A dear friend got very intrigued about opening a frozen yogurt shop in her small town. She did the research, got her husband on board, looked for locations, and choked just before she made the complete investment in this new business, and turned to her tried and true connection, her animal friends. Her husband dreams of being a semi-truck driver because he wants the freedom from supporting the family financially. He wants to get on the road and travel. Be away from bosses, and work obligations. Neither has reached the point where they are so hungry for happiness and success that they have found a way to change.
Two of my neighbors really want to be svelte and gorgeous. They struggle with their weight and their diet. One neighbor has been in a relationship that has been on again, off again during the whole time I known her. She describes that relationship as both very supportive and very abusive. She too threw herself into the relationship with her wonderful dog, until that dog passed away. Her new dog has challenged her to the max.
My son broke up with his girlfriend in December, and she immediately started dating a male friend with whom she had been dancing in a play. In January, he got laid off by the tech company in which he had invested 60 – 80 hours weeks. He was so tired and discouraged that he needed nine months to recover physically, before he could look for a new job and a new relationship. During that time, he was able to get clear. He wanted to move from the very small town in Vermont, be in a larger place where he would have opportunities to meet new friends and new work opportunities and not see his ex-girlfriends every time he went downtown.
He was exceedingly hungry for change. It came out of the adversity of his life. It made him hungry for happiness. Hungry for a different kind of success.
It took time. He took the time to focus on his food, and lose weight. He began to change his image. Imagine a 30-something male taking time to develop a hairstyle, skin regimens, and go through his wardrobe to really look his best. It was so fun to watch. And grueling for him. There was no guarantee any of it would pay off during his nine-months of not knowing what he would do next.
He now lives in Manhattan, across the street from where he works, on a less trafficked street where there is not as much noise. That’s important because he is a one of those people who has sleep issues. He’s got a job that he got easily. It came out of his hunger for change, and taking inspired actions. His hunger for success that wouldn’t hurt him and his body propelled him into living in a new way, and it has been amazing to watch.
I too am very hungry for change. I got very sick during the last five months. Lost my autonomy. My daughter had to come live with me, drive me everywhere, do grocery shopping, cook for me, do my laundry. And that is hard on our relationship. It scared me deeply. My huge hunger for my autonomy has propelled me to take longer and longer walks to build up my strength, and climb stairs. It has made me hungry to fix my own meals in the morning, which might be gluten free toast and eggs. It has made me hungry to really change my life core deep pattern that I have been carrying.
I was reading my September journal recently, and was blown away to see an entry where I was just so angry with so many things, and my guidance (to whom I was writing) said “well, you may just need to really experience being a victim, to really get this.” What?
My coach who has been working with me to help overcome life-long patterns and beliefs helped me identify that my core life pattern has been based on being a victim to circumstances, especially circumstances that I was born into. Circumstances that create survival and contracting. In January, my coach was asking me a really hard question. “Why are you not being able to drop this victim identification? You have cleaned up so many patterns, what is it that is still stuck?”
Grappling with that question really helped me understand how I got into this current health situation. I am a super-sensitive person. That gives me some wonderful strengths. It also makes me vulnerable to what other people think of me. Because of this I have had some really challenging times doing what is in my own best interests, and instead try to do what is expected of me. Here where I live, and with my pet-sitting clients that became particularly hard in October, when a client wanted to leave her brain-damaged husband in my care. I was able to state my concerns, but she left without getting them resolved. The result was that I needed to intervene with his family and then I got ill as a result. I was supersensitive, tried to be too nice, and didn’t take care of myself. So I created a circumstance where I got to live out once again being a victim to circumstance and learned the huge consequence to my health.
Now; from a much bigger (dragon’s eye view) perspective; I see that I got myself into a situation where I really became hungry enough to burst out of this major life identification, and I chose to get ill so that I could build the hunger deep enough to propel me past the blocks, past the reluctance to change that status quo, past all the gobbledygook that my small self throws out, and past all the resistance that would come up when I tried to change this core life issue.
Simultaneously that Universe gave me the opportunity to understand better how I got into this life-long pattern of being on the Victim, Perpetrator, Rescuer platform, where most of humanity hangs out. And how this Highly Sensitive Person Syndrome (surviving when the world overwhelms you) and my Active Alert Temperament are all related and have set up my body for this autoimmune condition I have been experiencing once again. I wrote a blog entry in 2016 called Resolve where I publicly resolve to change this core pattern and look at these temperament characteristics. That was just as I was beginning work with my coach. Finding that blog entry is another sign. Looking for Signs from the Universe is so important. Thank heavens I can finally have some larger perspective.
Because I was so hungry and driven to be able to answer my coach’s questions, I serendipitously ran across the book “The Deepest Well: Healing The Long-Term Effects of Childhood Adversity.” I needed to understand why I was having so much trouble. I like knowing. That birthed my last Post called Success and Acute Childhood Adversity.”
Knowing this research about Acute Childhood Trauma is a huge missing piece about the human condition and about my human and body condition. In the reviews on Amazon, there were a number of people who couldn’t read or listen to the book because the research did not make them hopeful, nor was there a lot of practical guidance about coping. But in the one of the five star reviews, writer and counselor Lucille Zimmerman who has done her own five years of research with this group wrote “Trauma can be the springboard that catapults people into higher and better ways of functioning than before. In spite of the pain and suffering, the trauma actually ends up giving some people an advantage in life.”
It actually can give you the huge hunger to change your life. When you are hungry to change, you can go past the barriers of self-doubt, and old ways of seeing and believing. It can give you the huge motivation to go beyond your deepest resistance.
It took me three years to get hungry enough to change my diet in a major way. I dropped sugar and alcohol, and other inflammation producing foods like dairy. And it has been pretty easy to stay on that plan, because the hunger for health and wellness was way bigger than the value of what I would get by having a piece of strawberry shortcake.
What is it that you are really hungry for? Hunger gives you a Burning Desire. Hunger gives you a Burning Goal. Your own largest self is calling you. It’s telling you what you are ready to do next. Looking for success for most of us is really looking for ways to be happy, and ways to step into our strengths and our best and largest ways of contributing. I am here to tell you that your own guidance and intuition is always there supporting you to find your way into your larger growth.
Sometimes we can’t hear the message, because our vision of ourselves has shrunk. And that might be a reason to reach out to someone like a coach who can hold the larger vision of you, help you see the bigger picture, and help you translate your hunger into an inspired action plan. We’ll talk about that in an upcoming blog. For today, you can ask the question of yourself, what is it that I am really hungry for?
Am I hungry for hope, am I hungry for the job of my dreams, and am I hungry for connection to deal with this immense loneliness that I feel inside? Am I hungry to have financial success because I am drowning in debt? Am I hungry to have the freedom to live my life the way I want, and it’s hard to be a parent, or have a partner or a family that I am having to support? Am I hungry to be healthy because I have chronic conditions like diabetes, asthma, chronic fatigue syndrome, heart conditions or something that is really debilitating my ability to enjoy my life? Am I hungry to express my creativity through art, painting, singing, sculpture, dancing, pottery, or some other way such as writing?
We are in times of change. Our hunger can tell us the direction of the change we are moving in. It can give us the powerful intention and motivation to change and be a success.
