Do Lobsters Know Something We Don’t?

I came across an interesting story recently:

“ The Lobster Story” (stay with me, it’s more relevant to you than you may think 😉)

Lobsters are born small with a small shell. As they grow bigger, their outer shells do not grow with them.

The pressure inside their shell becomes so unbearable that they hide for a while then burst out of that shell and wait for a new shell to form.

This happens through their lives.

Imagine if they took painkillers. Would they just ‘manage’ and cope with the pressure and pain and never grow out of their shells?

Probably.

How this relates to humans

This got me thinking: what if pain and pressure in our lives were there to help us grow? What if we listened to what that pain was trying to tell us, rather than mute it with ‘pain-killers’?  Would we grow more, faster, to higher levels of physical, mental, emotional health?

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not advising anyone in excruciating pain to stop taking their paracetamol or whatever gives them some respite.

I’m also no stranger to pain: I spent the main part of two years – during the ‘pandemic’, in unbearable pain, that painkillers could not relieve.  I even ended up at A and E twice during the lockdown.  I was desperate for relief.

But I also knew deep down that whatever had caused that pain needed to be resolved. I couldn’t just keep it quiet with stronger meds, and get on that never-ending rollercoaster. I had to get rid of the cause.

It took me a couple of years to figure it out, but I eventually did.

The pain then went and it will hopefully never return. Because I believe I removed the cause(s).

Lessons from pain

You may know by now that one of the modern thinkers, teachers, scientists I follow is Dr Joe Dispenza.

One thing he said at a recent week-long retreat I attended really resonated: “Whoever created this disease, this pain, this problem, is a different person from the one who heals it”

In fact Einstein also said: “We cannot solve our problems with the same level of thinking that created them”.

What this said to me was that I needed to change myself – in order to start creating a different level of health and wellbeing in my life.  I needed to work out:

• What thoughts, feelings, actions had created this dis-ease and pain (from my past)
• What I needed to change in order to get rid of this ill-health and imbalance (for my new future)
• How I was going to carry out that change (my new present moment).

I learned that in order to start afresh, I needed to start noticing what no longer worked for me from my past (thoughts, events, people, feelings, beliefs), decide what I was going to leave behind and take with me into my future and constantly be alert when things or people triggered me back to that past. Meditation has always been of tremendous help with all this, as well as journalling.

Add to that a good dollop of patience, a lot of acceptance of what turns up on my path may not always welcome, and a huge amount of gratitude for my small and big achievements, and I feel that the future really is in my own hands.  Most of the time.

Moral of the story

The moral of the story really is to let go of the past -whatever in your subconscious made you feel the need to ‘create’ that illness or ‘unwell-ness’. It could be trauma, a feeling of ‘less than’, ‘not good enough’ etc.  It was a similar feeling for me, that kept the patterns repeating in my life since…childhood.

Self-awareness is the first step to change and understanding that my ‘issues’ as an adult came from a less-than-easy childhood, helped me figure out my behaviour over the years. It helped me see that for some part of it, I treated myself as a victim of xyz, that I was indeed less than, unworthy of xyz etc.

Now I realised where I was stuck, the next step for me was to get unstuck by making a decision.  I decided that I would never ever be a victim. To my past, or present.  I would always take responsibility for my actions, whether I was totally conscious of the consequences or not.

I work every day on freeing myself from my past. It takes time and effort. Hours and hours of meditation. Sometimes I get triggered. But then I stop and notice and make a decision there and then. I’m happier in my life for doing this. I feel more at peace. And I’m pain-free.

If I could do it, you can too.

Mostly, self-love, guidance from the ‘right’ people, and meditation have been invaluable.

This is what I love helping clients achieve and work through.  If you feel this resonated with you, I’m here.

Image: a lobster on water – pexels-artushar