PNTV: Dark Side of the Light Chasers by Debbie Ford (#41)

Hi, this is Brian. Welcome to Philosopher's Notes tv. Today we're going to do another great book, Debbie Ford's Dark side of the Light Chasers. Awesome book as always. Great book. We've got The Philosopher's Notes 6 page PDF where I've got maybe a dozen of my favorite big ideas. This book is fantastic. It's all about shadows and shadow projection and the disowned parts of our consciousness and being that when we don't accept ourselves completely kind of come out like gremlins when we don't want them to. So the book is packed with big ideas. It's one of the leading and best books on understanding our shadow. Highly recommend it. Super quick, super powerful read, packed with a lot of great exercises. We're going to look at a few of my favorite big ideas now. First of all, the idea of shadow. Carl Jung came up with the idea and it essentially means it's the parts of us we've rejected, the parts of us that essentially are the person we'd rather not be. We don't want to be these things. We want to disown these aspects of ourselves. When we do that, we tend to have that shadow come out and we tend to project that into the world. And we tend to be triggered by people that. Who have our disowned aspects, right, that they're demonstrating in their own lives. We're triggered by them because we haven't integrated them into our own lives. So lots of really, really cool stuff. In the note, I'm going to go straight to one of my favorite big ideas, which is this concept that when we're triggered, Debbie Ford talks about the fact that. Imagine that you have electrical sockets on your chest right now. If you've integrated certain aspects of your life, like you realize you can be a little greedy sometimes. You realize you can be a little rude, you realize you can be a little abrasive or selfish, or you can talk really loud sometimes if you've integrated those things, it's like having an electrical socket that has a cover on it right now. If you haven't integrated those things and you've kind of ignored them and tucked them away into your consciousness somewhere. When someone you run into in your life does those things, it's like they plug in to that electrical socket in you, that disowned part of yourself you see in the other person and you don't like it. So you get really, really, really irritated at that person who's doing something that you have as part of your consciousness. But you disown it's a really powerful concept. And one of the ways that we can understand what our shadow elements are is by looking at what annoys us and other people. And you can ask the question, just do a little brainstorming. Now, you may want to press pause and think about who annoys you the most or what behavior in different people annoys you the most. Or the next time you're annoyed, see if you can pause and see, wow, what is this person doing right now? And then say, how am I that? How do I do that in my life as well? How, how am I that? It's a huge practice and it's something that I've done in my life. And it's actually kind of amusing now because when I find myself triggered, there's a part of me that can step back and look at it and go, okay, look, you're obviously triggered. What is it in this person that you have in your life that you're not totally comfortable with? And as I do that, I can see, wow, I do that too, do that a lot. And then I'm not as triggered and I can accept that person because I'm accepting myself more. Does that make sense? And so really, really, really big idea that we want to pay attention to. So when you're triggered, think about the fact that it might be something that you've disowned in yourself. Either that you also do or you want to do more of that you're seeing come up in this person's consciousness. It's a really big idea. Another really big idea here is that we need to love all aspects of ourselves, right? And that it's not about being perfect. We're not divine when we're perfect, we're divine when we're whole, when we've integrated all aspects of ourselves. We talk about this a lot throughout the notes that there are no perfect human beings. Rumi talks about it, Abraham Maslow talks about it. You can look at self actualizing human beings and you'll find extraordinary people. But you're also going to find those same people have certain characteristics like selfishness and petulance, and they get irritable and they can be depressed. There are no perfect human beings. And when we let go of the need to be perfect and we allow ourselves to be who we are, we fully accept ourselves. We integrate our shadow. We tend to project that shadow a lot less in the world. It's a really, really, really big idea. We talk about it more in the note and Carl Jung says, again, the gold is in the dark right. We want to avoid the aspects of ourselves we don't like. But in fact, the. That's where the gold is. We have certain repressed characteristics that as we embrace them, we become such a more full, radiantly alive human being, and we let go of the need to be perfect. Powerful stuff. What else do we want to talk about? So Debbie talks about the idea that freedom is being able to choose. She says, freedom is being able to choose whoever and whatever you want to be at any moment in your life. It's a really cool idea. We can choose who we want to be, how we want to show up moment to moment to moment to moment, or we can just be this reflexive, reactionary self that doesn't have that freedom. As we integrate ourselves, we get more and more of that power back. Really cool idea. She has an awesome idea here. She says that whenever she's stressed, she asks herself, does this interpretation empower me or does it disempower me? So if you're stressed out, pause for a moment and check in and see, how am I analyzing the situation? Is it empowering me or is it disempowering me? It's a really simple, really profound idea. And if you're stressed in your life right now, sit down. You might want to sit down, open up a journal, and write down whatever is stressing you out, whatever the situation is, and then write down your interpretation of it. And psychologists talk about this a lot as well. Sonja Lie Bermirsky calls these barrier thoughts. We have barrier thoughts, barriers to our happiness, that when we look at them and see them on paper, we can make different choices. We can say, wow, that thought isn't that empowering? Can I choose more empowering thoughts? So if you got laid off or you ended a relationship or whatever it is that's going on in your life, check in and see what thoughts you have around it and whether you can pick more empowering thoughts. It's a huge idea that we talk about here and throughout the notes. Another really cool idea is this idea of watching your fingers, right? So if you're ever pointing at someone and you're accusing them of something, that person is so selfish. That person is so greedy. That person is so whatever. Whatever it is that you're doing. When you're pointing at someone, notice Debbie Ford says you have one finger pointing at them and. And you have three little fingers pointing back at you. So pay attention. What is it that you're seeing? The other people that you need to see in yourself? Same story. How Am I that really big idea? She has another great idea called attending your own lectures. So anytime you're pointing your finger at someone and you're giving them a lecture on something, imagine for a moment that you're attending the lecture that you're giving. Because we tend to be most vocal about things that we need to integrate most in our lives. So as you find yourself triggered and you find yourself pointing your finger and you find yourself lecturing, see if you can pause and actually attend that lecture and then do whatever it is that you're encouraging the other person to do. Really, really, really big idea. So see if you can check in the next time you start lecturing and see if you may need the lecture as much or perhaps more than the person you're giving it to. Super big idea. Another concept here is that we can project our shadows and our light. So when we point at someone like that person's a genius, that person is so inspiring, that person is so amazing. What we're seeing in that person is our own greatness, our own genius, our own ability to inspire or do whatever it is that we admire. So we want to take that back as well and realize we're only seeing in others what we have within ourselves. It's a really cool idea. And then the same thing with the lectures. When we're giving someone a lecture on how to follow their dream and to go for it and really do something extraordinary or to stop doing something in the negative sense. But when we're really celebrating someone's genius and everything they could do and we see it so effortlessly, we want to pause and see, how can we attend that lecture? How can we see that we too can do extraordinary things that, that we're coaching people to do, etc. So that's a really quick look at this great book. It's packed with big ideas. We've got a lot of them in the note. Hope you enjoyed it. We're going to stop this one early today. That's pretty exciting. All right. Hope you enjoyed and look forward to sharing more with you soon. See you.