Why You Have to "Embrace" Your Pain To Win in Life

One of the most liberating things that you will ever realize is the longer you resist your emotional pain, the more control it has over you. And the moment that you can actually love your pain and accept it fully is the moment that it stops controlling you. Most of what you're actually doing in your life, the patterns that you have, the blocks that you're running into, is being driven by your shadow self, your. Your inner darkness that you're totally unaware of because it's too painful to look at. And I see this time and time again, especially with people who are starting to level up and expand their awareness and their consciousness. All of a sudden they have shame, they have fear, they have doubt, they have insecurities coming up to the surface. And instead of allowing themselves to process this stuff and face it head on and embrace that darkness within them, they run away from it. But running away from your darkness is also running away from your light. The two are one. You have to go low before you can go high. You have to embrace the dark in order to make it through to the light. That is the game that we're playing here. We're playing a game of transcendence. And I'm sorry if you've fallen into the trap of the toxic positivity online where it can be all love and light, but that is not this experience that we're having in this 3D world. We're having a polarized experience. Most of us have stored traumas in our bodies, and the more we avoid that stuff, the more we're going to stay blocked from reaching our highest potential and our highest level of creative consciousness. So I'm going to show you in this video how to identify this darkness within you or this shadow self, this unconscious self, and how you can basically assume the position here that my lovely stick figures have assumed, where you're fully embracing this side of you. When you can get to this point, you will seriously begin to control your reality, because you're going to be hyper aware of yourself, your whole self, not just the parts that you prefer. And this is so key because the self is the reality. You and your reality are one. And until you know yourself fully, even the dark parts, even the parts that are more painful to look at, you're gonna be kind of shooting blindly in reality, not knowing why things are coming up the way that they are. It's because they resonate with your shadow. But you're too unaware of your shadow to even see that. So I'm gonna walk you through where this shadow self comes from. We're gonna talk about trauma a little bit. I'm gonna explain to you what actually happens when you start ascending in your awareness and changing your identity and. And why you get so triggered when that happens. We're going to then walk through the steps to actually process these emotional wounds and these triggers when they come up so that you can essentially clear these blocks to you actually standing in your full truth and your most empowered, aligned energy. One of my favorite authors is Florence Shin, and she speaks about this essentially right before you're about to break through to another level. You. It always gets darkest before the dawn, and the moment that you can learn to see in the dark is when dawn will break. So I'm going to be giving you the tools in this video to see in the dark so that dawn can break in your consciousness. I'm actually dressed like a funeral director today because we're talking about the shadow self. And mx, who does my art, is also dressed like a funeral director. So we're all on brand. So the shadow self, what is the shadow self? How is it even created? Okay, let's talk about that first. So you essentially have two parts of your being. You have many parts, but it's split into two sides, essentially. You've got the shadow self and then you've got your dominant identity. So you've got the party that's in the dark, it's unconscious, and then the party that's more conscious, it's who you would really identify as. I call this your protector, your protector identity. This protect yourself is the self that if somebody asked you who you were and you were describing yourself, you would be describing the traits of the protect yourself. The shadow self is your repressed aspects, and the protect yourself is your expressed aspects. Don't worry, I'm going to make this all make sense in a second, so bear with me. So. So unbeknownst to you, you have this split in your being. Now, how this happens, and every single person has this unless you encounter somebody who has an extremely, extremely high level of consciousness. But even then, you know, that would be pushing it. Every single person has this split within their being because every single person experiences trauma on some scale. Now, when I say trauma, I don't mean, you know, something that needs to be so significant that you would ordinarily label it as trauma, that a trauma is simply an event that caused distress in the moment that was not resolved. Okay, so it's an unresolved, stressful event that is a trauma. So this could be anything as significant as abuse or grief. Or loss. Or it could be something that seems more lower level, such as getting in trouble at work. Right. Or losing your job or anything. Anything that was stressful. Key point that was not resolved in the moment. So I want you to get that definition down because you may be acting very tough on yourself because you haven't experienced major trauma, as maybe on the extent that other people have experienced it. This is something that. I have some clients who, they come to me and they have certain blockages, they have certain patterns, they have certain emotional pains coming up. But they say, but I've. I had a really good upbringing, I had a really good childhood. You know, nothing bad has ever really happened to me. But trauma is just an event. And we're going to write it down that caused distress that was not resolved. Okay? That is it. And so think about your life for a second. Think about your life. I know I'm kind of laughing. It's not actually funny, but it's the game that we're playing. Think about how many traumas you experience actually on a day to day basis. This could be a disagreement with your partner, maybe you just didn't like their tone. This could be a text message that you received that you didn't really like so much. This could be somebody cut you off while you were driving. This could be you thought your dog hurt their paw, but they didn't. A trauma is just an event that caused distress that was not resolved in the moment. So these happen all the time. In yogic tradition, they're called samskaras. Essentially, it's an unprocessed energy, and in the moment we don't process it. So what it does is it remains stored in our body and then it causes havoc on our consciousness. And the way that it causes havoc on our consciousness is essentially because it wasn't resolved in the physical world, because it wasn't resolved in the moment for us emotionally, when the event happened because we pushed away and didn't process it. Essentially this is. You store it in the back of your mind, but. But to cope with the distress, your consciousness fragments. Okay? And so this is how the shadow self is born. Your shadow self is essentially built by all the hurt and vulnerable parts of you that were hurt in the moments of trauma or distress. So the strongest kind of parts that would have the most impact on our patterns and our thought process in our lives are typically gonna be the parts that were the most distressed, that encountered the most emotional impact. And so these parts essentially are the hurt parts. They're the insecure parts. They are the parts that we really want to look at the least and that we want to identify with the least. So the shadow parts of you are going to be the parts that felt hurt, that felt unsafe, that felt angry, fear, shame, despair, insecure, inadequate. All of those traits that we really do not want to be holding. That's why we repress them. I'm going to give you some examples just to make this more tangible. Let's say you are walking through your life as yourself, just. Just going about your day, and somebody who you're kind of close to disrespects you. And then you notice your connections are not very supportive. They tend to be a little bit disrespectful. And you realize you don't really have, you know, strong boundaries, and you don't have people around you that really, really respect you. So you dig a little bit deeper, and you notice that it's probably coming from the fact that you don't really speak up. You don't state your truth, and you don't state your boundaries. You tend to shy away from drawing a boundary because you don't want to make someone else uncomfortable and you want to avoid conflict. So that's the pattern. And because you started questioning it with openness, you can start to see where it's coming from. You dig a little bit deeper and you ask, okay, why do I feel so scared to speak up? And you realize that perhaps when you were younger, it was actually really unsafe for you to speak up because you got punished for speaking your truth. Maybe you got bullied in school, maybe you were shouted at at home. Maybe something happened that created a part of you that was really scared, fearful, ashamed, and felt unsafe in speaking up and expressing their truth. Maybe you were only 7. Maybe you were 10. Maybe you were older. Nonetheless, that was an event that caused distress that was not resolved in the moment. And so you internalized it, and it created that shadow aspect of you, that part of you split and fragmented, that unsafe part of you, that party that felt unsafe in speaking up. The key thing to know is for every single shadow part of you that's born during a stressful event, a protector aspect of you is also born. And its job is to protect the shadow part of you to the point that it wants you to not even realize that the shadow part of you is there because that's threatening. Okay? So the protector aspect that was born in this moment to protect this shadow part of you is the expressed part, which is the part of you who stays quiet. It's the part of you who does not rock the boat too much, does not state the boundaries. It's the part of you that people pleases and allows disrespect, because that feels safer, okay, than exposing this vulnerable part. So we see here a protector element of you could be people pleasing, could be not having boundaries. And it was to protect the party that felt unsafe speaking up. Let's take another example. Let's say you're trying to grow your business and you are recording content. You're launching an ad of some kind. This should only have taken maybe a week max. It's taking you months because you're being a perfectionist about every little thing. This one is super common. This is a super common protector trait. This is one that I've had as well. So it's very, very common. The perfectionist in you needs everything to be absolutely perfect. The standards for everything are just through the roof. And you're basically putting these impossible standards on yourself to get to this level in this ad before anyone even sees it, because you can't stand it not being the best and it not being perfect. So this ends up limiting you. You end up really frustrated. You end up missing the window of maybe a particular season. And so it becomes destructive to your life. And you start wondering, why am I like this? Why am I such a freaking perfectionist? Why can't I just get it done within a week and put it out there? You won't want to look at this because it's painful. But remember, loving your pain is how you get it to stop controlling you. So you face it and you say, okay, why do I need to be perfect? What is being perfect or the idea of being perfect giving me? What part of me is this perfectionist protecting me from knowing or exposing? You begin to realize that you have a fear that you are inadequate. You have this deep, deep insecurity that if people see your flaws, they're going to reject you. You dig even deeper and you realize that this maybe happened. Maybe when you were in school, somebody pointed a flaw out to you that you were completely unconscious of. This is super common as well. We go into school, we feel like we're normal and we're fine. And then kids start pointing things out, as kids do. All of a sudden you want to repress these parts of you, okay? And your authentic self feels inadequate because in that moment, it wasn't resolved and nobody picked you up and told you that it's okay. And you don't need to believe what this kid said or whatever. It was a shadow Part of you is born that is seriously afraid that their authentic self is inadequate. And if they show up as their true self, they will be rejected or someone will point out their flaws. And so, in order to protect that shadow self, a protector self is born who is a perfectionist. Because if I'm perfect, nobody can point out a flaw, and nobody can touch on this wound that lives inside me. Okay, so one more example, just so you really start getting a full picture, and this might resonate with a lot of you. This example is actually coming from a member of my community. They asked this on a Q and A call last weekend. So thank you so much for asking this question. This person basically has been dealing with a lot of resentment in their close connections, and. And the way that that's kind of limiting them. And the reason they're frustrated with it is because they can't have the depth of connection that they want to have with these close people in their life because of this resentment. This person had the awareness to identify that this is coming from hurt over the past, over times that they didn't speak up, right? And so they felt they were treated badly, but they didn't speak up. So they're very hurt still. And they. They feel like if they were to let go of all the stuff that happened in the past, it would be an injustice to that hurt part of them. So we have the hurt part who was afraid of speaking up, and then that protector part is the one who is resentful. Right? We hold on to resentment, and we express in our identity resentment towards people, because that's how we protect the part of us that was hurt by those people. Holding onto this stuff and remaining in the energy of resentment can cause you to rob yourself of so much connection and so much happiness and so much freedom in your life. So you can see how this would be triggering many, many, many patterns that you have without you even realizing it, because we all have, like, hundreds of these parts. Okay. It's not just one or two. It's. It is many. I do shadow work every. Almost every day. Every other day, I get triggered every other day, But I process it and I move through it. And there's one more thing I want to go through before we get into the steps on how to process your trauma and your triggers, because it's really important. If you've watched any of my videos before, you might have seen me do this. But this visual helps me so much, helps my clients so much, helps my community so much. Because the biggest problem we run into when we're growing and changing and transforming and shifting. Our consciousness is when we get triggered. We freak out and we judge it and we hate it and we resist it, and then it controls us. So you need to realize when you are ascending in your consciousness, when you are on a path of transformation and growth, the path is not linear, is like this, okay? Immediately, you should be breathing a sigh of relief. Oh, my God. It's okay. Progress has never been linear, and it's not going to start being linear now. So when you're experiencing emotional highs and lows and emotional triggers, you can relax and know that this is part of the path. So I'm going to walk you through really quickly why you get emotionally triggered. Somebody also asked this in the Q and A at the weekend. They said, as soon as I started doing more inner work and I started doing more of the meditations and everything, I actually have more and more of my shadow coming up. What's going on? And I said, perfect. Your consciousness is expanding. If you think of a glass of water, okay? And at the bottom of the water, you've got all this soil and dirt. Essentially, that's your shadow, okay? That's the repressed parts of you. That's your pain. Those are your emotional wounds, your deepest, darkest fears and insecurities. It's the soil at the bottom of the class. When you're unconscious, when you're not moving, when you're basically stuck in one state of fixed consciousness and you're not ascending or traversing or transforming at all, there's nothing there to move. That soil, it just stays kind of at the bottom. You might have the occasional event come up in your reality that's a trigger event. But typically, it's very slow to happen. When you start actually observing yourself, when you start creating space from the ego, from the old identity, the protector identity, when you start really slowing down and your consciousness and awareness starts to grow, what essentially is happening is you're purifying your. Your energy, okay? And so it's almost like you've turned the tap on and there's water coming into your vessel or your energy. And what happens then? The soil starts coming up and starts flowing out over the top because you're filling it with water. So this is why, as you're ascending in awareness, you can start to feel a little bit crazy. All of this darkness, all of this pain is coming up, and you're thinking, why did I even bother with this? Well, because your energy is purifying. It's happening a lot faster now because you're you are essentially clearing out your energy. So it's a sign that your consciousness has raised. It's a sign that you are shifting. It's a good sign. And I think a lot of the reason why we end up suffering so much, we have the painful event, which is already going to be painful. Okay? It was stored with the same pain as when you experienced it. That exact moment with that exact pain is stored in your body. So it's already painful when it's coming up. But we make it more painful because we judge it and we criticize it, and we attach a story and a narrative to it that we're not. We haven't awoken, that we're not in a high state of consciousness, that we're not positive, that we're not productive all the time. This narrative makes it so much worse, and it makes it impossible to actually process the thing that's coming up because you're in resistance to it. And so that pain, that. That kind of samskara or that trauma stays stuck in your body. The shadow part of you stays alive and well within you, and it stays subconsciously controlling you. So this is why I'm saying you've got to start to love your pain. Change the narrative. The fact that this stuff is coming up means it's ready to be cleared. You're ready to be cleared of this thing. So the path to your desired reality looks like, okay, sometimes you're on the path. Sometimes you feel like, wow, I'm in flow. I'm making progress. Your awareness is expanding. You're seeing new possibilities, new potentials. Everything is happening and amazing. And then all of a sudden, your fear of being seen gets triggered, right? And you're just sabotaging everything. Maybe in your business, you suddenly can't take an action or you're finding a million ways to procrastinate, and you don't know why all of a sudden you're down here and you're feeling bad or all these insecurities are coming up. Until you face that stuff and you process it, it's going to be very difficult for you to get to this next height and this next level that you've never experienced before. But the fact that this is coming up shows that your consciousness has traversed to a point where you're ready to process this thing, you're ready to face this thing, and this particular part of you is not an energetic match with the reality that you're heading for. Okay? So this path that you go down, it is a very intelligently designed path from the moment that you set your intention to go to a new destination in reality and to shift your energy to match that, nothing is random. Nothing that comes up is random. And you've got to start being aware of that. You know, even if you feel terrible, even if seemingly unrelated things are coming up, it's not unrelated. It's exactly what needs to come up. Because it's exactly what you need to face, is exactly what you need to clear in order to be able to continue traversing to the level of consciousness that resonates with the reality that you're aiming for. I can't tell you guys how triggering it's been to achieve my dreams. It's been so fucking triggering. I don't think people talk about this enough. It's been so insanely triggering. Well, guess what? I've learned to fall in love with that process. I've learned to observe the pain, accept the pain, but not just be the pain and get lost in it and tell a big sob story about why it's coming up. Because I know this. This is imprinted in my mind. It should be imprinted in your mind as well. The pain is really, really part of the path. It's part of the path. And if you avoid the pain, you avoid your progress. You avoid your ascension. You know, when I first started making YouTube videos, I after that was the most triggered I've ever been in my life. I had so much stuff that was unconscious here. My deepest, darkest insecurities from when I was like 13, 14, they came up to the surface and I'm not joking, I felt like I was 14 again. I think 14 years old was the most emotionally difficult year of my life. The most emotionally painful year of my life. When I tell you that got triggered so strongly. After I started posting content online, my first couple of videos, I fully, fully felt 14 again. And it felt horrific. But guess what? That part of me needed to be cleared and purged so that I could keep growing and ascending towards what I wanted. That part was not energetically resonant with the reality of me becoming successful on YouTube and so on. I've spoken about this a lot, but I also had the fear of being seen. I had these ego insecurities. I had all this other stuff come up, and every single time, it was always to serve me. It always got darkest right before dawn broke and I reached the level that I was wanting to go to. What do you need to take away from this and imprint? Tattoo this into your brain. Triggers are not random. They're not random. How do you know you've been triggered? Like I said, the event gets stored in your energy like a snapshot, exactly how it was at the time. So if something feels like a little bit of an overreaction, or if you suddenly feel like you're 7 years old again, or you're 14, or you're just a younger version of you, or you just feel really, really intense emotions that you can't just simply shift your focus on. You know, sometimes we can dwell in negativity, sometimes we can be in a mental habit of focusing on the negative. And that is pretty easy to shift. Once you can control your focus, that's pretty easy to shift. You can just focus on the positive. But if you can't do that, if it's so emotionally intense that you really are kind of getting consumed by this thing, that is a trigger. And a trigger needs to be dealt with in a very specific way. But it's not random. It's actually an incredible opportunity is what it is. It's an opportunity to clean something out of your consciousness so you can move towards what you actually want. Okay, so I'm going to walk you through now the steps to actually process your pain or your triggers. And step one is actually probably the most important step. If you forget all the other steps, I mean, it would be better if you did it, but if you forget all the other steps, that's okay. So long as you remember step one. Accept. Accept what's coming up, accept the pain, accept what's happening, stop judging it, and for the love of God, stop defaulting into your protector mode. Okay, the untethered soul speaks about this. I was reading that book this week. Amazing book. But when you're constantly in the protector identity of the perfectionist, of the resentful of, maybe you know, the extrovert or the introvert or whatever it is, you basically close your heart, you close that kind of creative open flow of energy from running through you. Don't be trying to protect yourself all the time from experiencing any negativity. Accept things as they come up and stay open and non judgmental. That's step one. Step two is to observe and this is a really key point. This gets so much easier when you meditate consistently because you'll be connected to the observer self within you that's not tied up in your emotions and your thoughts and your ego. But you can do this as well. And it's really important that you practice this in reality, in your day to day life. When things are coming up, observe the emotion, observe what's happening in your body, observe your reaction. And to take this a step further, this is kind of the shadow work meditation that I have inside my community. This is the process that I give people. But you can observe your body as well. And where that emotion, where you can actually feel that coming up in your body, we basically store traumas in our energy centers in our body. So when a certain trauma or trigger happens, essentially it's going to be happening in an area in your body. So you want to just observe it. Where am I feeling this? What am I feeling? You can also name it, which kind of breaks you out of the spell that it might. Might take you under. So you name the emotion, you name where you feel it in your body. That's all you do. For step two. If it's a very kind of slight trigger and it's just something where you notice you're being defensive or you're. You're going into an energy that you prefer something step one and step two, if you're in a meeting or something and you can't do the rest of the steps, that's actually enough. If you can stay observing, if you can stay as relaxed as possible while just observing and not identifying with the thing coming up, that is really helpful in allowing you to just process it. But if you can, I would move on to step three. Step three is to listen. What do I mean by listen? Okay, this trigger, this emotion that's coming up, it belongs to a part of you. So this is where things get fun. You know, all the parts that we went through a while ago about the self, this belongs to a shadow part of you, this pain that's coming up to the surface. So you want to imagine. I've given this process before, but I'll give it again. You want to close your eyes, relax your body, feel into where you feel it, and then imagine pulling that part of you out of your body. The part that's feeling this pain, feeling this emotion, and you want to just sit with it again in an accepting, loving, and open energy. And you want to allow that part to speak, and you just listen. You just let it rant. I've done this before, and the stuff that the part said I would never normally identify with, it was the most insecure, almost like crazy furious things coming out of this part of me's mouth. But I was like, you know what I mean? I'm open. I'm not judgmental. This needs to come out. You would be shocked. The things that certain parts of you are holding onto and are thinking and are feeling and are believing. And it's so important that you, as the observer, listen, just let them say everything they need to say. This is how you figure out where this part was born, where it was coming from, why it's so scared, why it feels so inadequate, and all of these other traits that we went through in the last part. This part of you might look like a child. It might look like just a ball of energy. It doesn't really matter so much that it's like a vivid visual that you're getting. You just want to listen objectively with compassion. Step four, you want to reassure this part of you. And I use the ho' opono pono. I can never say, you think I would learn how to say that by now. This basically Hawaiian technique that's used to heal your perception of other people and heal your relationships with people. I use this as part of a shadow work process. So you say to this part of you, I love you. I'm here for you. I understand you. I will never leave you alone again. Basically, you can add to this, right? So the ho' oponopono is basically, I love you. I love you. I'm sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you. But you can make this your own version. Whatever feels loving and supportive for you to say to this part of you, say it here and reassure that part of you. And then step five is to release. The release actually starts in the listen phase. So while you're listening to this part of you, when that part of you is speaking and feeling, you want to let yourself feel all the emotions that that part of you feels and let them fully come up and come out into your body. This is only going to last a minute or so. And feeling it is how you process it. It's how you digest the emotion that's been running you in the background in your subconscious and causing all these problems and all these patterns. So as this part of you is having kind of their moment in the spotlight, you may even become that part of you for a moment and let yourself fully be that part of you and let yourself fully feel and finish the unfinished moment of trauma that happened in the past by feeling it to the very end. So the release starts at this. At this point by listening and by feeling fully all the emotions that that part of you is still holding onto. Then you reassure with love and validation and support. Then you release. Okay? The release part comes when you fully understand that part of you, what they're afraid of and where they've come from. Now you know what you can say to that part of you so that they feel safe to let this go. So ask it. What do you need to feel safe to let this go. And then tell them, don't worry, I've got us. I'm going to look after us. I will make sure that this never happens again. The past is not the present. I'm an adult now. I'm going to set boundaries. Whatever this part of you needs to hear to feel safe. And then you can give it something else to focus on. So maybe now it focuses on hyping you up instead of making you play small or whatever it is. You might notice the energy of this part of you has now shifted and you can imagine then pulling it back into your body and allowing it to just reintegrate and settle back into your body. If you want a guided meditation to walk you through this process, I do have one in my community. I'll leave the link below, but honestly, this only takes a few minutes. And having this openness and honesty and compassion towards yourself and all the parts of you is what really starts to free you from your subconscious emotional pain and from being at the whim of that pain. You know, when things happen in reality and happen in your life, you know you're not just triggered all the time and reacting emotionally to every little thing. You're able to stay more centered and more calm because you're open to everything that's happening and you're not overly getting sucked into it. You know, this is just a part of you. Why this is so important is if you really want to become your most authentic and empowered and aligned self, you have to start purifying this stuff. And so you have to face it with honesty honestly. Otherwise you are going to be acting in ways that are more self soothing so that you avoid feeling this stuff. And that's never going to be the path. A self soothing path is never going to be the path of alignment. I want to close with just a quick perspective as well. That always helps me. There's a law in hermeticism. It's called the law of rhythm and it says the measure of the pendulum swing to the right equates the measure of the pendulum swing to the left and rhythm compensate, compensates. So effectively what that means and what what is spoken about in the book the Kybalion is the more you experience darkness, the more capacity you have to experience light. So with these perspectives and these narratives, I'm hoping that you're changing the story that you're telling yourself about your darkness and about your pain. It doesn't mean that you need to live this watered down life. It doesn't mean that you need to stay stuck in these patterns. It's. It doesn't mean that you need to hide and run away from all these shameful or less desired parts of yourself. You know, the darkness that's in you is in me and in everybody because we're all one. So it's nothing to be ashamed of. Keeping it in the dark is what keeps you so ashamed of it. It's what keeps you in the hold of it. But the moment you start accepting it is the moment that you can alchemize all the pain you've been through and turn it into your literally life force. Your power, I promise you, it is so, so worth it. So remember, if you're going through lows, they're part of the path. Don't resist them. You are strong enough to face this. You are the one in control. Even if the emotions coming up are very strong, you are always the one in control. You have the creative consciousness. So go through this process. When triggers come up, remember you have everything you need to create your dream life. And these triggers are part of the path. They're not deviations from it. That is all you need to know to love your pain so much that it stops controlling you.