Archive for February, 2009.
Strength and courage are summoned from the Inner Adventurer as they pursue truth.
So many people are searching or seeking these days without seeing the fallacy in it. Searching and seeking are means of looking outside of yourself for something to make you feel complete. And that pattern can become an endless path that denies your personal power.
Fallacy? Yes, because each of us is already complete just as we are right now. That truth may take a bit of getting used to, yet the stretch it brings you is entirely worthwhile. It is truth that unifies our seemingly disparate parts and heals us.
Perhaps the hardest truth I’ve had to accept in life is around family. We all have idyllic dreams about having the “perfect” family that always gets along with one another, supports each other and loves each member unconditionally. Sounds great. However, the average family is far from that dream.
Most families deal with some form of dysfunction and mine was no different. I noticed hints of things that didn’t seem right from early childhood. At that stage, instinctual survival is more important than figuring things out, so those signals faded into the background of day-to-day life.
More oddities came in adulthood as I was finding my sense of self and shedding conditioned beliefs, often called individuation in the psychological world. I wondered about those peculiarities, without any idea of what really was going on. Interesting, as today I see how I might have found the truth by piecing those clues together. It didn’t happen that way.
Almost 5 years ago now, the truth hit me square between the eyes. Now it was undeniable. Why? A social worker was confirming suspicions and helping me put it together. Abuse. My heart sunk.
I was clear that I couldn’t continue in the family relationship as it had been without getting this ugliness out into the open. I didn’t want any “pink elephants” in the room separating how we related. No sacred cows we couldn’t discuss. Anything else to me would be living a lie. I summoned my strength and courage to make that known. I confronted the issue as gently as possible, vowing my support through whatever it took.
Through several conversations, it became clear that this line was not to be crossed. “If that’s the way you want it, then goodbye.” The receiver on the other end of the line hung up. It was the last I heard. I was alone with my truth.
The following days were strange. I was uncertain about the future while still talking with the social worker, who was trying to hold things together. I was trying to be of service, despite my uncertainties. Meanwhile, deep down inside I felt solace from my integrity still being intact. Mixed feelings for sure!
This story doesn’t have the happy ending you’d like to see. Those words were the final ones I heard. Living my truth cost me my family.
Truth is poignant, as it unfolds over time. Still, the Inner Adventurer welcomes it as it reveals itself. From pieces of truth over time, the Ultimate Truth is always made known. Through Integrity, Awareness and Acceptance of the 4-Step Cycle, your Focused, Aligned Action becomes clear.
I encourage you to embrace truth as your companion for Inner Adventuring.
For more of what Sarah has to offer about living the introverted and highly sensitive life, visit InnerVantage
We already know the Inner Adventurer has courage. (See the January 23, 2009, post). What matters most about courage is how they use it. Consider your own personal growth. How does your courage come into play?
No doubt about it, personal growth can be difficult and uncomfortable. I’ve reached one of those spots recently. Let me tell you about it.
Each year, I take on a personal progress intention. It becomes my theme for the coming months so that I grow in a chosen direction. My intention for this year is to come from the heart. 
What’s so difficult or uncomfortable about that? Well, it’s a far-reaching focus. It involves my thoughts, actions and speech. I have a very active mind, too, which chatters on throughout each day, keeping me in my head. Put on top of those things my well-honed business persona and I think you can sense the scope of my adjustment.
For weeks now, I’ve felt clumsy, like everything is out of place for the time being. On one conference call I hosted in January, I noticed that I kept using the same words to describe different things over and over. I sensed I was in a rut. Those who attended the call assured me they hadn’t noticed.
Another time this month, I was working on the phone one-to-one with a close friend. We support one another while offering our skills and opinions. When I was helping her, my demeanor was rigid and judgmental. My tone was callous. I felt all blocked up inside, like gridlocked traffic. Nothing was going well for me, or for my friend. I felt ashamed of how I acted, yet couldn’t find any way out of what was happening in that moment. Talk about difficult and uncomfortable, eh?
I had reached a crossroads. My focus didn’t seem to be working so well. Patterns from the past were holding on harder than I imagined. I could declare it wasn’t working at all and slip back into my former character, calling it quits. That option always exists for any of us. So what does an Inner Adventurer do?
Right away, I let my friend know I wasn’t feeling like myself. She knew it by how I was acting, yet appreciated my acknowledgment. We switched roles and tried to shine some new light on what was happening within me. It worked, as I started to see things differently right away.
Then, with Nancy, I reflected on what happened and asked for her insight. More realizations came to me. The pieces were fitting together. With some more time to reflect on my own, it became time for action.
I called my friend for a heart-to-heart talk, letting her know my true intention was not to hurt her and how I sincerely want her to be successful. She was touched by the conversation and accepted my apology. It was difficult to do but felt so good afterward.
I’m learning that my new focus is paying other benefits, too. It’s sharpening my inner guidance and strengthening my integrity. I also notice I’m less willing to tolerate anything to which I’m not fully aligned. That part is kicking up some dust I didn’t expect and I’m welcoming whatever it brings.
Here’s the Inner Adventurer lesson: When life challenges us, we find the strength and courage to forge ahead toward what we choose, even while there is something within screaming at us to pull back. The Inner Adventurer goes deeper into the issue, raising their consciousness as they continue.
How’s your focus? Where can you use its partners of strength and courage?
Is there too much weight put on loving another by society? Perhaps. I see another love comes before it.
Today, while the focus is intently on expressing love, remember to love yourself.
In a practice I learned from Louise Hay’s You Can Heal Your Life, in front of a mirror, look yourself in the eyes and say “I love you.” Include your name to add more power.
This practice is difficult for many people at the start. Simply making eye contact is the first hurdle to overcome. So often you see your image reflected to perform grooming tasks. So few times do you take a moment to connect with yourself and witness your soul through your own eyes.
The next snag comes when expressing love boldly for yourself. You might quickly break eye contact or sense disbelief. Be brave and try again. If not now, then later. It’s practice that helps it get easier. Do this for 20 to 45 days and watch what shifts within.
“We have to learn to be our own best friend, because we fall too easily into the trap of being our worst enemy.”
James Thurber (1894-1961, American humorist, illustrator)
The Inner Adventurer learns to love themselves fully. It’s love that lubricates the growth.
Posted on February 11th, 2009 by Sarah Dolliver in
4-Step Cycle Moving further with the 4-Step Cycle…
I realized my predicament clearly now from going through the first two steps of Integrity and Awareness. It was not an appealing place to be. I felt uncomfortable with my realizations and angry with myself for allowing it to happen.
I knew anger wasn’t going to get me very far. Anger can take you to all sorts of unproductive places, such as blame, guilt or shame. I felt that I could use my anger at myself to spark something new. But what? Anger was all I had at the moment.
I sat with it for a couple of days. Nothing seemed to be shifting for me. What next? After using this Cycle many times, I understood that these times of feeling blocked or stalled are merely part of the practice.
Finally, it occurred to me what was going on: I had to transform this anger into love – love for myself! I began to see that I wasn’t some horrid creature. I had good qualities that had been buried beneath my trying to please other people. It was my responsibility to shift the patterns that were denying my own comfort and inner greatness. 
So I ventured into Acceptance, the third step on my important path. This is where I learned so much. I searched for my goodness that wasn’t shining through in how I lived. Yes, I was a good person who was simply misusing what I had been given: my sacred gifts for this lifetime.
The more I probed, I found a deep and denied serenity. I learned to be gentle with myself at this point. Harshness was worn away by an emerging softness. The scalpel edge of anger became a healing caress of self-love.
I lingered in Acceptance for quite a while. I peeled back layers fixed in place by the length of time they had been there. This part is always a distinctly personal journey and hard to put into words. I learned not to rush this step, for this is where most of the restorative and renewing progress happens. Everything in its own time.
Quite suddenly, I knew I had to act. Discomfort was returning and I recognized it came from feeling so different on the inside while still having the same pattern happening on the outside. Lack of alignment was spurring me onward. This is where I started the final step: Focused, Aligned Action. I wanted to find a way to bridge the chasm I felt.
My first steps felt like huge risks. For instance, friends asked for my choice when deciding where to go to eat. I clearly remember this because of how I felt in the inside – like Jello! Before, I would have gone along with whatever the popular choice was, saying something like “It doesn’t matter. Whatever you want.” This time I had a preference and expressed it. Gulp!
I was surprised. They went along with what I wanted! My first action had been a success! Victory felt wonderful because a desire had been fulfilled. It also felt a bit odd, as I wasn’t used to having my way.
I continued to practice expressing my wants and needs, such as asking my husband for a hug or saying what I wanted for dinner. I know, these are seemingly small things, but I found out that starting small stacks success in your favor, allowing you to build up a sense of how to take action so you are better prepared for larger steps to come.
This is where your journey through the 4-Step Cycle becomes self-generating. You feel so fabulous from taking your Focused, Aligned Action that you want to go through the Cycle again with something new. Momentum is built in.
Whether you undertake this journey once or repeatedly, you will be different in remarkable ways. It offers any Inner Adventurer the opportunity to sculpt life to suit them.
Won’t you give it a try? And I’m here to help you along your own path. Just contact me…
Posted on February 6th, 2009 by Sarah Dolliver in
4-Step Cycle I bet you are still curious about the 4-Step Cycle of Inner Adventuring. Yes, it’s time to get started.
This is the cycle–spiral that I noticed and what Nancy helped tease out of me while adding her own insights. See my January 27 post for more background. It is what I use to move along in my own personal growth. I use it with clients. I know it works.
Let’s take a look at the entire cycle briefly and then I’ll explain each step in more detail with an example threaded in. Here is the 4-Step Cycle: Integrity, Awareness, Acceptance and Focused, Aligned Action. These steps are concise and to the point. They are easy to remember and use to mark your own progress.
Integrity is your wholeness. It contains all the things you stand for, including how you choose to treat yourself and be treated by others. When you have it, you feel like a million dollars. If you don’t have it, even a million dollars might not make you feel good. It’s that important and obvious.
One of my early discoveries was that I had a habit of pleasing others. I’d do whatever I could to meet their expectations or wants. For instance, I had a really hard time saying ‘No’ to any request made of me. Ask me to go along with you somewhere? Yes! Ask me to do something outside my comfort zone? Certainly! Want me to sit on the phone and talk about something important to you? Definitely!
What I realized at this point is that it didn’t feel good to me to do some of these things. That’s a sure sign of ignoring integrity. Ah, a morsel to work with.
That brings us to the second step: Awareness. I get many questions why awareness is the second step of this process, not the first. Doesn’t one have to have awareness to know whether they are being in integrity? Absolutely! Nothing can change when you are not awake to what is going on for you. 
What is different about this “awareness” step is its depth. Spotting something is one thing. Fully seeing and understanding it while you figure out what it means for you is quite another. This use of awareness focuses on that complete appreciation for what is happening, why it is there and where it is taking you.
So I started to ask why I was accommodating others so much. To my surprise, I was trying intensely to be included and accepted by others. Because I felt odd inside, I searched for outside signals that it wasn’t true. Any positive gesture fed my need, so saying ‘Yes’ was the stroke my ego needed.
But wait, that wasn’t all. By continuing to ask why, I also discovered that I didn’t value my own wants and needs. I know, that might sound absurd, yet it was true.
I got into this bind by not trusting myself and trying too much to be like other people. It was taking me to self-sacrifice and inner unhappiness. I didn’t want to continue this way.
With my clear choice to change my patterns, I was on my way. I was starting to become an Inner Adventurer.
Stop back in a short while to continue with the next steps: Acceptance and Focused, Aligned Action.
I realize that I promised you information on the 4-Step Cycle next. However, living the lesson got in my way and I hope you can patiently wait until the next post.
What is the lesson I’m living today? It’s all about keeping the harmony between work and self.
January felt like a constant stream of deadlines and producing work. It took lots of coordination of details to get through it. Business seemed like it was turning into “busy-ness.”
I started to resent the pattern in which I found myself. That was an important signal to heed. You see, I’ve done the burn-out thing 2 times before and know it isn’t fun or easy. Each instance took me months to recover from them. The physical, mental and emotional exhaustion is not worth it any longer.
I’ve learned to look at the early clues, like feeling trapped or resenting work, to show me when it’s time to step back before I crash. When these signs show up, I know it’s time to free myself from whatever external pressures are moving me and reconnect to my inner desires.
What I did was take 3 days to relax and do what my heart wanted to do. I indulged my desires: I read, listened to music and sung along with the lyrics. did some Sudoku puzzles, talked to friends and cooked. It was all wonderful, simply by not having to do any of it and wanting to do all of it.
Today I feel more connected to my inner essence of serenity. I feel more able to carry it with me as I start into a day’s work. I can embrace my serenity in the present moment while I engage with the busy world. It feels like a whole new me…and that’s good.
The Inner Adventurer needs time away from the hustling and bustling of the world to reconnect with what moves them. They yearn to know their inner whys and wherefores. And generally the easiest method to find them is to simply slow down and pull back so one can languish in the hallowed chambers within their souls.
Won’t you take some time for yourself to discover your peace and serenity? Your Inner Adventurer wants it.
