Superhero of Love. Bridget Fonger
life (house, car, office, finances, etc.) is in order.
You are on time, respectful of your time and the time of others.
You are known as a person who can be counted on, who always keeps her word.
From the big things like moral character, to the small things like having a clean fridge, having integrity makes life work better.
Sometimes I think I don't have the time to stop and get things into integrity, but I know I get an extra kick in my step and a surge of energy when I do. Start noticing how being out of integrity can drag you and your flame down. With very few exceptions, even the messiest people don't feel good about sitting in the middle of chaos. It wears on you—often without you even realizing it—and it definitely inhibits your productivity. Chaos outside is a reflection of chaos inside. And chaos tends to invite even more chaos.
Buddying up in the name of integrity is always a good idea to make it feel more like a game. On any given morning, Monday through Friday, at the same time each day, you can find me on a call with two to four friends. We each declare three tasks we will do that day in three different areas of our lives we want to transform. The next morning, we report how we did—three out of three, two out of three, etc. If I don't hit three out of three, I always take responsibility for what took me out of the game so I can stay conscious of the patterns that derail my integrity.
One of the most powerful things I can do on these calls is to commit to at least fifteen minutes of getting something into integrity. I don't have to know at the time what work I will do. I let myself choose over the course of the day. There's always something that can be sifted through, reorganized, cleaned, or completed after being left half-done. Without fail, my flame gets a boost, and I always end up working on whatever I choose for far more time than I originally promised. I highly recommend having a buddy, or ideally a group of buddies, with whom you can practice this. Find people who care about making a shift in their own lives, who already have a strong relationship with their word, and who inspire you. You will become a source of inspiration in this game as well—like the Superhero of Love that you are!
When your flame is growing and your life is working with integrity like a well-oiled machine, you will start to hear the hum of your Mighty Flame. You may even be more inclined to sing spontaneously when that flame is burning bright. Anything that makes your heart and soul sing, or helps you hear your own song, is a good thing. When you are guided by your own song rather than the noisy chatter of your mind, you will see the world differently and interact with others in a new way.
The following exercise will help clear the airwaves so you can hear that beautiful song, by getting some practice with calming crazy firestorms and increasing your Mighty Flame's power.
Love Strong Exercise: From Firestorm to Flame
Think of a time when you felt out of control. Imagine you are right back in that moment and answer the following questions:
What's the cause of this crazy firestorm?
The three emotions I feel are: _____, _____, and ______.
What do I need right now to get some relief?
Is there anything I could ask of someone to help me get some relief? If yes, who is the perfect person to ask?
Is there something I can do to shift the focus back to my Mighty Flame? When can I do it?
Make a commitment to yourself. If you don't come up with anything to do, or anyone to reach out to, no worries. Something may pop into your head later, and you can commit then to an action.
For now, take this moment to stop and give yourself as much time as you can to imagine the Mighty Flame in the center of your chest. Just breathe into that flame with awareness. You can repeat: “I bow to the Mighty Flame inside me. I bow to the Mighty Flame inside me.”
Just by giving your Mighty Flame attention, you commit a super-heroic act.
Chapter 4
SABOTEURS
You must go into the dark in order to bringforth your light.
Debbie Ford,
The Dark Side of the Light Chasers
We often think of superheroes in terms of the epic battles they valiantly fight with their enemies, where good triumphs over evil, and light over dark. Batman foils the Penguin's plan to devalue Gotham's currency; Superman swoops in at the last minute to defeat an assassination attempt. We Superheroes of Love must look inside to meet our mightiest foes. It's not the shadows in the dark alleys we need to confront, but those inside us. In this chapter, I hope to inspire you to be curious about the previously unnoticed places in your heart where your shadow selves live, and to empower you to deal with your shadows when they become saboteurs and wreak havoc in your life.
Have you ever become enraged when someone cut you off in traffic or in the grocery line? Have you lost it when someone spoke down to you or made you feel stupid? Have you ever overreacted and then later regretted it? Do you sometimes feel angry, but don't know the source of your fury?
Renowned psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Carl Jung developed the concept of our shadow selves as the pieces of ourselves we suppress, deny, or ignore that recede into our subconscious. Because we are not consciously aware of them, they can become stealthy little bombers that strike when we least expect it—for instance, when we are in line at the grocery store and become supremely annoyed by someone in front of us.
Shadows become saboteurs when they take control and hinder us or cause us pain. Shadows are constantly operating, influencing, and driving our choices. The moments they tend to grab our full attention are when we label what they are doing as sabotage. And that's a good thing. When they shift into the role of saboteurs, we wake up to them. Where they may have been just background noise that we could previously tune out, they are now screaming: “Look inside; get to know me. I am not going away. I need you.”
Whenever you feel less than your most powerful self—steeped in anger, easily triggered by others, paralyzed by fear, enveloped by blankets of dark sadness—you can likely benefit from doing some shadow work. You don't have to wait for your shadows to scream for your attention. Hopefully, as we continue to discuss shadows and how they become saboteurs, you will start to become more cognizant of their wily ways.
Let's say, right up front, that it's normal that we remain unconscious of our shadow selves. They are, after all, sub conscious, flying under the radar of our day-to-day awareness. Normally, we focus on what's in front of us, what we can access with our five senses. But we all have subconscious desires and motivations that are completely disconnected from our conscious dreams and wishes, and these have the potential to wipe out our higher aspirations. Imagine someone who wants to marry and have kids, but has a subconscious desire to remain free and untethered. This is an example of the shadow steering the car and taking us where we don't want to go. Otherwise, why would we end up where we don't want to be?
You may have fallen prey to your shadow if you:
Do things that you know you will regret
Feel out of sorts and don't understand why
Say yes to things that will cause you pain
Can't remove yourself from a source of pain
Say you want one thing, but consistently create something altogether different
Feel as if you are treading water
Shadows are born when bad things happen to us, or when perfectly mundane things happen to us as children. Yet, from that innocent perspective,