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Growing in Awareness…Not Always Pleasant

November 7, 2024 By Sheila Unique

There it was…unexpectedly I was given the opportunity to grow in awareness.

I caught myself getting upset with my husband, Jimmy a few weeks ago. I’d ask him a question related to our home and with a negative tone in his voice he’d snap at me telling me we weren’t going to be changing anything. I asked him not to talk like that. I wanted to know, kept asking him and finally he gave me an answer. Over the next couple of days I began noticing that same thing happening. It now happened one too many times! I was done being snapped at and reacted. Let me say my voice got pretty loud. He stopped snapping at me and even though that had changed I didn’t feel good about reacting.

Fast forward now to Thanksgiving Sunday. We were cooking the turkey for our family evening meal hosted by our daughter. Throughout the day, Jimmy asked all kinds of questions related to cooking the turkey most of which I easily answered. The day was flying by and I was starting to feel pressured because the turkey was taking so long to cook. Supper was planned for 4:30 that afternoon and come 4pm it was obvious to us that the turkey was going to be late. It wasn’t so easy to answer his questions anymore. The more he asked the less confidence I had in knowing what to do next. I began snapping at him and yes, there was a negative tone in my voice which I soon became aware of. Around 6pm I was at the point where I left the kitchen needing to release the emotions that were building up quickly inside.

Eventually I was back in the kitchen feeling very different. I had no more attachment to how this turkey would or wouldn’t turn out. I know that sounds odd to hear. The pressure was gone, I was no longer emotional and the tone had disappeared from my voice. Now I was in a place where I could accept that the turkey was late and was present enough to hear that our family insisted on waiting for us. An unexpected turn of events also occurred for me. I didn’t need to be the know-it-all and easily answered his questions with the words, ‘I don’t know.’ Because I didn’t know…Jimmy stepped up knowing what to do next. After 6:30…we arrived with a cooked turkey, enjoyed supper and still had time to visit with our family. I jokingly referred to that day as the day from hell! A day that came and went offering me an opportunity to grow in my awareness.

It has been my experience, we don’t always see the growth intended for us until we’re removed from the situation. Why? Because we’re busy living through the experience, reactions and all. For me, it was in my meditation practice the next morning that I realized where I had grown.

How do we grow in awareness? One easy way is by paying attention any time we react negatively. I reacted when my husband snapped at me. I also reacted causing me to snap at him which was the very thing I asked him to stop doing to me. It was only because of my awareness that I saw that. Regardless of who is or isn’t involved, it benefits us to pay attention to our own reactions. How would we know? For me, I knew I was reacting because I’m not normally like that and I wanted to be aware of what caused me to react that day. My awareness started the whole process of resolving my issue and finding the solution that was right for me. Only when we’re aware can we make a change, if needed. There really is nothing more powerful than our own grace and awareness. Yes, there is nothing more powerful for you than your own grace and awareness.

The gift of my reactions helped me easily identify opportunities for growth. We’re continually paying attention to what’s going on inside in relation to what’s happening outside of us.

What I most want you to take away from this article…has to do with my amazing husband. Because of him and his involvement in my life I got to heal something very deep within myself. It’s because of our involvement in relationships that we have opportunities to learn and grow.

Wherever you are on your journey, may you find what works for you…find your own truth…and you will always be guided to feel at peace inside.

Sheila Unique, Relationship Coach and Spiritual Teacher

Move Beyond the Mind and Heal

July 2, 2024 By Sheila Unique

Have you ever found yourself dealing with the same problems or issues month after month? It looks like nothing’s changing even though you tried what you could to bring about resolution. What do you need to do to move through them?

Recently I had a growth removed from the top of my ear. It did require stitches which were supposed to dissolve on their own and I couldn’t lay on that side making sleeping more interesting to say the least. This was my first experience with anything like this and at the end of the first week I noticed my thoughts were caught up in how my ear wasn’t healing. I questioned myself a number of times if the stitches would really dissolve on their own or if I should be putting essential oils on the area. Whenever anything would touch that part of my ear, my mind reminded me of the hurt and how it wasn’t healed. Now I’m into the second week and just couldn’t leave it alone. Why wasn’t it healing? Well, me being me I got to the place where I was aware of the unrest and had enough of that mind chatter. I knew something else was going on inside of me. It was time to look beyond my mind and heal. It didn’t lake long to realize the only time I thought about my ear was when something would touch it causing it to hurt. Was I reacting to the hurt? Yes I was reacting but it wasn’t to the hurt. I kept asking myself questions. Why couldn’t I just leave my ear to heal on its own? There it was…I wasn’t trusting my Divine to handle that for me. Not only was I not trusting in my own healing, I wasn’t trusting in the healing for others. I knew that was a truth for me because having that awareness caused me to cry.

Think of the physical body challenges you continually deal with. They could be ongoing problems with your back, knees, hips or jaw. When any kind of pain type sensations surface in those areas your mind automatically reminds you that area hasn’t healed and it’s still an issue. Over time what happens is we literally loose sight of what initially caused our problem in the first place.

Our physical body shouldn’t take months or years to heal. We break a bone and it heals. We sprain our ankle or dislocate our knee and they heal. If our hurts and pains continue month after month…even year after year and we’ve tried everything we can to heal them, I’ll guarantee you more needs to heal than just our physical body. Why? Because our physical body responds to our thoughts and feelings. Yes there’ll be times when we hurt ourselves and it heals in no time. Then there’s times when we hurt ourselves and it takes forever to heal…if it even has. Our minds will continue to point out problems some of which aren’t the problems at all. It takes our awareness to move beyond the mind and heal.

Here’s another example. My husband Jimmy recently went through a phase where his hip was quite sore. For about a week we energetically worked together with the intention to release the pain from that area. Whenever he felt pain register there, to him it was the hip and he asked me for help. Finally I got to the place where I challenged his mind. It wasn’t the hip! We had worked on that. What else was causing him pain? That morning I noticed he wasn’t centered on his chair and was sitting slightly tilted off to the left. When I brought it to his conscious mind he adjusted his sitting position, lifted his arms off the table and the pain released from his hip. He then felt a pain type sensation at the base of his spine. Now we found the source of his pain. For him, he tends to lean and wasn’t centered. That imbalance reflected in his physical body and in a number of other areas in his life. It gave him the new found awareness of the inner work he was now moving through.

This same concept applies to our relationships. We fight or argue with our partner, family or friends and our thoughts automatically remind us of the problem with ‘them’ and how it’s happening because of what they are or aren’t doing. Each one of us has our own ‘stuff’ to deal with. To stay focused on what we ‘think’ is the problem will not move us beyond the mind or even bring about the desired changes we want to experience. That’s why growing in awareness is most important. There’s nothing more powerful than our own grace and awareness.

I invite you to move beyond your mind and find your way to healing whatever is problematic in your life.

Wherever you are on your journey, may you find what works for you…find your own truth…and you’ll always be guided to feel at peace inside.

Sheila Unique, Relationship Coach/Group Facilitator

Holding People Stuck

April 29, 2024 By Sheila Unique

As we live our lives it’s very normal to experience the highs and lows in relationships. Some days we’re happy with our loved ones and other days we wonder why we’re even in relationship with them. Regardless of what we’re experiencing, our relationships are either improving for the better or becoming more difficult to work with. One reason for this…we’re holding people stuck. What does that mean?

Holding people stuck is like keeping them in a situation where they can’t make progress or move forward in any way. We see them a certain way and hold them there. Imagine if someone tied our shoelaces together…we wouldn’t be able to walk freely. Similarly, holding people stuck restricts their growth and potential making it harder for them to move forward. There’s a lot more happening than just holding them stuck. Let’s look at that.

The words we use and the actions we take indicate our perception as to what we think is or isn’t happening in our relationships. We tend to see this more often in our long-term relationships with our spouse/partner, family and friends. We interact with them constantly talking about the problematic things they do over and over like nothing seems to be changing. When we’re doing that, energetically we’re holding them stuck.

When it comes to holding people stuck, three things happen:

1. We prevent people from healing. Constantly reminding others of their negative type behaviors reinforces things aren’t changing for them. We’ll tell them things like, all they ever do is argue, they don’t listen or they never think about anyone but themselves. In the end we’re holding them in a place of staying stuck.

Here’s an example of what that could look like. It used to upset me when my mom criticized others. As soon as I heard her criticizing someone else, I raised my voice reminding her of how she was always criticizing others. According to me, I saw her that way and held her in a place of not changing. Energetically I was preventing her from changing or healing in any way.

2. We prevent ourselves from healing. If we’re focused on complaining about the negative behaviors of others, we’re actually preventing ourselves from moving forward in any way. Why? Because our perception of what we think is or isn’t happening dictates the direction we go when it comes to healing ourselves. For example, when someone mistreats us or makes inappropriate decisions causing us to feel hurt in some way, we tend to hold a grudge towards that person based on our experience. That grudge keeps our hurt and memory alive preventing healing on our part.

Going back to my example…eventually I got to a place where I realized I wasn’t feeling good about what was happening in my relationship with my mom. The things I said to her and about her were only causing me to feel more upset inside myself. Once I had that awareness, it didn’t take long for me to start questioning myself as to why her behavior was upsetting me. My mom seemed to be okay with what she was saying, I was the one who wasn’t okay. I was the one holding both of us in a place of being stuck. I started to look for those answers inside and little did I know of the impact they would have on my relationship with mom.

3. We prevent the relationship from healing. Relationships are all about relating and if we’re perceiving negative things about others, we’re relating with them in a negative type way. The result is we hold the relationship stuck preventing healing from taking place for everyone involved.

Using the same example…because I saw my mom as being critical, I related to her in that way. It was only through my intention to heal our relationship that I discovered I was exactly the same way as she was. I was also criticizing others, especially her. That realization alone resulted in healing beyond measure not only for myself but for our relationship. I now choose to approach all my relationships with that profound awareness.

Our words and intentions have the power to bring about any change we want to experience in relationships, regardless of who it is. It has been my experience when we see others differently…when we see ourselves differently…we then see our relationships differently.

When it comes to healing in relationships, how we move through our problems makes a huge difference. We either set our intention to make others the problem or we find our way to bringing about the healing we want to now experience in those relationships.

And if I could add here…we can approach the healing process by making people the problem or by making the unacceptable behavior the problem. Making the behavior the problem tends to create an environment for healing to take place. It gives the power and grace for others to heal, for ourselves to heal resulting in healing for the whole relationship. When we show up differently, we allow others to do the same.

Wherever you are on your journey, may you find what works for you…find your own truth…and you’ll always be guided to feel at peace inside.

Sheila Unique, Relationship Coach and Speaker/Trainer

Healing in Relationships

March 21, 2024 By Sheila Unique

Everyday life problems happen in relationships. Sometimes those problems escalate into heated arguments which leave you in a place of feeling quite unsettled. How do your relationships change so you experience more positive interactions with the people you care about?

Have you ever watched people arguing over what seems like a trivial matter? You’re watching and maybe think what’s the big deal, just forget about it and move on. This is not uncommon at all. It can be pretty easy to think things like that when you’re ‘detached’ from the situation.

Now think of a close relationship where you have a heated argument with another person. Would you find it easy to step back, just forget about it and move on? Chances are you would leave the argument feeling emotional. I know, I’ve been there. We’re emotionally involved and leave the argument thinking all kinds of negative thoughts related to what we were arguing about. It doesn’t feel good to me and I’m sure it doesn’t feel good to you.

Bringing about healing in your relationships begins inside of you and here is a great place to start.

I’ve been doing this visualization practice for months now and after telling a number of my clients they asked me to share it. This practice takes place at a ‘Soul’ level and involves cutting negative energetic cords. I learned it from Sri Sadguru Sivapremanandaji – Power of Forgiveness Exercise. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQ0EoZksqYE In the video he explains energy cords. When situations continue to repeat themselves, what happens is the negative energetic cords between you and the other person become “thicker and more problematic.” Those cords drain your energy and can be disconnected and dissolved. This is important to know regardless of the relationship.

Sri Sivapremanandaji shares these steps:

Visualize your own Soul above you;
Visualize the Soul of (the other person) sitting across from your Soul;
Say, I ask my Soul to forgive (the other person) for any hurts or any energy infractions between me and (the other person) in this life or past lives;
Say, I ask my Higher Self to convey this forgiveness to (the other person) and disconnect/dissolve any and all negative energetic cords between me and (the other person);
Say, So be it;
Say, I’m thankful to my Soul and the Soul of (the other person);
Say, I pray to my Soul to send blessings and healing to (the other person) now.
(The other person can be your parents, friends, co-workers, children, etc….just insert their names above).

This practice takes less than 2-3 minutes to do and can be used for any relationship. You can continue to do it until there is no negativity between you and the other person.

When you have negative interactions with another person and feel unsettled inside, you’re invited to try this practice. I’d love to hear what it does to bring about healing in your relationships. It starts from inside of you.

Wherever you are on your journey, may you find what works for you…find your own truth…and you will always be guided to feel at peace inside.

Sheila Unique, Relationship Coach and Spiritual Teacher

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