What Empowers Your Next Steps?

Have you ever been part of a group where you had the experience that you were on the outside looking in? Maybe just an observer? Maybe it was difficult, or you didn’t speak up because you didn’t know how to engage in the group. 

Or maybe your experience is where it’s easy to talk. When you are in a group you can always think of something to say. You can engage with ease, and yet, at the same time, you feel like you are on the outside, that you don’t belong, and you don’t fit in. This is the experience of a group that I’ve been working with, that they were exploring the other day. 

For example, I have a hand, and I have two sides to this hand. So there are two sides to having the experience of having a hand. This is an analogy for what it’s like to be in a group. One side of the hand is scared to speak up. Maybe it doesn’t know how, and as they begin to learn how, by exploring the process of self-compassion, and slowing time down to be in your experience to notice the nuances of that experience, They are discovering that when they have accompaniment with them, that it empowers them to have the courage to speak up. 

On the flip side, those of us who don’t have a problem speaking up, having a conversation, broadcasting whatever we are thinking about. For them to still have the experience that they don’t belong, or they don’t fit in to the group dynamics, is the same thing. Just a slightly different aspect of the same thing.  

Yet, when they also have that accompaniment, and they are empowered to slow down, the recognition for both sides of the hand is; when we take time to slow down for self-compassion, by resourcing from our heart, our body, our soul, then we are empowered to have an authentic voice.

The authentic voice is the one that speaks from truth. It speaks from our heart of hearts and is grounded and rooted in our sacred values. To me it’s such a beautiful experience to witness these connections being made in community. 

We all have both sides of the hand, and though they can feel, or the perception of what we tell ourselves about our experience is different, the beautiful needs are the same. That need for a sense of belonging and inclusion, mattering and being able to fit it. For fitting in to feel “just right”. That is important for all of us to experience.