This is The Ancestral Medicine Women and we would like to welcome everybody to the year twenty, twenty one.
The year of 2020 has been significant and an interesting year for everybody on this planet. The year of 2021 has that potential as well.
Every year we have sort of a theme, how we want to meet the year and greet the year and how we want to work through the year and this year, our theme for the year is:
“The Shattering of Expectations”.
For us, we see expectations as something that keeps people in a particular place. It gives people structure, it gives people guidance, it gives people something to work for, but it keeps them in a particular place. Even if there is a trajectory in the expectation, it will keep them on that trajectory and to get to the expectation it takes them to a particular place. We see this idea of expectation as something of a ‘survival mode’ and we are very interested in survival, of course, but what we are really interested in for the human being group is to ‘THRIVE’ and we believe if people can really ‘shatter’ certain expectations in their life, they can actually thrive.
So, we will explain that a little bit.
Expectations are with us from the minute we are conceived, from the minute we are in the gestation and from birth expectations are cultivated within us. We want to get a response from that adult who is looking down on us, so we make the smile, they smile back – our expectation is met! We make the smile as the baby did, and if the adult does not make the smile back, our expectation is shattered. That shattering of expectation has come from an external force and what that tends to do is to create within us a deeper determination to capture that expectation, to make that expectation happen time and time again.
What that means is that the expectation – it ‘owns us’. The expectation controls our actions instead of us as the human being, a sovereign individual controlling the expectation. And that’s what we mean by the ‘shattering’.
We would like to encourage people to help people to design ways for people to really understand that expectations that are influenced by the outside world that are placed on us by others, that they are controlling us and the only way you can control them, or the expectation, is to ‘shatter’ those expectations and to really understand how they are ruling your life, or controlling your life. Where we would urge people to start is not look outwards, to look at all those expectations that are placed on us by others and blame them and try to shatter those expectations, but actually look at the expectations we place on ourself.
Those expectations of course will be influenced and would be informed by expectations in our external world, but we, as human beings really place a lot of expectation on ourself and those are the expectations that we need to look at.
So you might expect yourself to be honourable, trustworthy, kind, a leader. These are expectations you place on yourself but time and time again throughout your day in your work life, through your relationships you will be faced with situations where that expectation of yourself is going to be challenged and how you deal with that is really how you are able to control that expectation.
You might find yourself in a situation at work where this is the expectation of yourself in the workplace where you feel you have to be honourable and trustworthy in your interactions with others. Your expectation at work is that you have to do something that perhaps is a little bit dishonourable, you have to make sure that you get a contract from somebody else, you know take it off them to make sure your work gets the contract. But to do that you have to do things that for you are not trustworthy and are not honourable. You have to come to an understanding with yourself: ‘Do I fulfil the expectation of my workplace, or do I fulfil the expectation of myself?’
If I want to keep my job I have to fulfil it from the expectation of my workplace. So you are influenced then, guided and controlled by that particular expectation. But that creates a dissonance within side of you because that’s not how you like to perceive yourself, that is not the expectation of yourself.
So then you really have to look at that expectation of yourself and this really brings us to the crux of the shattering of expectations because what we are trying to achieve here is: ‘Being true to yourself’.
So by really knowing what YOUR expectation of yourself is – and it can be many different possibilities of expectations of yourself. When you really know what those expectations are and then ‘you choose’ those expectations.
So for example, we come back to this honour one. That expectation of being honourable, trustworthy and so-on, that might actually come from your family but it’s so engrained in you you believe it is from yourself. It doesn’t mean that you are going to untrustworthy and dishonourable, but it does mean is that that particular thing might be limiting you, might be keeping you in a very tight box and it’s not true to yourself. So there is this aspect of shattering that to really find out what is my true self?
You might find out that you are actually an honourable and trustworthy person, but that’s not an expectation of yourself, that’s what ‘you are’ and therefore that is your true self and once you can come to that, once you shatter the expectation, and find out what you really are, your real-true-self, then you will either not do that work at all, or you will change the culture to a point where you can live within that, but you can be really true to yourself.
In that space, you can thrive because you are not just trying to survive and treading water and trying to do the expectation of the work and also the expectation of yourself and creating this dissonance and through all of that you just need to get on, you just need to survive, to get up every day and go to work. No, in this case, you’re shattering this expectation and you are really knowing who you are in the true being that you are, really knowing the truth of yourself, then you thrive. Because then you are in control and then you can turn around and say: “That is dishonest. That is not trustworthy and I don’t believe that that is what this business is” and you can say it with conviction and you can say this is another way to do it.
Whatever the situation is, but you are in control, not the expectation, not the expectation that influenced and informed by outer sources, but you are in control and then you are in control of the expectation and being in control of the expectation brings strength, it brings courage, it brings bravery and let’s face it if the year 2020 has not taught the human group to be courageous, to stand up for what you believe in, to really look at the community and say: How can we do this together? How can we be better together?
If that is not the thing that has really come out of this year 2020, then what has come out of it? What is the meaning of 2020?
So in the year 2021 we are taking all of those lessons, taking everything that we have learnt, that adaptation, the adaptability, the resilience, the creativity, the sense of community, the understanding of people that are our neighbours and the understanding of ourselves, and we are taking that into 2021 and we are going to take it further.
We are going to thrive, people. We no longer wanting to just survive and the shattering of expectations is what is going to help us start to find out our true self. Start to be true to ourself and then …..THRIVE .
Many blessings to you all. We send so much love to you, we thank you so much and we really hope that this year is the year for you to Shatter those expectations and to get up and start THRIVING !
Many blessings to you all and thank you.
The Mothers
Ancestral Medicine Women
All rights reserved 2020.
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