Accessing Your Greatest Need to Support Yourself When You're Insecure, ATH Episode 136

Awareness That Heals, Episode 136.

A very warm welcome to Season 3 of Awareness That Heals, where we have progressed to be able to focus on one challenging emotion at a time. This will allow you to choose a specific emotion that you've had challenges with, and each one will have a progressive series of guided meditations that will allow you to go deeper and deeper into self-compassion. For me, it's truly inspiring because each emotion has unique nuances for both self-care and responding to your environment at the same time. This is subtle and a rare skill, as all too often we don't stay aware of how we can care for ourselves as we are. I hope that you'll not only find it helpful, but also give you deep resources that you can internalize when the emotion is most emerging.

So a very warm welcome to the 5th segment of our series on caring for insecurity. I'm really glad you're joining us for this. So I hope that for you, as you listen to this, that you really have gone through the first 4, because I strongly believe it will help you understand the relative shorthand we're going to be using in these last 2 meditations. And by now, hopefully, it's really evident that by utilizing our awareness, that we found an ally to care for our insecurity. And when we add the obvious desire to care for ourselves rather than criticize ourselves and the acceptance of the insecurity, that we're so far ahead of the game. So now I'd like to encourage you to get ready for the guided meditation. Just be sure that your cell phone is turned off and that there are no other distractions that could disturb your silence, and you can just be at peace being centered on the meditation. So just allow your attention to be interested in where is your awareness focused. Is it focused on a reaction to me?

Does it have an emotion? Do you have another emotion about something else that you can't get over that's still lurking in your psyche?

Are there thoughts that are distracting you, or sounds? Maybe there's pain. Whatever it is, let yourself say, awareness, I see you. And let it be recognized that you essentially always have a partnership where whatever place you're focusing on, walking, talking, awareness is guiding me to walk. Awareness is guiding me to talk. And then we're going to shift. Let yourself shift. What is awareness especially awareness being aware of awareness itself. Now that's a mouthful, or it's a stretching the brain, but let yourself imagine that you're near a garden hose and you're right there with a spigot and you haven't turned the water on. And metaphorically, You turning on that water is wherever your awareness goes. And you have the capacity to not turn the water on anywhere. And you're just aware of the awareness of when's the time I want to turn on my thinking? When's the time I want to give attention to my feeling? And when you're ready, awareness of awareness can say, okay, turn on the spigot. Turn it on. Now, this is a very deep place to get to, and for most of us, it's an endless aspiration to be aware of awareness. And even to have the aspiration is something that's quite profound, because you recognize if you're aware of awareness before you're entangled into thoughts or feelings, you have a potential ally. You are at the source of your attention, and that gives you the capacity to guide. Now, just tune in. Does that make sense to you? If I'm aware, if you're aware of awareness itself, You get to shoot your attention to wherever you believe it's going to be most beneficial in your life. You have that possibility. So now let's use this free attention to focus it on your insecurity, exactly how it takes form in your life. Now, maybe your insecurity is one around money and you're insecure that, oh my God, I don't have enough money. And as you see it now, look, for most people that have that insecurity, there's a whole dialogue that goes on. What's wrong with me? I can't believe at this stage of my life this is where I am. And there's a series of criticisms that go on. Now, being aware and knowing that you want to care for yourself, you say to yourself, okay, I don't want to criticize myself. I want to stay in the next hour and just focus on how can I possibly benefit myself and become more secure in my relationship to money. And I am going to be a positive source of guiding my insecurity to become more secure with money. A phone call, an email, a paper you need to write, but not allowing yourself to go more than an hour or two in the future and training yourself because you care for yourself, because you're more tolerant and accepting and embracing of this insecurity. And you're remembering an hour or two, and I'm positively focused on the questions that will answer how can I best take care of this insecurity about my financial life. And so you're asking yourself this question on an ongoing basis. How How can I best take care of myself? And now we're going to add another tool. And you're going to look at the Introspective Guides, which has a list of 75 elements of compassion or essential needs. And you're going to look and see which need do I have that I need to implement to best take care of this insecurity And we'll still assume that's insecurity about money. So we might need perseverance and discipline and focus and basic trust and recognizing we're not being poor on purpose. We are dedicated to care for ourselves and find the needs which may include tenderness or kindness, even if we can't, especially when we can't find the guidance, and appreciating the fact that we are dedicated to optimize our chance to finding the source of security for our financial well-being. Now, no matter what your insecurity is, looking at these needs and recognizing this is how I want to guide my life. I don't want to be in criticism. I don't want to withdraw from myself when I feel insecure. I truly want to care for myself. I want to ask these questions that are all designed to support my wisdom and my intelligence. To kick in. And also, while I haven't found it, all these heart qualities of kindness and tenderness and recognition that we are doing our best. If we can't find the answer and we're insecure, it is because it's important to us. So we're focused. We're in the next, maybe not even hour or two, we're in the next few seconds. Because we're attentive to how we can be secure and what needs are most going to guide us on our journey to either be financially where we want to be, to be in the shape we want to be in, to be secure in our relationships. Thank you so much.

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