When you scan and tune into how all the various people in your life “see” you, what do you get and how does it mirror your own highest sense of self? Do they closely match or not even get close? Do those people really know that most extraordinary “you” that is online with some serious aspirations and means business when it comes to seeing them into reality? Are they on that same new page as that most exceptional and up-to-date version of you or are they still dragging their feet in some old perspectives (not even necessarily your old perspectives) that don’t support you at all? This exercise of scanning through your life and hand-picking a core few who you let into the inner sanctum of your manifesting can be so important, as can the exercise of weeding out any players that don’t fit!

When I refer to a “support team” in this context, of course, I’m not talking about people who can do your shopping or pick up your kids from school. I’m talking about the real stuff, the hard-core business of holding up the corners of the pristine table-cloth of you, as you see yourself at your zenith. This might seem very abstract but it’s so important, whether you are recovering your health or not (though there’s nothing quite like the former to flag-up just how important this area of life really is). Surrounding yourself with people who see you as somewhat frail,  deluded, tragic or victimised by circumstance, or even how you used to be before you evolved beyond belief, can be like a magnet that keeps tugging you towards what they think they are dealing with. Even those who simply don’t notice your prime gifts at all, since they aren’t in the remit of the context in which you know each other, can really let your side down at some crucial times; you need people who see these awesome qualities in you as you get this new foothold.

When I made a big announcement, yesterday, that I was writing a book (which, I know, I did in part to test out my own resolve and to get myself fully committed), I made sure to only to share this with a hand-picked selection of people who would “get” such an announcement, those who envision me as someone who has it in them to publish and who would understand just how important it is for me to take this leap at this particular moment. These are people who see the writer in me and who have taken the kind of interest in my recovery journey to care that I share it. I was hoping (of course) for some words of encouragement but was quite bowled over by the constant flurry of private messages saying “Wonderful, its about time”, sharing how some of them had literally  cheered outloud or not stopped smiling since hearing the news. These are the kind of people to have in your team and I’ve spent the last half-decade finding them almost exclusively online, getting to know them so intimately it astonishes me. Mine include people who have written, or are writing, books or are “in the business” and who see this part of who I am (not everyone does) so their reactions had a value higher than gold to my confidence. If I’d sent that tender news out to everyone on my friend list, including all the relatives and old school friends that don’t even acknowledge (or care) that I spend half my life writing blogs, I could have been set-up for one major wobble to my fledgling project as soon as I digested the cringingly absent response.

So why does this matter so much; why are we so “undone” by the opinions of others and isn’t this a sign that we should just get over it and ditch that egoic part of us that gives a brass farthing? Well, aside from not being one of those people that has it in for the ego since it has a very real part to play (as a servant – not a tune-caller) in our most human-oriented selves, we simply can’t afford to overlook that we are social creatures. Chances are that, whatever we are trying to get off the ground, whether that’s a recovery or a book we are writing (or both...) we are having to propel ourselves out of a state of extreme introversion and into a more group-oriented setting than for a while and this inevitably means rubbing shoulder to shoulder with other people. Or we may have been quite a social person already but something has changed in our dynamic, through illness or whatever new circumstance has come up, and suddenly everyone has something to say about that; they want to bring their own piece of pie to the table so we have to remember its our buffet and we can say “no” to their offerings. So many of us forget this or feel we have to politely accept everything that is brought to our door dressed up with a smile or that most dreaded thing, sympathy. Or the worst feeling of all can be that no one even turned up to celebrate with us; we have this paradigm altering aspiration, we’re excited and just know we are onto something great and yet no one is even noticing through the heat haze of their everyday existence. But maybe it’s not us…maybe its just the company we keep; perhaps we need to broaden out or get more selective.

Take the relationship you have with your nearest and dearest, those close family members that live in your house. Chances are they have probably supported you through thick and thin and you are deeply grateful to them; but do they have any real idea about the you that has an audacious plan, whether (I keep repeating these examples…) its to recover from the so-called unrecoverable or write a book. Perhaps they have got so used to encouraging you about the little things, coping with the mundane, that they can’t even see how you’ve stepped things up a gear to take that leap with you… yet.

A lot of us have spent years being a parent first and anything else very-much second so the leap towards our highest aspirations can seem all the more audacious by comparison. When it comes to our kids, even the most mature ones probably lack a real evaluation of what our most gilt-edged skill set look like; all those things that WE know we are capable of at our fullest extent, even if we haven’t gone there quite yet. Its a well-meaning oversight, no blame intended, but that doesn’t mean we have to benchmark our achievement potential at the limits of how we are regarded as “mummy” or any other familial relationship that forms the rockbed of our everyday life. My daughter knows I write blogs most days (yawn yawn) but if I told her I was starting on a book she would probably just shrug and say “yeah, whatever mum” since she has no reference-point to help her grasp what that really means to me. Likewise with recovery milestones; its all more of the same to her but, to me, its crucial that I keep feeling that progression. It’s not the fault of anyone in close proximity to our lives that they are sometimes blind-sided to these changes in tempo that feel so monumental to us but we need that enthusiasm and engagement from somewhere so its our job to go and look for it. When our highest aspirations are hung all-around with domestic mundanity, we might need to consider throwing our hook out there towards like-minded beings in the ether who really get what we’re doing and, it doesn’t matter how geographically far away these supporters are; together, as souls, we can become true gems to each other on the aspirational path.

Amongst such treasured friends, I have one who is overseeing her own recovery from cancer in the most remarkable and transformative way imaginable (documented on her Facebook page and videos Kat Shines Through Cancer) and we have batted this idea around between us many times, being so topical. She has discovered, more than once, that well-meaning “support” offered by people with intentions that don’t feel aligned with her own can be as undermining as no support at all, especially when those people have their own issues that they are clearly working through. When other people in your vicinity aren’t seeing the pristine new way that you are approaching something but keep offering up gestures and insight that feel “old” in their base-note energy, that can feel like a direct conflict of interest. More than once, she has had to go out on a limb and say some pretty firm and boundary-setting words to people but what is most important here is that she did that; she didn’t just let it go with the excuse that she didn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings. One of the key processes she is using in her healing is to encourage the cellular walls to soften and for those stuck-old feelings to pour out, so what is the point of her bottling up even more repressed emotions when other people claim ownership of her cancer in ways that have nothing to do with her or her spin on what is happening.

In other words, she is taking the time and effort to draw a line around her own parameters, to choose what she is aligned with and demarcate where her own territory extends to, which is where those choices reign sovereign; as we all have the right to do in every portion of our lives. If people start to encroach upon our energy field with stuff that doesn’t feel supportive or aligned – especially around projects that are precious or even wrapped up in fundamental flesh-and-blood survival – then it is so important to assert some rules around how close we allow them to get; to make clear what is ours and what is really all about them. Left to their own devices, people can (unwittingly, well-intentionally) bring a whole lot of their own baggage right up to our feet and its up to us to say “No , I don’t want that in my field, please remove it”; in other words, “Thank you but no thank you”. In setting these boundaries, we so often find we are helping these people do their own inner work so there are no losers; but the way we are feeling around our interactions is always the primary rule of thumb, over and above trying to come up with some sort of strategy that keeps everyone placated. In fact, the old belief system that our role is to keep other people happy is probably one of the major things that is asking to be reappaised.

Doing all this for yourself is powerful. It asserts something so fundamental about you, about what you own, what perspectives you reject, what you are prepared to do to stand-up for yourself. It establishes a big creative and CLEAR space around you where, before, you might have been feeling like you had your arms tied to your sides and no room to manouver; one which makes you so much quicker and slicker at assessing what amounts to an encroachment the very moment it happens, which allows you to deal with it long before it becomes a problem for you or anyone else. It marks an end of complacency, a step-up in how much you are prepared to follow through on the guidance system of your intuition. It sets a great example to other people, not least your children. And it creates a hallowed zone into which you can allow your very best supporters to join you (and, equally, you join them in theirs) so that…together…you get to spin an abundantly creative and uplifting new life based upon encouragment and seeing the very best in each other. These simple yet oft overlooked steps can be some of the most powerful and self-affirming of your journey to date, strengthening the foundations of all that you are manifesting to give it the most tangible and sustainable head-start it can possibly get.

Related post – How do you see yourself?