By Jenny Peterson
You can’t heal being the same person that you are now.
To quote Dr. Dispenza, “ you need to break the habit of being you”.
Today I’m discussing a list of 5 ways of being that you need to be in order to heal.
#1 - Let Go of Illness Identity
Having chronic illness, you most likely have a lot of labels. Diagnosis like Lyme disease, Mast cell disorder, Fibromyalgia, POTS, MCS, and the list goes on.
The problem with these labels is that they become your identity.
In fact, people will maybe ask you, why are you having a bad day? And you might say, It’s because I have Lyme disease. Or you can substitute any label there.
Just by saying “I have” followed by your label, you are creating an identity around that disease/symptom. So many people don’t know who they are outside of their labels and its not a place you want to be if you want to heal.
Yes, you may have those symptoms but they don’t need to be your identity.
I will be the first to say that I too had an illness identity.
In the very beginning stages of my healing journey, I would let my husband, son or the store clerk know that the reason I was having a bad day or that I couldn't do something was because I had Lyme disease. I joined Lyme support groups, connected with other Lymies. These are all actions of having an illness identity.
Here’s the thing, you are more than your illness.
You are a person with purpose here on earth and walking around using this language with yourself or others is taking you away from who you are.
Choose to no longer identify yourself as a label. Stop using the words, “I have ____".
Instead, choose to identify yourself as a person that is here to learn and grow. If that means through the symptoms that your body is giving you then that is ok.
#2 - Choose to be a Creator rather than Victim
When it comes down to it, there are two ways to approach our lives; either as the victims to our lives or the creators of our lives.
The life as a victim is to live within the limited belief system that everything in our outer world is happening to us.
If your energy is invested in this reality, you freely give away your power to someone or something outside of you. When things are good, you feel good. When things are bad, you feel bad. This doesn’t put you in the seat of the creator of your life.
Examples of this would be that you blame your parents for the “trauma” they caused, you blame the doctors for giving you the medication, you blame your illness for the life that you have, you blame the bully’s from high school for your low self esteem.
The main problem with the victim mindset is where we place the power. In this mindset, the power is outside of us. We give “them” the power to “make us” feel or do something. But, it is actually our power to give power.
No person, place or thing can make you feel a certain way. Only you have the power to determine how you will react to the things that happen around you.
Now as a creator, you start to witness events in your external life that came out of your internal world of thoughts and feelings, you begin to move into oneness.
Now, you have evidence that the thought or emotion produced the effect in your outer world. This is the beginning of moving out of the victim consciousness into the creator consciousness.
Does this mean that you’ll never feel pain/hurt/suffering? No.
Unless you have fully transcended your “human-ness” permanently, you will most likely feel pain, hurt, or suffering to some extent when the people in your world don’t act in the ways that are most pleasing and/or comforting to you.
Where your power comes into the picture is how long you decide to stay in “victim mode”.
The quicker you are open to shifting into “creator mode” is directly proportional to how much pain, hurt, or suffering you will experience.
Being the creator puts the power back where it really is….within. Living from this model of thinking shifts the power and responsibility back to you. Here we recognize that though our family of origin and personal experiences have shaped us, we are in control over the way we feel about a situation and as a result the choices we make.
As a creator, we realize and understand that we are creators of the world around us. Though we cannot always control what people do around us or to us, we can have complete authority of the way we feel about it and what we do with it. Instead of giving others the power over how we feel, we take responsibility and realize the choice is ours.
Rather than saying and believing “you made me angry when you did that!”, we can say “Im angry about this”.
Even better we don't have to choose to be angry even if it's what we have always done in the past. If we feel angry, we realize it is our choice to be angry. This empowers us! If I can choose to be angry, I can also choose to be something different instead.
As a creator we might start to ask ourselves the following questions:
Why might this challenge/opportunity have come into my life?
What strength(s) can I develop from having lived through this experience?
What’s the gift that the universe is trying to deliver to me through my experience with this person?
Don’t worry if you can’t immediately shift into being the creator. It does take time just like anything else. It is a pattern. It may even be a generational pattern, which is something I often see.
Shifting into “creator mode” is a process and rarely does it happen where one just shifts into it and stays there permanently going forward. What typically happens is that you will toggle in between “victim” and “creator” modes, but you will then switch into “victim mode” less frequently and stay in that mode for shorter durations of time.
Eventually being a creator will stick, And, when you do, watch out world!
When students are in the MBR program, after 6 months they are power houses. They are transformed and have fully embraced being creators of their life. As a coach, it is one of the most rewarding shifts that I see in those that do this work.
Starting today, are you choosing to be a victim or creator of your life? It is time to create a new version of you.
#3 - Focus on Who you Want to Be
Who do you believe yourself to be as a person?
If you want to have certain results you need to do certain behaviors; If you want to do certain behaviors, you need to feel the right feelings to trigger them; If you want to feel the right feelings, you need to have the right thoughts; If you want to have the right thoughts, you need to be the kind of person to whom those thoughts naturally occur.
Another way of saying this is if we focus less on what we want to do and have, and more on who we want to be, everything starts to flow a little easier.
Instead of...Have - Do - Be (Once I have the confidence, then I’ll do the things I know I need to do to heal, and then I’ll be someone who sees themselves as a success). We need to flip it around to...Be - Do - Have (When I see myself as a success, then I’ll do the things I need to do to heal, and then I’ll have all the confidence I desire).
So, who do you need to BE? Who is the person who naturally does the things you want to DO? What kind of person would have access to the kind of outcomes you want? How do they carry themselves? What personality traits do they possess? How do they dress? How do they show up in a room? How do other people feel when they’re around them? What thoughts do they think? What do they believe? What do they ignore? What do they value?
You need to become this person of who you want to be. Pick someone that you know has healed and is an inspiration for you. When you catch yourself doing behaviors or having negative thinking, ask yourself, what would ____ do right now? Then take action in ways that you think that person would do.
Keeping your focus on who you want to be rather than what you want to do will automatically shift the choices you make and bring you closer to reaching that reality.
#4 - Be Able to Embrace Change
Your will to heal is directly related to your will to change.
You won’t heal if you are not willing to change, plain and simple.
Yes, growth is uncomfortable. Yes, change is uncomfortable. Yes, your brain will do anything to avoid change. But nothing is as uncomfortable as sitting in your own poo.
Have the courage to outgrow what is no longer serving you. Give a new meaning to change.
If you fear or dislike change, it is because, most likely, change in the past has not worked out for you. At least that is the way you may have seen it up until now. But I encourage you to shift your meaning behind those experiences and choose to give change a new meaning.
Change means growth. Change means an opportunity to heal.
#5 - Become the Person who is in Charge of your Thoughts.
Decide what thoughts you can’t bring with you to your future.
Write them down. Thoughts like I can’t, it's too hard, i’ll never change, i’ll start tomorrow.
How do you talk? Do you complain, do you blame others, do you make excuses? Become so conscious of those thoughts that you’ll never go unconscious again. You can’t change what you can’t see.
You need to see that you are not your thoughts and that your thoughts are actually things that you can choose and change. This is an incredibly empowering thing to realize!
It means that, if you want to, you can choose entirely new thoughts and beliefs. You can choose to perceive every situation in your life differently. It's not easy at first because your brain isn’t used to seeing things in a new way. But after you do it over and over, your brain will get accustomed to seeing things in a different light.
Your thoughts and your ability to redirect them is one of the key components to your healing.
Alright, so to recap, the person you need to be in order to heal includes:
Getting Rid of the Illness Identity
Choosing to be the Creator vs Victim of your Life
Focusing on Who you Want to Be
Embracing Change
Taking Charge of your Thoughts.
These 5 areas will bring you one step closer to getting back your life and health. They are necessary for creating a new version of you.
We get it, you're desperate to have your illness be a thing of the past, not something that defines your days. But trying to heal WITHOUT a custom plan is costing you precious time, money and energy!
You are unique, your symptoms are connected to very specific patterns within your subconscious.
Without a plan unique to you, you will continue struggling and miss out on the life you deserve to be living! To help you get started on your long-lasting healing journey, we would love to provide you with a healing plan that is unique to you. Get your custom healing plan today!
You can also Download my free healing guide, “Why Can’t I Heal” where you will learn the 5 reasons that you haven't healed despite everything you've tried. These are the missing pieces to your healing and the key to resolving your symptoms for good.