The World is Not Your Oyster, It’s Your Mirror
Shadow work is often unpleasant. It makes us look at ourselves in ways we don’t want to and admit to aspects of ourselves that are uncomfortable. But it can also reveal some amazing things about us!
I actually found a small pearl in an oyster once. It was basically like a very small stone that didn’t look like much, but it was kind of cool to actually see the result of that process.
While there are treasures to be found in life, like that pearl… every single day… we are energetic beings and what we will experience most often is our own energy reflected back at us. And while we may be surprised by what shows up in our life at times, it’s all a reflection of what we’re putting out in the world.
We’ll even see this when our hackles are raised at someone else’s seemingly innocuous actions or words That’s when it’s time to look in the mirror. Or maybe just look at that person as a mirror. What are you seeing or feeling from them that is really about you?
Self-directed work is sometimes unpleasant. It makes us look at ourselves in ways we don’t want to and admit to aspects of ourselves that are uncomfortable. At the same time, gaining a deep understanding of who we are and how we navigate the world will open us up to greater successes in life, in relationships, in business. Gaining these deeper understandings of ourselves allows us to build more trust in our inner voices and feelings - our intuition.
There are different ways to approach this work of uncovering who we are and how we operate. It’s not all dark and emotional and dealing with trauma. With my clients I use a combination of tools designed to reveal both unconscious aspects of our personality as well as things we sort of knew but couldn’t define.
Here’s an example:
I had a client recently who was trying to figure out why she wasn’t moving forward in her business as fast as she thought she should be. She works hard and feels like she’s one of the most productive people she knows. She was constantly “busy” but not getting things accomplished.
After some discussion I asked if she ever found herself going off on tangents and “chasing rabbits”. What I meant was, going on an information hunt and researching things that don’t matter, that weren’t directly applicable to her business at hand. Her eyes opened wide and she sort of sighed and said YES! She would be working on one thing and then it would lead to another question and another that (she felt) all had to be explained or answered.
It was a distraction mechanism, though not malicious or purposefully throwing her off track, it was a tendency that, now being aware of it, she could catch herself doing and get back to business. I experienced this behavior in our conversations, so when I “held up the mirror” for her to see her actions, she saw it in herself immediately.
It’s sometimes small discoveries about ourselves like the one this client realized that can make big shifts in how we operate. Sometimes these hints emerge through intuitive listening or though archetype work during a coaching session. Human Design is another fabulous tool that can help us uncover our tendencies and make us aware of how we function within the world around us.
Looking closely at what is being reflected back from those around us as well as our perceptions of our own actions gives us both amazing and sometimes uncomfortable realizations about who we are.
✨What’s been reflected back to you lately? What are you seeing or feeling from others that’s got you feeling a little uncomfortable? If you’re feeling something but can’t quite put your finger on what it is and how you can shift it, let’s chat! ✨