The Stories We Tell Ourselves (And How They Hold Us Back)

Hi, I’m Dr Jane Lewis and I teach spiritually-minded professional women and female business owners how to become powerful confident leaders without feeling you have to lose your femininity, act like the guys or drive yourself into burnout.

I use a huge range of tools and techniques with my clients in my coaching and in my training but one of the key approaches for me is Huna. It’s been a lifesaver for me. Huna is the spiritual, energetic, shamanic and healing practices and philosophy of the ancient Hawai‘ians.

I recently had a real eye-opener in terms of just how I managed to limit myself in my thinking…

A couple of weeks ago I put up a Facebook post about black bags, emotions and Huna and I mentioned that I was opening a new Facebook group for women dedicated to all things Huna. I gave the link.

Having spent the last 12 years telling myself and anyone else who would listen, that there’s no point in trying to teach Huna over here because no one has heard of it – and if they have they aren’t interested in learning about it – I thought a few mates would probably join in a desire to be kind.

I had 10 members… Thought maybe we’d grow a bit. 14 days on, actually 13 days on, I had 173 new members! And while some of them are good friends, a lot of them are people I don’t know but who have heard about it somehow.

In parallel I decided to put on a one day live training in Huna in Oxford, UK. I chose a venue which resonated for me because it’s my old Oxford College – Jesus – and I carefully ensured that my numbers would be limited by the room I chose, to 20. So that would mean that when no one wanted to come, I wouldn’t feel too bad, or lose too much money on the venue.

Turned out in, the end, we had 16 people attend and most of those had booked within 14 days of me putting up my post.

Again I’d believed my own story. All of which just goes to show how easy it is to believe your own bullshit. But when you actually step out of your story and step up, people show up to show you that it’s just that. A story.

Which of course I should know because I teach this stuff and I coach clients around stepping out of their stories. But when it comes to your own baggage (or bagages if you prefer), how difficult it can be to see the illusion, pierce the veil and find the truth.

It’s also a responsibility doing this work and that’s probably one of the reasons that I dodged doing anything for so long. That and the old “not good enough” message.

In so many ways I’ve dealt with them “not good enough” over the last 20 years and Huna has helped me substantially with that. Mostly I’m comfortable in my own skin but of course, the problem with your own story, is that once you believe it to be true, you don’t question it. You don’t look to see if it might be one of those black bags of emotion masquerading as something else.

Finally, I’m stepping out of that particular story, until I find the next one of course! As a coach it’s a real reminder of how our clients really do show up with the problems we need to deal with ourselves. And I’m excited, I’m really, really excited!

So my advice offering to you is this… Stay alert to how you let your stories limit you and how far you use them to deny some of the realities, particularly concerning your own capabilities.

If you are interested in joining the Huna group on Facebook, here’s the link – www.facebook.com/groups/secretartofhuna – you just hit the request to join button.

There’s also information on there about workshops that I’m running and I look forward to seeing you in there.

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