If you are a woman, your road to prosperity and success may not be paved with gold, but with guilt. As a girl, you absorbed hidden beliefs that now work underground to sabotage your adult capacity to manifest yours dreams.
These Inner Enemies are the opposite of the elves who helped the shoemaker in the Grimm’s fairy tale. These gremlins undo what you do, invalidate the importance of what you want to do and pull some nasty tricks to get you out of the path to your dreams.
In my FlightDream online course (http://www.catchthedreamexpress.com/flightdream_course.htm), as well as in my FlightDream live workshop (http://www.catchthedreamexpress.com/flightdream-workshop-presenters.htm), I help women address 6 common roadblocks to women's prosperity and success and to discover their self-sabotage MOs.
In this article, I present some of these MOs using the fairy tales that lull you to sleep as a girl. They may reveal other, more hidden ways, in which you were lull to sleep in regards to your own power as a woman and your right to prosper.
Take a pencil and check how many of these MOs are sabotaging your success right now, and to what degree. Each category has three items.
The Ugly Duckling
1. You are a beautiful Swan, but you feel like the Ugly Duckling. You have a hard time trusting your flight or your grace.
2. You have issues with your body, dancing, grace and beauty.
3. The thought of someone evaluating you triggers terrible anxiety.
If this is your MO, your best strategy is to cultivate your talents and skills while surrounding yourself with mentors and peers that support and strengthen your self-esteem. 40-day ceremonies focusing on discovering, nurturing and expressing specific talents and graces can have powerful effects. Work on letting go of self-judgment. Use dance, movement and performance to reclaim your grace.
Cinderella
1. You are tortured by a need to give more and more and a sense that nothing you give is enough.
2. You try to make yourself indispensable. In the process, you train others to devalue your gifts and take you for granted.
3. You do for others what you don't do for yourself.
If this is your MO, join some coaching or support program that offers you specific self-cultivation projects. Slowly let go of the things you do for others to make room for yourself. I recommend two art forms: dance or acting to shine and become the diva hidden inside your Cinderella, and something quiet, just for yourself, like writing or ceramics.
Little Orphan Annie
1. You will do anything NOT to be alone with yourself, not to feel yourself or face your personal truth. You've had one boyfriend after the other, one heartbreak after the other, but you have not stopped to feel your broken heart.
2. You are at a loss on how to deal with the pent up emotions you have collected all your life, and constantly avoid them. Unfortunately, this repression is drowning your voice.
3. When you give yourself time and space, you feel guilty. You feel that you are wasting time. You feel that being self-centered is selfish. You wind up being other-centered.
If this is your MO, you must stop running, turn around and face yourself. There may be secrets or issues you are trying to cover up. Seek therapy and Soul healing. Join a support group that gives you the space to express yourself and doesn’t let you get away with hiding. Use journal writing and visual arts to place yourself in the center of your life
Sleeping Beauty
1. You fear a hostile world and expect rejection. This hampers your ability to take risks or place your offering out there to the world.
2. You withdraw your voice, your essence and your true self from the world, so as not to be rejected, mocked or hurt. Few people know the real you.
3. You often steal your voice and find excuses to justify why you did not talk. Or you talk about others and for others, but not to ask for help or express your true being.
If this is your MO, implement a focused, step by step strategy to come out of hiding. Begin with easier things and graduate to the hardest. Make a list of all your dreams and goals. Track down the beliefs, fears and self-sabotage actions that have stolen them. Create counter-actions. Let’s say you chicken out at the last minute. Then create an action where you save all your energy and courage to leap at the last minute. Singing, dancing or poetry writing may be the path for you.
The Beauty and the Beast
You secretly feel that you are not enough. This makes your feel powerless. You boost a false sense of power by “being in control” and by “making things” happen. You need to proof yourself.
2. You may believe that you thrive in crisis, but this may be part of your addictive spiral. You create chaos because you need to control everything and end up not controlling anything.
3. You may surround yourself with incompetent people so that you end up doing all their work and feeling superior.
If this is your MO, you need to let go of control. The core issue in addiction is usually an illusion of control that covers a feeling of being out of control. When you leave your home every morning, be conscious that with each step you take, you are falling into mystery. Practice deep breathing and concentrate on the exhalation as you let go of tension and of your need to control. Practice a movement meditation such as Sufi dancing or Tai Chi. Practice the art of listening.
We often blame lack of money, skills or opportunities for our failure to thrive. But emotional and spiritual issues run deep in your woman’s psyche, and they may be at the bottom of the difficulties you are facing with success and prosperity. Do not despair or badger yourself. Inside each wound, your authentic power awaits. When you heal these broken places, they will become your strongest places.
1042 words
PBS-featured artist-shaman
María Mar has helped thousands of women in the USA, South Africa, Mexico
and other countries to release limitations and fly into their dream. She is
a performer, writer, visual artist and shaman with more than 30 years of
professional experience using art for personal growth and women's
empowerment. Maria is an artist-alchemist who integrates visual art,
literature and performance to create interactive art experiences that change
peoples' lives. She offers life coaching, eproducts, books, lectures and live art events.
Visit her at:
http://www.catchthedreamexpress.com.
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