Standing in the Shadow of Shame

I am currently reading a book entitled, "Healing The Shame That Binds You" written by John Bradshaw.  I encourage everyone to read this book, but one of the things I have learned is that there is a difference between shame and guilt.

Guilt is when people feel like they have made a mistake.  Shame is when people feel they are a mistake.  When a person feels shame they continuously focus on their pain and not finding a solution.  Guilt accepts the mistake then tries to find a solution within the pain.  Many people have felt both of these emotions at different points within their lives but with different amounts of intensity.  Anyone who says they have not is either lying or have not been introspective enough within their own lives to figure it out.

A period in my life which I felt shame was as a child and leading into my mid-twenties.  My shame was that my family lived in poverty.  While in grade school, a friend was supposed to sleep over; well my friend's parent called my mother and explained that my friend could not come because the neighborhood was not safe enough  It hurt me and it told me in so many ways that my home was not good enough.

I became ashamed of the financial situation of my family.  I worked hard from that point to cover it up my shame.  I did not maintain friendships during high school because I was ashamed that I could not hang out with my friends and buy clothes because of my family's financial situation.  I realized that my life was not as privileged as others around me.  So I began to work hard to prove to others that I was special, but at the same time feeling so insecure about whom I was as a person.

I was basically running from my past...at least trying to run.

It was not until my mid 20s that I stopped running from the shame of my family's financial situation and began to stop making decisions based on trying to prove my childhood wrong because that was not living authentically.  I was living to turn a truth into a lie. 

The truth is that I did have a childhood that was filled with financial hardship, such as moving often and at times food scarcity.  That was not my total truth. 

My total truth is that I had a loving mother who cared for me deeply, a family that helped often so things would not become too rough, and I still had hope and a driving destiny.

You may feel ashamed about something; maybe its abuse that you have experienced, a mistake you have made, or maybe it has something to do with you.  I do not know what it is but here is how you turn something from away from the feeling of shame.

1. Know where it comes from

        Most shame comes from an external voice, action, or experience placed upon you.  Figure out where that hurt and pain comes from and know that you are not that experience, opinion, or the action that was done to you.  You are much more.

2. Understand that you are running

        Show me a person, who has an addiction issue, I will show a person that is running from shame.  Show me a person that struggles to show emotion and I will show you a person that is hiding something from themselves.  Know why you are running, most of the time it has to do with fear.

3. Get Help

         You cannot move through shame without help.  Shame alters a person in many different ways that we sometimes do not even realize.  You need a therapist or a life coach or a spiritual mentor who can help you move through these emotions.

Remember shame causes you to believe that you are the mistake that needs to give up and give in.  Most shame screams so loudly that you begin to act out the very things which make you ashamed.

I encourage you to embark on a journey to heal the shame that may be binding you.

Honor Your Weaknesses

When I was growing up one of the things I noticed about myself was that I was very shy and at times painfully shy.  When my mother would talk with me in a public setting she would always say to me, "Girl, if you don't speak up...I can't hear you."  This would embarrass me and I would usually turn red, become irritated, and not say anything at all.   When people would tell me I was
quiet, I would usually become defensive and tell them I am not and then offer a list of examples.

The fact is, I was very shy and I did not like to be the center of attention.  My favorite pass time when I was younger was reading a book.  I had friends but I did not feel the need to be with them all the time.  As I matured, my shy personality remained but it served me differently.

I always thought being shy was a weakness because that was what I felt and people would say that I must learn to stick up for myself.  (as if being quiet meant I was a coward) Until one day a teacher wrote a letter for me to get into a program and I will never forget that one of the statements she used to describe me was, "...still waters run deep."   I ran home that day and asked my mother what that meant.  She told me that it means you are quiet and calm, but there is something fascinating and exciting going on underneath (in your mind).

I thought yeah, there is. I will never forget that statement because it gave me the confidence to be exactly who I am.  I saw being shy and quiet as a weakness but when I became proud of it and confident about who I was, it turned from a weakness to a strength.

Now, that quiet spirit has served me to become intuitive, creative, very observant, and a great listener.

You may have things about your personality that have been labeled as a weakness.  Maybe you have been trying to cover it up.  Underneath your weakness is a strength that is a waiting to happen.  For example, if you show me a person that is very lazy I will show you a person who lacks confidence and a person who is scared to try.  You see there is a strength waiting to come out.

The thing about weaknesses is that most people are told so often by so many that they have a particular weakness, so they begin to stare so long at it that it becomes the only thing they see.  Now, as one hopefully progresses through life, one will always notice a weakness but that's just the universe pulling you into something greater to learn about yourself.

My current weakness is that I am very impatient.  I have never felt like this and I get frustrated often.  But each day I learn to deal with it a little differently.  Sometimes I count my blessings and other times I smell flowers.  I do things that make me have to see the beauty in my moments.

So...am I still quiet? Of course.  But now when people tell me I am quiet, I just respond with a smile and say, "Yes, I know."

Your Weakness is Your Strength

There is a great group by the name of Gnarls Barkley, which a line from one of their songs states, "Knowing your weakness is what can make you strong."

This is powerful because the only way one can grow and mature as a human being is to acknowledge their weaknesses. Buried in each weakness is a lesson that makes us stronger.  A lesson that guides us toward realizing that we do not know everything and can not do everything.  Learning your weaknesses is like hitting a wall which causes you to stop, stand still, and think for a moment.  If you have ever ran through a maze then you know what I mean.  Life is like a maze, at times we become confident and move fast and turn corners without thinking then all of sudden we hit a dead end.  The dead end could be losing a job; maybe the universe is trying to pull you in another direction.  The dead end could be a failed opportunity; maybe that opportunity would have blocked something better.  The dead end could be a broken heart; maybe, just maybe, it is trying to teach you to value yourself more than others.

Our weaknesses help to define and sharpen our lives so we are able to move forward in the pattern and way that will help us to create a life designed for our personal purpose.  When we come against a dead end we usually ask ourselves 3 questions: 1) What did I do wrong? 2) Could I have done something differently? 3) Is this right for me and should I try again?  

By asking those questions we learn about ourselves.

We become closer and closer to our authentic self
.

When you face your weaknesses that is when you began to become whole.  If you have a vase with cracks in it and you continuously tape up the cracks without truly fixing it, eventually the water will begin to leak out.  The cracks will begin to connect and the vase will no longer be whole.

This is just like us as human beings.  We find weaknesses and we cover them with stuff such as drugs, alcohol, people, money, laziness, and excuses.  Each weakness that we do not address leaves a crack in our soul and soon we are not able to hold anything within because we are no longer whole. This is how depression, anxiety, shame, and guilt creeps into our lives.

You know the greatest sound within music is the silence between the notes.  Without the silence there is just noise, one long note, but how, where, and how often the silence (the break between notes) is inserted makes the song slow tempo, fast, or mid tempo.  It gives music its genre whether jazz, hip-hop, pop etc.

So if you do not want to just create one long noisy musical note....

STOP!!! LOOK AT YOUR WEAKNESSES, HONOR THEM, AND LEARN FROM THEM


(Tuesday Blog: how to honor your weaknesses)

My 36th Birthday

I turned 36 today.

The questions asked: Do you feel wiser? No. Do you feel older? No.

I feel quiet.

Its weird to explain, but this is the first birthday that I don't feel like going out to a party or having a BBQ or the first birthday where I do not care who remembers or who forgets.  This is the first birthday where I don't care if people make it a special day or not.

Some may say oh because you are getting older.  That's not it, because I know older people that continue to expect others to make a big deal of their birthday, and that's ok because that is what they want.
Some may say you sound depressed, but believe me I work with people that are living with depression and that is not it.

So what is it?

Well, the quiet is me feeling grateful.  I am grateful to still be alive but its a different grateful.  Its an empty gratefulness.  What I mean is that its not grateful for a home, a car, a job, or a great partner.  Though I am glad to have all those things because there are many that don't.

I am grateful for an awareness.

You see I have been really working, thinking, and moving to get my speaking company off the ground.  I love working on my company but it was becoming a thing of let me get as many posts out as I can and as many twitter messages out as I can.  I got lost in tag lines and headlines and posts.

The awareness, well I began to become a little obsessed and attached to it, to the point that I thought my company (Meagan McLeod Communications) would not take off unless I had more followers and more people like my posts.  Here is the thing, many people experience this but its not about placing judgment its about being aware.

Society has made us believe, that if you do not have a lot of followers or friends on facebook then your career, within a certain arena, will not take off.

But here is what I became aware of...

Nothing can stop a career that is meant for you.  Nothing.

Here is the awareness, there are many things put out there to stop people from trying to own their dreams; religion, culture, race, education, beauty, and now social media status.  In ten years it will be something else.

The lesson is to be aware but not attached.  That is the difference. People are aware and attached to beauty when they get plastic surgery and believe it will help them move forward. People become aware and attached to education when they allow their lack of (education) to be the excuse of their failures in life.

I understand that these things do play a factor but they are not the deciding factor.  The deciding factor is your hard work, your determination, and your grit.  I am aware that I need more followers but I was becoming attached to it, in which I started to believe it was the deciding factor.

Maybe your thing may not be a career, but maybe its getting married, or a good relationship, or a great family, or being a good parent.  Maybe you have attached yourself to something that exist on the outside of who you are and you are aware of it but you feel like you need it.

I am here to tell you that you do not.  Just work hard at who you are and be the best human being and other things will fall into place.  Maybe, you feel like you can not meet a good guy or girl because its been so long or you missed your chance, and you are so attached to this thought that it is making you anxious.  This will be a turn off.  Maybe you are so attached to not wanting to fail,  that you have become stuck and have not tried to succeed.

Everyone has their thing.

The empty gratefulness is that I am happy to be me in this moment not looking at any benefits or future rewards just looking at myself.  This moment filled with uncertainty of whether my career will work, this moment not being where I want to be, and this moment of not having a bank account with six 0's in it.

But I like who I am and I like who I have become.  That, my friends, by the grace of God, is gift enough. I call it empty because its not filled with stuff, its just filled with me and God.

Peace be with you and grace abound.

Choices Hurt Our Decisions

We are living in a time when we have so
 many choices from foods to eat, places to visit, technology to buy, and things to occupy our time.  If you drive the length of five blocks in any urban city, you will have your choice of liquor stores, restaurants, corner stores, and churches.  Yet with these choices, liquor sales have increased, and attendance in churches have decreased.  We have so many choices like never before to communicate with people but yet interpersonal communication is a lost art.  We have lost touch with knowing how to speak to the humanity in people.  There are so many methods that save us time from microwaves to GPS systems, yet we are always in a rush.

Even though we have a plethora of choices, we still manage to make poor decisions.   But why is this?

People reject the process it takes to make decisions and see the results of making that decision become reality.  In order to make decisions that will change your life for the better, you must be conscious of your moments. To be conscious within your moments, means to be disciplined and not distracted.  To be disciplines means that we have to be patient.  Patience means that things do not come immediately but they come when Jesus Christ, the Universe, Allah, or Buddha believes your spirit is ready to receive that thing.

While there are more things in technology to assist in everyday living, those same things can pose as a distraction also.  How many times have you come home and just sat in front of the TV for the rest of the night while flipping thru over fifty channels.  I wonder how many of us watch anything which we actually learn something?  Watching TV is not the problem so much because how many people can resist it but what we are watching is the issue.  So, you watch all of this fluff then you complain that you are not moving forward in life.  Well, you can not move forward, when your conversation consist of only reality shows and sports.

That example may be extreme but it is true.  We give up our goals so quickly, we give up on love so hastily, and we hate ourselves so easily.  We do all of these things without question and accompanied by excuses.  I can not start a goal because my life is not right, or I can not change my life because this is the way its supposed to be.  Each person's life is the way it is because you are the sum of our choices.  Most of us do not remain in a decision making process long enough to create a positive impact within our lives. Instead we let things distract us and then use those things as excuses.

The question you should ask when deciding on the choices in your life:

1. Is this necessary?
2. How will it empower my life?
3. What changes will I have to make to make sure this choice is impactful?

We as human beings have so many choices yet most of us choose from things that are just within our reach and sometimes those things are not good for the person you could become in the future.  The amazing thing regarding our process of choice is that most of our choices have to do with the external and not the internal.  When is the last time you made a choice that would enhance your internal such as meditation, prayer, or personal development etc.  We have so much stuff covering us that we barely have time to find where our soul stops and our spirit begins.

Its not that we have too many choices which causes us to fail, its the simple fact that our many choices causes us to not make powerful intentional choices that will change our life greatly.  Choices that will affect the internal and therefore slowly change the external.

Remember, choosing to upgrade your phone does not upgrade you.

Until we connect again, may your dreams remain abound.