Kicking Shame To The Curb: Build A Judgment-Free Zone In Your Mind
Have you ever walked into a room full of people and immediately doubted your right to be there? Or stared at yourself in a dressing room, convinced you were looking into a funhouse mirror? Did you ever wonder if everyone around you could tell you were faking it (whatever “it” is), and that at any moment, they’d call you out as a phony?
It’s hard enough existing in the unforgiving public eye, let alone when we carry that punishing and often cruel perspective into our most private spaces. And I don’t just mean our houses — I mean our hearts, souls, minds, bodies, and spirits.
All the terrible thoughts we imagine people think about us and all the memories of people who were less-than-kind to us get gummed up in our brains, and before you know it, they’re part of us, seemingly forever. We just can’t shake them — and that’s the nastiest part about shame. We take those judgments and we invite them home with us, letting them live rent-free in our heads.
Well, I know you don’t need me to tell you that real estate is at a premium these days — especially mental real estate. So how do we give these freeloading negative thought patterns the boot and put them out of our minds for good?
Easier said than done... but worth doing? Absolutely.
We all have a figurative Garden of Eden within us — that place where we remain blissfully unaware of a gaze outside ourselves, where we are wonderfully and perfectly oblivious to the judgment of others. The nasty little voices in our heads (born of nasty little thoughts other people have shared with and about us) have not yet come knocking on the gates. It’s a place we knew well in early childhood, a place of peace, spontaneity, freedom and self-love.
So, if it is true that we have got to get ourselves back to the garden (wise words from Joni Mitchell), I can think of no better guide in the process than Dr. Emmett Miller, gifting us a return to innocence, validation, and love in his new guided meditation “Releasing Shame; Embracing Self-Worth.”
Am I a broken record? Can you tell how excited we all are to be partnering again with such an insightful, creative mind? (And egads, that voice! Our sound engineer calls it The Voice of Gawd...) I hope so — because this meditation is exactly what we all need for building up a cushion of protection and self-love for those times when we feel exposed, defeated, and humiliated. This release invites us to go back to a time when we gave no thought to other people’s opinions of us, when we were content to simply be in a world where, sometimes, existence itself is a wild and radical act.
When we let go of the mortifying judgments and finger-wagging we’ve experienced and imagined for ourselves, we have the opportunity to give our inner child a second chance — to give ourselves a hug, celebrate our intrinsic value, and lift ourselves out of fear, self-doubt, and shame.
We deserve a little sunlight now and then.
All best,
BR and the HJ team
