Be the Designer of Your Life
Key Practice #3 - Integrative Discovery
Journey within through an Integrative Discovery process; awaken natural potential and release old patterns.
Within our most challenging moments lie the roots that hold us back and the soil to plant something new. |
Spirit as it is used here can go by many names: Prana, Chi, Life Force, Higher Self, Internal Wisdom, etc. If we could only use one of the Five Key Practices to being the designer of our lives, I would choose this one because it helps access and integrate the innate wisdom we each have within. This Practice can support every part of that initial question: How can we uncover and begin to follow our hearts’ desires to thrive in ways that are sustainable and support our minds’ needs to survive?
The struggles and challenges we have in life are pointers to mental and emotional blocks and limiting beliefs that hold us back. When we unwind the core of who, what, when, where, why and how we established our tools for survival, we can find a new freedom of choice. We can act freshly in situations that show up
in our lives. We can break free from old triggers. A trigger is a repeating pattern of reaction developed as a tool to work through a challenging situation. As you will learn, this is what the introspective process of journey work is all about!
Within each of us is the innate wisdom to work through our problems and challenges. We are the captains of our ships. We are the ambassadors of our bodies, minds, emotions, and spirits. We only need to hold a speck of possibility and openness that it is true. For every step we take towards opening to our greatness, the Universe responds by taking a giant leap towards us.
The struggles and challenges we have in life are pointers to mental and emotional blocks and limiting beliefs that hold us back. When we unwind the core of who, what, when, where, why and how we established our tools for survival, we can find a new freedom of choice. We can act freshly in situations that show up
in our lives. We can break free from old triggers. A trigger is a repeating pattern of reaction developed as a tool to work through a challenging situation. As you will learn, this is what the introspective process of journey work is all about!
Within each of us is the innate wisdom to work through our problems and challenges. We are the captains of our ships. We are the ambassadors of our bodies, minds, emotions, and spirits. We only need to hold a speck of possibility and openness that it is true. For every step we take towards opening to our greatness, the Universe responds by taking a giant leap towards us.
Origins of Mental and Emotional
Blocks and Limiting Beliefs
Our minds do not see beliefs as beliefs, they see beliefs as facts of life and survival. Choosing beliefs freely is not something our rational minds do. To begin to open our awareness to this, it is helpful to first look at how our strategies for life evolved. Up to the age of eight our minds are like sponges, learning how to survive in these experiential vehicles we call our bodies. Our minds figure this out through the experiences we have as children. This includes our family or caregivers, our educational system, our social groups, and our society. Our subconscious mind runs our biology, behaviors, patterns and responses over 90 percent of the time based on what it has recorded about life.
In 50 years nearly 75,000 medical studies have been published in the area of emotional and social-emotional intelligence.[6] This area of research has been well documented; yet effective ways to shift and grow our social-emotional tools for life are not well known. As adults, our go to strategies for physical, emotional, mental and social survival are most often those we learned as children.
The Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study conducted by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and Kaiser Permanente provides an excellent comprehension of how our strategies for life evolve. The ACE Study is focused on 10 simple questions about abuse, neglect, and other traumatic experiences we had as children. As the number of yes answers increase, so do the risks of having social- emotional and cognitive difficulties, health-risks, disease, and early death. This study shows how impactful our childhood environment can be in having fulfilling lives as adults.[7]
Over one-third of our society has had at least one adverse childhood experience. And, the reality is, we have all experienced some level of trauma as we have developed our tools for life. Growing up is challenging for everyone. Something as simple as coming home from kindergarten and not finding your mom there because she was visiting a neighbor can be traumatic. It can ingrain feelings and beliefs about life that we are alone and people we care about are not available for us.
These childhood traumas are stored in our minds and bodies. They are held in place with the emotion we experienced at the time. The more intense and frequent the emotional experience, the more we are locked into the old neuropathways that are our methods of response. This is how we learn to survive. Unfortunately, if we do not unwind the negative and limiting patterns learned as children, it can be very difficult to evolve our abilities and strategies as adults.[8]
In 50 years nearly 75,000 medical studies have been published in the area of emotional and social-emotional intelligence.[6] This area of research has been well documented; yet effective ways to shift and grow our social-emotional tools for life are not well known. As adults, our go to strategies for physical, emotional, mental and social survival are most often those we learned as children.
The Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study conducted by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and Kaiser Permanente provides an excellent comprehension of how our strategies for life evolve. The ACE Study is focused on 10 simple questions about abuse, neglect, and other traumatic experiences we had as children. As the number of yes answers increase, so do the risks of having social- emotional and cognitive difficulties, health-risks, disease, and early death. This study shows how impactful our childhood environment can be in having fulfilling lives as adults.[7]
Over one-third of our society has had at least one adverse childhood experience. And, the reality is, we have all experienced some level of trauma as we have developed our tools for life. Growing up is challenging for everyone. Something as simple as coming home from kindergarten and not finding your mom there because she was visiting a neighbor can be traumatic. It can ingrain feelings and beliefs about life that we are alone and people we care about are not available for us.
These childhood traumas are stored in our minds and bodies. They are held in place with the emotion we experienced at the time. The more intense and frequent the emotional experience, the more we are locked into the old neuropathways that are our methods of response. This is how we learn to survive. Unfortunately, if we do not unwind the negative and limiting patterns learned as children, it can be very difficult to evolve our abilities and strategies as adults.[8]
Identifying and Working
With Challenging Emotions
Using introspective journey work, we can begin to explore our emotions. The first step is to learn how to feel again, and allow emotions to flow naturally. Emotions are not something that get in the way of living life. They are a gift of experiencing life. They are central to everything we do and every decision we make. As children we may have been taught to talk and think in a way that established a belief that we are our emotions. We may have said, “I am happy” or “I am sad”. Then we learned to judge the emotions we did not like, and became unwilling or fearful of feeling them. We may have even begun to think that if we felt too much of an emotion we could get stuck in it, indefinitely.
Emotions are energy sensations meant to flow through our bodies. Sometimes “I feel happy” and sometimes “I feel sad”. These ups and downs of feeling emotional energy are a natural human experience. As humans, this energy was meant to come and go so that we can experience life wholly. We really cannot fully know the experience of joy without a balancing experience of sadness. As a simple example: when we are sick and stuck in bed, we forget how great it feels to be healthy. When we regain our health, we have a renewed experience of how great food tastes, how beautiful the sky is, and how much we love spending time with friends.
Our society is well trained in avoiding emotion. We have all types of coping mechanisms to not feel what we do not want to: television, alcohol, sex, drugs, food, video games, social media, etc. Partly why movies and television are so popular is we get to feel the emotions of some imaginary experience rather than our own. Even what are viewed as healthy habits, like exercise and meditation, can become crutches for avoiding our personally challenging emotions.
The first part of the experience of journey work begins with a safe and non-judgmental atmosphere where all emotions are welcome. When we are authentic and non-judgmental, we can allow emotions to flow and work with them more openly and easily. As we give a voice to our unexpressed emotions, we begin to fall into a natural state of relaxation. The veils of inauthenticity melt away. We can let go of trying to control or judge anything, and in this state our innate wisdom can speak, and be heard. We are re-teaching ourselves how to naturally and healthily feel emotions; to let them come and go.
This journal exercise can help us to uncover emotions we are trying to avoid, and allow them to come and go.
Emotions are energy sensations meant to flow through our bodies. Sometimes “I feel happy” and sometimes “I feel sad”. These ups and downs of feeling emotional energy are a natural human experience. As humans, this energy was meant to come and go so that we can experience life wholly. We really cannot fully know the experience of joy without a balancing experience of sadness. As a simple example: when we are sick and stuck in bed, we forget how great it feels to be healthy. When we regain our health, we have a renewed experience of how great food tastes, how beautiful the sky is, and how much we love spending time with friends.
Our society is well trained in avoiding emotion. We have all types of coping mechanisms to not feel what we do not want to: television, alcohol, sex, drugs, food, video games, social media, etc. Partly why movies and television are so popular is we get to feel the emotions of some imaginary experience rather than our own. Even what are viewed as healthy habits, like exercise and meditation, can become crutches for avoiding our personally challenging emotions.
The first part of the experience of journey work begins with a safe and non-judgmental atmosphere where all emotions are welcome. When we are authentic and non-judgmental, we can allow emotions to flow and work with them more openly and easily. As we give a voice to our unexpressed emotions, we begin to fall into a natural state of relaxation. The veils of inauthenticity melt away. We can let go of trying to control or judge anything, and in this state our innate wisdom can speak, and be heard. We are re-teaching ourselves how to naturally and healthily feel emotions; to let them come and go.
This journal exercise can help us to uncover emotions we are trying to avoid, and allow them to come and go.
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Replacing Limiting Beliefs
If we do not unwind our limiting beliefs and clear our triggers, they will keep attracting that treasure of our attention. They will influence our creative thoughts and experiences; reinforcing more limiting beliefs.
Let us explore an example of a crystalizing moment where triggers and beliefs are set. Say when you were a child, one of your parents or caregivers often came home drunk and was abusive to you or others in your family. By the age of eight you likely decided that you never wanted to act like that. You probably made a vow to yourself to never be like that person. All the qualities of that person often get wrapped up in that vow. That can include good qualities too, like being a great networker and very successful at business.
Now let’s say you are in your 30s or 40s and still living out that vow subconsciously, while consciously and diligently you are trying to figure out why you have never been successful at business. That vow is how you have been protecting yourself from being like that dangerous caregiver your whole life, but it is also impacting you in other ways. It is holding you back from being successful.
To your subconscious mind being a successful business person also means to be an abusive alcoholic. So you will find subconscious ways to sabotage your success, and you will eventually create another belief, that you are not successful. As a child your life felt threatened by the caregiver you made a vow about, and your mind took on the job to keep you safe from the behaviors that person exhibited, even the good ones.
The next part of journey work is to dive into the crystalizing moments we had as children. Again, this is most effective while in a safe and non-judgmental atmosphere. We need to be in an open and free-feeling state. From this space we can begin to see and feel through our experiences as children more clearly. We can begin to unwind what happened by allowing our younger selves to speak freely from the pain of our experiences. We can even allow for a full conversation between our younger self and the person we had challenges with. Anything and everything that needed to be said then can be said now. In this way we are emptying out our trapped emotions and developing social-emotional intelligence skills. We are re-teaching our minds how to authentically feel and communicate.
This may stir up a lot of emotion, or it may not. Either way, we can know that the process is working perfectly. We can let emotions come and go freely until we are feeling emptied out and authentic. Now, in this place of calm and internal connection, our own wisdom will guide us. It will help us identify the beliefs about ourselves and life that we developed during challenging and traumatic experiences. It will also help us clear out those beliefs that are no longer serving, and replace them with more healthy awarenesses about who we truly are and of what we are truly capable.
This journal exercise can help us unwind childhood events, trapped emotions, and subconscious defenses that we built to avoid having an experience again. It can be difficult to revisit this on our own, and we may find it most effective to have the help of an experienced mentor or Intentional Journey Coach.
Let us explore an example of a crystalizing moment where triggers and beliefs are set. Say when you were a child, one of your parents or caregivers often came home drunk and was abusive to you or others in your family. By the age of eight you likely decided that you never wanted to act like that. You probably made a vow to yourself to never be like that person. All the qualities of that person often get wrapped up in that vow. That can include good qualities too, like being a great networker and very successful at business.
Now let’s say you are in your 30s or 40s and still living out that vow subconsciously, while consciously and diligently you are trying to figure out why you have never been successful at business. That vow is how you have been protecting yourself from being like that dangerous caregiver your whole life, but it is also impacting you in other ways. It is holding you back from being successful.
To your subconscious mind being a successful business person also means to be an abusive alcoholic. So you will find subconscious ways to sabotage your success, and you will eventually create another belief, that you are not successful. As a child your life felt threatened by the caregiver you made a vow about, and your mind took on the job to keep you safe from the behaviors that person exhibited, even the good ones.
The next part of journey work is to dive into the crystalizing moments we had as children. Again, this is most effective while in a safe and non-judgmental atmosphere. We need to be in an open and free-feeling state. From this space we can begin to see and feel through our experiences as children more clearly. We can begin to unwind what happened by allowing our younger selves to speak freely from the pain of our experiences. We can even allow for a full conversation between our younger self and the person we had challenges with. Anything and everything that needed to be said then can be said now. In this way we are emptying out our trapped emotions and developing social-emotional intelligence skills. We are re-teaching our minds how to authentically feel and communicate.
This may stir up a lot of emotion, or it may not. Either way, we can know that the process is working perfectly. We can let emotions come and go freely until we are feeling emptied out and authentic. Now, in this place of calm and internal connection, our own wisdom will guide us. It will help us identify the beliefs about ourselves and life that we developed during challenging and traumatic experiences. It will also help us clear out those beliefs that are no longer serving, and replace them with more healthy awarenesses about who we truly are and of what we are truly capable.
This journal exercise can help us unwind childhood events, trapped emotions, and subconscious defenses that we built to avoid having an experience again. It can be difficult to revisit this on our own, and we may find it most effective to have the help of an experienced mentor or Intentional Journey Coach.
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Sustaining Healthy Beliefs
The final part of our journey work is to reinforce and grow the new neuropathways we have just formed. Multiple studies have shown that just visualizing an exercise can be nearly as effective as the physical practice. The same is true for developing
new patterns of thought.[10] An experienced mentor or Intentional Journey Coach can support us in mentally and emotionally walking through this exercise, in identifying and releasing any remaining stuck points, and in moving forward in our lives.
In your mind you can imagine stepping forward into the future. As you take each step you can invite in the feelings of what it is like living and experiencing your life from a place with new awarenesses. You can let go of triggers that were formed from limiting beliefs or vows. In your mind’s eye you can experience the images of new ways of being, and feel into new ways of doing life that are healthy and sustainable. You can envision your heart’s desires for full expression and a fulfilling life. Here is the journal exercise.
new patterns of thought.[10] An experienced mentor or Intentional Journey Coach can support us in mentally and emotionally walking through this exercise, in identifying and releasing any remaining stuck points, and in moving forward in our lives.
In your mind you can imagine stepping forward into the future. As you take each step you can invite in the feelings of what it is like living and experiencing your life from a place with new awarenesses. You can let go of triggers that were formed from limiting beliefs or vows. In your mind’s eye you can experience the images of new ways of being, and feel into new ways of doing life that are healthy and sustainable. You can envision your heart’s desires for full expression and a fulfilling life. Here is the journal exercise.
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All parts of journey work are highly supportive of our goal to become the designers of our lives. When we are listening to our own internal wisdom we can hear our hearts’ desires. We can learn to follow our hearts in ways that feel safe and possible to our minds. We can reinforce new, sustainable ways of being. In this way, we are turning the mind into a fully utilized asset that trusts our heart and creates a life we love.
GO TO: Key Practice #4 - Experiential Behaviors
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Footnotes
[6] Various. (US National Library of Medicine National Institutes of Health, PubMed.gov, 1968-2017), www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=((Emotional+Intelligence)+AND+(%221968%22%5BDate+-+Completion%5D+%3A+%222017%22%5BDate+-+Completion%5D))+NOT+Emotional+Intelligence%5BText+Word%5D [7] Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. CDC-Kaiser ACE Study. (Atlanta, GA, 1995-2016), https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/acestudy/about.html; Various. (US National Library of Medicine National Institutes of Health, PubMed.gov, 1968-2017), https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term ((((Adverse+Childhood+Experience)+AND+ACE)+AND+Centers+for+Disease+Control))+AND+(%221968%22%5BDate+-+Completion%5D+%3A+%222017%22%5BDate+-+Completion%5D). [8] Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. CDC-Kaiser ACE Study; Vincent J Felitti MD, FACP, et al. Relationship of Childhood Abuse and Household Dysfunction to Many of the Leading Causes of Death in Adults.(American Journal of Preventive Medicine, May 1998) Vol. 14, Num. 4, http://www.ajpmonline.org/article/S0749-3797(98)00017-8/fulltext. [9] Joel Young, The Non-Personal Awareness (NPA) Process, http://www.joelyoungnpa.com/the-npa-process; The Guild of Energists, History of EFT & Tapping: Guide to The Tapping Techniques, https://goe.ac/history_of_tapping.htm. [10] AJ Adams, MAPP. Seeing Is Believing: The Power of Visualization. (Psychology Today: Sussex Publishers, LLC, December 3, 2009), https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/flourish/200912/seeing-is-believing-the-power-visualization; BC Clark, MD, et.al. The Power of the Mind: The Cortex as a Critical Determinant of Muscle Strength/Weakness. (US National Library of Medicine National Institutes of Health, PubMed.gov & Journal of Neurophysiology, December 15, 2014), Vol 112:12, http://www.physiology.org/doi/full/10.1152/jn.00386.2014. |
Table of Contents Links
Introduction .................................... 0 Life Purpose .................................... 1 Learned Skills .................................. 2 Integrative Discovery ..................... 3 Experiential Behaviors ................... 4 Supportive Environment ................ 5 
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