For a long time, I took my inner voice for granted.
It was just there; I never stopped to ponder where it came from or what it was telling me.
It was me and I was it.
I feel like this is the case for many of us. There is no separation between ourselves and our inner voice. There is also no separation between our inner voice and the truth.
So often, we believe our own thoughts 100%. We are certain that they are telling us the truth, but that’s not always the case.
My inner voice used to be critical and self-conscious, with a tendency to be controlling and judgmental, both of myself and others. It was like having an inner sheriff, that would keep me in line (and try, fruitlessly, to do the same with others).
My inner voice was the voice of the Tyrant King.
And his standards were awfully high, to the degree of being inhuman. There was very little room for mistakes or messiness or giving something a go without knowing the outcome beforehand.
So when inevitably things didn’t go the way I thought they would (because life, after all, isn’t meant to dance to our flute, as we say in Swedish), I didn’t know how to handle it. I would try so hard to live up to my Tyrant King’s perfectionist demands, that when I let him down, I would either fly into a rage at the world (because there was always someone else to blame, even if that someone was God) or I would fly into a rage at myself.
I had no soft place to land within myself.
There was nowhere to go lick my wounds with loving kindness and compassion.
There was no place to curl up and cry. No inner voice that said, “There, there, it will be alright.”
There was only the harsh, judgmental light of the Tyrant.
Here’s the thing about the Tyrant King: he often feels strong in the moment, like this kind of take no bullshit voice who just tells it like it is without holding back any punches (this is especially true when his judgment is directed outwards at others).
But often, he’s not telling it like it is; he’s telling it how he thinks it should be. Nor is he as strong as he initially seems, because he lacks a fundamental aspect of strength: Flexibility.
And in that, he lacks resilience.
One of the definitions of resilience is “the ability of a substance or object to spring back into shape; elasticity.”
There is no elasticity in an either/or, all or nothing worldview. There is no possibility of both/and. There is no softness or tenderness. There is no murky gray area.
This makes the Tyrant King, and those of us under his spell, quite fragile at our core. Rather than bending, we have a propensity to brace ourselves against life until we eventually break. No wonder we brace ourselves so damn hard; somewhere deep inside we know our own breakability. We don’t trust in our own ability to weather life’s storms.
I love helping my clients to create a softer place to land within themselves. To lovingly point out where the Tyrant King is steering the show, and to introduce the possibility of a gentler way of being and responding. A new way of simply being with ourselves.
Are there times when I fall back into old patterns and lose my shit when something goes wrong? You betcha. But I recognize it now for what it is: a sign indicating where I have allowed the Tyrant King to take hold once again, and an invitation to slow down, soften, and feel in order to break his spell.
Sometimes it’s hard to describe the work that goes on in one-on-one coaching, but this is definitely a major facet of it: creating a softer place to land within yourself. A place within you can move out from and come back to.
If a soft place to land feels like a far-off, impossible dream, I invite you to schedule a Soul Diving Session and we can set up a time to chat for 30 minutes to see if my six-month coaching offer would be a good fit for you at this time.
xoxo
Linda
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