Recently a friend of mine contacted me to tell me she had had a dream that I was in. In the dream, she and I were dressed up as cats with ears, whiskers and tails and we were standing in the wings of the musical, Cats. The show director came to us and said to my friend, 'OK, you are on next and this is the song you have to sing', and she named the song'. When she walked away, my friend turned to me with terror in her eyes and said, 'Oh my god, I don't know that song!! What will I do?' I put my hands on her shoulders, looked her in the eye and said,
'You go out there and BE A CAT and the words will just come!'
On hearing this dream story from her it was clear to me that I was representing her inner being trying to tell her something important. The message was that if she went out on stage and authentically acted as a cat that everything would flow easily and she would just know the words to sing.
In other words, if you are being your authentic self, everything flows more easily and what you need in your life will come naturally. Taking the cat analogy further, if you watch cats in real life, you will notice that they always do as they please!
We spend far too much time not being authentic. It can take a long time to discover our authentic selves. We learn to hide our wishes and dreams, stifle our voices and squash our feelings down so as not to anger or upset someone else.
We learn to do this from our family set up when young and from the experiences we have within the society in which we live. For those of us who are people-pleasers, this is particularly true. But it happens to most humans that we bury our real feelings so as not to upset others. If you grow up in a traumatising family system, this is even more true.
I grew up in a messy family set up. My mother left us when I was 13 and no one every really spoke about it. We were not encouraged to talk about our feelings. Quite the opposite. From that experience, I learned to bury my feelings and it took me years to understand what I truly felt and wanted in my life. I can look back and see that a large proportion of my life was spent being inauthentic because I had learned it could be dangerous to express my real feelings or needs.
By learning about your own deeper feelings and needs, you can start to express yourself more authentically. After the dream, my friend was able to open up more in her role at work; she stopped worrying what others were going to think of her opinions and, consequently, she started to enjoy her job more. She is in the 'flow' now and, once you understand how great it is to be your authentic self, it's impossible to go back to hiding.
So, BE A CAT and watch what happens.
If you would like help to uncover your authentic self, please reach out and book a 30 min FREE consultation with me.