Aspire Magazine: Inspiration for a Woman's Soul.(TM) April/May 2017 Aspire Mag Full Issue | Page 55
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#3: You have an acquaintance that you simply
cannot stand. She gets on your nerves and
really ticks you off nearly every time you see
her because she is incredibly self-confident.
She clearly loves herself a LOT and thinks
everything she does is valuable and
worthwhile, and this really gets your goat….
you judge her because she isn’t modest
enough; you are the model of modesty
and downplaying your brilliance, and your
criticism of this self-confident acquaintance
plays over and over in your head.
Any of this sound familiar?
Each of these 3 situations are examples of
the Shadow at work, and each and every
human being on this planet has got Shadow
energies running through them.
The Shadow—first coined Carl Jung—
are the parts of ourselves that we don’t
consciously identify with. They are the parts
of ourselves that we have either rejected or
not recognized altogether because they are
unacceptable or shameful or not allowed.
We decided that these parts were unsavory
and unwanted at a very young age.
For example, let’s say that you grew up with
a Father who was constantly overworking
and you felt really neglected and unseen
as a kid... you might decide that being
...your Shadow
contains natural,
normal and vital
parts of yourself
that you decided
at a very young
age you would
NEVER be.
meeting with her unprepared. Or somehow,
you stay out way too late the night before
your first meeting and show up exhausted.
It’s as if your entire life you were a hyper-
responsible person and then at the exact
wrong moment your inner Lazy Sloth
abruptly came out to sabotage you.
Ambitious is “bad” and so you stuff your
ambition down deep inside of you so that
you can always be present for your own kids.
The problem though is that your ambition
still exists somewhere inside of you, and
you end up feeling unfulfilled in your career.
Or perhaps when you were younger your
Father couldn’t hold down a job. And the
family was always stressed out because
of it and at risk for bankruptcy. If that’s the
case, you may have decided at a young age
that that laziness was “bad” and that there
was no part of you that was ever going to be
irresponsible. To be vigilant about this, you
swept any impulses to relax and have space
under the rug and became hyper-responsible.
So much so that your responsible nature gets
in the way of you having time for yourself,
and taking pleasure in life.
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