My story - how THE SECRET changed my life! It's not what you think!
Resistance was my second name. Pop culture wasn’t my thing and this whole concept of the LOA (Law of Attraction) was grating on my nerves.
When the movie, The Secret, screened back in 2006 I was reluctant to join in all the hype. It could have been 2 years later before I conceded and bought the movie to watch in the comfort of… well, to be honest, it was more the secrecy of my home.
Throughout that movie I noticed the scowl, my scowl! The distaste I had for everything secretive and sensationalised was triggering like a blast of fireworks on New Years Eve inside my brain that was wired for no-nonsense.
I was not a fan.
Until the very…last…scene.
Do you remember the very last scene?
There was Rhonda Byrne, on a wide and sandy beach, far enough below the high water line so that the sand was firm.
The camera was high up above her.
She took a piece of driftwood,
…then she took her loose skirt in her hand to stop it from blowing up as she bent over to write…
Feel Good!
I rewound. The impact that had was literally mind-blowing. I kid you not!
I watched it again, and again, and again.
It bounced around my brain like an order, a command.
FEEL GOOD, DAMMIT!
That one scene changed my whole life!
Experiencing feeling good was going to be new territory.
My brain was not wired for this.
There was no roadmap showing me where to begin, so I started with one of my favourite tools, a list. I would write a list of things that feel good.
The trouble was, I couldn’t think of a single thing to write on that list.
That unspoiled page in my journal sat on my kitchen table and waited patiently with a pen. Each time it grabbed my gaze it would shout out to me what a miserable existence I had that I couldn’t think of a single thing that made me feel good!
Not to be defeated, I had to dig deeper.
Childhood. There must have been something there that I enjoyed.
Slowly but surely I started adding to the list.
Walking bare-foot on the beach
Walking bare-foot on freshly mown lawn
Eating an ice-cream cone to the rhythm of swinging legs on the park bench
Swinging on the playground set of rickety swings
Going to the movies and laughing out loud
Breakfast out on Sunday mornings
Contacting a friend for a long, slow catch up
Pink roses, bunches of pink roses
Three (3) weeks went by before I was able to write these simple things on that list. Progress!
My list started to grow
Chocolate any day of the week
Coffee and cake at morning tea
Driving in the country on Sundays
Sailing on the sea, or under sail anywhere
Walking in bushland under the shade of tall, elegant trees
First plan, then implement.
Was I really going to be able to schedule and actually do a "feel good" activity every day? I set myself a challenge.
OMG! I started to have fun!
AND I didn’t need anyone else to make my life fun for me!
Truly, that was a revelation! It sounds pathetic, I know. And perhaps unbelievable, but right there is my truth.
It wasn’t long before I became a little addicted to feeling good, and adding another activity to each and every day seemed like a good idea.
So now we’re doing 2 things each day that feel good! Holy smokes, that’s was feeling great!
Excitement filled my days as I looked forward to that time when I had scheduled my “feel good” activity. To be honest, I was so surprised that this is all it took!
This huge leap in the direction of joy showed me that “feeling good” was within my power.
No more waiting for someone to give me roses on Valentines Day! I could buy them for myself. From that day and every day for the next 3 weeks, pink roses on my desk at work and on my dining room table. Yes!
No more wondering where my next date would come from. I could take myself out on a date. The movie theatre didn’t care if I rocked up on my own!
The beach didn’t mind me walking solo, and freshly mown grass was right outside my door.
There was bushland nearby complete with fabulous walking tracks waiting to be explored.
So closed off was my mind to joy, so committed was I to a life of hard work, and “your rewards will be in heaven” parental and ancestral misery that all these freely available ways of feeling good had not entered my vision.
But then something happened! I became suspicious.
Something that I didn’t expect started to happen and I became just a little bit suspicious of this feel good vibe.
A lot of old memories started to bubble to the surface and they felt anything but good.
Events from my childhood, things my mother said, scraps with my siblings, wrongful punishments at school, my dad getting really angry with me without checking out my story, my brothers calling me names because I was overweight, my cousins teasing me, boyfriend issues and other stuff that I didn’t want to remember anymore.
Argh! Clearly there were lots of memories there that needed to be resolved. Memories, I later discovered, that were the foundation of what I had decided life was all about, and that played a big role in my blindness to joy.
I started to feel miserable again.
My experience wasn’t matching up.
Joining the dots was a favourite pastime. Some people called it analysis paralysis! I wanted to, needed to understand how feeling good could feel so bad!
My mind set to work trying to figure out how all this fun could also lead to all this additional misery. That’s when I finally made the connection between my mind and my body.
In popular culture back then was all this talk about raising your vibe. My experience wasn’t matching up! There needed to be more.
Here’s what I discovered.
Raising our vibe is a bit of a mission. We have a whole physical body that was created in that vibe, and that continues to faithfully support that vibe that we’ve been hanging out in all our life so far.
Surprise, surprise – of course it does. Our body supports us completely in whatever direction we are heading. It was later that I came to the realization that our mind and body are one and the same…another discussion altogether.
The significance of this discovery is that to change our vibe means to change our physical body.
All good, you might say. Yes, on one hand, it’s a useful realization. What it also means is that I had to consciously support my body gently and thoroughly through the transition. That’s not something I’m entirely good with and I stumbled many times.
It means tuning in with your body, understanding its messages and supporting it on a day-by-day, hour-by-hour basis. From where I was to where I wanted to be was a 180-degree shift. That was going to, and did, have a big impact on my body.
My body and I have some very interesting conversations.
And so a journey into my body awareness began. With an already established great love for all things anatomy and physiology, the step to discovering my body’s awareness, the consciousness of each and every organ and tissue of my body was and is, a delightful learning.
The BodyTalk System captured my imagination, and I soon became a Certified BodyTalk Practitioner. We are having some very interesting conversations, my body and I. Conversations I also have with many of my clients who are committed to creating a better life.
Finally the penny dropped. With lots of practice and listening to hundreds of clients’ stories, I realized the key to fast tracking joy.
And that key is not only about raising our vibe, it's about understanding what life adjustments we've made that contribute to that vibe, and having a simple process to resolve it.
How to feel good in the long term.
Raising your vibe can lead to momentary delights of manifestation and that can be fun. Maintaining joy in the long-term comes from a lived reality of continual and conscious creation. Life keeps getting better and better. When I first experience that shift in trajectory towards joy, it was an exquisite and almost unbearable feeling. Something so unfamiliar, not exactly pain, yet breath-taking. Difficult to describe, scary and extremely joyful at the same time. The difference that you will experience is such a contrast to how we usually live our lives.
Growing into sustained joy is about finding those unresolved events, reviewing those old stories and releasing those active memories that bring our vibe down, and keep it there.
Why feeling good long-term is soooo important.
Life doesn’t work when you’re not feeling good. And you don’t feel good when your life’s not working. It’s a vicious cycle.
On a purely practical level, when these stories and active memories mess with your moxie, no matter how hard you try to feel good, no matter how hard you try to put your happy vibe out there, the vibe that’s sitting just below the surface is the one that communicates to your tribe, to your people.
Just as you know when something is up with your children or your parent, that’s how others know that something’s not quite right with how you are showing up. The scientific term is neuroception. Our nervous system is picking up each other’s vibe before we are anywhere near aware of it.
Two (2) clues that you have unresolved stories to attend to:
You’re experiencing the monkey mind, the busy mind, the “off somewhere else” daydreaming mind. It’s difficult to achieve a quiet and calm mind.
You often feel emotionally triggered. That could be a nuclear meltdown when everything turns pear-shaped, or a nano meltdown which shows up as procrastination, self-doubt, self-sabotage, judgement of yourself or others, or many more.
Do the inner work to support your joy.
If a joyful life looks like health, wealth and happiness to you – do the inner work. I can help.
Access to the right words, the right actions at the right time and the right place. The NEW best version of YOU is about SELF-MASTERY.
I’m a Well-being and Self-Mastery Mentor and Certified BodyTalk Practitioner. You are welcome to seek more information here. If you're ready to learn to live fully with ease and grace, let's talk. Make a time here to discuss your immediate concerns. If I can help you I'll let you know.