“What do you actually do, Angie?”
It is a question I have been asked often since I began this journey of “becoming” about two decades ago and especially since I chose to step fully into my abilities as a Transformation Specialist. For a long time, I didn’t know how to explain to people what I did and I experienced a lot of confused looks, fearful expressions, and downright harsh judgments. The more I wanted people to understand what I did, the less they did. Mostly because I didn’t understand myself and for another to understand me, I have to understand me first.
The other night during a coaching call with my mentor, she asked me, “Angie, what do you do?”
“I hold space.” I answered confidently.
This is something I innately understand. It is something I AM. There is no doing in it; I simply be and it is done. “Holding space” makes perfect sense because I live it. She understands it because she has experienced the power of it.
So I was really stumped when she said, “What does that mean? Can you say it in more grounded language?”
Immediately, my “I’m doing it wrong!” pattern kicked on and I got all kerfuffled and became really defensive. Because she understands my behavioral patterns that spawn from my fear, she wasn’t at all surprised by my response. I went about spewing all kinds of words at her, growing more and more frustrated and as though I was trying to convince her of how powerful I am. I felt ill as the “old me” surfaced and I realized I was trying to convince her of who I was.
Eventually, about ten painful minutes later, I came up with some sort of description of what I do, but it had a lot of words in it and it just felt… icky. I knew I was in convincing mode and I knew I was seeking validation from an external source. That is not where I’m living my life these days so it felt starkly icky.
Because I have the propensity to believe I am wrong first, I sometimes trip myself up and make the learning really difficult. Truth of the matter is, in that moment, the words “I hold space,” were exactly perfect and still are perfect because it is what I do. What she was trying to get me to see is that sometimes muggles (people who don’t understand “magic”) don’t understand magical language and need more of an explanation.
As soon as she said that to me, I suddenly saw the light. I know when someone is not going to understand me or hasn’t understood me and I will instantaneously learn their language so I can speak to them in a way they understand. Therefore, when I say the words “hold space” to someone and there is no understanding, I listen to what they understood and clarify my definition in their language.
DING! DING! DING!
I couldn’t speak in muggle language to my mentor because she is so NOT a muggle. I was speaking to her in a language she understood already and I felt confused when she said she didn’t understand. I know she knows what I do so the request to state it in a more grounded way went through my language translation system and threw up red flags. I went into “alarm mode” and couldn’t get clear. If I had understood that the parameters were, “Pretend I am a muggle that has no idea of magic whatsoever and explain it to me differently from that point of view,” I would have been able to get clear. Immediately.
But, because I didn’t have that understanding… I didn’t understand how to play the game. I was playing by entirely different rules. I was playing by the rule that she is one of the most magical people I know, not from the rule that she was being the least magical person I know.
This incongruence created a disconnection in me. This disconnect triggered my ego. My ego flipped up the safety program of “I am wrong” to protect me from going any further. That program resulted in frustration and an inability to get clear and to find the answer for the question I had been asked. That result proved “I am wrong” and there I was, feeling impeded, incapable, and powerless. And my old thought pattern of, “No matter what I do, I am always wrong,” crept into my brain and I was done for.
In one breath, I shifted that awareness by realizing that the sponsoring experience was the fact that my detection system had picked up on something that was out of balance within the system. I had detected a lie. Something was out of alignment and I couldn’t go forward until I had found the part that needed to be aligned.
The alignment, clarity, release, and self-empowerment came when I realized that I was spinning into victimhood (impeded, incapable, and powerless) because I had failed to acknowledge in the very first moment that I didn’t have enough information to answer a question based on my understanding of the situation at hand. In hindsight, when I realized that from the start, I had picked up on the fact that something was off for me and that is why I got frustrated and confused, I could then realign myself and actually celebrate my victory: I’m already doing the very thing she was asking of me to do.
The truth that was able to come through was… Instead of being “wrong” as I immediately jumped to, I was actually “right”!!! However, my instantaneous belief that I was “wrong” was blocking me from knowing that. The truth is, rather than being “ungrounded,” as I was thinking I was because I couldn’t explain to her in a “more grounded language,” I am grounded in my explanations, I do use grounded language. I already innately follow the course of connection and strong communication. I already share with people at the level of their understanding. I couldn’t see that I was operating at high capacity already because I believed I was wrong.
Our behavioral patterns are an intricately woven tapestry of threads that spawn from our beliefs that are created through our upbringing and life experience. If you have the belief that you’re always wrong or that it is painful to be in your body, that is what you continually experience and it becomes really difficult to be in your body and be fully alive. If you spend your life believing that your gifts are “too much” or that you are “too much” or if you have received the message far too often that you are “too loud” or “too wiggly” or “too sensitive,” then it becomes very easy to believe that you are and then your behavioral patterns grow to support the beliefs. These behavioral patterns then give you the result over and over and over and over that you are, indeed, “too ____________ (fill in the blank here).”
It is time to live a powerful life, my friend. It is time to take off your blinders of “too ____________ (fill in the blank here)” and wake up to the truth of who you really are. To remember that YOU are HERE because you CHOSE to be and you ARE exactly PERFECT in this very moment, just as you are!
I can attest to the power of being present for your life experiences. Doing so has given me the opportunity to transform “wrong” into “right” … not because I changed what I was doing, but because I was willing to be accountable for what I was doing and of what I am truly capable. And, in that moment that I got willing to be accountable for my truth, the “wrongness” cleared away and I discovered that I was already right where I needed to be and I had been all along.
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I always welcome your thoughts, questions, and comments.
Feel free to jot down what you’re thinking in the comment box below.
