personal-growth – A Dog and Her Girl

May 27, 2025

Failure Wrapped in Love

A Path to Enlightenment

Failure may actually be one of the best and most efficient ways to get in alignment with the truest and highest versions of ourselves. A path to really living our best lives. …IF we can wrap failure in love.

The more mistakes we make, the more we learn how a choice or path isn’t for us, or we realize the way in which we are trying to get where want to be is out of whack (fear-based), and the more we have the opportunity to remember who we really are.

Which takes us to the blocks around failure. Shame (a topic I’ll talk more about how to work with soon) prevents us from evolving and seeing the failure, or simply the situation, with clarity. When we get lost in shame and stories of how we’re bad or not enough, we can be assured we’ve identified with our subconscious programming (small selves/ego) and NOT our Higher Selves. The irony is that the more we stay in shame (which believes we’ll make a better choice if we’re super mean to ourselves), the more likely we’ll take the take the wrong path again, make the same mistake, and fail again. (If the emotion is in you and still in the shadows, you probably won’t even know when you’re doing this.)

Yet, if we see failure through the lens of love, or rather, we love ourselves when we make a mistakes, we open ourselves up to new ideas, paths, and…to use a super spiritual word, EXPANSION. Loving energy helps us see new options and make more optimal choices (we’re past good or bad when we’re in this space).

Because we know we “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them”, to quote Albert Einstein (a super spiritual dude and scientist), it’s not thinking about being kind to ourselves that’s going to get us out of this one. Which to me, is a relief, because my neural pathways are pretty set on how I really did screw things up. (Yes, I’m right here with you on this topic.) In addition to working with childhood memories on how our shame got its origins, what we can start doing is FEELING into the energy of compassion. Personally, I have no problem doing this with my sister, my dog, my dad, etc. Once I conjure up this feeling thinking of them, I can then PRACTICE (it is a practice) turning it towards myself. Try it our yourself.

I’ve got a lot more to say about shame coming up, when I have time to write more of my thoughts down. For now, here’s some food for thought and some compassion to feel into.

May 15, 2025

The War Within

Can empathy and self-compassion save us?

Most of my clients come to me saying some version of, “I feel like I am at war with myself.” And they’re right. Most of our parts (identities), or various internal programs, are just battling it out inside our brain, with our wounded inner child hiding for cover.

Now, if I told my clients upfront that love and self-compassion were the answer they’ve been looking for, they might agree (or they’d at least agree self-hate was the problem), but they’d also probably roll theirs eyes, think “love is the answer” is a nice song lyric, and then inquire exactly what they need to do to heal.

And so instead, I’ll do some version of parts /shadow work, helping them see how their inner critic, judge, perfectionist, addict, saboteur, etc, is actually trying to protect them from a painful (emotional) childhood experience and allow compassion to come right on in and do its job. Simple, but not always easy. Some of us have built up a lot of resistance to love.

Let’s look at it this way…

Many militaries train those going to combat by using dehumanizing strategies (I’ve read some cool research being done within the US military, but unfortunately haven’t heard a lot of great stuff from vets I know). If every military taught empathy, how to see their “enemies” by understanding their childhoods via their upbringing (aka programming) (“Oh, no one was ever there for them either? He was abused too?) and that they too, were doing the best they could, how many would still be willing to go into battle? Throw in some self-compassion and self-forgiveness, realizing once again that our own inner demons are just kids doing the best they can to survive in an insensitive world, how many wars do you actually think there’d be?

We live in world of fake enemies, inside and out. Yet when we break it down and remember everyone- that we ourselves were once just innocent little kids wanting to be loved, we can start to soften. Going deeper, we realize all our hardened parts are the result of our little selves not receiving unconditional love and learned to turn towards fear (living in survival mode). From here, we can soften more.

And once we can love those kids, or “inner enemies”, and parts of us that got confused between the difference between love and fear, they heal.

*I was recently in a workshop with Dr. Sue Morter where someone asked what to do with the resistance that came up during a love-based meditation. She said “Just love that part of you” and that interrupts the cycle. I loved that answer too, as sometimes I think we can get stuck try to figure things out , and instead we can just go back to love.

***

Previous blog posts on the topic:

Dreams: A Mind at War (+ dream interpretation)

Thoughts That Kill

March 30, 2025March 30, 2025

If You’re on a Non-Linear Path, You’re on the Right Path

The path to healing, growth, and evolution isn’t linear. It’s not something to get frustrated about (but do honor your emotions). These obstacles and road bumps (different from roadblocks and closed doors) are actually signs YOU ARE ON THE RIGHT PATH!

In fact, we know that obstacles and challenges are not only what make us stronger, but bring us closer to our true, most awesome (and authentic), selves.

Accepting this truth, that challenges are signs we’re on the right path, can keep us from getting stuck. It’s when we judge ourselves, “Why am I here again? I thought I healed this!” that we’re resisting the lesson and blocks us from 1) the opportunity to apply what we learned the last time and 2) prevents us from being curious*, “Hmm, why is this happening again?” “Why is this repeating?” “What do I have to learn here?” “How can I love myself more?”

_{* Curiosity is different from “trying to figure everything out”, which has more of a fear energy. Oh, self-judgement will never get you to healing, either!}

This idea, that the path to healing and growth often happens in loops and includes challenges, can be applied to athletes too.

When I work with athletes who get injured, they usually end up working with a PT, commit to correcting poor form, or to consistently performing exercises that target underused muscles. When that athlete comes back, they’re not only physically stronger, but more mentally resilient for having gone through the challenge. There’s a new belief, a new resilience in them that says, “I can move through challenges and not only be okay, but be closer to that highest version of myself.”

A slight reframe: The path to healing and self-evolution is really the journey of transformation. Usually, we metaphorically think of this as the process of being a caterpillar to becoming a butterfly*: First, we are a caterpillar. Then, we wrap ourselves inside a cocoon. Third, we become MUSH, obsolete. From the mush, we transform into butterflies. But in order to REALLy be a butterfly, we have to fight our way out of the cocoon.

_{*The caterpillar and butterfly share the same DNA, but the genes are expressed differently. That, in itself, is metaphorical. Article Link}

But what I really see for most people is little transformations inside a BIG transformation. Maybe we go through a small transformation in a few months or 1 year period, but then in 7* years, BOOM! We’re this new, amazing being flying high and living our best lives. (In other words, don’t give up. You’re right where you’re meant to be.)

_{*On AVERAGE, our body’s cells renew every 7 to 10 years. However, some cells are replaced every few days, and others take 70 years. Article Link}

…And then there’s probably another evolution, but this time it’s easier because we’ve done it before and this higher version of ourselves knows that THIS IS A SIGN WE’RE ON THE RIGHT PATH.

As always, only if it feels empowering: https://buymeacoffee.com/raynypaver