The only person you will be with all your life is you. Lockdown has meant that you have been able to spend more time with yourself. How do you feel about that? How have you responded to that? What I have noticed from recent conversations with clients and others is that many have found themselves on the Yellow-Violet continuum. Let me explain what I mean.
The Yellow-Violet continuum
Violet is often a place you go to when you experience deep depression, loss and grief. We can see how that’s playing out as people lose their livelihood, see their income reduced or are made redundant; they can feel poleaxed by the changes that are forced on them. As I shared in the first of my 10 heart connection top ups last week, every life however average you consider it be experiences heart break. I define heartbreak as being forced to let go of something before you are ready to do so. How many of us have been in that place at some time in our lives?
The other phenomenon I have observed is more of a Yellow one. Is this you – frantically busy? Too busy even to stop and tune in for thirty minutes a week never mind each day. Perhaps you feel under the cosh because you have to meet big commitments like earning the money needed to pay for your children’s education or to cover your mortgage. And such is the pressure that you are not aware of the price you are paying. Living life at full throttle prevents you the space to even connect to yourself and what matters to you.
Here’s the thing when you die no one is going to check your record to see how your consultancy skills made an organisation more efficient or profitable. Busyness is a form of distraction that stops you spending time alone. You can be so focused on meeting your targets that there is no time to experience who you are becoming. Likewise if you are in Violet you may be spending a great deal of time alone with your grief but feeling swamped by it, overwhelmed even.
If we dig a little deeper the busy person is often being propelled by fear and is working with an underlying assumption: as long as I am distracted then I don’t have to face my feelings. Whilst the person in grief may well attempt to numb their feelings because they are not yet ready to come to acceptance with what is.
Your essence is revealed in every moment
In both cases what is needed as a willingness to be open to intimacy with your self. What does that even mean? In every moment of every day you are revealing yourself consciously or unconsciously to others and to your self through your words and actions. What is said or not said.
Putting it another way, think about how much time you spend cultivating a persona which is acceptable to others. That takes up a lot of energy and is exhausting. What if you just dropped the mask and showed your self as you are, full of flaws and imperfections?
Intimacy comes through revealing secrets
I will let you in on a secret, which is the first step to intimacy, and reveal more of myself in the process. Earlier this week I woke up feeling exhausted. I realised that it was a gift, a wake up call. It was the cost of spending so much time communicating with others and not enough time with myself so I changed tack and slowed down. The irony was that I then had lots more ideas on how to deal with a particular challenge I was facing.
In colour terms there is a link between vulnerability which comes when you soften and reveal what’s happening on the inside; and creativity. Another way of phrasing that is to lean into your feminine. Just to be with what is showing up rather than pushing to get a specific result. The colour it relates to is Coral.
Recently I have been talking about that with my clients a lot – getting them to consider how to access more of their femininity. We get a clue about how to do that when we look at the colours that make up Coral – Yellow and Pink.
Why Coral provides the antidote
Yellow tends to represent stress, fear, anxiety and the ego. If the mind had a colour it would be Yellow. The positive aspect of all this is that there is a lot of drive and focus but the mental energy can be exhausting when it is going at full throttle. It needs to be softened by Pink, which represents the ultimate in femininity. Power in Pink comes from an innate knowing that presence can speak a thousand words. There is a subtlety with Pink and this softer energy is much more about being. This allows you to peel away your ego gently and reveal your inner genius. When you stop escaping intimacy because you are no longer scared of your self, you also discover your true purpose.
As a result of these reflections I am going to be exploring Coral more deeply in next week’s heart connection top up as a way to help participants to tap more into their feminine. As femininity is about being, whether you tune in next Wednesday or not, you may wish to consider the following questions as they could be the key to accessing more of your feminine and ultimately pay dividends:
- How much time do you spend alone?
- How do you feel about solitude?
- How do you feel about intimacy?
And I would love to know what comes out of your reflections. Do get in touch if you want to share them with me.