Find Your Freedom Series Episode Seven: What To Do When Your Stuff Comes Up, Because It Will!

Hello this is Michelle Barr. Welcome to my Working for Spirit podcasts. This is another episode for you in my Find your Freedom Series. Today, I want to talk to you about something I had been talking about for years, way over a decade. It’s one of the things that started showing up. I started being asked to speak about all the time when I first started doing this work with my clients. 
 

What to do when your stuff comes up, because it will. Learn how to examine, how to discover what I have been asking for? When something happens to us that throws us off course or doesn’t fit into our plans? We often begin to question why is this happening to me? What did I do to deserve this? What am I going to do about this? When all along the better question to ask would be what have I been asking for? Now I get it I am the ultimate or used to be the ultimate Why why why girl? Why did they act this way? Why did this happen? What if? It doesn’t serve you. First of all, why is this happening to me? What did I do to deserve this? What am I going to do about this? They all put you in a constricted, restrictive mode and you want me to get into an expansive mode. 

So instead, what have I been asking for? You see, nothing happens by coincidence. Nothing comes to us without reason. Anything that shows up in our world can only come to us because in some way, it matches what we are asking for. We can ask for whatever we want. We send that out into the universe through our feelings and desires. Sometimes we’re using tools that are helping us to consciously create our circumstances. At any time there exists a continuum and we are both consciously creating and unconsciously creating what we don’t orchestrate is the how of it all. 

This is where building trust with all that it really serves us. There’s always a bigger picture. We are a part of it along with everyone and everything else. We ask for what we want, and then the universe goes to work to deliver it. Now here’s where things get messy. Many times I’ve asked for things in my life, and then when they come about I’m really surprised. I mean, I would never orchestrate things to happen that way. That’s not the way I envisioned this would go yet as it all unfolds. I do see what I want is what is coming to me. 

A higher wisdom is at work here and a higher intelligence. In the same way, I’ve had times when I have told God actually what I want and less the house completely up to universal design. For instance, a few years ago, I started letting Spirit know what I wanted in my life. I really felt it. I got specific about the essence of it. I said I don’t know how any of this can or will happen. It’s what I want though, and I went on about my business while I was doing what I’m here to do, getting up every morning and stepping out into the world.

This is important, offering what I have, creating value and being in inspired action engaged in the cycle of giving and receiving. The universe began to liberate all the incredible things and circumstances to me in ways that I could not have ever dreamed up.

Time after time after time. I sat right here on the verge of making huge life changes that would bring me immense joy and satisfaction and support the work I’m doing in the world and the life I want to live with my husband and my children and my community. It has been the easiest and most effortless thing to receive ever. 

I know this stuff works. I teach it. I coach people through it. It’s a way of living for me now, but still from time to time, I get surprised by the impeccable way this all work. If you all have been following me from the beginning of this podcast, workingforspiritpodcast.com. You will follow what has been going on just in the last year. What is very much about all of this. The Law of Attraction works. It’s on all the time. You don’t choose to engage with it, do a little manifesting, then turn it off and go back into your toxic relationships, environments, thoughts, habits and patterns it all counts. It all matters. 

When people come to me in crisis, the first thing I do is have them go back and look at the intentions they have been setting recently and what they have been asking for. Almost immediately I’m able to help them identify patterns and relationships so they see why the things in their life are showing up the way they are. 

It is always on target. Are you willing to believe and affirm? Every day, Spirit is always working in my favor. Why is this happening to me? It creates constrictive energy. You turn on yourself, you feel victimized, she closes yourself off, you shut down. What have I been asking for? It creates an expansive energy that you can work with to move forward. You’re not a victim instead you are a creator. We are creators made in the image. We are receiving feedback from the universe and there is great benefit for us here. 

What is showing up now is bringing us what we have been asking for. Here is hope. Here is promised. This shift in energy alone lifts you up out of a stagnant space so you can grow. Many times when he’s showing up first is what you need to clear, heal and resolve so that you can receive what you have been asking for. 

Try this the next time something shows up that doesn’t feel good to you, or seems at first glance to be counterproductive to what you are dreaming about and desiring. Examine where your trust lies, in yourself, in your connection to all that. Then ask yourself. What have I been asking for? Open to the answers. They might surprise you. Get over your garbage and take action. I wouldn’t have said it quite that way. But I love telling this story. 

Some years ago now I had the opportunity to speak with Janet Schweitzer, business coach to Jack Canfield and many other well known transformational leaders in the human potential movement. As I was pitching her the work I was developing at the time people were asking me to start talking about this when your stuff comes up. 

She said I see what you do. Your message to people is: Get over your garbage and take action. Well, yes. I started calling my work that master the art of taking action, get moving in the direction of your dreams and desires and create a better life. Now, my point of view in every area of life, something I continue to teach and coach and write and speak on is too many people never take any action toward what they say they want most. Then they wonder why they don’t have it. 

In all truth, how I got from where I was to where I am now was by learning how to indeed get over my garbage and heal my crap. Then I had to learn how to take action in an empowered and intuitive way that best serves me. I got to a place in working with my clients where they were beginning to make new discoveries about themselves and their world and creating some powerful shifts in their thoughts and feelings and beliefs. 

They were getting stuck though, right at the point where it was time to take action. I saw it was the missing piece why people said the Law of Attraction didn’t work or didn’t work for them. I started talking about it more and more and taking aligned inspired action. Master the art of taking action to create a better life now, to create a better business now Yes, I did say now and I mean it asked my clients. 

along this journey. 

Here are some of the things I did that you can do to Dig deep. Chip away at the crowd. Build belief. Take massive aligned inspired action consistently. Reclaim your divine birth right. Embrace your purpose. Reframe everything. Invest in yourself with teachers, mentors, coaches, and spiritual advisors. Allow the shift to happen. Uplevel your environment. Connect with your passions and purpose and allow yourself the creative expression to integrate them into your everyday life.  Learn to manage your energy. Develop your intuition. Be courageous enough to master emotional authenticity. Get clear with your money. Take honest inventory. Heal your issues that show up around your value, your worth, your gifts, your self image and your need to be light and self promotion. Recognize resistance and don’t back down. Love yourself.

As I was working through my stuff and on myself,  I kept getting a very clear message. Are you over yourself yet? I’ve come to a stuck place and I’d ask, Why Spirit? why can’t I make this work? What am I missing? Again are you over yourself yet? As I cleared away more and more of the mental and emotional clutter that has become my life, I realized that is exactly it. 

Get over your garbage, heal your crap. Get over the constant beating up and second guessing and sabotaging yourself. Get over feeling not enough. You are here now and who you are is enough for someone. Your journey is important. It can have an impact on others only when you are willing to share it. I did get over myself and I became myself with a capital S. 

These are all a part of the process to master the art of taking action. This is what I work on with my clients and students as I continue to work on this in my own life. It has been life changing and game changing. 

My life now is unrecognizable from the life I was living just a decade ago and even five years ago. Make a decision. It all starts right here. The first step in my M.O.V.E process is -make a decision. As soon as you do, you will set things in motion and the universe will conspire on your behalf. You have to take the first step every time. Move from the reactive energy of scared to the creative energy of sacred. All it takes is a little shift. Do you see it? 

I will tell you when you work on your business, your business works on you. With a Bachelor’s Degree in Advertising and Marketing, a Master’s Degree in counseling and guidance, a seminary education as a spiritual director and a hospital chaplain and then more recently a doctorate in transformational spiritual coaching. I bring a real mixed bag when it comes to working with people who are working on their businesses. But I love it.

I believe Spirit does not call the equipped. Spirit equips the called. I have been equipped my entire life for this time and this place and this purpose and every step along the way. You can educate yourself in all the best and most effective business building systems and model yourself after the most successful people in our industry and still at the end of the day. You are often left asking and wondering why some make it and some don’t. 

I have had my business now for over 15 years going into my 16th year. If it was just the simple learn what we need to know and do it. We would all be wildly successful. So we continue to search for the person with the answer, the key, the one thing we were missing that will make it all come together for us when we have it. You can stop searching, the key issue, the answer issue, you are the most integral tool in your business and in your life. 

The common denominator in everything you set out to do is you and the differing factor in your business and everyone else doing something just like you is also you. What I have discovered while building my own business, the life I want to live is when you work on your business and your life, your business and your life work on you. 

Now when you’re looking at the snapshot of where your business is right now today where your life is right now today, where are you in that snapshot, your business in your life is offering you the opportunity to see yourself and to get to know yourself better. 

They are a reflection of your current state of mind. Like any trusted friend it will showcase your strength and also help you see where you are standing in your own way. If you are ready to see it. This involves taking honest inventory and taking responsibility for your business in your life or your creations. 

You as the creator have put all of you into what you have created. It is reflecting all of you back. When you look at your business, when you look at your life, what you see what is showing up that is exactly what you want it and you see when it’s showing us that you don’t you put your heart and soul into it and still there are those things showing up that you don’t want. 

You are responsible for both. The feedback from the universe is the meet. It’s the tool for your transformation to receive and allow all that you want, need and desire. I believe that inner healing is a strategy for success. It is how I founded my business originally and I have applied that to my own life with great results. 

Every client student I’ve ever worked with, has had to work with this inner healing to achieve the success they wanted and desire. When we began to dream big dreams, to set intentions and goals for ourselves. When we begin to strive for prosperity, abundance, wealth and success, everything that is not in alignment with that rises up to be healed or transformed. 

We must heal so that we can soar. When we have a big vision for our life, we have high desire and we often encounter high resistance. We find our stuck points, we find ourselves doing what we’ve always done not taking new actions, stuck on replay. This can result in creating a lot of what you don’t want or feeling like you are creating anything at all along with feelings of anger, frustration, hopelessness, powerlessness, by not addressing these aspects. 

We’re standing in our own way. Once you start to spin, you find yourself doing the same things over and over again. You have a lot invested in staying there, and sometimes you don’t know how to get out. I have worked for many years now with people who find themselves stuck in inaction, standing in their own way. This causes all kinds of dissatisfaction and unhappiness. 

Eventually it can turn to anger at yourself or negative self-talk or feelings of wanting to just give up or beating yourself up. People try to make changes for short periods of time. Then they can be uncomfortable and they retreat back into what is familiar and No. Even if it isn’t good for them. 

The first thing you can do for yourself is to show up in a different way in your business in your life. Take ownership. You are your business owner and the founder and creator of your life. Take responsibility for all of your creations and be open to what you might find. 

Then begin taking honest inventory, just showing up for yourself and being willing to do this will start shifting you out of where you no longer want to be and open a space for powerful movement. You’ve got to stop beating yourself up. In my work, I help people to live their extraordinary instead of their wounds. It’s a powerful paradigm shift and it changes everything. 

There’s a story I love and I want to share it with you now because it’s a beautiful illustration of this work. Living your extraordinary instead of your wounding. Some of you know, I’m a former therapist. So I’m very aware, at all levels and bring it to my work now, this whole living your extraordinary and living your wounding, and I did it for a lot of years myself. 

A grandson told him his anger and a schoolmate who had done him an injustice. Grandfather said, Let me tell you a story. I too have felt a great hate for those that have taken so much with no sorrow for what they do. But hate wears you down and does not hurt your enemy. It is like taking points and wishing your enemy would die. I have struggled with these feelings many times. It is that there are two wolves inside me, one is good and does no harm. 

He lives in harmony with all around him and does not take offense when no offense was intended. He will only fight when it is right to do so and in the right way. But the other Wolf is full of anger. The littlest thing will set him into a fit of temper. He fights with everyone all the time for no reason. He cannot say because his anger and hate are so great. It is hard to live with these two wolves inside me. For both of them try to dominate my spirit. 

The boy looked intently into his grandfather’s eyes and asked “which one wins grandfather?” the grandfather solidly replied, “The one I feed”. Our ego is fed easily every day it is triggered by our wounds. When we act from those wills, it does not serve us well. Our Spirit wants to be fed and we often do this most when we have extra time or extra money or when things get really tough for us. How wonderful is it? 

When we can feed our Spirit on a regular basis, It grows stronger and stronger. You have to exercise your spiritual muscles too. I’m a busy person with a full life and have been throughout this whole journey of building, creating the vision of the life I want to live and then building the business that supports and sustains it. I’m a mother. I’m a wife. Now I’m a grandmother. I’ve been a volunteer in my community and a businesswoman. I used to overcommit. I used to run myself too much. I used to let my priorities get out of whack, unexpected things would have a way of dropping into my lap. I no longer have the luxury of allowing that. At the same time, my spirituality is very important to me. 

I have lived before with that part of my life shut down or put on hold while he went about the business of everyday life. Until I realized that was not good for me. I’ve gone off on extended Spiritual quest where I put my physical life and my physical world in the background and what happens, people and things start acting out calling for my attention. 

My children act out, my pets  get sick or misbehave. Bills aren’t getting paid on time, things around my house start breaking or malfunctioning. Do you know what I mean? Everything matters, everything own. I have worked for many years now with people who are stuck in inaction. This causes all kinds of dissatisfaction and unhappiness and eventually turns to anger at yourself or negative self-talk or feelings of wanting to just give up or beating yourself up. People try to make changes for short periods of time. 

Then they get uncomfortable and they retreat back into what is familiar and know even if it isn’t good for them. Yes, you are hearing that. The ego grows stronger and the spirit is weak. Do you know that feeling? The ego is just doing its job, working only with what it knows from past experience and its job is to keep you safe and comfortable. That is why it is so important to feed the Spirit. 

My passion over the years has not just been to work with people who are stuck, but to work with people with a big vision, people who know they are meant to be doing something. People who want to create a life they love. People who desire to do work they love and come from heart centered, people who desire to live a physical life that is Spiritually rich. It’s only they could get unstuck.

Get unstuck from that place of limiting beliefs, toxic emotions, toxic relationships and environments, unhealthy patterns and negative self talk. We must heal so that we can soar. Your stuff is going to come up. Once I started teaching and speaking to groups about these principles, I got asked the same question over and over again. What do I do when my stuff comes up? It’s a great question. I have several things I do when my stuff comes up. 

I’ve been filling my spiritual toolbox and I dig in and start using my energetic processes, tools and techniques to create a shift in my energy which will create movement for me. These processes and tools and techniques also helped me feel and interpret my energy in my environment and manage my environment. 

Energy management is key in all manifesting and healing. When you are going down that black hole or you’re stuck in that dark tunnel, that is not the time to try surfing the internet or trying to find help. You want to be building and filling your spiritual toolbox and using the processes, tools and techniques on a regular basis. 

So you’re stronger and they’re there to support you when you need them most. The more you use them, the easier it gets and the more you are able to live in the flow. It is always my intention with you to help you with things that are most powerfully practical and spiritually rich. So that these things that I teach you, talk about to you use in my own life and with my clients and students all the time. They become more a way of living and being over time. 

Now you can really start getting a glimpse of your extraordinary. Now you can really start accessing your extraordinary and living your extraordinary. Yes, I have my own trusted advisors, coaches, teachers and mentors that I know are there for me. I have not been without a coach since 2009. 

I’ve learned when it’s time to go to them to help me but because I’m doing my own work I can go with more clarity and focus. Know when I need and want and really benefit from the work that I do with me. I have tools I can use to make this work even more powerful. Working on my own after my work with them is complete.

People often come to me when they’re in crisis and it’s much more difficult to get things shifting and moving for the better when the person does not have access to any of these tools, or an understanding of working with their energy and intuition. I can see the difference and the first thing I do once I’ve gotten them into a more stable feeling place is to begin, to lead them through and teach them these processes, tools and techniques they can use and help them apply this in their life and in their business, in their work and in their world. 

Hopefully then,  they will begin filling their spiritual toolbox and better developing their spiritual practice. The top two things I work on in my own life and with the others I help is energy management and emotional mastery. I help people live their extraordinary lives instead of their wounding to respond to life in a conscious way, rather than reacting to become a conscious creator creating a life you love. I am so committed to this.

I am so committed to supporting you in this. When you love to stop beating yourself up over an action you can. When you learn to shift your energy and shift your life. I will tell you this work requires extreme self care. So another thing I like to talk about , I travel a lot. I build travel into my business. I love being able to combine pleasure and work all in one trip. Like when I am able to visit family or friends and then attend a Business Conference, speak on stages, have my own retreat for my clients. When I can attend a mastermind with my coach then spend my birthday in a resort having the day also myself.

I spend time serving myself and I spend time serving others. I’m going to talk more with you about this self-care. It’s so important. I’ve given you a lot today to really let it land a big broad stroke today and as you listen to me as you listen to my different podcast episodes.

Follow me on Facebook. The events that I’m a part of, you visit my website, you read my book, by the way my #SoulTeach, 365 days of SoulTeach, it just got published just a few days ago and people are loving it. So I invite you to go to soulteachbook.com and take a look where I give you energetic transmission every day for 365 days. 

I pour into you and one builds on another built on another. I invite you to connect with me on facebook.com/michellebbarr and michellebarr.com my website I have resources on there for you I have free gifts on there for you and my workingforspiritpodcast.com.

This has been part of the Find your freedom series another podcast episode I thank you so much. I really encourage you and invite you to look at how you’re interpreting your stuff coming up in a different way. Learning how to understand it and how to use it and not feel victimized by it and turn these things that have become your Achilles heel into your superpower. It starts here. Emotional mastery and energy management. I’d love to hear from you. I’d love to stay connected to you and I will leave you with this today. Thank you