This was clearly an interesting week for me. I definitely had some wonderful “Inner Vixen” moments this week. I sailed across the floor, boa in hand, grooving to my favorite Hip Hop teacher, Johnny P’s, awesome choreography, feeling like “MTV, watch out!” I loved being back in class with my belly dance goddess of all time Francesca.

But on the other hand, five fingers, I saw myself up against my resistance as well.  I definitely backtracked into unconscious eating, not giving myself the amount of sleep that really serves me, “forgetting” my morning ritual which fuels me in so many ways and a few other habits that will clearly keep me at the “status-NO.” No, I’m not going to get where I want to go, if I continue these behaviors.

Really feeling stuck at the wall of resistance, I decided to sleep on it, and literally before I went to bed, asked my inner guide/my subconscious to reveal my next layer of healing. I awoke from a very interesting dream, where my fear was this scared little five-year-old, flaxen blonde hair, white playsuit with pink sneakers. In the dream, she just kept saying, “I’m not bad, I’m just scared. Love me and I’ll work with you.” I woke up with this quiet, peaceful glow in my heart, and the wisdom (different from knowledge) of how important it is to have compassion toward the part of us, that is afraid of moving on, and letting go. During the week, I decided to stop and breathe more, focus on all my life’s blessings, and honor this child. When I felt myself starting to grab for extra food, or do more work instead of going to sleep, I’d stop and say, (yes I self-dialogue all the time, and it’s made an enormous difference for me), “Sweetie, what do you need right now, how can I help you?,” and the need to numb out with food or other behavior, faded.

It’s so easy to be at war, fighting with that part of us that is scared to move forward. Even easier, to simply throw up our hands and resign ourselves to defeat; neither one is very effective or life affirming. So for this week, I suggest, a question, “How can you show more compassion to that scared-to-move-forward part?” “How can you get better acquainted with that part and, perhaps, start to see it as a scared child who doesn’t know better?”

We are often afraid (I know I certainly was) that if we “accept and love that part,” then we’ll keep giving ourselves license to continue negative behaviors. In stark contrast, I find that the more we embrace, learn, get to understand that part, and stay in dialogue, the more compassion we have for ourselves; the more consciously we can act on what we really want and need in order to move forward in our lives. It’s very much like how a loving parent deals with a scared child, you comfort it, try hard to understand its needs and coax it in the right direction. You avoid ridiculing the child or trying to change its mind. Most of all, you don’t fasten it into the driver’s seat when it comes to making the important choices in your life.

I would LOVE, LOVE, LOVE, to hear from people, whether it’s the nature of your project, or any of these ideas that may resonate with you, your victories/challenges, the whole shebang.

Starting next week, I’ll be launching the 5-week kaizen process as it speaks to the Completion Initiative.