Photo by S O C I A L . C U T on Unsplash
“There is a surrendering to your story and then a knowing that you don’t have to stay in your story” — Colette Baron Reid
I enjoyed having the lovely Carolina Barker and Wayne Yates on my IC show this week. Carolina and Wayne are both 3 Principles Practitioners and the hosts of the free Webinar series, How to Connect with Humans. A series that is now in its fifth season and one I am excited to be a guest speaker on. I asked both Wayne and Carolina how they first came across the Principles and how the understanding had impacted their lives.
Carolina shared that coming across the Principles wasn’t the bolt of lightning experience that many people report. Instead, the evolution of her understanding was a slow burn. Although she wasn’t entirely sure what The Principles were pointing to, over time, she gradually began to see that the anxiety and depression she had battled with for most of her life began to disappear. Carolina also noticed that while many of her relationships improved, some ended amicably with ease and grace. Carolina’s most significant insight was that she realized that she didn’t have to fear her experiences even when the experience was as devasting as coming to terms with losing her terminally ill father to suicide.
Wayne, on the other hand, describes his first insights as if fireworks were going off. It was during a session with Janet Reiner when she asked him, “If you weren’t Wayne Yates, who would you be?” This simple question rocked Wayne’s self-limiting story about himself. You see, Wayne was born with Cerebral Palsy, and he had spent much of his life viewing himself through the lens of his physical disability. From that moment forward, Wayne saw that he was so much more than his physical body and its limitations. Through the understanding of the Principles, Wayne knew that at his essence, he was made of infinite potential.
When I first came across the understanding, back in 2009, like Carolina, I also experienced a slow burn with a lot of resistance and “Yeah Buts” along the way. I had been through a quick succession of painful, life-changing events, from dealing with a challenging divorce to caring for a severely depressed child to the sudden death of my sister, to witnessing my mother decline into dementia before her death. Initially, hearing that my experience of life was “just my thinking” wasn’t helpful to me.
I was going through such a magnitude of change and loss I couldn’t comprehend what my teachers were sharing with me. But as hurt, angry, and confused as I was, something inside me said, “keep looking in this direction.” Then, in time, similarly to Wayne, I had the vast “aha moments” when I saw with such clarity that my self-limiting story of who I thought I was, was entirely made up of thought. This insight was life-changing for me.
Before coming across the Principles, I had viewed myself as being at the mercy of life and what it had dealt me. I felt victimized and helpless. I felt that I was broken and needed to be fixed. I felt that my personality was set in stone, and there was nothing I could do to change the trajectory of my life. Like a child, playing dress-up, I had created a character and a self-limiting story that supported my belief about myself. I had innocently forgotten that there was a trunk full of different costumes just waiting for me to play with.
How many of us do this? How many of us innocently create a self-limiting story about ourselves then live from that place, never thinking to question its validity? I know I did, and I’m sure I’m not alone in this. What a relief it was for me to see that I, too, am made of infinite potential. That the self-limiting story of me and my life was just that, a story. A story I could rewrite whenever and however I chose. A story with infinite creative potential. A story that I could have fun with!
With love and appreciation, Del 💕