blog | Liz Cirelli

Daydream Believers Podcast hosted by Liz Cirelli

How to overcome fear & challenges with D Grant Smith

This month inside the Daydream Believers community the wise and wonderful D Grant Smith took the time out of his busy schedule to sit down with me and chat about how to overcome fears and challenges.

It was an amazing exchange, during which we addressed the questions submitted by members of the community.

We hope you find it helpful, and if you’d like to connect more with D, you can find him here. Get in touch with him – he’s a beautiful and big-hearted soul who is waiting to help you step into your greatness.

These podcasts exist to provide you with the knowledge, inspiration and motivation needed to pursue your dreams.

If you’d like to join the Daydream Believers online coaching community, have your say on what topics get covered during our podcasts – and have your questions answered by our expert guests, simply become a patron here. You can sign up quickly and easily and you’ll also get access to the full range of my coaching packages. Plus you’ll get exclusive early access to all my musical output – and lots of lovely treats in between!

You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes or Stitcher.

Really looking forward to welcoming you to the family!

Take a leap of faith

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Email | RSS

I find myself reflecting and contemplating a lot – especially when I’m travelling. For the last two months I’ve been in California – I came out here to attend a music production and licensing retreat hosted by my music production mentor, Gary Gray. When I booked my ticket, I booked it with the intention of going on a ‘music mission’.

I hadn’t really given much thought to the details of how that mission would unfold, but one thing was clear – I wanted the trip to be all about the music – and I wanted to stay out in California long enough to build long-lasting connections and relationships.

Let me backtrack to just before I committed to come out here. I had a little money come my way which meant that for the first time in 10 years, I was able to put something into a savings account. When Gary told me about his retreat, I wanted to go, but the fear of financial lack arose within me like a hungry snarling dog.

I use the analogy of a snarling dog, as that’s what it felt like. The ferocity of this fear was so strong that it almost totally blotted out my desire to go, to follow my heart. I say almost because an instant after I felt the ferocity of this fear, another sensation swooped over me – and this sensation spoke to me louder than the fear. It said: “you have to make this journey, Liz.” I knew this was the voice I had to listen to, not the voice of fear. The snarling dog had to be put in its place.

Despite knowing deep down that I had to say yes to the retreat and to coming to California, I still felt the fear inside me. I had more money than usual, yes – but in practice, not enough to sustain a longterm trip to the States. I didn’t know how this would work, but I knew I had to take the leap of faith.

So I did. I booked myself a one-way ticket to LA, trusting that Lady Luck would support me. Remember what I said earlier about my intention to make the trip a music mission? For it to be all about the music but that I hadn’t really given much thought to the details of how that mission would unfold?

Well, being out here and letting go of my need to be in constant control has been like me diving head first into a cornucopia. Me deliberately taking a step back and not having everything planned down to the finest detail meant that I allowed vital space for Providence to sweep in. On a practical level, I met people – who were initially complete strangers – who welcomed me into their homes and not only offered me a place to stay, but also really looked after me. These people have subsequently become very dear and special friends. Bob – I cannot thank you enough for everything!

On an artistic level, I have met some incredible people who have inspired me and helped me re-focus and redefine my goals as a music artist. New collaborations have been formed and new and very long-lasting connections have been made. I feel like my creative juices have been given a shot of turbo-powered superfood. I’m so excited for what the future holds.

I consider having goals extremely important in any endeavour, but especially when it comes to having a successful career as a creative. At the same time, I consider it important to be flexible with how those goals are achieved, and to also constantly learn and grow along the journey, redefining your goals as you go.

The people I have met, collaborated with and connected with here have reminded me of what inspires me and what my natural gifts are. This has helped me redefine my goals in accordance with what I believe to be my life’s purpose – the call of my higher self rather than the call of my ego.

Of course this means working with music, continuing my own career as a music artist, but doing it from a place of deep connection with my community (if you’re reading this email, it means you’re a part of that!) and working in a way that ultimately inspires other people to follow their dreams. I love seeing people happy, so I want to work in a way that will enable me to help more and more people along the way. I would love to eventually contribute to institutions (or set up my own!) that help children from troubled families follow their dreams of working in the music industry.

I would not have learned the lessons I’ve learned, become clearer on my goals, nor made the beautiful connections I’ve made had I not taken that leap of faith and listened to the voice of my heart over the voice of fear. Your heart will often tell you to do things that may seem crazy to you. You must listen to it. This the voice of wisdom talking to you – the voice that guides you to realise your life’s purpose.

Have the courage to take leaps of faith – it is only when we leap that we discover we’ve had wings all along.

These posts exist to provide you with the knowledge, inspiration and motivation needed to pursue your dreams. If you’d like to have your say on what topics get covered AND have your questions answered by me and/or our expert guests, simply join our community on Patreon. We really look forward to welcoming you to the family.

Am I good enough?

30/07/2017 by LizCirelli

Blog, Podcast

art, blog, creation, creativity, daydream believers, determination, focus, guidance, insecurity, Liz Cirelli, mentorship, podcast, realisation, success, truth

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Email | RSS

Big dreams, big visions. Most, if not all of us, have them. But why do seemingly so few of us see these dreams come true?

There are of course myriad reasons as to why, but for this post, I’m going to focus on the concept of being ‘good enough’.

A lot of us get stuck on our projects because we either want what we deliver to be as good as it can be, or we don’t consider ourselves to be good enough to put ourselves out there.

Of course, we all need to deliver material that is going to be pleasurable for our audience to receive, but we must not let ourselves get tripped up by this concept of everything having to be perfect.

Perfectionism is in itself a form of egoism – but I’ll be talking more about that in a few weeks!

So many times I’ve not taken action on something because I haven’t found the perfect way of delivering it, or I’ve felt that I wasn’t good enough to do it just yet. For example, I stopped singing for 10 years because I thought my voice sounded horrible and that I couldn’t sing properly. It’s taken me that long to gain the confidence to start singing again.

In thinking along these lines, I decided to really tap into the main reasons that we feel, or act like we are not good enough to pursue, or become involved in some activity that vitally interests us.

Lets look at some of what I believe to be, the most relevant reasons that we do not feel good enough to pursue our passions.

We have been through most of our lives being told by others that we must follow a certain ritual, or believe in certain ways before we will be socially acceptable to others.
We have listened to others who are critical of us in ways that are not conducive to our growth or progression. This type of criticism is usually delivered to us to deliberately stop us in our tracks. If we listen to this pessimistic view, we allow it to have authority over us – and inevitably it holds us back in pursuing our goals and passions. Don’t get me wrong – good constructive criticism – the type that helps you become better at what you do – is vital, but non-constructive criticism that is meant for no other reason than to put you down, should be discarded immediately!
We have not bought into ourselves fully and completely. We have been told that we were good by others, but deep down inside, we just do not believe that it could be true about us.
Throughout our entire lives we have handed over our personal responsibilities to some type of authority who has dominion over us. This causes major conflict within ourselves, as we think we know what is best for us, but the authorities inside our being are always telling us this is not the case.
We are not listening to our inner voice. Our inner voice, the essence of who we are in the physical world, is , or should be, our perfect guide and counsellor. Too often, we do not listen, nor respond to what that inner voice is telling us. Therefore, the conflict begins.

These are a few reasons to think about in the coming days, weeks and months. We can, and should always be, the captain of our souls, and the masters of our own fate.

How did I get over my feelings of not being good enough? By continuously and tirelessly working as hard as I can at my art – and by reaching out for support.

I now work with an incredible music production mentor, Gary Gray – who not only identifies and destroys the lies that are holding me back, but also offers me incredible tuition to help me grow and develop my skills as a music maker. I do my singing practice every single day, and I spend countless hours in the studio – learning, experimenting – and doing so with patience, perseverance and with pure, pure passion.

The more familiar we become with our art, the longer we spend honing and nurturing our craft, the more our confidence grows. And as our confidence grows, so the feelings of not being good enough dwindle.

It is time for us to realise our full potentials, and begin to listen to ourselves for a change, and never to the outside forces that choose to hinder our progress!

The true nature of creativity

02/07/2017 by LizCirelli

Blog, Podcast

blog, creativity, daydream believers, ego, Liz Cirelli, passion, podcast, truth

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Email | RSS

I’d like to talk about where our creativity comes from. I’m a spiritual person, so relate to the world in spiritual terms.

I believe our creativity is a gift to us from the Divine and that we’re all creative. But for some, their conditioning and resulting thought patterns have become so dense that they have totally lost touch with their inherent creative nature.

We were created – so it makes sense that we have the ability to create inherent within us. We can create physically, in that we can create new life. We can also create energetically and mentally – our thoughts are our creations. We create our reality by way of the thoughts we chose to entertain. We are all creators.

So – our ability to be creative is a gift from the Divine. It expresses itself through our creativity – and in doing so, rejoices. Simultaneously, in allowing the Divine to express itself through us, we are also giving it glory – and if we were all doing that, imagine how magical this world would be…the Divine intelligence that creates us, does after all, only want the best for us 🙂

But…just as the Divine rejoices in us expressing our creative gifts, so there is an opposing force doing its best to prevent us from expressing these gifts. It does this in different ways: it tries to convince us that we’re not creative at all, it paralyses us with fear – and it also corrupts our dreams and turns them into ego-based desires. This force wants to keep us trapped and disempowered – because it needs our energy in order to survive. Yes, vampires do exist – just perhaps not in the way they have been presented to us by Hollywood.

When I began looking at things this way, it changed everything for me. It made me more determined than ever to follow the call of my heart – to live out my role on this tiny pale blue dot we call Earth.

I’ll be talking about the fear thing in next week’s broadcast, but for this week, I wanted to hone-in on mistaking dreams that come from a place of pure passion, with desires that come from a place of ego.

The former is what we should all be concentrating on manifesting – this is what will enrich our lives and the lives of others. Some refer to it as a ‘life-purpose’. The latter must be recognised for what it is – a grasping for recognition because we are unable to fully appreciate ourselves. We are not here to manifest fast cars or fat bank accounts – if they result as a by-product of you pursuing your dream from a place of pure passion, great – but then remember it is your duty to be philanthropic with your blessings and use them to help others.

Music has always been my passion, but it used to be a very ego-driven thing. I wanted fame and fortune, but I didn’t want to work for it – and I got very angry and resentful when I didn’t get what I wanted.

I also used to very much follow ‘the path of least resistance’ theory, whereby if things seem a struggle, one should interpret it wasn’t meant to be. However, herein lies a dichotomy because we do need to work hard to turn our dreams into a reality.

It has been a struggle for me to follow my dream of doing music full time. I often felt like I was dragging a huge boulder up a never-ending hill and a lot of the time I questioned whether this was in fact ‘what I should be doing’ – because it was such a struggle.

But once I was able to drop the desires of the ego and follow my dream from a place of pure passion, magic started to happen. I started to work hard. Really hard. And willingly – joyfully even. The more I persisted, the more confident I became – not just creatively, but also as a human being. I felt more complete – I felt more of my true essence coming through – and with each step forward I took, doors opened.

I felt less fear. Not just surrounding my creativity, but generally. Long-standing health issues faded away and life began to take on an entirely new energy and feel.

So – if you feel called to do something, but it feels like a struggle to do it – my advice to you would be to go ahead and do it. Sacrifice whatever you need to in order to fulfil that desire, because the fulfilment of that desire will not only heal you on a physical level, but will also bring you amounts of happiness that are almost inconceivable.

In doing so, you are also sending out a tiny ripple of positive energy into the world and universe.

Our dreams were put inside us by a higher intelligence that knows what is best for all of us. It is our duty and our responsibility to follow our dreams, no matter how challenging the journey may be. And it is imperative that we do it from a place of pure passion.

The magic of gratitude

25/06/2017 by LizCirelli

Blog

awareness, blog, consciousness, development, gratitude, growth, humility, progression

Gratitude. It goes so much deeper than simply being polite. When we are able to shift our minds into a grateful state, it changes the energy we emit – which therefore changes the energy we attract.

Of course, it’s easy in theory, but life can be challenging and hard. A lot. Plus, our social conditioning doesn’t exactly do us many favours in most cases.

I spent a large portion of my life residing in emotional states that were anything but grateful. Arrogance, bitterness, anger, resentment, jealousy were frequently if not permanently on the menu. I expected everything, but, according to my perspective, received nothing. And guess what? This just made me even more angry, bitter, jealous and resentful.

These negative emotional cycles controlled me because back then I didn’t know any better. I hadn’t yet developed the awareness needed to change. Then slowly, information started coming to me that freed me from my bondage.

I realised I had a choice. I realised I was actually the one who was in control of my mind – and not the other way around. I began to understand that the way I was choosing to behave – the emotional states I was choosing to reside in, were destructive and were not serving me or anyone surrounding me. I chose therefore to begin the process of change.

It was uncomfortable and painful, because choosing to change meant that I first had to acknowledge those darker aspects of my personality, then I had to stop fighting them. Over time I began to realise that these emotional states were obstructing me from experiencing true happiness, were preventing me from receiving and experiencing the magic that is life.

Slowly but surely, I learned how to get out of my own way…I made a conscious choice to let the arrogance go, and I started adopting humility. That was scary for me, because I had built up the arrogant side of my persona as a defence mechanism to prevent me for getting hurt. But then I came to realise that if people chose to take advantage of my humility, that is their issue, not mine. I realised I could choose whether or not to be hurt by someone.

The more I embraced humility, the more I was able to become grateful. And the more gratitude I was able to exude, the more beautiful life became. I came to fully understand the nature of the expression that one must become humble to be able to stand before God. Or, to put it another way, one must become humble in order to experience the magnificent beauty and magic of life – to experience love in its purest most potent form (and I’m not referring to human love here, I’m referring to the love that is the Divine).

Humility is the key for the gate – and gratitude is the energy that swings the gate wide open.

Humility also enables us to acknowledge that life always gives us exactly what we need, even if it isn’t what we want. If we are able to accept it and be grateful for it, rather than resist it, we will find that what we’ve been wishing for is contained within the experience. It will always provide us with a valuable opportunity for growth – which can even serve to help us help others.

In a hurting world where individualism and selfishness are rife, gratitude and humility are, from my perspective, the antidote. After gaining the knowledge of how to use the gifts of humility and gratitude, our focus should not be on material gain, but rather on how we can serve as a collective to heal the hurts of the world. The Divine intelligence in all things knows best – and if we are able to submit to humility and gratitude with a pure heart, we can rest safe in the knowledge that this infinite intelligence will guide us along the right path. Not just for our own self-gain, but for the benefit of all.

Thank you so much for coming here and taking the time out to have a read. If you’d like to get early access to all my blog posts, musical output – and get access to my coaching community, please join my Patreon page by clicking here. It’s where all the action is happening! You can sign up quickly and easily and as a patron, you’ll receive some really lovely rewards. Big love, Liz.

Me and my creativity

11/06/2017 by LizCirelli

Blog

blog, creativity, dreams, fear, Liz Cirelli, music, overcome, struggles

Music. Even when I see that word, or hear it – or speak it, it sends shivers up my spine. Music is my air, my water – my sunshine. It always has been. And yet it’s taken me decades to pluck up the courage to pursue my life-long dream of doing music full time.

I’ve wrestled – repeatedly struggling with fear. The usual suspects: fear of financial lack, fear of judgement and of course our good old buddy, fear of failure. These fears were all compounded by doubt – a lack of confidence in myself, a doubt as to whether or not I was ‘good enough’ or ‘capable’.

My passion for music is unquestionable, but for a very long time ego-based desires shrouded that passion in a craving for fame and fortune, making my motives selfish and ego-driven.

This suited me just fine whilst I was living the life of a relatively unconscious human being. I was selfish – and was for the most part, quite happy to manipulate people so I got what I wanted. And I was good at it. But, what goes around comes around – and life eventually served me a well-deserved slice of humble pie.

I started taking my previously neglected spiritual life a little more seriously and began seeking the truth. In doing so I added a considerable amount of discord into my desire to pursue a career in music.

My quest for truth inevitably lead to me unravelling my own story – and as I began the search for who I really was, I began to face some hard truths about myself.

I started to feel that pursuing a career in music was selfish – that I should be doing something more worthy. Something that would help others, rather than satisfy my own selfish wants. Of course I felt this – I had developed enough awareness by now to make the painful realisation that my desires to pursue a career in music had been selfish. Yes my passion for music was real and pure, but my motives had been totally driven by my ego.

For a while I put music on the back-burner. I pursued a life as a yoga teacher and massage therapist because I thought they were good, wholesome things to do. I promised myself I’d do the music in my spare time, but the reality was it got neglected. I loved teaching yoga and giving massages, but there was sadness in my heart.

I couldn’t put my finger on what was causing this sadness though. I didn’t make the connection back then that it was because I was neglecting my passion. Then in September 2015, my heart spoke to me so loudly I realised in an instant what was causing it to be sad. It was like lightening running through me. I HAD to do music.

I realised that music has always been my life-long love. I also realised that my biggest fear was the fear of dying not having achieved my life’s purpose. In that moment, all fear and doubt paled into insignificance, and I made a promise to myself to give music everything I had.

Since then I’ve been focussing on music and only music. I’m working super hard at it. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever worked this hard in my life! I’ve achieved a lot in the last 18 months, but I’ve lost count of the times I felt like giving up over that period.

For the first year money came in in fits and spurts, so of course my fear of financial lack was doing its best to make me do an about-turn. No. I had done enough work on myself by now to not allow my fears to rule me, so onwards I strode.

There is no doubt about this: I couldn’t be doing what I’m doing now had it not been for the amazing support network I have around me. Family, friends – they have all been – and will continue to be – the wind beneath my wings throughout this journey. And faith. Faith has been my cornerstone. Without it I probably would have given up.

In fact, in a serendipitous turn of events, providence sent me Gary Gray – my incredible music production mentor. Having him to guide and support me – and to hold me accountable has been like wind to wild fire. Gary, I know you’ll be reading this – so thank you so much!

Sure, I still have moments when the doubt tries to make a return. I still have moments when I can feel the fear trying to figure out a way to creep back in. Yes, the wrestle is there – but when we wrestle there has to eventually be a winner.

Getting to know how the forces of doubt and fear operate within my mind – and learning how to circumnavigate them has been so freeing for me. It’s what finally gave me the clarity and courage to listen to my heart.

Being honest with myself about my ego-based desires was equally freeing. By acknowledging them, I was then able to chose to let them go. Letting go of them then allowed my pure passion for music to shine through, which then enabled me to follow my dream of doing music full time, knowing there was nothing selfish in it. It is simply what I was born to do.

Our darker tendencies do not disappear but rather, through the careful cultivation of awareness, we slowly come to realise that we are able to make a choice. We can chose to not be ruled by ego: fear, doubt, frustration, despair, selfishness – or rage. We can choose to follow our true passions – our dreams – what we were born to do.

Having the faith that the right doors would open for me when the time was right gave me the strength to keep going when I felt like giving up. When you are pursuing something from a place of pure passion without any of the darkness of ego-based desires attached, magic does happen! The power of your focus makes it so.

Add into that equation commitment, determination, humility, resilience and perseverance and you become practically unstoppable. The only difference after all, between those who make it and those who don’t is this: those who make it never give up.

I hope this inspires you to go out there and follow the call of your dreams.

Letting Go Of Fear

17/10/2016 by LizCirelli

Blog

blog, fear, letting go, Liz Cirelli

The journey into myself continues with a visit to my good old buddy fear. We all have it – it’s something that intermittently – or in some cases – frequently – cripples us. For many years, fear crippled my creativity – both musically and back in my dancing days. Fear of judgement mostly. It would prevent me from really putting my heart & soul into my dance moves – and it causes me to find any possible distraction to take my focus away from doing that which I long to do the most – make music. I still have it – I find myself piffling about with pointless things when I’ve promised myself some music-making time – and when I’m about to embark on anything that will be inherently beneficial & nourishing to my soul, I will procrastinate here there & everywhere about getting to it.

It takes an incredible amount of awareness to overcome the emotion of fear. The ego absolutely adores it. I don’t regard the ego as a negative thing – it is that part of you which has been constructed as a response to your life experiences, your conditioning – your programming as a human being. Most of our ego-based tendencies were formulated whilst we were very young – and so by their very nature, they are the reaction of a scared, very young version of you. The ego reacts in a way that it thinks will best protect you – but these are the reactions of a scared child. And what are children most excellent at? Creating stories. Huge ones. The ego thrives on fear. It will create the most epic of fear-based dramas. Are these dramas real? Not really – they only exist inside your head. Sure, they feel real – but are they actually taking place, right here, right now, in front of you? Probably not. And still, these fears will prevent us from doing anything if we allow them to – not to mention the stress they put on our adrenal glands! The most important thing when dealing with fear is forgiveness. This terrified little child within you that is generating these fears must not be considered a ‘demon’ or something that you need to fight. What would you do if you saw a scared little child, all alone & crying? You’d comfort them wouldn’t you? You’d take them into your arms, give them a big hug & tell them everything will be ok. You need to do this for your terrified little you too.

After being single for the best part of 3 years, I had begun to feel very comfortable in my singledom – happily getting on with life, projects – and working at overcoming my fears. But a very profound encounter with a young man recently left me with quite the realisation…I am terrified of falling in love. This is actually a very new fear for me – a fear that had been wrenched out of one too many broken hearts & betrayals. In the wake of my encounter, this fear sent my ego into warp-drive – she was fretting & fussing, burying her little face in her hands and sobbing “no, no no!”. Am I alone in this fear? Hell no. Is it real? It certainly feels real – but…it is an emotional reaction from things that happened in the past. It’s not based on the events of the present. Does this make it wrong? No. It’s ok to feel that fear – it’s only human – but most importantly, it points to an aspect of myself that needs healing. There’s a really scared little Lizzie in there who really doesn’t want to fall in love. But how to do that? By sitting with the emotion that comes up (in this case fear), allowing yourelf to feel it without analysing it – and taking the focus to your breath. Keep breathing until the emotion has subsided. Breathe as much as you have to in order to release the emotion – exhale through the mouth if it helps, imagining the emotion leaving you, breath by breath. If you have to pant as though you’re giving birth then go with it – do whatever breath work you have to in order to release the emotion – the trick is to stay with the breath – and stay out of analysis. After a few moments the emotion gradually melts away. Next, bring in the forgiveness towards that scared little aspect of yourself. It’s tough – even after doing this, the ego will still insist on the drama – but remain in a state of mindfulness – aware of the drama, but not participating in it. Often, once you’ve released one layer of emotion, another will pop up – maybe instantly – maybe in a few days, maybe in a week. Keep working through the emotions as they come up, with patience, acceptance and mindfulness.

Of course, I could choose to play into the ego drama and shut down my heart as a response to the fear. Walk away, in order to ‘protect’ myself – but…what am I protecting myself from exactly? When I look deep into it, the answer I come up with is ‘nothing’. So what if I get my heart broken again? It mends. So what if I cry a few more tears? Don’t get me wrong, I believe I had those experiences in the past for a good reason – and I have learned valuable lessons from those experiences, but rather than allowing myself to be paralysed by fear, I can use those lessons to my advantage and navigate this situation with the gift of greater wisdom. Past experience has shown me that you attract people (especially lovers) into your life who perfectly reflect where you are in terms of how you behave towards yourself. If you are able to look into this mirror with honest eyes, you are given the tremendous gift of being able to see what you yourself need to work on. This is often a hard and painful experience that many of us choose to ignore – or even fight – but if you stop and be still with it for a second, you will start to see that the reason the person that is supposed to be closest to you isn’t nourishing you the way you wish, is because you yourself aren’t nourishing – or accepting – yourself. Heal those parts of you that cause you fear, anger, self-loathing, shame, jealousy…because all they are, are terrified little versions of you who are just trying their best to protect you. Accept them as part of who you are – give your ego a massive hug – that’s all he / she wants.

Parts of my conditioning left me with a susceptibility towards low self esteem. Something I have on the most part now healed. But every now & then, the self-doubting, scared little Lizzie makes herself known again – mostly when I approach making music. I have ideas for musical creations that I am still struggling to bring into manifestation. The urge is getting greater and I know they will come through soon, but it is taking an immense amount of willpower to build up the courage. And this is the thing – the only way with fear is through. When I feel the fear preventing me from making music I know I have to push on through and do it anyway – even if it’s just for 10 minutes. And it’s ok if these other ideas aren’t coming through right now – Rome wasn’t built in a day. Baby steps. The more I keep persevering despite the fear, the more I instil within me the will to do it. You have to do it despite the fear. This in itself is an incredibly healing and empowering way of living life.

When it comes to fear, you can either let your ego win and succumb to the crippling – or you can bring yourself into a state of mindfulness, see your ego playing out the non-existent drama, acknowledge it, and then choose to assert your will and fly in the face of fear. Use the emotions that your ego brings up as signposts to point you in the direction to which aspects of yourself need a bit of care & attention. The opposite of love is not hate – it’s fear. If you can start turning fear into love – a love of yourself – then beautiful things will start to happen. Promise 🙂

It’s all about acceptance

17/10/2016 by LizCirelli

Blog

acceptance, blog, breaking habits, Liz Cirelli, wellbeing, wellness

A short while ago I decided to do a 120 day blood cleanse, during which I would not eat any sugar. The process really made me examine my relationship with food – and subsequently my relationship with myself! Some of you may be aware that when I was 13, I went anorexic – and have had a very tricky relationship with food – and my body – ever since. Part of the reason for doing this blood cleanse was to heal the damage the anorexia had caused to my digestive tract. Messing around with my eating habits at such a crucial stage in my development had left me with a very weak digestive system – and food intolerances here, there & everywhere. The other part was to get over my addiction to sugar.

Over the course of the last couple of months, I have realised that my addiction to sugar was just the tip of the iceberg. It’s not just sugar I’m addicted to – it’s food in general. But it’s a funny, perverted addiction…I will turn to food as a form of comfort and eat to make myself feel better if I’m feeling low because of an external factor, but then I will as readily purposely abstain from food if I feel I have been over-indulging too much. No doubt, this yo-yo eating pattern has done nothing good for my poor digestive tract. But more importantly, it has shown me that in some way, the shadow of the anorexia still lingers. It’s an insidious and dark condition. I remember being a stick-thin teen, but looking in the mirror and seeing a fat girl. That distorted body image stayed with me until my late twenties. I now see my body for what it is when I look in the mirror (at last), but the fact that I still ‘play’ so drastically with my eating habits does seem to hint to me that the condition is still present in my psyche.

Addicts turn to their addictions for comfort, but then wind up hating themselves for having indulged. I’m no different with food. I will over-indulge, then I’ll feel thoroughly disgruntled with myself for being ‘weak’…”why the hell did I just eat that entire 200g bag of cashews?! Why couldn’t I just have a handful and put the rest of them away?!” Why indeed…I’ve been delving deeper into this…and the conclusion I’ve come to is that it’s a form of self-loathing – an inability to accept a certain aspect, or aspects of ourselves – and an inability to accept certain emotional states. It’s a lack of acceptance. I’ve recently been faced with a situation that has brought up aspects of myself and emotional states that I least like – and struggle to accept. What has this resulted in? Me turning to food to comfort myself – and distract myself from being in that emotional state – and then being dissatisfied with myself for succumbing to my addiction, resulting in yet more self loathing. A pattern is occurring here – a very destructive pattern. I’m sure part of the reason I can’t say no to food is because I literally starved myself as a developing teenager – so whenever food is around, my unconscious mind is telling me to eat it all, because it thinks I may not eat again for days. What a dichotomy!

But how to break this habit? These habits? How to make peace with those parts of my self I find the most unacceptable, those emotional states I find the most uncomfortable? Just be present with it – sit with that part of you, that emotion, without trying to analyse it, without judging it – and without judging yourself – literally, meditate on it. Sit yourself down – and just be with it – watch it – and then watch it disappear. It’s incredible how quickly it dissolves. Yes, you may have to do this over and over again, several times a day even, but over time, the pangs lessen – the grip of the addiction loosens – and acceptance slowly starts to seep in. In the many, many spiritual texts that I’ve read, they all say one thing – that it is our journey as humans to ‘find ourselves’. I think I’m actually finally beginning to understand what this means – it’s about getting to know every single aspect of ourselves – and completely accepting – and loving – each and every part. Yes sure, there is still a 13 year old Liz inside me who is terrified of being the ‘fat girl’ – and yes, there is a part of me that’s absolutely petrified of the unknown. Sure, there’s the angry, resentful wrathful woman too…but rather than battle with these aspects of myself, hating them & wishing they weren’t there, I will now give myself time to sit with them, to be present with them – and learn to accept them as part of who I am. And they’re all ok.