Standing Firm
Welcome to the Standing Firm by Mary Morrissey
Standing Firm Coaching
This coaching is an integral part of the Standing Firmy Programme by Mary Morrissey, part of the ‘Brave Thinking’ programme series. Delivery of this coaching will be by a Brave Thinking Institute certified Life Mastery Consultant.
Standing Firm is a four week commitment with 4 weekly 1 hour coaching sessions following 1-2 hours work using the worksheets and audios provided. The coaching, however, is probably the most important and useful element of the exercise.
Payment for this programme is normally taken prior to the beginning of week one.
For further information please book a Discovery Call
Module 1 – The Dark Night
The first phase of using your Dark Night of the Soul as a forward-momentum builder is turning back, looking it square in the face, and finding a way to relate to it that is empowering to you. So, take a deep breath and look back over your whole life. Look at all of the ups and the downs; the light and the dark; the easy and the difficult; the deeply scary moments and the totally unexpected wins. In certain cases, you may discover that you have already practiced the principles of Standing Firm and did not even know it! You may also realize that there is still some work to do in facing a difficult situation you have had or currently do still have.
The truth is that each of us has had, are having, or will have a dark night and each are different. These dark nights could be something public or something private to you. No matter what your dark night is, know that it is challenging you to be your greater self. This may be a dark chapter, but it’s not your whole book. It’s okay to have a dark night, but don’t let the dark night have you. You can choose to nurse, curse and rehearse the hurt or you can choose to glean the learning out of that experience to move forward.
The opportunity you have right now is to pick a situation where you still feel some negative energy and open yourself to the gift it has to offer you. Remember, you are more powerful and contain way more potential than any circumstance, situation, or condition that may seem scary right now. This is just what it looks like as you are becoming who you are meant to be.
Module 2 – The Hero’s Journey
As you study the dark nights in your past and the ultimate outcomes that occurred, you will most likely see that you are on a hero’s journey. According to Joseph Campbell, who wrote The Hero with a Thousand Faces, the three major phases in a hero’s journey are the departure, the initiation, and the return.
Phase one is the departure and it is a departure from some sort of life that you have known. This can occur in two different ways; It can be that you have the call to a more expansive life and honor it, or you refuse the call. If you answer the call, in general things tend to go more smoothly because you don’t have as much resistance. If you refuse the call, then the life that’s seeking a freer, fuller, more expanded expression through you will seek out a different route. This alternative route will be some unfavorable circumstance or situation that may look like something outside of our control because the expansion of life is always bigger than our refusal.
The next phase is your initiation and it starts with what is called the road of trials. The road of trials is where you are tested and find yourself vulnerable to this new situation. Often times you may not feel bigger than what you are facing and the challenge feels bigger than you. This is part of the process because as you go through this challenging time, you will reveal a part of yourself to you that you did not know existed. Remember, the acorn has to shed its shell in order to sprout to become the oak tree.
The final phase is the return and with the return, you don’t come back as the same person. After going through this hero’s journey, you are not the same person you were before you began because through the process you will gain more personal power, develop greater abilities, and receive higher wisdom. This is the true gift of the journey because who you become in the process can never be taken away from you.
The opportunity you have right now is to take another look at one of your dark nights. Even if you feel like you have completely blessed it and are done, take one more look and ask if there are gifts that are yet to be received from what you have called your dark night of the soul.
Module 3 – Harvesting the Good
When we find that our world is shaking, one of two things will happen. Either our ego will make up a victim story about what happened or we will frame the situation in a way that is empowering to us. If we let our ego attribute blame to ourselves or others, we are most likely thinking about the circumstance as if it is happening to us. When we approach the difficulty from the mindset that this dark time is happening to us, the general feeling tone of that experience is victimhood. As long as we are a victim to the experience we are having, we amplify its power and extend the time we invest our energy into it.
Choosing an empowering perspective about a dark time in your life is what Standing Firm When Your World is Shaking is all about. To take this higher perception, you stand on the firm foundation that there is nothing outside the circle of God’s good. This means that there is nothing outside the circle of, “This, too, can be used to move me forward. It’s part of my evolutionary path.” Your dark night is here to help you discover and deliver a greater version of you because the content of your life is the curriculum of your growth.
Remember, unless you have some things to surmount that look bigger than you, you will never know that you are bigger than them. What you want to do is neutralize the emotional charge of your dark night by discovering the gifts and learnings you can gain from it. When you neutralize the emotional charge, you free that energy to be used to move you forward. You will either use your dark night to take you forward or take you down, so choose to take yourself forward.
Module 4 – New Beginning
We have the opportunity to turn our Dark Night experience into a new beginning, but only if we use it well. Using your Dark Night experience well means many things. It means that we learn from our experience so that in future circumstances we can recognize when life is signaling for us to get back on course. Paying attention to the soft signals and honoring their message in many cases allows us to avoid a major event that would be the beginning of another Dark Night of the Soul. Remember, it is not if life is sending us soft signals; it is what are the soft signals?
Using your Dark Night experience well also means creating a support structure for the changes you would love to implement in your life. Willpower is ultimately not enough to cause us to change our lives. We can sustain an important change for a little while, then we often find ourselves slipping back into our old patterns of living. With a real structure of support, there is an exponentially higher chance of success in changing our lives.
Making a decision for the life you would love and learning to connect with your inner sanctuary where you are protected from the elements of circumstance are the next steps in this process. Deciding for the life you would love helps you design a clear destination in mind. With a clear destination, it becomes easier to notice when you are on and off track. Along the way of living into the life you would love to live, you will most likely encounter some challenging situations. This is where your inner sanctuary, or your point of power, comes into play. With this solid center to return to, you can overcome these challenges with grace and ease.
Finally, using your Dark Night experience well means learning to see the TRUE meaning of your Dark Night experience. TRUE is an acronym that means Think, Release, Use and Expect in a way that moves us up the ladder of our own becoming. Through this process, you will find that your Dark Night of the Soul was an experience for you to grow into a higher version of yourself because the content of your life is the curriculum for your growth.