7 steps to get through difficult times
A couple of weeks ago, I went through difficult times. Every time that happens, I find guidance by doing oracle readings. I want to share one of them because I downloaded 7 steps to get through them, all with a couple of cards from the Spirit Animal Oracle by Colette Baron-Reid.
I love pulling cards. Having transitioned from tarot cards to oracle cards not so long ago, I seem to start to like oracle cards more and more. For some reason, they feel simpler – something I’m looking for these days.
I pulled Wolf Spirit, and this card tells me: Turn knowledge into Wisdom.
I guess that when you occasionally pull a card (or more often, as I do), you also have those moments in which you look at the card, and you already know what the advice will be. It only needs one peek, and you’re good. Luckily, I took some time to work on the card a bit more, and out came seven steps for you to work on when you are going through difficult times yourself.
Wolf Spirit From The Spirit Animal Oracle by Colette Baron-Reid
“Wolf Spirit leads you deep into the enchanted forest that holds the secrets to your life. Can you sense her beckoning you to follow, asking you to take all you have learned and all you are learning and make it yours? Can you integrate it all into your body, mind, and spirit?”
What the card showed me
This card showed me that I shouldn’t pretend to have an answer when I don’t. And if you don’t know how to solve it, it is time to ask for help. There’s no shame, no blame when you don’t know. It was a bit of a humbling moment to accept that I haven’t had an answer for a long time. But I tried to show that I had on by applying the same old ineffective strategy over and over – a strategy that worked for others but not for me.
The card was a sign of stopping the fighting and acknowledge that it’s time to wheel in someone with an answer. Let it happen. Hanging on to fighting is a bit of a pattern for me. You read about it in many blogs on this website: here, here, and here.
In this process, I’m learning valuable lessons.
1. Be patient
Being patient with myself is a big lesson for me to learn. Not having an answer to a problem or question is quite terrifying for me. I already found that out in school when, for some reason, I’d experience extreme shame not to know an answer. When I look at situations logically, I’d ask: “Isn’t that why you were there in the first place?” But apparently, some part of me didn’t agree.
I’ve written about this before, but I’m my worst prosecutor. At times I can be harsh with myself. Instead, I can trust to know the next step, the next, and the next. I don’t have to see the result yet, only the next step. Asking for help was the first step; after this, it’s easier to make the next one. Hopefully.
2. Don’t be afraid for what you fear
Ralph Waldo Emerson said: “What we fear of doing most is usually what we most need to do.” This is something I’ve also noticed a lot. The more resistant you are to what seems the most logical but hard to do is the thing you should do to solve the matter. The more yeah buts you have, the more you should do it.
The fear that keeps coming back, like asking for help, is a fear you’ve been dragging on behind you through several lives in a row. Anxiousness came about in my first akashic records reading I did. The fact that it comes again in this life is an invitation to address it. Of course, I’m free to skip the invitation. The question is if I want to address it again in the next life. 😉
For me, asking for help has been my life-long nemesis. It started in school, where I’d rather die than ask for extra help. But it has also made me resourceful. But my resourcefulness isn’t helping me anymore. I need new answers, which I don’t know yet. So I’ve asked for help. The hardest step has been taken. Phew!
Some fears go with us from life to life. It’s as if we can’t but also won’t leave it behind. It becomes familiar and part of who we are. At some point, the absence of the familiar becomes the fear – fear of the unknown. What if you’ll be eternally happy and you will resolve all your fears? What happens then? We have to face the unfamiliar because even though we fear it, it can’t be worse than it is now, right?
Don’t be afraid of what you fear; it’s only the answer to a problem you don’t have yet. Ask for help.
3. Look at it from the bright side
Going through difficult times with your eyes open asks for a positive mindset. That’s not easy, given that there’s so much ‘not knowing’ going on. What’s been there for a while may take some time to correct itself. On the other hand, some people only need a light bulb moment to correct their course, and off they go again. While that’s also an option, I always think I’m the irreparable one that needs long and complex procedures to be fixed, if they might work at all. I guess I’m still scared that what I’ve chosen to start may not work at all. It’s a gamble, but it’s better than nothing.
Starting new journeys is always scary, but using Glennon Doyle’s words: “We can do hard things.”
4. Listen to your demons (and your angels)
I’ve truly learned along the road that I have several parts in me that can get me in trouble. No, I’m not ‘hearing voices,’ but they are part of my Internal Family System. IFS is a form of psychotherapy that helps you listen to the core self and the separated silenced parts. There is a tremendous abundance to be found in those silenced parts.
There are super scared parts and angry, threatening parts that seem to protect the scared parts. Finding out that the angry parts were there to protect the other part made it super easy for me to accept that I consist of several parts, as they call it – and they all have their reason to be there, especially when I started to visualize them.
One was a well-muscled bodyguard to the small fox that hid from the big evil world, and another one was a big fat aunt type that wanted to seduce me with all her baked goods, telling me in her southern accent, “How can be something so good, be bad for ya, honey!” (she’s my saboteur). I have a whole happy family hanging around here.
It helped me a great deal to understand that I’m not just me, but the sum of all those parts. We bring a fun and vibrant show to Broadway, so now and then! But bringing them to life like that big fat aunty with her apron holding an iced pie in front of me, inviting me to eat it made them more relatable. IFS has helped me a lot through the years.
But sometimes, you need to listen to your demons, and there are also times to turn deaf ears on them when it is better to listen to your core self. That part of you always knows what to do and acknowledges all those parts that tell you that it’s dangerous to do the sensible thing (like asking for help). It’s funny how it works with decision-making. Once you know it, you can’t unknow it. And it also feels okay immediately.
5. Accept the flaws
Self-acceptance is about seeing the spots and being okay with the flaws. What we often do is to look over all the parts that are beautiful, wise, and brilliant and smother them with a thick, dark blanket of critical, perfectionistic stories told by the darker parts inside. It’s a blanket that blocks all your life’s light. In short: we listen way too much to those loud screaming parts, while instead if we tweak our ears a little, we also hear those whispers of love and acceptance.
All parts need to be acknowledged, even when you don’t like them. Like the sweet aunty, she has an evil twin sister: Pissy Aunty. She doesn’t like the pies her sister bakes. On the contrary, she always talks about how bad I am for eating them. She wears a black dress with a stiff white collar around her neck, and her wrinkled face stares at me as if she’s about to put me in the naughty corner. I’m mean: hello! I’m grown up now. Can you lighten up a bit, please?
Pissy Aunty constantly nags about my weight, body, clothes, and ‘funny remarks’ –, everything I am, do, or have. It’s never good enough.
She’s there for a reason. She also protects the small, scared little fox inside. She pushes me to be and do perfectly. While she doesn’t mean to, she’s hurting that small fox.
Fox Spirit From The Spirit Animal Oracle by Colette Baron-Reid
By the way, I looked up the card of Fox Spirit, and it tells me that it has excellent traits: Fox is clever, alert, resilient, graceful, and astute. It can take quick action when the time is right. It can think outside of the box, see more ways than to solve an issue, and always clear about what you deserve. How cool is that? There’s more beauty in that little fox than I thought.
I guess there’s a lot of potential in that small animal.
6. Notice what triggers you
The stories you have stored inside about what is true or not create a life that goes back several lives. Once you’ve healed a particular wound, you no longer have to create a life like that anymore. Some mental and emotional wounds have gotten infected and became permanent scars that still hurt.
It only needs a harmlessly meant remark by the next person to let your soul cringe with the memory it brings up. We tend to make those remarks personal, but they are just old ouchies that don’t define who you are.
While I used to think that I was too stupid to understand math, I’ve learned that you don’t have to “get” everything over the years. I don’t feel stupid anymore these days. My talents sat in the opposite corner, waiting for me to claim them. My intuition, sharp mind, and ability to communicate that information create freedom of choice. And that is important to me.
So, I struggle with other stuff. So, what? I’m not my ouchies.
7. Ho’oponopono the f***out of it
When you start to see that it’s not the outside world that is to blame for what hurts, you also know it’s now your turn to start your next journey. It’s no longer a journey of finding the solution for your flaws but of healing your pain.
Being without pain doesn’t make you a better person. It just makes life more accessible, and that’s what we want. When we accept who we are, we see that we deserve to live a pain-free life and that it doesn’t make us smarter, friendlier, better, or more beautiful. So, we can stop looking for the solution that makes us that and forgive ourselves for the difficult time we’ve given ourselves. It wasn’t necessary, but we created it anyway. All we needed was such an assurance that all would be okay.
So, when you get stuck in that eternal loop of physical, mental, and/or emotional pain, forgive yourself:
I’m sorry
I love you
Please forgive me
Thank you.
Now you. Repeat it over and over. Talk to you soon.
