Spring: Time for Self-Improvement

Do you really want to look back on your life and see how wonderful it could have been had you not been afraid to live it?
–Caroline Myss

I seem to be having a bit of a mid-life crisis. But, “You are not that old!”, you say? Well, thank you. And the people in my family don’t live to be very old, so, I kinda am.

I decided I needed some self-improvement in my life.

All at the same time, I started:

1. Taking St. John’s Wort supplements to balance my mood.
2. Reading a book called Warrior Goddess Training by HeatherAsh Amara
3. Reading a book called Self Talk, Soul Talk by Jennifer Rothschild

Mood Enhancers: I think I forgot to add the caffeine…

I read the books at the same time because although Rothschild’s book is based in Christianity and Amara’s book is based in Shamanism, they cover similar territory.

Self Talk, Soul Talk explains that even if you are only calling yourself an “idiot” silently in your own head, you will eventually begin to believe it. Part One of her book helps you to identify the bad thoughts in your “thought closet” as she refers to it. OK. Check. Lots of badness in there.

Part Two of her book is broken into seven things that you should tell your soul. Her section on “hope” explained it in a way I don’t think I have ever thought of it before. I underlined passages as I read, and the book might work better that way for me. To go back and just review key passages, instead of trying to make sense of a whole chapter at a time. This isn’t a bash against her book or writing style, it is the fight in me trying to resist change.

Warrior Goddess Training was more interesting to me because the information was being presented to me in a new way. While I have never attended a Sunday church service regularly, I have grown up for decades in the USA where I have been surrounded by Christian ideals every day that I have always failed to fully understand. Warrior Goddess Training is based on ancient Toltec tradition. The book is divided into ten lessons where you find your True Warrior Goddess self by accepting how you are instead of feeling bad about it. “Our deepest healing occurs when we learn to be our own best friend, companion, and cheerleader,” Amara writes.

Amara discusses how there are three parts to yourself: your judge self, your victim self, and your Warrior Goddess self, who sometimes just has to tell the other two to shut the f’ up. (I’m paraphrasing, of course.) There was an activity in the book where the reader was asked to rewrite the old stories from your past that you keep telling yourself, but that are no longer true. I found that exercise pretty helpful.

“When you open your heart to yourself, quirks and all, you change the world.”
–HeatherAsh Amara, Warrior Goddess Training

Both books lost me when they tried to tie their ideas to a religious/ideological framework. Rothschild used tiny phrases from the Bible to illustrate her points. While they were nice, I am always skeptical if you can’t even cite an entire sentence to illustrate your thoughts. It is easy to take things out of context that way. That is how all the political ads words on TV come election time.

While I liked the positive sentiments in both books, at the end of the day they both didn’t sit right with me. Self Talk, Soul Talk says to me that I have no control over my life, because it is all God’s plan. In Warrior Goddess Training, it states: A Warrior Goddess does not try to control life or even understand it. Our job is to consciously choose what we are aligning with and then let go…

I must be a control freak, because if I can’t have control of my life, then why am I here on this planet at all? And it goes against what I believe about the Law of Attraction, that you can bring the things you want to you. I have lived and seen that for myself. Not always, but enough to believe.

So, I now know what good stuff I should be putting into my mind and heart, but I still haven’t changed my thought processes to make those things my default. I also haven’t cleaned out the old junky stuff that is bothering me. I think I would benefit from reading the books again, individually. Maybe then the information would sink in better.

I think, overall, the St. John’s Wort has been most effective. Mostly because I can’t remember to change my thinking many times a day, but I can remember to take a pill three times a day. And, you know, there is always the placebo effect…

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