Hello, I’m Nancy and, after much time, gnashing of thoughts, and fumbling with words, I am writing my first blog for this site. The truth is that I named it ‘Releasing the Shackles’ for a lot of reasons, and those reasons keep moving around in my mind until it’s hard to know where to begin. I want to share stuff, hard earned wisdoms I’ve been able to glean so far from a life that’s been an interesting array of what I now know to be hard times I brought on myself in order to get the lesson. And as it turns out, I’m a slow learner. But more than anything, I want to show you that there’s a better way. A way to free yourself from the inside out.
I’ve been in quite a few instances of being shackled in the literal sense: I’ve had two separate prison sentences and haven’t even counted my visits to various county jails. All these incarcerations are the result of being in another type of shackles. For me, it was addiction to alcohol. I was drunk for decades. And through the shackles of alcoholism, I found myself in figurative shackles that showed up in untold drama in my life because I never knew when let go of toxic habits and people. My outside life became a shambles that mirrored what I told myself about myself: That I wasn’t good enough to be happy.
You might think that releasing shackles in your life has to do with outer conditions, which is true; it does. Any facet of our life that chains us – addiction, prison, legal problems, relationships, work, or whatever we perceive as making us unhappy – is an outer reflection of what’s going on within us. We create outer conditions, by and large, by the beliefs, thoughts, judgments, and feelings we have about ourselves. Our earliest perceptions and self-image, accurate or inaccurate, inform the decisions we make in our life to this day. And either consciously or unconsciously, to our peril, we believe about ourselves what we learned before we could even question it. In my case, growing up in a large Catholic family and in parochial school, that I wasn’t good or special, and because I was inherently bad, that there was no way I could be loved…even by God.
So, what have you been telling yourself all your life? And what conditions have you created to prove to yourself, beyond a doubt, that those things are true? Do you even know what you think of yourself at a deep level? Do you blame others or yourself for your woes? If you do, you can be pretty sure that you believe a lie. No one is to blame; situations are exactly as we created them. Shaming others or you doesn’t address the issue. The question is, “why do I create these issues in my life? What do I believe about myself?”
So, where to begin to release the shackles in your life? Just start by noticing what you’re thinking. Just do that. Notice when you’re drudging up the past. What dramas are taking up head space? Are you blaming someone or feeling shame? Notice when your thoughts are negative or positive, and how they make you feel. Practice this whenever you can.
Next time I’ll tell you more about what I believed about Nancy and how I learned, through hard lessons, that it simply wasn’t true, and how I started creating a life that is happy (mostly), drama-free, alcohol free, and yes, legal problems and incarceration free. You can do this, but it’s an inside job.
Tell me about yourself, your shackles, and what you see as a way to free yourself.