The seven magic words that change everything…
Musings on Heart Powered Human Leadership
2023 has been quite the year for me. It started in Winter with my husband and son both breaking bones in a ski-ing accident in early January — which was, shall we say.. testing.
The Spring blew in with a massive spring clean and clutter clear of our house as we readied ourself for the BIG SABBATICAL trip to Australia — clutter clearing being for me a challenge. For those that know me and my Cancerian hoarding ways — this was also (very) testing.
Then turning 60 over the Summer which involved lots of life-affirming parties and social events (and outfits) which were wonderful in pretty much every way — although all the excitement brought another kind of adrenalin and ‘looking your best’ melodramas. Anyone who has followed my curly hair story on insta or has a strong feminine side will relate.
Then the BIG TRIP, back home to Australia after seven years away. Last time I was there it was for my younger sister’s funeral. So it was quite a thing to return. This involved living in close quarters with my huge, high energy, loving yet intense family and even though there were infinite moments of real joy — as spiritual teacher Ram Dass says…
If you think you’re enlightened, spend a week with your family.
Try ten weeks.
In the Autumn, as if I didn’t create enough interesting tests for myself, I came back to too much work (good problem to have), although it meant I burnt myself out a little — which was illuminating.
In late Autumn, came a great test indeed. Collaborating on the Wise Woman Ways project — to bring together a group of thirteen women in their 50’s and 60’s to the Alpujarra, Spain for a powerful rite of passage to become confident elders in their communities. We laughed, we cried, we hugged, sang and danced. We created works of art, we journeyed deep, we practised powerful sacred rituals, we communed with our bodies, minds, hearts and souls. It was potent, beautiful and transformational magic.
My own journey with this deserves its own epic post. Facilitating and olding all this, whilst collaborating closely with others who had completely different styles and approaches, provided me with voluminous material for my own development; bringing into the light my own patterns and shadows.
The year ended in mid-Winter, with a final, powerful and deep integrative process with my Feminine Embodiment Guide Lian Brook-Tyler to face, heal and find peace with all of the above.
All in all, this year I have been deep in processes of growth or as me and Lian like to call it – plenty of ‘material for my liberation’.
I see that I am still not the finished article, that there is always more to learn. That we can only see what we can see, we can’t see more until life offers us the chance to do so.
These tests have been a gift, but in my own experience they often come wrapped in a shit package that I wouldn’t otherwise want to touch.
Feelings are the way each package presents itself. Difficult ones. For me they can be deep disappointment, frustration, feeling abandoned or betrayed, feeling urgently compelled to control or take action. Being critical and even on one particularly intense day — rage — and this is just me with myself — let alone the impact or projection of these onto others.
My spiritual journey so far – and being in a body as a woman, has taught me one very clear and simple thing; the only way out is through. In other words when a feeling arises, to go there and feel it fully (without judgment). For, as has been said many times before, Jung brilliantly puts it:
What we resist, persists.
I think we are conditioned in this crazy, modern world to NOT feel. To deny our own emotions; to train, manage and control them.
To numb them with (all the things… you know what they are, but just in case you want a reminder of some of the sneaky ones) … scrolling, rescuing, busy-body-ing, busy-ing — just doing something (anything) to stop the intensely mad, sad, bad or scared feelings.
What I have come to see this year through my many tests, is that there are some magic words that work like a spell or a charm or a gift from Source. They work when things are good and you want to be fully present and grateful for your life, they work when shit hits the fan, they work in the deepest of sorrows and the hardest of challenges. They work through the highs and lows of life.
They work especially well when we can recognise them as a deep and profound wisdom coming from our own souls (and not just a good idea someone wrote in a blog once).
These are the seven magic words that change everything;
Just breathe, all of you is welcome.
Just breathe — this means to me that all we ever need to DO to find our centre and come back to our Core is to take a simple breath. To breathe deeply and with consciousness into our bellies and meet the moment and ourselves, where we are, as we are.
Try it now — see what happens.
We come into our bodies, we leave the noise of our minds and we are returned to the here and now. It seems to me that we start life this way when we are born and indeed as we take our final breath, we will gently fall into what is next, peacefully. There is no need to rage against any machine — if we can just breathe into what is so.
In the just breathe place, we come back to our experience and in that experience we notice the feelings, thoughts and judgements — the thing we don’t want to be, do or have — and in this liminal place the next five words work their magic…
All of you is welcome. This means your true experience, your true emotion (and I mean your big ones — self-judgement, rage, despair, guilt, shame, depression and panic) can be given some room to exist. To be felt, to be met, to be held.
True story (not a pretty one) but some rage came up for me a month or so ago. BIG RAGE. Primal rage, so overwhelming all I could do was scream. It didn’t matter what triggered it, but I knew with every fibre of my being it was bigger than me, like a wave crashing overhead and I knew it had to happen and I had to submit. I did not want anyone else to be at the effect of it, so *I ‘asked’ those in my vicinity to give me space. *this might be a generous way of putting it.
What I knew was that I had to feel it, not fight it and find fellowship with it.
Although it felt really hard and unpleasant and my head was coming up with all sorts of reasons why I was entitled to feel this way, yet paradoxically all sorts of judgements as to why I shouldn’t be this way.
Something in me said quietly — Can you welcome this too? Can you allow all of you to be welcome? Right here — even this? And I did.
All I can say now, a month later is I look back on that as a seminal moment. A moment where I gave myself permission to go there.
After I let that wave crash on the shore, I discovered radical compassion and some fresh and deep understanding of myself and why certain things feel like massive tests to me, although not to others.
These were the gifts of liberation that could only be gained by allowing all of me to be on the path I was travelling, just as I was.
I love that beautiful expression by Ram Dass (here he is again that wise, yet deeply human sage)
In the end, we are all just walking each other home.
All of you is welcome means to me that you take your own hand, or perhaps it is the hand of the child within that once really needed something so badly and deeply, yet didn’t receive it, and you welcome them and give them what they needed and you walk them home.
If you can learn to meet and welcome your own self with this kind of loving kindness, when you most need it — it changes everything — and from there a whole, new world is truly possible.
I want to inform anyone who feels called to it that I am offering something fresh and new; personalised individual leadership retreats with me in Southern Spain that nourish and take care of you, if you could do with getting some headspace, just breathing and want to lead with ease…
Check it out and reconnect with your wisdom to lead a vision born of your heart-led desires.
You will also discover how you can say these seven magic words and mean them too.
Working with Changemakers to let their wisdom lead real change.
Work with me one to one — Leadership Wisdom retreat
Join Elizabeth and Co-Founders on our next Wise Woman Ways Retreat in the Alpujarras, Spain: A transformational retreat for women to flourish as elders
