Do You Avoid Your Brilliance?
Most of us did not receive the nurturance to develop our authentic gifts and to live a life of Purpose. Therefore, when we embark on this journey as adults — we may experience growing pains and friction. In this piece, I will explore how we can reorient ourselves to the avoidance of our brilliance and allow the flow to continue.
You may have arrived at the place where you know your purpose and have identified the steps to get there — yet, progress may not be as straightforward as you hoped for when you began.
Even when you are committed to growth, expansion, and taking consistent action towards your evolution — you may find yourself in avoidance or procrastination.
This may cause feelings of frustration — “but I know that I decided to make this commitment! I know I need to do this, even if it’s challenging” — yet in the day-to-day, there is a friction that appears in honouring your commitment.
Often, this friction has to do with fear. The famous quote from Marianne Williamson illustrates this:
“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?”
The root of fear
You may ask “Why would I be afraid of my brilliance?”
Often, like with most challenges, the source of it can be found in our early life.
Perhaps, sometime in the past, we dipped our toe in our brilliance. We tested the water. We allowed our brilliance to poke its head out a little, like a turtle.
But maybe it was not received as we had hoped. Maybe there was a negative consequence, on some level. Maybe our little poke-out did not meet the welcoming, the nurturance, and the support it needed to come out again and more consistently.
So, it retreated.
Back inside the shell. Perhaps to be forgotten about for several decades.
The lack of nurturance or even rejection that our Authentic Self experienced at a tender age can be stored deep in the subconscious. When we decide to embark on the journey to reconnect to this part of us — these blocks will likely come up to the surface in the form of avoidance and procrastination.
Children internalise rejection
In her book “Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents,” Lindsay Gibson (PsyD) discusses the psychological coping mechanism that children adopt when they are let down by their caregivers. Children internalise the rejection they may experience — making themselves ‘wrong’ and their parents ‘right.’
In a given situation — they tend to create a story around experiences that protect their parents’ safety and authority. It makes sense for the child to do this because the child depends on the parent for safety, security, and survival. To jeopardise the belief of the parent being ‘good’ or ‘right’ would cause the most disruption to the child’s sense of security. It’s safer for the child to make him- or herself ‘wrong’ than to make the parent ‘wrong’.
Therefore — if a parent treats a child badly by using excessive punishment, for example, this mechanism will cause the child to instinctively create the belief that they have done something to deserve the punishment. This belief will shape the way that the child will grow up to think and talk to him- or herself as an adult.
The child’s developing cognition does not allow for the child to understand if a parent’s maltreatment is due to the parent’s own issues or stressors. The child is self-centred in that way — the child thinks that everything that happens is because of something she did or did not do.
If we extrapolate from this example — equally, if the child experiences that her authentic self is ignored or rejected by her parents — she will internalise this rejection. She will subconsciously make her parents ‘right’ and believe that there is something wrong with her authentic self.
How our parents may have rejected our brilliance
Say your parents did not support your brilliance when it came to your passion and what you may have wanted to pursue as a career later in life. Say you loved playing computer games as a child. Say you were fascinated by the technology and how it could be used to create new and exciting things.
Say your parents’ did not indulge this curiosity, but wanted you to go into business or medicine. They thought your interest in computers was superfluous, something that would just indulge a gaming addiction. Say this was before the proliferation of the tech industry, so your parents did not understand the potential in the area and instead wanted a career path for you that would guarantee success.
This is just one example I have heard of, but I, as I’m sure many of you, have my own version of this story.
When our parents’ impose their own fears and limitations on us — the programming that is imparted usually contains beliefs, such as:
- “If you enjoy it — it can’t be a job.”
- “Your interests and passion do not matter, only hard work and perseverance.”
- “To make money you have to sacrifice your health and well-being.”
- “Work is work, you find your joy and purpose elsewhere.”
- “It’s not safe to take risks in life. You need to play your cards safe to guarantee survival and health.”
- “Survival and creating a life that ‘looks right’ is more important than how you actually feel about it.”
All these beliefs and the associated neural pathways in our brains have created the ‘programming’ of our subconscious. This programming determines what we believe to be possible and how we carry ourselves in the world. The more our programming is based on fear — the more we carry ourselves with defensiveness and the more threats we observe in the world. This, in turn, affects the outcomes we witness around us.
The need to grieve
When, as adults, we become fully aware of the limiting beliefs and the contracted programming we inherited from our parents — emotions may surface.
This is a good thing.
Our reconnection to our brilliance requires us to grieve the abandonment and the rejection that our brilliance was subject to. To grieve and let go of all the subtle stories that no longer serve us. To grieve for the support and nurturance that we had to go without.
A mental reframe around external validation
A powerful mental reframe, available to us as adults, is to see that the rejection our brilliance may have experienced before was due to our parents’ (or whoever did the rejecting) fear and contraction. Your caregivers may not have had the wisdom, maturity, and courage to validate and nurture your brilliance. However — this does not mean that your brilliance has no value, quite the opposite.
It may have been that your brilliance challenged your parents — in the way that new, innovative ideas can be disruptive to the collective.
You can’t control how something is received by another person. You can’t control what level of consciousness or vibration they are at — or even what their personal tastes are.
I’m sure there’s, for example, a piece of music that deeply resonates with you — where beauty meets wilderness in just the right proportions — that pulls on your soul strings. And along comes another, perhaps a family member, or someone whose presence in your life is more of a circumstance than a choice. To them — this incredible piece of music is “nonsense,” incomprehensible noise, and does nothing but irritate them.
And there will be another situation where the tables are turned.
There will be something that you feel ‘meh’ about that touches another person deeply. And that is okay!
What we like and what resonates with us will change over time.
You’ve probably experienced this with something in your life. An idea, a person, a teacher, a practice, or a type of TV show that you used to dislike… Eventually to find yourself coming around to it — recognising that the reason you ‘repelled’ this in the first place was because it was a mirror for something that you were avoiding within yourself.
Even on a more neutral level — often when we come into contact with something unfamiliar, we don’t immediately embrace it with open arms. We need a bit of time to get used to the presence of the new thing — maybe we need to feel into the energy of it. If the energy feels good, then we will probably stick around until we’ve become accustomed to the new thing.
Your unapologetic, authentic brilliance is this ‘new thing’ in the world.
And it may well be that if your parents were not familiar with their own brilliance — then your brilliance was indeed something scary, something uncomfortable and unknown to them. Even though they brought your physical body into the world — they were not equipped enough emotionally to bring your soul essence fully expressed into this world.
Standing at the threshold
However — now you have the opportunity to embark on this journey yourself. You have the opportunity to grow beyond your parents in terms of your personal and spiritual power. You have the opportunity to heal the fear and the contraction that has been passed down your family line.
You have the opportunity to embody a higher vibration. A vibration rooted in expansion, love, curiosity, and joy — rather than fear and contraction. A vibration where you believe in the possibility of miracles, in the potential of the human mind and heart to create and transform the world for the better. This is not a level of mere survival, comfort, or ‘getting by’ — this is the level of your brilliance.
This may be the place you find yourself in right now — ready to make the leap. And yet, you may encounter blocks, resistance, and procrastination.
For this, I want to offer you a metaphor
Birthing your brilliance
Think of your brilliance as being born into the world, like a baby.
It is first conceived in the dark depths of the birth canal — or in the depths of your subconscious.
It then gestates and grows inside the warm safety of the womb — which is the safe space you have created for it through all the personal work you’ve been doing.
Now, it’s ready to emerge, to become expressed, and to take its place in the world. But first, the hard bit. The bit where the baby loses the safety of the familiar and leaps into the unknown. It can only hope that the hands who receive it on the other side will receive it with love and nurturance.
Imagine first the following scenario for the birth of a baby:
The parents of the baby are riddled with their own unattended psychological wounds. They are unable to welcome the baby with unconditional love. Maybe they didn’t want to have a baby. Maybe they are disappointed at the sex of the baby or if the baby has an illness or a physical deformity. Maybe the parents had not fully thought through the decision to have a baby and now will resent the baby for the sacrifices they’ll need to make.
You know intuitively that whatever the parents’ reaction is — this does not make the baby any less valuable or worthy of love. It’s the parents’ own unattended wounds that are blocking them from giving the baby the love it deserves.
Maybe you even feel the desire to love this baby, because it makes you sad to think that this innocent baby will go without the love it deserves due to its parents’ woundedness.
Hold onto that desire.
Now imagine that the baby is a metaphor for your brilliance that is making its way into the world.
The Wounded Parents are a metaphor for all the fears and the contracted programming that you have inherited and that you are now working to transform.
Then there is You. You, in all your wisdom, love, and empathy that you have learnt through your experience until now. You, with the desire to surround fear with love — to expand rather than contract.
You now have the opportunity to be that loving parent towards your brilliance.
Your brilliance needs you to show up for it with understanding, encouragement, and love. It needs you to nurture it, to allow it to make mistakes, to stumble, and to fall. It needs you to allow it to develop at its own pace but with your guidance and loving attention. It needs you to not neglect it. It needs you to feed it with inspiration. It needs you to not expect it to be able to walk or run straight away — but to be patiently guided with mature wisdom.
You can use this image when you are getting stuck in perfectionism, avoidance, or procrastination. Whenever you feel like you are being choked by your expectations of yourself. Whenever you are letting “perfection be the enemy progress” — you can call forth this loving attitude.
The world needs you
The world needs you in your authenticity and your full expression.
It needs you in your higher vibration — with more love, creativity, and compassion.
The world needs you to not give into fear and contraction — both within yourself and in the world at large.
I hope that you can feel the truth in that.
I hope that it can help you to carry on, even when it gets tough.
I hope that one day, I will get to be witness to and inspired by the courage that you emanate into this world through the way that you show up in the world.
