There was a time in my life when I wasn’t okay.

And nobody asked me if I was because nobody even suspected that I wasn’t.

From the outside looking in, I had it all. Living in beautiful Santa Barbara, California, I had a great chiropractic practice and was about to open a second office. I was engaged to a woman that everyone said was “perfect” for me; I ticked all the boxes for a successful man “living the West Coast dream.”

The problem was it wasn’t my dream. I was depressed, anxious, lonely, and trapped in the image of my life.

There were mornings after my fiancé left for work that I would crawl back into bed, curl up under the covers, and cry. I told no one about that, at the time; it seemed too pathetic and even unmanly.

After several failed attempts to figure out what was wrong with me and fix it by trying multiple modalities and practices, I gave up. I was done. I was tired. I was bored. I looked around at life and thought, “If this is it, I’m getting out.” I set my final departure day and told the universe, “You’ve got six months. Either everything in my life changes, or I am out of here.” And I meant it; I was ready to leave.

But the universe had other plans. As it often does!

It didn’t send a person asking me if I was okay. Instead, it was a tiny ad, in a small local newspaper, that caught my attention. The ad simply said, “All of life comes to me with Ease, Joy & Glory. Call Shannon.”

And as one last-ditch attempt, I called.

That phone call led me to a modality called Access Consciousness, which quite literally saved my life. Access showed me what that pervasive sense of despair was about. And I realized, for the first time ever, that I had the capacity to create and choose a different life—a life that I desired to live.

Stop Taking on Other People’s Stuff

So, what was under the loneliness? First, I realized that I am acutely aware of people around me, of what they think, and feel, and their continuous judgments of, well, everything.

Ironically, in my experience, our awareness of others is one of the greatest causes of loneliness.

The sensitive, kind, caring individuals in the world are often intuitive as well. When you function in this way, you are extremely conscious of other people and what goes on for them. And many of them are sad and lonely, so guess what you pick up on? Their sadness and their loneliness.

And since no one tells us that just because we are aware of something it doesn’t mean it belongs to us, we buy it as real and believe that loneliness (sadness, anger, point of view) is ours.

Judging the loneliness

Secondly, not only do we buy others’ loneliness as ours, but we take on their (and this whole society’s) judgment of loneliness as well. (It’s a double whammy!)

Loneliness equals failure and shame. So, when someone starts to experience loneliness, they often decide that there must be something wrong with them, which then causes them to withdraw even further, ashamed and believing they have nothing to contribute, except the wrongness of loneliness.

So again, ironically, the moment we buy the point of view that we are lonely, we also start to create that exact loneliness in our everyday life, like a self-fulfilling prophecy.

So, how do we break that circle?

One of the first things my Access Consciousness facilitator asked me was if I had ever considered the possibility that a majority of all the feelings, thoughts, and emotions that we all experience daily do not belong to us.

She gave me two questions to ask for anything that popped into that busy head of mine:

Who does this belong to? 

Is this mine?

And lo and behold, when I started to ask that, that sadness that I had carried with me for years, that I thought was me, simply dissolved.

It was never mine. It belonged to all the people around me whom I cared about and tried to understand by making what I was aware of in them, real for me.

Over time, I realized that we all basically function like big radio receivers and pick up every thought, feeling, and emotion from miles around. We are all that psychic.

That was my first big revelation: Just because you are aware of something, does not mean it is yours. And it does not mean you have to keep it, understand it, carry it around, or fix it. Just let it go; return it to the sender with consciousness attached.

Using the awareness for others

Once we finally acknowledge that we have psychic superpowers, we can also use them to support the people we care about.

We all know that even if someone appears to be happy, even if their life seems to be in order, it does not always mean they are okay.

And we often have a sneaky suspicion that something is off, that somehow that supposed shiny-happy is not real. That is our superpowers in action.

But at the same time, we’ve never been shown how to use that awareness, how to approach the person, how to get under the mask and facade without triggering the person’s defense systems. So, we often avoid the topic; we don’t ask, since we don’t know how to handle what comes next.

But what if we don’t need to have an answer or solution before, we ask? What if the question itself is the way to change?

Would you be willing to give it a go?

Next time you have that sneaking suspicion that someone is not okay, even if they say they are…try this?

Lower all your barriers, let go of any assumption about whether the person is okay or not, and destroy your investments in the outcome of the conversation.

Then ask:

“Hey, are you okay? Is everything good?”

Then, whatever they choose to answer—good, bad, ugly—just keep listening in allowance; there is nothing they can say that is the right thing. Or the wrong thing. Or even the “thing.”

And if something comes up for you, a point of view, a projection, rejection, separation, or a need to help, just ask: Who does this belong to? Is this mine? 

What if you just being with, and hearing, this person with no judgments is enough as a start?

More than enough.

What if that is one of the greatest gifts we can give someone?

~

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