Posted on by Lauren Polly

Shifting the Servant Mentality of the Lightworker

Shifting the Servant Mentality of the Light-worker / Healer

How being OF SERVICE not IN SERVICE allows you to stay re-charged, present and at full gifting power

Calling all light-workers!  Teachers, healers, therapists, mothers, fathers, friends – basically anyone who cares about or for other people.
All those folks who provide hand-holding, lend a shoulder to cry on, are a guiding force; those that mentor, facilitate, teach and lead by example.
You are light-workers.  Those called to serve others through many different ways – the most importantly being the way you live and interact with the world.
The difficulty is that most of us are getting burnt out, not able to operate at full power and sometimes struggle to get by in our own lives.  The reason?
We have twisted our calling to be OF SERVICE to others to being IN SERVICE to them.
As a result, we put ourselves second, our bodies become unhealthy, our minds dull, our moods dim and our energy is always given out, with very little coming in to re-fill us.
What if there was a different way to serve?
One where the gifting to others came from the overflow of your already full tank – not the last drips you have at your disposal?
How do you know if you are operating under servant mentality with your gifts?  Let’s play a game to find out!

  • Do you feel depleted and exhausted after being around other people?
  • Do you feel like you are banging your head against a wall – trying desperately to show people a better way that they don’t ever seem to choose?
  • Do you force change on others?
  • Do you struggle to put yourself on your to-give-to list each day?
  • Does your body feel painful, tired or heavier than you would like it to?
  • Do you get angry when others refuse your help?
  • Do you struggle to charge for your healing services?
  • Do you get so filled up by others receiving your care/services that it is more than enough in payment yet struggle to pay for what your body needs month after month?
  • Do you get mired in the heaviness and stickiness of people’s problems?
  • Do you take things on from others and carry it for them?
  • Is helping others more important than taking care of yourself?

If the answer was yes to any or ALL of the above then the servant mentality of the light-worker is at play in your world.
Now – this is NOT a wrongness!
It is amazing that you are called to serve and have the gifts to do-so.
How many of you cringed at the thought of giving up your ability to help others?  As if the only way to take care of you and to operate on a full tank is to turn your back on your calling?
It’s not that at all…
You just require a shift in your perspective (and perhaps deeper clearings of stuck mindsets/behaviors) that have you being IN SERVICE to people as opposed to being OF SERVICE to them.
Here’s an example:
Imagine a waiter who comes to your table and asks “How can I be OF SERVICE to you?”
Notice he doesn’t have the point of view that he is a servant or a slave.  He is at work.  He’s receiving money for his time.  He can take breaks.  He is there to gift and ‘serve’ you but not in a ‘servant way.’
Practice time! 
Start to notice when the ‘yes’ answers to the above questions come up for you.
Where you leave you and your body out of the moment and ‘feel’ it later.  Where you refuse money, energy and connections.  Where you refuse that inclusion and re-fill would make your healing work easier, more fun and perhaps spread it more widely and organically into the world.
Start to choose differently.  Put you first.  Stop being a servant and IN SERVICE to others.  Shift into the gift of being OF SERVICE and see what self-peace, energetic re-fills and possibilities begin to emerge!
STILL A STICKY SUBJECT?  I’m holding a special online class on Un-doing Servitude: Becoming the Master of Your Reality on September 29th where will be clearing deeper layers of this twisted phenomenon, shifting broader perspectives and catalyzing the creation of YOUR REALITY with your healing abilities.
For more info on how to join visit here: LaurenPolly.com/servant-master
 

Posted on by Lauren Polly

Mental Illness Violence Stigma: What Makes Us Stand Apart?

I know it all too well.

The comments overheard at parties, work, school… “It’s because they have a mental illness.  That’s why…”Each time I heard this, watched the accompanying eye rolls and felt the undercurrent of fear, I shrank into myself.  I would smooth out my hair, stand a bit taller and put on my ‘normal’ smile to hide the truth.
That I have been diagnosed and living with a mental illness for most of my life.
Social stigma is the biggest killer of possibilities for those of us living with a diagnosis.  It has been for a long time however recently the conversation has changed.  It isn’t simply wacky or disruptive behaviors or self-inflicted wounds but acts of extreme violence that are catching the eye of the nation and adding more stigma to the diagnosis.
It still astonishes me.  I’m watching the news, morning with the nation as yet another mass shooting has occurred.  Then the conversation turns to the gunman’s mental health – or lack thereof.  The feeling of connection I had moments ago with the nation sours into the dread of ‘Am I like them?’
The utterances; “He was bipolar” “Suffering from social anxiety” “Paranoid behavior” bring up those deep seeded doubts.  The inexplicable psychic link to these strangers based on sharing a diagnosis is a dangerous thread.  In some weird way you see a similarity to them.  You allow yourself to be grouped in with them.  You start to see their choices as yours, even though they are not.
It is only a handful of people with mental illness that slaughter innocent people.  There are millions of Americans living with and overcoming mental illness on a daily basis.  They delicately balance their inner worlds with the stresses of life.  They that are making conscious choices daily to heal, be productive and find their feet in life.
What if those individuals were the trend setters for mental health – not the few who create violence and grab the headlines with body counts?
And what makes us stand apart from those that allow their mental angst to turn into violence against others?

Our choice.

Our choices create our life and our future.  It is the choice on one’s part to seek out help when needed, to be vigilant in our self-awareness, to embody and gift kindness and to seek ways of building peace in our inner and outer worlds that make us different.
These gunmen made a choice.  One for destruction.
What choices are you making?  Can you acknowledge your difference?
Please do not let the actions of a few classify you as less then you are.  Do not let the label you were given box you into behavioral traits that can be changed when you choose to move beyond them.  Do not allow the social stigma, fear or misunderstanding of others keep you from living your life.
Stand apart with your choice to be you, nothing less, in all your beautiful uniqueness and to actively create the world you love to live in.