Hello and welcome to day 18 of my experiment of living from love rather than fear.
My name's Liz Scott and for 30 days I'm experimenting with bringing my awareness back to the settled space of love rather than getting lost in the unsettled feelings of fear.
And this is the 18th day that I've been trying it out and every day what I do is I write a journal and then share something with you just to explain what I've learned from the day.
And my invitation is that you join me.
I'd love to hear how you're getting on living from love rather than fear.
Today I've been reminded of how painful it is to fuel stories,
How emotionally painful it can be when you get lost in story loops.
And it all came down to me visiting a friend.
It's a friend I hadn't seen for years and years.
We met up for a coffee and I wanted to know all about what had been going on for her in the intervening years.
And she over the last few weeks has had some real problems in her workplace.
So what happened is that my friend started to tell me the story of what had been going wrong in her workplace and I realized quite soon that she was in a lot of emotional pain about this.
But also what I realized is that it was so intense this emotional pain that I could pretty much feel it even though it wasn't my story.
The truth is I'm not used to listening to people like this.
A lot of my friends are quite settled and grounded in the way that they engage and this is somebody that I hadn't seen for a long time and it felt very intense that she was very lost in the pain of her story and of what had gone on with her.
So it was really easy for me today to see the fear that she was in.
So remember when I talk about fear I'm talking about those unsettled anxious stressful feelings that seem to swamp us.
She was lost in fear.
The fear was turning up in this repetitive story that just didn't seem to go away.
It was like she was lost or stuck in a room that was full of wasps that were stinging her.
That's what their thoughts were doing.
They kept stinging her with pain and she was flapping them away and the more she flapped them away the more they stung her.
And she wanted me to come into this room with her.
This is all metaphorically of course.
She wanted me to feel the pain too.
But I know I'm a professional listener and I absolutely know that there is no resolution by getting lost in a story.
In fact the opposite is true.
When you find yourself lost in a story the best thing to do is to take a step back and look towards love.
If she were a coaching client I would deal with things very differently.
If she was a coaching client I would have permission to point out the story and to support her and taking a step back from it and supporting her and noticing that wisdom and love within her that settled grounded space to work from.
But she's not a client so I don't have permission.
I'm meeting her as a friend.
So there were two things that I did and these come from a place of love.
I absolutely knew to stay on my rock solid ground of love.
My job is not to step into her pain.
My job as a listener is to stay on my rock solid ground of listening and encourage her by her feeling my rock solidness to step onto firm ground or to use the wasp analogy to step out of her room full of wasps so that she stops getting stung by her thinking.
That was my job.
And the second thing which is so fundamental for listening,
Particularly listening when you know about the three principles and the inside out understanding,
When you absolutely know that the core and essence of someone is love,
Is wisdom,
Is resilience,
When you know that and you're a listener then what you do and what I was doing is I was listening out for the wisdom and resilience in her that she couldn't see in herself.
Because what tends to happen is as I shine a light on that in her and she feels that in me because I stay on rock solid ground,
Usually what happens is the mind starts to settle and she starts to see things more clearly.
So that's what I engaged with as a friend and that came absolutely from a place of love.
A few years ago I might have dealt very differently with her before I was a professional listener and before I understood about the three principles.
In those days I would have probably got involved in her story and I would have come up with ideas on how she might deal with things differently or I would say how bad things were and confirm that things were really bad.
I know from experience and I know deeply in my heart that that is not the way to help someone find their resilience and well-being.
So what I did today,
I came from love,
I kept grounded in my loving space and I looked out for the loving space in her,
That resilience and wisdom in her that she couldn't see for herself.
Today then has been a reminder for me about the importance of staying grounded,
Of bringing my awareness back to love and when I'm with other people,
Particularly people who feel a bit disjointed or feel a little bit unsettled,
Is if I bring my awareness back to my love I can listen to them from a rock-solid space and then from that rock-solid space,
From that loving space,
I listen out for the resilience and resourcefulness in them.
So that's what I've learned from today's experiment.
How are you getting on?
Do let me know how you're getting on as you live from a place of love rather than fear.
