It’s not about you.

It’s not about you.

These are words that I have said to myself, to my friends and to my clients on repeat lately.

You see in most situations, when something happens and we are knocked a little (or a lot) off centre, often we feel like it is a personal attack, or the situation is directly aimed or related to us.

Well, it is, and it isn’t. In truth it is multidimensional.

The part that is about you, is the aspect that reacted. Regardless of the situation that stirred this reaction, YOUR reaction is telling YOU something about YOU.

Your reaction was triggered because there is something for you to heal; and you are being presented with an opportunity to witness, accept, and heal the wounding behind it. If you are able to put your reactivity on the back burner and get a little curious – feel into what is behind your reaction or behaviour… There is a feeling there. There is a wounding there. There is something that feels icky and it is much safer and easier to react in anger, resentment, frustration, and jump back into the realms of your victimhood and your righteousness. We all do it… even if we are ‘evolved’ we still dip in and out of it until we become masters of ourselves.

Reactions are the link in the chain that show you where you can break free.

Harness your consciousness, self-acceptance, self-compassion and love your way through the process. Suspend your need to protect or judge yourself and allow yourself space to reflect.

You will always react and feel like a victim if you choose to ignore these flashing neon signs and stay on the path that you have walked for so long. Your ego has been necessary for your existence and survival, but at a certain point it begins to hold you back from your consciousness and from evolving into your infinite potential.

So how do you work through it?

• Allow yourself the space to be quiet and go within, close your eyes
• Go back to that reaction and allow yourself to feel into it (do not worry about justifying anything, this is not about being right)
• Underneath that reaction is a feeling, can you feel it?
• If you can, spend some time journaling about what you felt, and why. Don’t think about it too much, whatever comes to you just write it down. You don’t have to be a writer, it doesn’t need to sound good or look pretty. It just needs to be. You may prefer a voice diary.
• Can you connect the dots to another time where you reacted (perhaps differently, that doesn’t matter), but the same feeling or theme was the driver? Maybe you can’t connect any, maybe you’ve just drawn a masterpiece with your dots. Either way, there is no right or wrong.
• Spend some time feeling, witness those feelings, welcome them, accept them. That is what they need. Once they have been given the attention they deserve, once they have been validated by an empathic witness, then they can move through you and dissolve.
• Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. With every opportunity, you can clear yourself of your emotional debris, that only serves to keep you stuck. If you can do this, you are working your way to rapidly expanding consciousness and freedom – freedom from being triggered at all.

Ok, so let’s get back to the first sentence and title, because really it seems that I’m contradicting myself, doesn’t it?

It’s not about you.

That person that triggered you, whatever the situation was, their behaviour or reaction is not about you.

It is all about their wounding.

Can you see what is happening here?

If we walk around unconscious, we continually project our wounding into the world and on each other. It creates a culture of conflict where we try to make ourselves feel better, by trying to make ourselves right and others wrong.

We blame our way to feeling better, but really it makes us feel disconnected, and a little dead inside.

We are here to connect. We are here to live.

So, it’s not about you, but it is about you.

It’s not about others, but it is about everyone.

As within, so without.

As above, so below.

If we can just forget about what other people ‘need to’ or ‘should’ do and work on ourselves, the entire collective will shift.

And absolutely, when you’re a master of yourself, you won’t be projecting your wounding anymore.

Then you can bear witness, and with a loving, compassionate heart, be a guide for others to meet you there.

Pretty cool, huh?

Disclaimer: I totally get some days feel like they completely suck and being conscious feels harder than studying to be a brain surgeon (if brain surgery feels easy to you <insert personal difficulty here>). Let those days be, honour your feelings, for they too shall pass. Then you can get back on the horse and gallop onto the trail of expanding your consciousness. Because you let that day and those feelings move through you without judgement, they cannot block your path.

You know what?

We will all get there in the end.

Personally, I would like to get there with as much ease and grace as possible, but in the end, it is all about doing the work.

We’ve got this,
Lauren