Are You Trapped By Your Own Rhetoric?

Does this sound familiar? "It's all good." "I'll just think a good thought." "I'm better than I was last year." "Everything is as it should be." "It will happen next year." "It's all okay." "It's all their fault anyway."

The founder of Jungian psychology, Carl Jung, wrote, "One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light but by making the darkness conscious." Now why would Carl Jung, one the greatest psychologists of our time, say that? Why would he want us to explore our shame, our guilt, our fear, our heartache, our envy, our incompetence, and our critical and insecure selves? Why is it that we can't just say affirmations, "imagine figures of light" and get to the place where we feel fulfilled, happy and content? I will assert it is because the gold really is hidden in our darkness. This is not just a feel-good platitude -- this is the truth. Shadow work isn't a spectator sport but an in-the-game, on-the-field, I'm-going-to-win-my-greatest-life-now kind of sport.

With the new year quickly approaching, you get to choose today. Are you going to go into 2010 with the same fears, insecurities, addictions, regrets, resentments and guilt that you carried into this year? Now is the time to use your critical self to move you forward and do some critical thinking to answer these three questions.

1. Is there something that you want that you've been wanting for over two years?

2. Is there something that you chronically complain about but yet you haven't been able to change it?

3. Are you waiting for someone to come save you or are you 100% accountable for living a phenomenal life?

If you answered yes to these, you're probably waiting but guess what? Nobody's coming -- nobody's coming to save you because they wouldn't want to rob you of the opportunity to save yourself. As my friend Brent BecVar describes in The Shadow Effect, one day you realize you're like a drowning person with someone holding your head under water. At some point, you realize that, if you want to live, you have to be the one that fights your way back to the surface. Are you ready to save yourself? Are you ready to truly live? Let me let you in on a little secret:

One way out of the trap of your own rhetoric is to join me in a one-time, exclusive Hay House Radio online workshop. I promise that if you spend eight weeks with me exploring The Shadow Effect, you will be freed from the prison of your own imaginary figures of light and empowered to win your greatest life.

With love and a not-so-gentle nudge,

Debbie Ford