#515 Forgive Yourself for Disappointing Yourself

Flow Dreaming. It's a show where we talk about the power of your mind to change your world around you, to literally affect the fabric of your reality. We talk about this feeling of hope and joy and relief, and that is what being aware of your flow does. It gives you a feeling of power again in your lives. And that is what being aware of your flow does. It gives you a feeling of power again in your lives. Breathe. It is the feeling that you bring forward. It is your emotional connection that really sets the tone for what is going to be happening to you and for you. And you know that feeling when you touch it, it just spreads through you. I'm Summer McStravik, and welcome to another episode of Flow Dreaming. Hi, it's Summer, and a quick request before we jump into the show. If you like this podcast, the number one reason Flow Dream has grown is because of your reviews. People rely on your opinion, and frankly, they often misunderstand Flow Dreaming. The only way to correct that is through you leaving a few words about the program. So pop over to itunes or your podcast app and write a review. It means so much to me when you do. Now, on to the show. Hey, everyone. Summer here. Welcome to today's episode of Flow Dreaming. We're going to jump into topic that I think is so rich and fertile. Forgive yourself. Right? Forgive yourself for disappointing yourself. Forgive yourself for not living up to your own expectations. Forgive yourself for not being where you want to be by this time in life. Forgive yourself for all those crummy decisions that we have made along the way. Forgive yourself. We're going to get into the freedom that comes at the other end of that, that feeling when we let our Flow know, when we let our lives know, when we let other people know. I've forgiven that. I've let it go inside me. We become different people. We really do. It's like, you know, butterflies lifting out of their cocoon. So we're going to go deep into that energy today and hopefully maybe pop open a few of you into a new place where you can finally say, okay, I leave you behind. I leave that behind. Forgive myself. Okay, housekeeping. Before we go further, I have some kind of exciting stuff. Very first thing, this is just the preliminary, preliminary, preliminary, preliminary announcement. For the first time in years, I have decided to offer a event, three Days Live with Me. It's an immersion experience where I will lead you in flow. I will take you through Flow, into yourself, into your life, into your energy. Go in and come out the other side. I'll be supporting you with more knowledge about flow and flow dreaming and empathic intuition and all of these tools for self empowerment. In fact, it's actually kind of like a little mini, mini version of MI school, an introduction. It's certainly not me school, but it's an example of what me schoolers do when I take them on their retreats, when my diamonds go on their retreats. That's what it is. And this is going to be happening probably in February, February of 2017. And I recognize some of you are listening to this as an archive post podcasts. My intention is to see how this goes and perhaps do another one the following year. So always check back. Go to my website, flow dreaming.com the event is called Inflow. Inflow. Get it Inflow, Outflow and Inflow topics I talk about a lot. So we're looking for inflow 2017. Get ready for it. If you're on my mailing list, I will start to send out some newsletters that will let you know how can get in early. Early registration, always a great thing for you guys and God, I hope it's going to be an amazing experience for everyone. I intend to have an amazing experience meeting so many of you from really all over the world. People will be flying in from other continents for this. It's that big of a deal. The other thing I wanted to mention is so many of you have been coming in through the new podcast app. Well, it's not new, but it's there. This app allows you to download everything into it and then you can make favorites, you can organize by topic, etc. And also you've been coming in through itunes. If you've discovered the show there, it's really helpful. If you subscribe to the program, just click subscribe. It helps the numbers of the show. What you'll discover in itunes is that I always keep around 30 masomenos episodes available. And then after around 30 episodes the the oldest one will drop into what is called the premium archives. And the premium archives, it's like three bucks a month. I mean it's like less than the cost of a, you know, a latte. But that gives you access to another almost 400 or so heading toward 500. Maybe it's over 500 now. Past episodes dating all the way back to when the show aired on Hay House Radio. When was running and developing Hay House Radio. Some of you don't know that. I don't mention it so often anymore. But that's where I got my roots, where I got myself started. I was the network producer of all of the shows actually at Hay House Radio and grew that entire portion of Hay House for the company, all the podcasts that you know and love. So anyway, float rooming came from that. That's why we are now 11 years strong. And I welcome all of you. All right, so let's jump in the format today as usual. We're going to talk a little bit about this concept of forgiving yourself and why and how and what it does for you, how you begin to energetically interact differently with the universe, which I can call flow, or source, whatever you want to call it. We're going to go into a flow dream together where I'm hoping you'll be able to process some forgiveness. Maybe not all, but some. Get it started, perhaps deepen it. So let's look at this forgiveness. I think sometimes we feel that forgiveness is something that has to happen only for other people. I forgive you for calling me all those names the other night in the argument. I forgive you, mom, for dragging me through such a terrible childhood. I forgive you, partner, for hurting me, betraying me. I forgive you, friend, for not being there when I needed you. Certainly, yes, there's a lot of forgiveness that can be meted out as part of our healing. But I think the biggest forgiveness, if you could say it that way, biggest, is the one that happens inside of ourselves, right? How. How can we forgive anyone else if we're failing to forgive ourself? Okay, so you're thinking, what do I need to forgive myself for? I'm just gonna kind of ramble through some off the cuff ideas of things that we hold against ourselves that we often don't even know we're doing, right? These are what I call hidden energies, hidden emotional states. These become part of our patterns. These become part of our restrictive walls inside us that say, you can have this, but you can't have that. You can manifest this, but you can't manifest that. You're allowed this, but you're not allowed that. I wrote an article actually in my blog recently, kind of explaining. It's called my hate mail. And it explains how we develop these restrictive corridors inside of ourself. What we're allowed to do, be, or have, and what we're not. And this is part of that. These areas that you don't forgive become part of these walls inside of you. So when I talk about forgiveness with my students, my clients, I often use the term be gentle with yourself. Be gentle with yourself. It's something that we learn not to do. I don't know exactly how it Gets inside of us. But we're hard on ourselves. We have high expectations for ourselves. We have internalized the entire external world your parents desires for you. Teachers saying, you're an A student, you're a D student. What colleges think of you, what employers think of you, what your parents, again, want for you. Right? We end up internalizing that. All of those other people's ideas and opinions become part of us. Were you good enough? Were you good enough? Were you good enough? Yet we don't seem to internalize. I forgive you. I love you anyway. I love you no matter who you are. I love you no matter what has happened. I love you. Whether you're wildly successful or you're still just eeking by, I love you. What does it matter to me? I just want you to feel happy. I know it seems like such a basic idea, but if you look inside yourself right now, which message have you internalized more? The one that says, be gentle with yourself, do you love yourself? Or the one that says, you know what? You were supposed to have purchased a house by the time you were 30. Your career should have really taken off by now. But you know what? You didn't let that happen because you were so indecisive. And then you changed careers over and over. Or perhaps you changed majors and why don't you have a baby by now? You know, you thought you would be happy married and you'd have a baby. And look at you, still single. Ouch. Right? Even though even the tone I'm using is hurtful, yet these are the things that are going through our head. Why haven't I done this by now? Or if you're backwards looking. That divorce ruined my life. I've never been able to recover it. I've never recovered my finances. I've never recovered my weight that I put on after the divorce. I've never recovered my. My safety, my home. I look back and how did that happen? Why? Why? I. Oh, If I had only. If. If I had only. If I had only seen it sooner. If I had only worked harder, if I had only put away more money when I was in my 20s and 30s or 40s or even 50s. If I had only not invested in that dumb company that I thought I was going to sell and do so well with. Only not. Can you see, like, on and on, right? You can write a list right now. Maybe these things are actually making one or two things float up inside you. You're like, yeah, Summer, thanks for making me feel like crap right now. This is what we try to Surface. You know, half of flow dreaming is manifesting, creating, being a builder, being powerful, being in charge of your life. The other half of flow dreaming is surfacing. The things that don't allow you to be that builder, that powerhouse, that manifestor, that clear vessel. And that's what we do now. We surface, we're surfacing. The. What are you holding onto against yourself? Where have you said to yourself, I didn't make it in time. I'm not good enough. Nobody loves me anymore. I don't have enough good friends. I'm not a good friend, where I'm on and on, on, on my. My health. Do you forgive yourself? Is there some area of your health you can forgive yourself for that you're holding against yourself? Something wrong with you? What's wrong with you? Why did you get fibromyalgia? What's wrong with you? Why did you get cancer? You're so stressed all the time. Do you feel those? You'd think, gosh, I never really thought about having to forgive myself for that. You can feel it through the tone. You can feel it through the sort of negativity that rides through your feelings. If you have anything in your past, in your life, in yourself, that has that little gray wash of rippling negativity through it, in your tone, when you think of it, when you feel it, when there's sadness around it, that, my friends, is where we forgive. That is a flashing indicator. Forgive yourself for this. Forgive yourself for this. And then maybe we can think about forgiving the other people who are involved in this. Forgive yourself for that divorce. Forgive yourself for that betrayal. Forgive yourself for not showing up for someone when you really wanted to. Forgive yourself for not having the career yet. Forgive yourself for failing your own inner expectations. Notice what comes up. Are you feeling like, gosh, if I do that, then who's gonna hold me accountable? Who's gonna hold me in line for it? If I forgive myself for it, I may just give up. Is that a fear? Are you holding yourself accountable by holding yourself in a constant negative state? Is that how you want to hold yourself accountable? You know, that's the classic parental role. You're just not a good enough student, Johnny. I'm not going to give you my love until I see all A's. That's terrible. That's terrible. Why would you do that to yourself? Starting to see where this is going. Be gentle with yourself. Forgive yourself for disappointing yourself. Move on, move forward. Keep moving, keep growing. Here is where things start to lighten up and brighten up your whole Life, you're going to be making decisions, choices, calling things into your life, manifesting them in to play with, to experiment with. No one expects you to do all of them a hundred percent right. No one but you. No one but you. You say, but yeah, there's just one or two that I haven't gotten right. Other things I've gotten right even better. So you don't have the marriage and family piece in yet. Big deal. So you don't have the career piece figured out yet. Big deal. Maybe there's more than one piece. Maybe it's an addiction piece. Great. Work through it. Move through it. Did you think that as soon as you graduated from high school, you would be perfect? You would do everything perfectly and excellently? Who here has a perfection tendency? Gotta be right. Gotta be perfect. Can't let it go unless it's perfect. Can't release it out into the world unless it's perfect. Can't share it unless it's perfect. That same tendency, that same feeling in you is the one that says, I'm imperfect. I have been imperfect. I'm not good enough. Push, push, push. I can't love myself until this is perfect. And you go, oh, no, Summer, I love myself. That's wrong. I don't really feel that way. You're taking it too far, really. If you loved yourself deeply, fully, take that thing right now in your head. That's not perfect for you. Do you feel love in it, or do you feel a sense of disappointment still? Do you feel a sense of shame? Do you feel a sense of if only? Or instead, are you feeling a sense of, that's all right? I'm perfectly happy with the way this progressed and the timeline that it's progressed in. And I fully understand this is something I'm still working and. And developing and creating? I forgive myself for how long it's taken. I forgive myself for being slow about it. Whatever you say to yourself, remember that negative emotion is key. And if there exists any bit of negative emotion. Flashing light. Ah, be gentle with yourself here. Cut yourself some extra slack. Give yourself some extra room. That's what a loving person would do to someone else and to yourself. Right? We're peeking kind of underneath the surface here. Forgiving yourself for not yet arriving at that person you want to be. I really just want to blow up that whole myth. When are you going to arrive at that person who gives you the sparklers at the door and says, congratulations, you've made it. You're finally that person that you want to be? No one will do that for you? No one can do that for you. You're the only one who can. You're the only one who could give that to yourself. What are you waiting for? How many more years are you going to wait? How many more tasks do you have to get through? How many more projects do you have to complete? How many more parts of your life have to be perfect and in line for you to give that to yourself? How many? We can extend it three months or three years, or 30 more years. Or you can say, oh my God, I think I'm gonna pick that today. And you say, what? You can't have that yet. How come? Why can't you have that yet? You know what I'm talking about, right? Perfect self acceptance. I'm good exactly the way I am. I'm exactly where I need to be. I'm experiencing the things that are divinely right for me, whether they are good or bad, whether I'm strong in them or weak in them. I'm perfect in them. I don't have negativity around them. I might have some feelings of sadness or you know, drive or all kinds of different feelings swirling through. Maybe there's someone in my life that I miss dearly. And I feel. I feel remorse, I feel sadness. I did everything I could. That's okay. You could have those feelings about the situation. But how do you feel about yourself in the situation? That's the piece. I can still miss a friend and be disappointed that our friendship broke. And I know that we can't go back and recapture it. I can still feel that ache. You can still feel that ache for all kinds of things in your life. But inside myself I can say, I forgive myself. I did what I could in that friendship and I allow myself to be okay with it now. I'm okay with myself in that resolution. You see, the distinction I'm trying to make here doesn't mean you have to heal every negative emotion about every past event in your life. The event itself is going to carry feelings. But do you forgive yourself for your participation in that event? That is the key. Because again, if you don't, when are you going to do it? Or are you going to continue to self punish yourself? I mean, maybe you'll say, no, I will never forgive myself till I'm, you know, till I'm on death's doorstep. Okay, you can punish yourself your whole life if you want to do that. Go for it. I wonder how much self punishing behavior and thoughts you're going to continuously create. And you know, if you do that. What kind of parent are you going to be? What kind of partner are you going to be? What kind of friend you're going to be if you're always in a self punishing state? You guys are like, I know you're going to be that martyr, that martyr mother, that martyr friend, that martyr partner. Go for it. I'm being sarcastic, I'm trying to goad you. You don't want to carry that self punishment, not just for yourself, but for other people. They want the best you, they want the most loving you. They want the most connected you, they want the most enthused and engaged you loving you. And that is not someone who's holding inside them self punishing, non forgiving behavior. I don't want to give that to my family. Therefore, I can't afford to indulge in that myself. Therefore, therefore, therefore, therefore, whenever I'm feeling negativity, shame, disappointment in myself, oh man, I wrote that book and it tanks. And I gave so much of my life to it. I should have done better. Whatever it may be, I go, oh, I forgive you, Summer. I forgive you. What a beautiful experience that had. It was right in whatever way it was right for you. I forgive you for that. Now what? Now what? And you see how this turns you. You're no longer facing backwards. Now what turns you forward again. Now what? Oh, okay, now I guess I have to do something else. Now I'm on to the next thing. And that's maybe one of the biggest ideas. As you move through life, as you move through flow, as flow. And the universe is always sort of dynamically organizing all these beautiful experiences for you to encounter. You are not going to ace everyone. There will be plenty that you do not ace. Even ones you really, really want. You won't. How are you going to handle those? How are they going to sit inside of you? Once you've collected those experiences, how are you going to hold them for the next 20 or 30 or 40 or 50 or 60 years? How are you going to do it? So I want you to be gentle with yourself. I want you to remember, you're expected to have areas of growth. You're expected to fumble the ball. You're expected to not get that spin on the dance floor perfectly right. You're expected to mess up that relationship. You're expected to drive yourself until your health breaks. You're expected, and I know you're like, what? You're expected to not be perfect. You're expected to not be perfect. So can you forgive yourself for not being Perfect now, not being perfect in the past and not being perfect in the future. Chew on that while we go to break. And when we get back, we're gonna do some flow dreaming. So stay with me. Hi. It's summer, but on break. And I know that some of you are still wondering, what is Flow Dreaming and what is MI School? Because I refer to both of these quite a bit in my podc. MI School is a transformational program. It's a gorgeous and deeply revealing, empowering online school worldwide where I teach you how to remodel your life in any way you choose, using the technique of flow dreaming as well as a bunch of other deeply powerful life changing processes. So me school is either enrolling or it's accepting names onto the wait list. And that means that I'm accepting students who work with me for the year. And you can learn how to do what I do in life. The way I think, the way I build things, make things, heal things. Everything I talk about you will learn directly from me how to do. You're going to create some amazing things. My MI schoolers, their lives change way beyond the norm. And you don't even have to be a superstar when you go in. Some of you are, and you're ready to go bigger, play in that bigger field. And some of you are just saying, hey, help. What's next? Where should I go? And both are fine. Both are great if you're ready to go big. But you know that you need to deepen your own spiritual practice and your personal growth, because that's where it all comes from, right? Then this is where you need to be. Your life only grows as big as you do. So here's what to do. Go over to flowdreaming.com and click on MI School. And during these enrollment periods, you can actually set up a free phone call with me or my staff and we'll talk about it. Is it a fit? Is it interesting? During wait list times, we just put you on a list of people who've expressed interest, so we can notify you as soon, soon as the doors open. All right. I look forward to hearing from you and even more to getting to know you as one of my personal students in May School. Now let's get back to the episode. All right, before we get in here, for those of you who are new to Flow Dreaming, it is a technique that allows you to access your deepest emotional self. It connects that deepest emotional powerhouse of you into what I call your flow. Your flow, which is the flow of your life forward. The Kind of co creational schematic of the universe that's organizing on your behalf, bringing things together for you and your future. Not only do you access this state of flow, but you're able to offer it direction and guidance through this language of emotion. It's not what you see, it's not the words you say, it's the feelings that you guide this state with and the way in. So profoundly easy. It's ridiculous. Daydreaming, right? Daydreaming. You do it all day long, you dream at night, you dream in the day. Hasn't it ever made you wonder why is my consciousness always kind of unhooking and being someplace else that I don't know where it went for 10 or 15 minutes? What's my brain doing? Well, in flow dreaming, we acknowledge that our minds, when they are unhooking, moving into this other space, they're probably doing a multitude of tasks, allocating memory, resolving things, connecting in to your own higher guidance, your own greater self, to your flow, to your future, doing some co creating happens about 30% of your day. You are off somewhere else. How many of you had parents saying God, you're always off somewhere else, or teachers, you're off there co creating. When do you think it gets done? Otherwise you think it's all just dictated from the top. Some soul is saying, do this, do that, do this. You're in participation with the universe, with God, with your higher self, whatever you want to call it. We daydream our way into the flow state and we begin communicating intensely emotionally. And as we do this, we're actually creating something very, very real. We are spinning out instructions, emotion based encoding into our life. It's a real thing. If you look back 10 minutes ago, you were taking in my voice, your brain was processing it, you had some revelations, perhaps it was a real thing. It's been captured by the universe now it's a piece of you. When you enter flow state, same thing happens, it's captured, it's a piece of you. You have created purposefully a new emotional state for yourself, new and new deep driving intention and energy for yourself. It now exists, it's a real thing. Imagine if you do this over and over and over again. You keep adding more and more and more to that and your life starts to respond to that. Oh look, this person is adding all of this juicy, rich emotional direction around these situations or ideas or desires. I guess we have to do something with that because this person is sure shoveling a whole lot of that out at us. And I mean, shoveling good stuff. That's the basis of flow dreaming. Remarkably life changing. So today we're going to use this technique. Not to manifest something outside of ourselves, but to manifest a new piece within ourself. To manifest forgiveness. To restructure our own emotional interior. You can do that too. So follow along with me. You're going to notice this is not meditation. I will not be gentle and slow. I'm going to have some emotion. I might throw in some pictures and details just to give your mind something to do. Sure, it can come along. It doesn't have to shut up and be quiet. Make it feel happy, make it feel engaged. It's your emotional self that's really doing the work. So we start by relaxing. Relaxing your body. Taking a deep breath in and releasing it. Letting your abdomen release. Letting your shoulders drop. Go ahead and roll your neck. Feel your jaw loosen and your brow. Releasing, letting go. No tension, no tension. Gentle, deep breathing. Allow a situation to come up in your mind. Something you're aware that you've been holding. It's been bothering you. It's been bothering you for too long. Maybe this is something big. Maybe it's something small, something long standing or something from just a few weeks ago. Gonna practice with this. Practice with this troubling feeling. Something you did, something you said, something you failed to do well, or do it all a way that you failed to become. You have that feeling inside you now. Notice. Does this hurt? Where does it hurt? Where? On your body? Go ahead and put your hand right there. Where does it hurt? What is this hurt telling you? What has it been telling you every day, every moment, every time you've thought of it? Can you imagine that this hurt just keeps saying the same message over and over. Why would it do that? It only does that because you're not listening. Does it like a parent saying to a child, go brush your teeth, go brush your teeth. Go brush your teeth, go brush your teeth. It's waiting for you to do something. Notice. What have you been doing in response? Feeling more hurt, Feeling more upset? Do you think it's gonna let you go if you keep doing that? Is that the response it's really looking for? To keep it going in you, in this cycle forever? Just like that parent. Does it just want you to go brush your teeth? What does that hurt say says, forgive yourself, Move on, keep going, forgive yourself, Let it go. Let it go. And if you can't, is there something that you still need to fix or address? You're allowed to go for it. Do it you want to be able to let it go, to forgive yourself. What does it need from you to do that? Do it. No one else can do it for you. You're the only one. Do it. It's not worth the pain, the suffering. It's not worth it. It's not helping you. It's begging you. It's asking you, release me. Solve me. Forgive me. I'm stuck. Forgive me. I'm stuck. Forgive me. Forgive us so I can go forward again, please. And what do you do? Oh, you want to. Of course you do. Forgive. Let that feeling spill up and out of you, out of your heart, out of your solar plexus, plexus, your abdomen, up and out. This feeling of a beautiful white, rippling light. Forgive. Be gentle with yourself. And now, whenever you're ready, you say, I'm gonna come back from my flow returning feeling, this new sense of peace. And you open your eyes. How'd you like that? I want to give you a follow up Flow Dream. If you want to do some more in this direction, there's a playlist on my website, flow dreaming.com. it's called heal my heart, heal my past, Heal my heart, heal my past playlist. It will help you release, let go and forgive. And you can load it onto your mobile device, your phone, your tablet, your computer, take it anywhere until all of these things that have been hounding you, holding you, diminishing you, you've now forgiven, released. And that is how you get into your power. All right, this wraps up another beautiful episode together in Flow Dreaming. I look forward to seeing you all again next week when I'm back here with you with another interesting topic. Right? Love you all. All right, that wraps up our episode today. But before you go, two things. One, you can get the Flow Dreaming app in the Google, Amazon or itunes app stores. It allows you to search and sort, to mark your favorite episodes. It's completely free to download and it gives you access to the latest several dozen of these episodes as well as to the premium episode library where there are more than 400 episodes that date back 10 years. The app's free, so go download it it now at Flow Dreaming in the app store on your mobile device. And last, if you love my show, I'm going to give a shout out to my mom's podcast. It's called the Dear Venus show and she's an amazing intuitive and a medium and super, super funny. Search the words Dear Venus in your podcast directory or online and that way you can find her too.