Latest / Energy With Alex / 5. Wherever You Go, There You Are: Breaking the Patterns That Follow You
Transcript
- Alex Williams: Hello and welcome to another episode of the Energy with Alex podcast. I'm Alex, your host, and this is your space to romanticize your life so that you can drop into the present moment and find magic in every single day. This is also a place you can always come to for honest truths and deep conversations and a lot of fun too. I am so excited to have you here. Let's get started. Hello everyone. Welcome back to another episode. I hope you have all had a wonderful week and have had a lot of magic and beautiful things going on in your life. For me, it's been a really great week. I spent a lot of time with my puppy. She's on my lap right now, like she was on the very first episode. Hopefully she doesn't bark like she did last time, but I'm going to give her another chance and see. what else has been going on? I ran my first 10k distance, which is so exciting. I did it in an hour and 22 minutes. So there's a lot of room for improvement, but I honestly just a few months ago never thought that that was even possible for me to do. And so the fact that on just a random Saturday morning I can just go off and run 6.2 miles is crazy. Crazy to me, and I'm extremely proud. So hopefully, you can take a moment to think about something you did this week that really brought pride within yourself. And then what else has been going on? I started the second Crescent City series or second book in the series, and I can already tell it's gonna be a banger. Taylor Swift came out with some new music, so I've been listening to that a ton. It's just been a fun week. Fun week with music and books and to exercise and all of that good stuff. So that's what's going on with me. And today I want to talk about a phrase. So this is kind of like a more personal episode because I want to dive into the phrase, wherever you go, there you are. I don't know who said that phrase originally, but I have seen a lot of people. say it and it has really spoken to me and it has become a big lesson that I've learned in my own life. And so I kind of want to talk about how I've learned that lesson within myself, how I've embodied the lessons that I've learned from it. And hopefully you can you can see something within yourself here too and and take something away from it. So wherever you go, there you are. This is the idea that When you try to make change within yourself, oftentimes what humans end up doing, what we end up doing, is we try to change the external first, hoping that that will change the patterns, the cycles, the different things that are going on within us. And we're hoping by changing where we live or our relationship or what we need to buy in order to gain XYZ. So it's like we think we need something physical or external. And that in turn is going to be what actually changes us. And what we so often find is in this phrase wherever you go, there you are. So you could literally move Across the world, spoiler alert, this is where I'm going. you could literally move across the world and still find there you are. There you are with all of what's been going on internally. If you don't take the time to meet with it and to really create love for it and understanding and work on somatically releasing it, then it's going to follow you. Wherever you go. And that is what happened to me. So if you haven't heard the very first episode that I put out, which was, I believe, titled My Journey from Religious Control to Spiritual Freedom, that talks about my original journey as a Jehovah's Witness. And I left that religion when I was 18 years old. what happened there is I took with me a lot of different religious traumas and identities that I took on and sadness and and just some hardship that I was holding within my body. And that caused a lot of negative cycles or self-sabotaging cycles to come about throughout the years. I really dove into that story on a grand scale. And so right now let's dive into one of those pieces in the timeline and just kind of explore that. when I left and I was a few years out, I was feeling all of this freedom because I for the first time wasn't being told exactly what I needed to do in order to gain acceptance from God. So I felt like, wow, I have this weight lifted off of my shoulders. And there's no one that's expecting anything from me. And there's no set of rules that I need to follow. Which the pros of that was just that feeling of freedom and that feeling of knowing that I can be whoever I want to be now. But the cons of that was nobody was expecting anything from me. Nobody was expecting me to. follow anything and I was no longer attached to this identity that I had held on to for so long. But I hadn't yet gotten comfortable enough with figuring out what do I believe in? Who really am I? what ended up happening is I kind of was in this wishy-washy state where I didn't quite know who I was, but I wasn't ready to meet with that fact head on. So I kind of fell into unhealthy vices or unhealthy for me. I really fell into like heavy drinking and partying and just self-sabotaging cycles, bad relationship patterns, and just letting those play out over and over and over again for quite a long time. And while this was happening, I was still living in my hometown. And I was running into people who were from my past these were people often that I had known since I was a child. And now it wasn't recommended that they speak to me. They weren't supposed to s to talk to me. You're not allowed to really have any like relationship with a person who has left the religion. And so I was feeling really hurt all the time. If I go to the grocery store and I run into somebody that I've known my whole life and We're no longer supposed to be even making eye contact or saying hello to each other, let alone have a conversation. That's a damaging thing to have to go through And on top of that, I still lived in the same hometown as all of my childhood friends that I loved so dearly and had such beautiful relationships with growing up. And that was severed as well because of me live leaving. And so it just all got to be too much. I then made the decision that I was gonna do something drastic and get out of my hometown and kind of experience things on my own. And so I decided to do something a little crazy and I moved to New Zealand by myself. And I decided to go there and get a working holiday visa. Which allows me to work and live in the country for up to a year go to a new town, experience backpacking and experience what it's like to just kind of be on my own and just not know anybody else in the country and just start from scratch. This was a really cool experience. Like just as a side note, if anyone is feeling like they Want that experience of pushing themselves out of their comfort zone and really meeting themselves in a deeper way than they ever have before. I cannot express to you how incredible solo traveling is. It is such an insane experience to land in a different city or a different country and realize that there is not one person in this entire city or this entire country. that knows who I am, that cares about me, that has my back. It's the most weird yet freeing experience because you realize like I've gotta have my back like nobody has ever had my back before because I'm the only one that knows me. And it's I can be whoever I want. And it's like this wild experience of just knowing that all of this adventure and opportunity and future connections are are there waiting for you and you just have to kind of live out every single day with this expectation and just knowing that you're about to be this magnet to all of these beautiful opportunities and people you would have never met if you hadn't of gotten on that plane and done this by yourself. That's another thing is going solo is so cool because we can become a little dependent on the people in our life. So if we go traveling with family or with friends, that's a whole nother amazing experience. But it is easy to kind of rely on each other and not push yourself out of your comfort zone and reach out to a group of people that look cool at a restaurant or a bar or an activity If you're going to book an activity, it's easy to just go with each other and not really reach out to other people. And so when you go solo, it's like you kind of have to because you'll just be by yourself if you don't reach out to someone. And that's sad. And so it kind of forces you to be the first one to reach out to someone and have the first conversation, say the first hellos, introduce yourself. So that was such an amazing experience. And I really did get to know myself more than I ever have, more than I ever had before. And I treasure that time of my life and that decision that I made so much. And also, I do believe in the duality of it all. And I can look back on that time with fondness for. The version of me that had that bravery to book that plane ticket and to apply for that visa and to actually go, even though some people thought I was crazy for doing that. So I can have appreciation for that version of myself and also be aware enough to know that while I was there, I was not the best version of myself that I could ever be. I really thought that by do doing something drastic like moving across the world I would find freedom from the toxic cycles that I was in, the relationship patterns, the drinking patterns, the partying, all of that. I really thought, this is my chance to start fresh and to get out of these anxious spirals that I would get into because of the decisions that I've made or the past that that is haunting me. And then when I got there, there was that excitement of something new, which is amazing. But as I started really living there and settling into there and especially living in a backpacking town that was so into just the party scene, I very quickly fell back into my old ways. And in some ways I even fell into it even deeper because I was there by myself and I didn't really have people in my life there that could be like, hey, I know that this isn't like you. I mean, nobody else knew any other version of myself except for the one I presented while I was there. And then, I started to feel the shame that comes from being like, man, I thought that if I got this thing or if I moved to this place. things would be different. And then maybe for a minute it does feel different because when you first get the thing or move to the place, you have that rush of dopamine and excitement and you start to feel like, okay, like things are really moving. And then the cycles begin and and things get hard again and things begin to recycle. And then you start to think, my gosh, I am back to how I was before. I thought that this was my time to shine. I thought this was my time for things to be different. And now it's not. What's wrong with me? And that's when the shame begins. And when you mix shame in with these self-sabotaging cycles, it only exuberates the entire situation and makes things worse. that was kind of the the cycle that I was in. I Then traveled to Southeast Asia after I was there. And I then got my visa to Australia and I was there for a year. And once again, it was incredible to be somewhere new, but I kept thinking like when I get to this next place, things are gonna change. When I get to this next place, things are really gonna change. And they didn't, unfortunately, because I kept trying to change the external. factors in my life, but I was not at a place in my life where I felt ready or safe enough to explore what was going on internally and to really figure out, take apart those layers and really see what is going on beneath me and these layers of self sabotage. The why. Why am I acting out this way? I didn't know and I I didn't take the time to get to know those parts of myself and why they were acting out the way that they were. Because as soon as they popped back up, I was letting shame take control instead of understanding, instead of love, instead of giving it the attention that it deserved. And so those parts of me were running the show and taking over and kind of having control over the decisions that I made. I moved back home things are okay for a minute I started thinking okay maybe it's just because I was backpacking so I didn't really have a home base so I was kind of floating around there so maybe that's why I wasn't the best version of myself. then my family decided they wanted to move. I was in California at the time they decided they wanted to move as a family to Georgia. In the United States. I then thought, that's it. That's what I have been missing. It's not the fact that I need to move somewhere far. It's the fact that I moved to all of these different places, but they weren't actually my home base. I wasn't there to stay. So I wasn't really grounded there and I didn't really have a home there. So it was hard to build, it was hard to really make lasting change. And so I'll move to Georgia with my family and I'll make that my home and everything's gonna be so much better. Got there, things were good for a minute. I stopped drinking for a while. I was feeling really good, really proud of myself. And then the cycles began again. I felt more discouraged than than I ever have before because I really believed that that move was going to be the thing that really changed things for me. what I think the main problem was that I was so focused on what was going on on the outside. This next relationship's going to change me. This next home is going to change me. This next job is going to be the job that finally gets me in order. And that wasn't ever going to be the thing that changes it. I mean, there are cases where maybe the home that you're in isn't safe or you're with people where you have a toxic relationship with, and you really do need to get out of that situation, and you will see change happen from just being out of something so toxic. We cannot put all of our attention into just that one external thing. if you say like I really hate the home that I live in, and that's the reason why my life is this way, and if I move, that's gonna solve everything. Or I've been having all of these horrible relationships and I know once I get into one that's healthy, I'll be healthy and I'll be able to stop these patterns. None of that is is actually true. It might help. There might be things in your life that really are bringing you down or not in alignment for you. You might actually have a a toxic job that is bringing you back a little bit for how much growth you're actually able to have. You might actually be in a relationship that is not for you, but you are going to find that or a I found that those patterns continued to find me over and over and over again, no matter when I got to that next external goal. And I think the biggest piece with that is when all of this was happening, I finally had to have that moment when I got to Georgia and things started back up again where I had to take a deep breath and think, my God, I am so tired of my own bullshit. I am so tired of it. How much longer am I going to allow myself to just fall back into the same routines? And this time it wasn't out of shame. Like I wasn't shaming myself. I wasn't even really judging myself. I was just tired. I was tired and I finally knew that I was better than this. I was meant for more than how I had been treating myself and the fact that I wasn't allowing myself to really be seen by myself. And the fact that I wasn't trusting myself, that was the biggest thing. When you continue to try to change things over and over again, and and you make these big grand promises to yourself and then and then we break them, we're breaking trust in ourselves. And that is one of the most toxic things that can be going on is if you don't trust yourself, it's going to be so hard to grow. And that's what I found is to me, a promise To myself no longer felt like a promise. I didn't really take it seriously. I didn't take my own words seriously when I made these promises to myself. And that over time really damages your relationship. I mean, it the same goes if you have a relationship with a partner or a friend. If you continue to break promises to them, you're going to really lose trust in that relationship and they're going to lose trust in you. And we need to be taking it just as seriously within ourselves. We need to make sure. That the relationship we have with ourselves, that trust is the highest value that we have. If we say we are going to do something, we have to follow through with it. And we also need to do it in a way that releases the all or nothing mindset. I really struggled with the all or nothing mindset because let's say I made a goal that I was going to move my body every single day that week. And then maybe two days in, I woke up late, slept past my alarm, and I didn't have time, then the all or nothing part of me would be like, Well, that's it. There's nothing I can do about it. I already stopped with my goal, so I'm not gonna try to move my body for the rest of the week. That's it. Well, actually, if I release some of that all or nothing pressure, let's say I do miss my alarm and I'm really running late. Maybe I don't have time for that 30 minute walk or that 45 minute strength training that I had planned or whatever it is that's on your agenda. Do you have time for five minutes? Can you just walk up and down your block for five minutes with a little intentionality? Do we have time to take a few deep breaths and stretch our body? Put on a two minute song as you get ready and just kind of let your arms move and your body move. Like there are other ways. To create trust in yourself if you can't do the big thing that you had planned. And let's say you do miss it altogether because life happens and we're not always gonna get it right and we're not always gonna be perfect. We don't have to throw the whole plan away. Start back up again the next day. Move your body right before bed instead of right when you wake up. There are changes that you can make and you can rebuild the trust within yourself by saying, Hey, I didn't get it completely right this time. But I am going to follow through with what I said, and I'm going to continue to build this trust because this is a relationship that I have, that I value, and so I'm going to follow through with what I said, even if it looks a little bit different than I originally wanted. And so that was my biggest part with this journey of figuring out that I have to change the internal before I can really. externally enjoy the things that are going on and so I had to rebuild the trust within myself and release the shame when things didn't go exactly how I wanted. So, how can we begin to meet parts within ourselves so we can start to focus on changing what's happening internally to kind of shift those self-sabotaging cycles? For me personally, when I had that moment of I am tired of this bullshit and I and I want to do something different, I found a therapist that I could really talk to about all of these past things that were still haunting me. And these stories that I was still holding on to. And there was a lot of power in finally using my voice and letting myself be heard. And I wanted to also pair it with something else because I didn't want to continually just talk about those stories without there being any sort of extra resolve to release them from me. Because I did start to have an understanding at that time that my body was really holding on to some past things. And so that's also when I started to mix. Therapy and Western medicine with energy healing, Reiki breath work was huge for me. And so I would have these stories that would come up maybe in a therapy session, maybe with a friend, and I would realize, like, wow, this is still really tender for me. And there's still a lot of pain attached to it. And then when I would do my next breath work session, I would set the intention that I want to allow myself to feel this. I wanna allow it to have some attention. And then I would let myself feel it as I breathed. And when you feel things, you're able to fully process them. And once they are processed, they can be released from your body. A little at a time even. But just having some of that weight be lifted off was so incredible because I was able to start to let go of all of these things that I was holding on to that was making me feel like kind of jaded towards the world because I was still holding on to so much pain and suffering and not actually taking control to release it. Another thing that I think is really important with energy healing is we can't shy away from the shadows within us. We talk about shadow work so much in this kind of work, and it is such an important piece because we aren't going to love every part of ourselves. That's just reality. There are going to be parts of ourselves that we're embarrassed about, or we feel shame around, or we feel pain around, or we know we've caused. Other people pain. I know when I dealt with my relationship patterns, I really had to come and bring to light the fact that a lot of those problems were because of me and the way I treated people and how how I acted when my cycles and patterns were really presenting themselves. And that's not a comfortable thing to come to light with, but it is so important because if we continue to push down our shadows and keep them in the dark. Then when they get triggered, they're going to take control over the situation and they're going to rear their head. And then you're going to be left there wondering when it's done, like, where did that come from? Why did I act that way? And you're gonna have to start with the apologies again or feel that shame again. so let's normalize the fact that there are parts of ourselves that we don't love let's bring some attention to them. Let's shine some light into the shadows and see what's hiding there in the corners and bring them to light. So I would do breath work and really try to meet different parts within myself, the parts that have really hurt me, the parts that have broken trust within myself, the parts that have hurt others, the parts that have acted in ways that the conscious healed version of me would never ever act out again. But it's how I acted before. And I I had to bring that to light because it is almost impossible to continue on in your most authentic, bright, beautiful version of yourself if you are still pushing down the most shameful parts. And so breath work was such an incredible tool here. Reiki was amazing. Somatic work is so important, you guys. Somatic work releases stuck energy from the body. And there are three pillars that releases stuck energy from the body. And that's through breath, through movement, and through sound. And so breath, we've got the breath work, we're moving it through. And then a lot of the somatic work comes through when we're moving our body or making noises, right? If there's that frustration of something that we can't let go of, can we scream into a pillow? Can we push? as hard as we can against a wall and let all of that pressure and all of that pain just come through and just begin to be released that way. Cause we can't always think it out of our way, right? We can't it's nice to set an intention and to breathe. And a lot of times that comes forward. But sometimes we're met with resistance in the breath and we don't actually want to push forward. And those might be the times where we need to really huff out the breath, make it loud, take up space, shake our body. Right? Animals do that. When things are stressful, they shake their body and it centers their nervous system and puts them back in a good space. So can we shake out the next time something is frustrating us? The next time we think, why am I still not able to change this part of myself? Why am I still holding on to this? Can we shake? Can we scream? Can we jump up and down? Can we move our body? It might feel silly, but that honestly is one of the best ways. To begin to change what is going on internally. And I say change, not in a way that you need to change things about yourself to be a better person. I'm saying we're able to change the patterns that are hurting us rather than helping us. The patterns that maybe we have continually been seeing played out over and over again, and we're tired of it, and we know that we are ready to live our life in a different way. And so that's how we can really start to shift the internal before we really focus on the external. We also want to get clear, filter our decisions of okay, when I do this, I'm doing it because blank. And I had to do that. When I try to move away I'm doing it because I'm trying to escape something. I thought, I mean, I do love to travel and I do I did have that travel bug, especially when I was younger, of wanting to explore new places. But there was a very clear distinction of when I was just trying to go explore and enjoy something beautiful and meet cool people. But there was also this underlying thing quite often when I would move somewhere else of desperation to escape something, to run away from something. And so whatever your pattern is, maybe it's you want to move on to another relationship or you want to. get another job or you want to move or you want to buy this next thing, oftentimes we don't quite realize the reason we're doing it. We might think it's because, I I need to do it because this is going to grant me happiness. But what's the underlying thing here? Are you actually trying to run away from something? Are you actually trying to escape something? And so getting clear on that, maybe doing some journaling with this pattern so you can kind of get used to it and just see it for what it is when you're not actually in it. Cause it can be really hard to see the pattern clearly when you're living it out. So if you're in a space right now where maybe you're feeling the feelings creep up or you're in a good spot right now, but you you don't feel like you fully closed that loop, then you can do a little journaling on that and be like, hey, I've noticed that when I start to get the urge to do XYZ, It might not just be because I love it. It might not just be because I want to get this thing. It might actually be because I'm running away from something that I have not allowed myself to fully see head on. Another thing that I love to do in these moments is morning pages. that comes from the book The Artist's Way. I'll have to look up who the author is. Let me look it real quick. The Artist Way by Julia Cameron. She believes that writing morning pages every morning, three pages of just a brain dump and seeing what comes through is really incredible. And her way, it's kind of to have this creativity start to flow through you. But I also think it's a beautiful tactic to use to just get everything out that's there for the day. And that way you can kind of see like what it is that's present. And huh, okay, I'm feeling a lot of shame today. I'm feeling a lot of stress today, anxiety, overwhelm. And maybe when you are feeling one of those things, that's when those patterns start to kind of come back out. But this time you're changing something. You're actually paying attention to it. You're giving it light, you're giving it attention. And if you have time, maybe you can bring in some of those tools, you can breathe. with whatever it is that's coming up, with whatever it is that you're feeling. You can move your body with it. maybe you do like for your movement that day, maybe you do a little bit extra cardio if there's like something that you're really trying to get out of your system before you go about your day, whatever it may be, I find that journaling is such a fantastic tool to kind of just see what's there and then figure out how you want to kind of move that through your body. So that's a story I wanted to share with you all today. Wherever you go, there you are. And I think what's so beautiful is when we do really start to come into trust within ourselves, the things that we do want, we gain so much clarity on if it's actually what we want and if it's actually the reason that we're going after the thing, maybe you have just been jumping from job to job to job. And maybe you really are unhappy in those jobs. But what's so cool is when you start to shift. The internal, you got start to get more clarity on what it is you actually do want. So maybe the next time you do move on to another job, it's one that is so much more aligned for you. It's one that feels like you're really doing something that you want to do. Or maybe when you do get another job offer, you can actually take the time and space to think, do I actually want to do this? Instead of just trying to run away to something new. I just find that so many new opportunities and connections come our way that are just so much more in alignment with what it is that we actually desire when we take the time to look internally first and clear out all of the gunk, all the stuff that's getting in the way, and we no longer feel like we have something that we need to run away from. So the things that we do actually gain externally are so much more intentional and they bring us so much more joy, and we really start to connect back with. the things that brought us joy when we were kids, the things that our higher self is leading us to. And I'm really excited to see what those things are for you and what patterns that you can break and begin a new cycle that feels beautiful and feels rich with purpose. And I'm excited to see where that takes you. And I'm excited to see where that takes me in this next journey. Now that I'm living in this home and I feel more grounded when I now travel. doesn't feel like I'm running away from something. It feels like just a beautiful opportunity to connect with myself or with my husband or with whoever it is that I'm traveling with. There's places to see. There's things that I can do when I'm there. And then I also know that I'm grounded within myself and if within my home base. And there's no longer something that I need to escape. And that's such a beautiful feeling. And it's allowed me to Find again my love for travel, but in a much more healthy, balanced way. so, whatever it is that you love, maybe you really do love travel as well, but you just need to shift the energy behind it, Thank you so much for listening. Please reach out. My Instagram is energy with Alex. If you ever want to chat, tell me what has resonated with you, a little bit about your story. And thank you for listening to pieces of mine. And I will talk to you all soon. Have a beautiful day. Bye. Thank you so much for tuning in to another episode of the Energy with Alex podcast. If you loved this conversation, it would mean so much if you could share it with your community and like, rate, and subscribe to the podcast so that I can continue having these incredible conversations every single week. I will see you next Thursday.