Have you ever wanted to cringe at your own behavior but ended up being able to laugh at yourself instead?
You will often hear people laughing at themselves as they become more self-aware, saying things like, ‘Oh my God, I can’t believe I did that! That is hilarious!’, ‘There goes my inner people-pleaser again, gotta just laugh!’, ‘My Perfectionist is having a fit right now, but it’s Ok, I’m only human.’ Or ‘My inner critic is so uptight. She could really use a vacation.’
Exploring your various aspects can be illuminating as well as highly entertaining. This process does not need to be dull, boring or painful in any way; in fact, it can be as humorous as you can make it. I highly recommend making it a comedy! You could think of it as free entertainment.
One of my friends and Master Mind partners, Sheri ‘Galvanized’ Zampelli, had an aspect she named ‘Jeb’ who she vividly described as a large, overweight hillbilly with a flabby beer-belly hanging over the front of his pants, plumber’s butt and a big ol’ wad of tobacco in his jowl. He had judgmental and prejudicial behaviors toward others – including name-calling and criticism – while remaining perfectly oblivious to his own faults and limitations. Not only was her description of this character funny for other people to hear when she shared her insights, she was able to use the humor of it to lighten her own healing process, literally cracking herself up every time she mentioned this aspect.
By using humor to laugh at this part of herself, she was able to begin to soften her attitude, let go of her defensiveness, update her irrational beliefs, own her projections of judgments, clear her self-judgment and see that this part of herself she’d named ‘Jeb’ had some traits that were really quite wonderful. He lacked self-consciousness, he didn’t care what anyone else thought, he was able to let it all hang out, he was honest with his feelings, he had oodles of self-confidence, and more. In other words, this part of her held qualities of honesty, authenticity, boldness, confidence and other strengths, which she’d been attempting to suppress for much of her life. Owning ‘Jeb’ was liberating for Sheri, freeing up tons of her personal power which she can now use consciously towards more meaningful, supportive, constructive pursuits.
You see, no part of the self is really bad. There is no such thing as ‘bad’, from Spirit’s perspective, so it becomes part of the healing journey to find the parts that you’ve labeled as ‘bad’ in the past, reach out to them and then reel them in to the Loving where you can reap the benefits of claiming their strengths.
By letting go of viewing these parts of yourself as ‘bad’, ‘wrong’ or ‘shameful’, it will be far easier for you to see how you developed your old, unhealthy patterns of behavior. Likely, these were all behaviors that had been modeled for you as a child, by parents, siblings, teachers and friends. The truth is that you didn’t know any other way to respond at the time, and you did the best you could to cope with whatever was occurring in your world. From these realizations, it becomes easy to ask yourself, “How’s this working for me now?
Is this pattern of behavior serving me to continue in any way?” The answer will likely be “no”, so you will be able to choose new patterns of behavior that are more self-supportive.
Every aspect of you has an underlying Loving motivation; every part of yourself that has been judged as ‘bad’ was really just trying to either protect you or to get your needs met in some way. These motives are natural, normal and built-in methods for basic survival. By recognizing that these parts of your personality are the natural outcome of being raised in your particular environment, in your particular level of fear-based reality, with your particular set of irrational beliefs, you’ll be able to simply laugh and embrace each and every part of yourself as Ok and totally acceptable from the learning perspective.
Once you discover what has motivated your behaviors for each aspect, then you have the power to look at each part, identify the irrational beliefs that were motivating these behaviors, update the beliefs and clear the surrounding self-judgments. After the irrational beliefs have been updated and the judgment has been transmuted, your behaviors will naturally begin to shift, as there will no longer be a reason or a motivation in place for continuing that particular behavior. The new motivation for the new, updated pattern of behavior will reflect your highest, most rational, most empowering and Loving understanding, allowing you to fall into alignment with your Higher Self, to align yourself with the will of your soul. Upon doing so, you will become free.
Is there a part of yourself that still makes you cringe with shame, embarrassment or self-loathing? See if you can begin to look at that aspect with some lightness, begin to find the humor in it, maybe even laugh at yourself.
Maybe draw a funny picture of that part, or cut out a character that reminds you of that sub-personality. Make some jokes about this part of yourself. Laugh at your old, irrational thinking and patterns of behavior. However you go about bringing lightness to your process is Ok; I just encourage you to do it! Explore your own character fearlessly, with humor, diligence and commitment.
Bringing in the lightness helped me to be able to view my aspects with self-acceptance. Accepting all of my parts allowed for rapid healing and integration of my personality, leading me to completely transform my life in every way for the better. Now, I feel whole and complete, all parts of me are in alignment with the will of my soul, and I move forward in life with joy, authenticity and courage. If I can do it, you can do it. Say, “I am now viewing my aspects with lots of humor and lightness, laughing at myself whenever possible as I accept myself fully.”
Many Blessings of Joy and Vibrant Freedom
Action Step ~ Bring the energy of humor into the exploration of your disowned parts. Use laughter as a healing tool to help you accept the parts of yourself you’ve been suppressing and claim your strengths.
Declaration: “I am now seeing the humor in my various disowned aspects. I am now viewing these parts of my personality with lots of light and laughter. I accept myself fully and claim all my strengths.”