What to Do When Life Challenges Us
Lisa McDonald is an Artist, Wellbeing Coach, and Kundalini Energy Healer delivering workshops, retreats and healing online and in the far north of Scotland, in her business name of Haven House Art. Read this personal account of her healing journey and how she moved out of victim mentality towards a growth mindset to transform her life.
Life isn’t easy is it? If you are anything like I was, you seem to swing from one challenge to the next. I remember when I was just starting out on my healing journey in my early twenties, and was just becoming aware of my ‘self’, all the challenges seemed to come at me at once. I can’t ever remember being on an even keel at that age. Not only was I bouncing from relationship to relationship and from job to job, but I was being heavily affected by other people’s problems and issues too.
I was ricocheting from one event to the next, creating havoc, and attracting it too. I used to think that life was so unkind. Why wasn’t life bringing me my dream partner, or my perfect job? Why was everyone so consumed with themselves to not notice me? Why did my parents have to split up when I was 17? Why was I always broke? Not only would I think these thoughts, but I would act on them too, mostly impulsively, and I ended up self harming, just because I didn’t know what else to do with all the pain I was feeling.
I was stuck. Well and truly stuck in a mindset that believed that everything was happening to me, that I was a victim of circumstance.
But that was the mind. My soul, my inner guidance, my higher self was telling me otherwise. There has always been a little light within me, as I am sure there is within you, telling me that life could be better, that I will get better, and thankfully that guidance got louder. The more I tuned out from the noise of the mind, the more I could listen to the nudges of my higher self. I started reading self-help books, repeating affirmations throughout the day, doing meditations, spending time in nature, and I started to practise yoga.
Anyone on a healing journey will tell you that the changes don’t happen overnight, and yes, there will be slip ups and deviations, but persistence is key. Slowly but surely, you release all of the false narratives that you inherited, or learned, and layer by layer more truth is revealed. I have always believed that healing is not something that we acquire, it is something revealed. The more we let go of the false beliefs, the automatic behaviours, the habits, the thought patterns, the more we heal.
Healing is not a striving to get somewhere, it is a becoming, an evolution into fullness, and a greater connection with our higher selves.
One of the main catalysts to my healing journey was the realisation that life wasn’t against me, but was in fact for me. Everything that was showing up in my reality was a gift for growth, even though it often felt far from it. Once I truly grasped that, my mindset began to change, and my healing journey accelerated. Every challenge that presented itself I began to see as a sign from my higher self of where I still needed to discard a thought, a habit or a belief, or sometimes the challenge would invite me to seek external support, to shift a blockage, or do something physical that would enable my body to heal.
I was diagnosed with endometriosis in my mid-thirties, for instance. I sat in that energy for a couple of years, reeling with both the very physical pain, but also the emotional pain too of not being able to conceive a child, which I can honestly say is the hardest pain I have ever felt. I would still be in that vibration and in that pain to this day, if the light of my highest self hadn’t come knocking on the door, like it always does, and invited me to step out of my misery and continue my journey onwards and upwards to greater healing.
First, I was guided to clean up my diet, then to do a heavy metal detox, and to ditch chemicals from household cleaning products, and personal hygiene products. But THE most important work in my healing was the emotional delving that I was guided to do. What was infertility teaching me? When I started to dig, I discovered that it had so much to teach me. I could write an entire article on that alone (maybe one day I will) but the most important thing was love. Where in my life was I not showing up for myself with love? There I was, waiting for a child to throw all of my love onto, but I wasn’t allowing the love into myself. I wasn’t allowing all of the love of the universe in, because I was in so much pain. My heart was constricted, and blocked.
I had been wallowing in self-pity for years, all of my life in fact, thinking and believing I was a victim of circumstance, that life was out to get me. Life showed me, however, in those moments of healing that amidst my greatest pain, was my greatest blessing, and that realisation in itself cracked my heart wide open, and allowed the love to pour in. So much so, in fact, that a short while later I experienced a spontaneous Kundalini Awakening, that is now very active to this day. This awakening has purged me even more, and awakened the ability within me to feel people’s auras and be able to release blockages in other people’s bodies, which I do in Energy Healing sessions.
But I say this with my whole heart, I would not be here today, doing what I do, if I hadn’t allowed love to enter. I invite you to do that too. Bring a current challenge to mind, something that you can’t seem to move past.
Where are you still carrying the victim mentality with this issue?
How can you see this challenge/illness/circumstance as an opportunity for growth?
Are there any thought patterns, or relationships that are no longer serving you?
Are you being guided to seek external help?
What changes do you need to make in your life to enable more healing?
What mindset are you holding onto that you can now release?
Every single thing can take us higher towards our calling, to greater connection with all aspects of ourselves, including a greater consciousness - if we allow it.
It’s our minds that block the progression, by falling into victimhood, and by pointing the finger externally. Every challenge is an opportunity for growth, we just need to choose growth, and choose it with our whole being, then the path shows itself to us, and we step more fully into all that we are meant to be.
It’s time..Time to step out of believing that life is out to get you, and time to come home to the truth that life is working for you.
I wish you well on your journey, wherever it may take you.
You can find and connect with Lisa at Haven House Art.
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