
There is no one else like you. Who you are is perfect, sacred, and very needed.
Do you ever have trouble loving yourself because you feel ashamed? If so, please see my article >>> \”What is Wrong With Me? Healing From Toxic Shame.\”
by Dr. Heléna Kate | Aug 8, 2018 | Dr. Heléna Kate's Blog, Empowered Action, Self Awareness, Uncategorized
One key to being more empowered in our life is self-acceptance—truly embracing all of ourselves, both the good and the not-so-good. When we embrace all of who we are, when we\’re willing to move into a place of true acceptance, it eliminates a lot of confusion. It limits the other challenges that arise when we\’re trying to be something else by adjusting ourselves to the external in an unproductive way. But accepting ourselves, as you likely know, is, is no small feat. It would be great if it were as easy as saying, “I accept myself completely.”
And in a way, there\’s an aspect of self-acceptance that is just that simple. We make a choice at some point in time to fully accept who we are. However, the path to that moment can be quite long. On this path, we learn about the many different ways in which we\’ve been conditioned to think that we need to act, behave, and feel differently than is really right for us. This kind of conditioning usually starts quite early in our lives. And, depending on what we have experienced, some of us have received excessive doses of it. For example, minority cultures experience this type of conditioning to an extreme.
However, all of us to some extent have received a message that who we are would be better if it were adjusted in some way. We experience this rather than the more supportive experience of being affirmed, and we need to expunge it. We instead need to find ways to appreciate who we are and what it is that we are bringing forward—naturally and intrinsically.
There is a lot to do to learn how to fully accept ourselves. For today, I will offer one simple tool to help you on this path to self-acceptance—look at the other side of the parts of yourself that you are being told should be adjusted. If you have a flaw or something that you think has been problematic for you in your life, examine how it is also a benefit to you. You can see the strength that\’s on the other side. All strengths have weaknesses, all weaknesses have strengths. So when you do you take a look at some aspect of yourself that you thought was your biggest problem and you start to see how it actually might serve you in other aspects of your life, you will begin to see that context plays a large role in whether or not this part of you is in fact a challenge or a gift.
If it is challenging to see how it might be of benefit, imagine situations where it might serve you. In other words, employ some creative thinking—explore how and when this aspect of yourself might be a powerful ally. Then you can start to consciously use these aspects more and more productively in different areas of your life.
As you do this, you will find that it is naturally healing. It breaks through the belief that these things about us are wrong and need to be fixed. It shows us that no matter what they are, even our most challenging traits have some productive uses. This helps us accept ourselves in a deeper way. This self-acceptance then helps us grow our sense of empowerment.
For more about trusting yourself and your empowerment take a look at my article >>> \”An Unstoppable Source for Your Personal Power.\”
by Dr. Heléna Kate | Aug 8, 2018 | Dr. Heléna Kate's Blog, Empowered Action, Self Awareness, Uncategorized
Compassion, freedom, love, integrity, vulnerability, and happiness are built on the bedrock of our trust in ourselves. When we can look in the eyes of the person standing in front of the mirror and know that we are showing up to the truth of who we are, we have everything.
Life’s betrayals do not just erode our trust of others, but they also leave us doubting ourselves. Whether we are conscious of it or not, we often blame ourselves for choosing the person who betrayed our trust in the first place. We might wonder what will stop us from making this kind of error again. This lack of trust with ourselves leaves us guarded.
This guarding actually perpetuates a cycle of disconnection; this disconnection opens the door to lower-frequency energies that impair our ability to operate at every level—furthering the challenges we might be having in these areas.
What makes it difficult to trust ourselves is less often about these challenging experiences themselves and more often about how we have been conditioned to relate to ourselves.
I was taught time and time again in the course of my life not to listen to myself. In many ways, I was taught that trusting myself was a form of arrogance—a blindness to seeing things as other people saw them. I was taught to think like other people and to interact on other people’s terms.
These things were taught to me under the guise of “getting along,” “loving others,” or even just passing the test.
The main message, through these experiences, was that my unique way of seeing and being was somehow wrong. I was taught that the clear messages from my soul needed to be adjusted to fit with the outside world rather than being a direct expression of it. I was taught that if I was in a situation where my needs and another person’s needs were at odds, then one of us was right and the other one was not—meaning there was always a high probability that I was in fact the one who was wrong.
Self-doubt then became the way—the backdrop of all of my experiences.
As a result, I was time and time again open to being hurt by others—in the ways that can only happen when we abandon ourselves. Because of this, my lack of trust with myself kept growing and I tried all kinds of ways to remedy this—most of them having to do with bolstering my ego.
I believe this is a common experience.
Since we all experience breaches in trust in our life, we all need to do repair work on our trust. We might first think that we need to figure out how and when to trust others, but we actually gain quite a bit more by learning how to deeply trust ourselves.
This is easier said than done. Quite often, as I just highlighted with my own experience, we have learned how not to trust ourselves both very early and in fundamental ways. Our lack of trust in ourselves is often insidious and difficult for us to see. It might show up as an ongoing feeling of anxiety for no apparent reason. It might leave us unable to see opportunities. Or, we might just be unable to accept the help we need.
We benefit from relearning that the way that we are is, by its design, perfect. This does not mean that we don’t need to grow and change or that we are not aided by questioning our own intentions. However, we are actually better able to do these things as we learn to trust ourselves more deeply, as a deep trust and respect for who we are actually makes it possible to see our limitations and to make changes that help us be better people.
If we can remember that we are made in a way that has its own inherent wisdom, and that this wisdom is very much needed by both ourselves and the greater world, then we can open up to new levels of trusting our self.
While we may at times make mistakes or errors in judgment, we can return to a trust in the fundamental goodness and perfection of our nature. And then, kindly guide ourselves in the direction of making better and better decisions as we move forward through new knowledge, new skills, and improved discernment.
As we come to deeply know our own truth, we can rely on it more fully. This allows us to make choices and put ourselves in situations that are truly right for us. It allows us to navigate the many complex situations that we find ourselves in in the course of our life.
Trusting ourselves is also a skill that we develop. As we work to be more honest, more caring, more respectful, we become a person whom we can truly trust. As we practice these skills, they become stronger and our lives become a reflection of our character. We feel this growth, and as a result, trust ourselves more.
My wish for all of us is that we know the fundamental goodness of who we are. That we realize the perfection of how we are made. And, through this, we develop the foundations for trusting ourselves in ways that restore our health, wholeness, and connection with others.
For more about trusting yourself take a look at my article >>> \”An Unstoppable Source for Your Personal Power.\”
by Dr. Heléna Kate | Jul 20, 2018 | Dr. Heléna Kate's Blog, Empowered Action, Self Awareness, Uncategorized
Often, when we think about trust, we think about whether or not the other person is trustworthy—whether or not they\’ve shown themselves to be someone who has a character worthy of our trust. Because of this, we go around evaluating people based on whether they meet our criteria; if they do, we trust them. It is important that we learn to see what is and is not trustworthy behavior; however, this is not the end of the story.
If we have experienced a breach of trust at some point in our lives—and most of us have, some of us to an extreme degree—it disturbs or breaks down our ability to clearly see another person\’s behavior.
Because of this, we might be blind to some untrustworthy characteristics or not see them so clearly. And we might actually be skeptical of somebody who is trustworthy. Our ability to gauge whether or not we should trust gets impaired by the filters that we wind up looking though because of our past betrayals. Maybe you\’ve had this experience; maybe you trusted somebody who really was not so trustworthy or did not trust someone who turned out to be worthy of your trust.
This is one reason why this defensive analysis of who is and isn’t trustworthy is not totally reliable.
The more that we play by this game, the longer our list of what is untrustworthy gets. Our distrusting story looks like this: “I really can\’t trust people because I trusted this person after I ran them through my faulty evaluation system to figure out whether or not they were trustworthy, and they turned out to be another person who betrayed my trust. Therefore, I now know that I cannot trust people even more completely than I did before. I have tried. People, across the board, are untrustworthy.”
So, as our life goes on, we have a smaller and smaller group of people whom we are willing to trust; sometimes, it comes down there being nobody, really, whom we\’re willing to trust. We might feel like we trust some people a little bit with certain things, but deep down we don\’t really trust that anyone is going to do right by us.
This erosion of trust in our lives creates all sorts of problems. We become cynical and shut down. When we are not trusting, we feel we need to constantly protect ourselves. What other choice do we have if we cannot trust anyone? Consciously or not, we feel unsafe because the people around us are untrustworthy. We lose sight of what it feels like to have a deeper, more trusting connection with others.
It is a problematic situation. So, how do we find our way back to trust if we can\’t trust our own judgment? The good news is that there are a number of different ways to do just that.
Trusting Ourselves: More than learning to trust others, we benefit from learning to trust ourselves. This means (in part) acting in ways toward yourself that are supportive, kind, and honest. It means taking responsibility for poor choices, learning from them, and making a commitment to do better. It means acknowledging yourself for all of the good choices that you have made along the way.
Learning the Signs: Chances are we learned some bad cues when we were growing up. We may have put a bad behavior into the category of a loving behavior because of our experience. As adults, it is important to learn what is healthy and what is unhealthy, who is trustworthy and who is untrustworthy, so that we can choose the right people to keep in our lives.
Healing the Past: Part of why we do not trust is because of how we have been hurt in the past. It is only through fully healing our old wounds that we become free to embrace a whole new life. This healing requires us to accept what happened and offer forgiveness where necessary. As we do this, the distortions these old hurts have created in our present life are lifted, and we find ourselves able to make better choices.
Trusting Again: As simple as it may sound, one of the ways that we heal our wounds with trust is to try to trust again. It is through trusting that we have the opportunity to be proven right. One of the most helpful things we can do is to turn our story about trust on its head. We so often focus on the few people or situations that broke our trust; however, they are actually the minority. More frequently, there are many more people in our lives who have done right by us than who have done us wrong. Focusing on what has worked helps to restore trust.
For more about discerning trustworthy people take a look at my article >>> \”Should I Trust You: What Does a Trustworthy Person Look Like?\”
