My Biggest lesson last year – Reclaiming one’s agency

If you had a tough time this past year, could it be that you are letting go of the same beast that I’ve been wresting this past year? This is a beast that is easy to see in others. Virtually impossible to see in oneself. This is about reclaiming your power and your agency and letting go of “Poor me, this isn’t fair!”

2018 was the “year of the fire” for me. A year ago my house nearly burnt down and this whole year stretched out into one long painful wrestle with authorities who felt I had been negligent for not checking what kind of light bulbs a professional Swiss electrical team had installed in my cupboards. It was incredibly tough going, particularly with the language barrier. I felt deeply and wrongly judged, but today I feel blessed for all that happened because in the process I was able to see and let go of a shadow I may never have seen otherwise. The entire year was full of master teachers. From my perspective, it felt like I was being continuously regressed to earlier developmental stages, each event giving me another taste of the enormous cost of “poor me this isn’t fair!”

I probably would not have been able to see this, and cut myself free, had it not been for

researching my ancestors, prior training thanks to a course I had hosted, plus mentors and brutally honest friends. This helped me see that much of what was going on wasn’t about now at all. It wasn’t even about early childhood, but something far older. The evolution of Self, of family and our human lineage.

Some days after arguing with the building insurance and blaming them for blaming me, I would have to spend an entire day walking in the forest to get my power back. And then the next day I’d be back to square one. Each time giving me another opportunity to see the beast I was feeding.

Incredible also to witness how divinely orchestrated everything is that happens to each of us. That “life happens for you, not to you.” It is just such a divinely delicious cosmic joke: how every person who shows up in your life is a perfect mirror teaching you something profound. And how important it is to suspend judgement and be fully present with whatever is arising. All feelings are fuel. But can we learn how to shift gears and entrain a more joyful speed without our older survival brain throwing a spanner in the works? This is how we reclaim our power. Not with a whimper but a whoopee!

A shorter version of this story was first published in Living Now magazine.