Are you looking for tips to help you embrace your shadow? Well, you’ve come to the right place!
But first, let’s quickly go over what is shadow and shadow work.
What is Shadow Self & Shadow Work?
Your shadow self, or shadow, is the side of yourself you have no awareness of. It holds all the qualities you disowned during your formative years.
Although you learned to repress these qualities and push them outside of your awareness, they still live underneath the surface.
They unconsciously guide your actions and are the unseen cause for many of the troubles in your life.
Shadow work is the intentional practice of becoming aware of your unconscious shadow and integrating these neglected qualities into your being—becoming whole.
This is a process of building self-awareness, self-acceptance, and universal Love.
“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”
Carl Jung
NEXT READ: Everything About Shadow Work (Comprehensive In-Depth Guide)
5 Tips to Help You Embrace Your Shadow
1. Focus on Yourself
This is the most important thing to do before you engage in your shadow work journey. Yet it’s one of the most understated facts. If you start working on your shadow work without investing time in yourself, you won’t get any productive results. Your shadow represents a range of various emotions hidden in your psyche. Therefore before you start working n your shadow, you need to have a clear, calm, and neutral space. That is why it’s important to shift focus on yourself first.
2. Develop Self Compassion
Before you go on to work with your shadow, you have to attain a certain level of friendliness with yourself which has to be unconditional. Without this unconditional friendliness and self-compassion, it is impossible to embrace your darker stuff. If you are harsh, critical, and judgmental when you commit mistakes, it is hard to confront your shadow.
If you are used to feeling shame and guilt when something goes wrong, you need to transmute them with feelings of friendliness and self-compassion.
Remember we all have a shadow, and it’s vital to embrace your humanness first. Don’t forget to connect to your heart, and no matter what comes by, stay connected. Place your focus on your heart and acknowledge what you feel, be it good or bad.
3. Develop Self Consciousness
Working with your shadow requires a self-reflective mindset; your ability to observe and ponder over your past behaviors, feelings, and thought patterns.
Developing self-awareness and self-consciousness will help you evaluate your feelings without any inner judgment and criticism.
4. Be Brutally Honest
Being honest with yourself is the prerequisite to working with your shadow. It’s easy to do lip service, but unless you are honest with yourself; seeing the unpleasant side of your personality and attitude, is what is needed.
It is not easy to come to terms with your disowned parts, which is why your ego spends so much energy repressing them. Coming face to face with your selfishness, greed, insecurities, and tyrannical parts can be very challenging. It takes a hell of courage to come to terms with your dark side, attitudes, behaviors, and bad thoughts.
The rewards you will reap are well worth the discomforts, as this brutal honesty will help in healing your inner self. This courageous act will unleash new creative potential while opening a whole new world of possibilities which will help in your psychological development.
5. Record Your Improvements
It is fascinating to come face to face with your disowned self which you always wanted to keep out of sight. Similar to how a dream slips out of our mind the moment we wake up, our disowned parts can deceive us.
A writing journal can aid your journey in which you can record your improvements and discoveries. Writing your thoughts and referring to them later will help you determine the success at which you have been able to improve your connection with your shadow.
Here are some resources I recommend:
A Light Among Shadows is a guide to self-love and being that helps you overcome negative self-talk, instill genuine self-acceptance, and overcome self-hate and resentment by making sense of people’s level of consciousness and your spirituality.
Shadow Work for Beginners Series helps you beat negative patterns and beliefs, integrate your shadow, heal your inner child, reclaim your projections, build emotional maturity, and take back your life by becoming whole.
Shadow Work for Relationship Series helps you heal your attachment style, navigate relationship issues, and build a healthy, mature relationship.
Advanced Shadow Work is an ongoing publication with continued in-depth insight and practical advice you won’t find anywhere else on the internet for practicing shadow work, self-awareness, inner healing, spiritual development, and more!
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Approved Tools
Tarot Cards (incl. Manifestation Manual ebook) provide insight and intuitive guidance for personal growth and decision-making.
Chakra Crystals (incl. Ancestral Healing ebook) can bring balance and harmony to your mind, body, and spirit.
Book of Shadows (incl. Shadow Work Journal) is your own special journal that you fill up with your energetic intentions as you scribe your own inner practices to be passed down to others.
Subliminal Bundle uses different hypnosis tracks to subconsciously improve your health, love life, motivation, self-love and much more.
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