Today's article is about baggage, which we all carry forward from our past lives, from experiences in our current life and from your family. Baggage can blind us, hold us back and make us miserable. In a lot of healing work I do - I discard baggage so life becomes manageable again.
Family Baggage
All families have history and all history has baggage associated with it. A good exercise to see family baggage is to see what has been similar problems for many family members. What type of obstacles is most of your family facing? These obstacles can be a recurring health problem, problems with money, career or relationships. It won't be long before you can see patterns emerging within your family. Sometimes baggage translates into a different type of experience or behavior, so it seems like it's not related, but it really is just a different expression of the same baggage.
Example: I met a client who obviously had family baggage concerning self esteem. In the family itself many members would work either extra hard (high achievers, compensation behavior leading to burn outs, physical problems like heart failures and depression) or didn't work at all (slacking off, falling through the cracks leading to mostly mental problems like addiction and depression)
All of these family members were struggling with the mistaken belief that they had to do something/amount to something to truly matter and to gain value. Some of them were sabotaging this belief by doing nothing, but almost all of them were trapped in this web. Since we grow up within the family often this type of behavior or a specific belief is considered normal and won't be reevaluated until somebody else mentions it. I helped my client see this web and disentangle her involvement in it so she could move forward freely.
Personal Baggage
Sometimes clients find it easy to identify personal baggage, because they can see how they have been stopping themselves gaining specific goals. A client who went through a difficult divorce will notice that it's harder to open up again to a new relationship. A client who has difficulty dealing with authority figures due to problems with their father will understand how this is related. Knowing your baggage however is only the first step to resolve it. The second step is focused on processing the old pain so you can move forward.
Personal baggage can be misunderstood however, because we can be blinded by it. Often this is compounded by people being very strict with themselves, finding fault within themselves, because something that is easy for others is very hard for them. Consider this: If you find something simple very hard, it's time to figure out the why and sort it out, instead of punishing yourself. If you can't figure out where the baggage is coming from - seek help.
Example: A client was generally happy in his life, except for some health issues related to weight. He has lost quite a lot of weight already, but couldn't find it within himself to exercise more. Even when doctors recommended more exercise he felt angry, but couldn't find the cause of the anger. He tried everything, from personal trainer appointments, doing team sports and going on his own. He failed to see that this wasn't a discipline problem, but old baggage. His parents told him to go exercise and he took the mistaken belief with him that he was fat and that was why he had to exercise. We successfully released this belief so he was free to exercise for his own health and well being.
Past Life Baggage
If you notice a pattern in your life that is destructive, but you can't figure out where it's coming from, mostly likely it's past life baggage. This type of baggage is usually easily resolved, because it's carried over just so you can resolve it in this life. Some people have flashes of past lives or feel that they know a certain person deeper then is justified in this life or have a special connection. I wrote more about Past Lives here
Want to talk about your baggage or ask me a question? Post a message on the blog, Facebook Fan Page or e-mail me.
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