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A homage to the hidden and often misunderstood precious gold of projections

Written by Lian Brook-Tyler

“Who does she think she is?” Projections: what they mean about you and them

I’ll begin this homage to the hidden and often misunderstood precious gold of projections by sharing some of what I’ve heard said about me – either first-hand (after they’d changed their minds about me!) or repeated to me by a person they’d shared them with.

Firstly, here’s a couple of descriptions of me dating back to when I was at college:

“Snobby”
“Up herself”

You’ll see how this theme continued, with a classic from the baby years, when I was trying to make friends with other new mothers:

“She thinks she’s better than everyone.”

Not exactly what I wanted potential (and much-needed) new friends to think about me. These comments used to hurt, confuse and worry me. I knew I didn’t think I was better than anyone (in fact, mostly I was just trying to figure out how to navigate the world without revealing myself to be a complete weirdo!) so why did I keep giving that impression?

How I looked?
How I spoke?

Something else? However much I analysed it, I never seemed to be able to understand, let alone change, this perception of me from people who didn’t really know me. It’s taken many years (and a lot of work to discover and rewild who I really am) to see that as much as I didn’t think I’m better than other people, I do (as is the case for others who came here to lead, disrupt, innovate, whilst paradoxically reclaiming the ancient ways too) have a sense of being different. I’m strange and otherworldly. I’m unable to fit in, be ‘normal’ and one of the crowd, even when I really, really want to… because of course I’m not meant to. It’s not my path.

And even today people continue to think these things about me, though now they’re even more pointed because, as I said in my post last week, the more revealed you are, the more impactful you are and the more the projections on you will increase in number and intensity, Inception-style.

Last week, the fiery Truth-Teller Sara generously shared her past opinions of me…

“Who does she think she is?”
“She’s a big headed know it all.”
“Oh look at her all glam and priestess-like”.

Sara also said… “Perhaps what was happening was seeing what I’d very skilfully placed in shadow, and how dare it be flouncing around like it’s ok to be like that in the world?”

Yes! She was watching me in the world and in doing so was risking bringing into the light of consciousness her very own wise, radiant and powerful priestess. That was something she wasn’t yet ready for, so she turned away, disgusted. Sometimes we’re self aware enough to know we’re not ready for that level of threat to our nice safe identity so we steer away from even allowing ourselves to be in enough connection with a person to feel the full power of our projections onto them.

As my precious client Tracey shared with me… “I steered away a little because I felt I would be jealous of your life if I got close to you, so I suspected I would get triggered and I wasn’t up for it. I wasn’t triggered from my ‘safe distance’ ”. And then she was ready to feel her own power to create an enviably blessed life so she was willing to come closer to me. So close that we’ve spent the past ten months working together in various Waking The Wild crucibles… and she’s now birthing her own much-needed wild medicine into the world.

How about you?

What are you projecting onto others (maybe me!) – what does that say about your own hidden gold? And what are others projecting onto you – what does that say about the parts of you that maybe you’re not yet claiming as the gift you are to the world?

P.S. If you’re feeling the call to see how I can help you become your magic, follow your next breadcrumb to Waking The Wild Medicine

N.B. Everything I’ve shared here from Sara and Tracey is with their permission and with deep gratitude for their courage and vulnerability (two sides of the same coin) to share it with me and then to say YES to me sharing what they said with you.

7 things I’ve learned from 7 years running my (soul-led) business

Written by Lian Brook-Tyler

To create a business, a real business – the beautiful, fantastical, edgy af, playful and love-fuelled one that your soul is inconveniently calling you to – takes time. Time to hear your soul’s call, time to find the courage to heed it and then a lot more time than you believe at the start that you can or will give it before it ‘works’.
And then a few years in, you realise there’s no alternative to giving it as long as it takes… after all, this was a soul choice… it’s your very life on the line and therefore it might well take a lifetime.
You will spend several years thinking you’re missing something, maybe a funnel, a new coaching methodology or a better niche, until gradually it dawns on you that the only thing that’s missing is you.
Which brings us to… when you finally dare to strip bare, dropping the mask, losing the armour and revealing your heart… something incredible happens, it all finally starts to work. It looks like magic (it is… *your* magic).
And then the projections come. The more you reveal yourself, the more impact you have and the more people will project on you – positively and negatively. I’m a Divine Queen to some and a Drama Queen to others. The font of all knowledge to some, a know-it-all to others. Sovereignty is being in deep relationship to all of it, knowing it’s all material for your liberation, whilst knowing it was never about you anyway.
Finally you’re *there*… six figures, multiple six figures, seven figures, or whatever the amount of Monopoly money you needed to play with to realise that the material girl in a material world is a gloriously clever, creative part of you but still, only a very small part.
Then you see that you can be, do and have anything.

You make it look so sick-makingly, ridiculously, enviably easy because by this point you’re playing the game, knowing it’s a game and that you’re the table, the board, the playing pieces, the player, your opponents and the games designer. And if there’s a designer of the games designer, you’re that too. So you create that game however you darn well fancy.

Maybe it’s in a pink and turquoise rose print, accessorised with speckled feathers you found on your walk and with a drinks machine dispensing cocktails or Assam tea depending on your mood.

With a magical chair with just the right mix of wild and sumptuous, say oak and velvet, that gives anyone who sits in it a taste of their own divinity and at the same time, welcomes every bit of the soft animal of their humanity.

Which of course, they’ll pedestalise you for and demonise you for.

And you just keep loving them anyway, making art and playing your game (which is all really the exact same thing)… what else is there to do?

Then you realise that it’s what your soul was saying all those years ago at #1.

P.S. If you’re feeling the call to see how I can help you become your magic, follow your next breadcrumb to Waking The Wild Medicine

The radical work of approving of myself

Written by Lian Brook-Tyler

Like many of you, I’ve practised accepting myself, seeing through the illusion of myself, liking myself, losing myself, transcending myself and loving myself.

And what’s creating the most expansion for me is: being in full, deep approval of myself.

There’s something so magnetic and activating about the energetic of approval, I feel my body open and bloom in its warmth. It’s an invitation for all of me to be unashamedly present…

My “too loud” “hysterical” “dirty” “infectious” “fake” laugh.

My 10,000 hours mastery and my wobbly legs uncertainty.

My brilliance and my ‘existing on a completely different planet’ (the nicest version that Chris just offered when I asked him how to word that one) which can make the most basic tasks incredibly confusing and challenging.

My curvaceous Aphrodite and my sports bra-bound, boxing-gloved Amazonian powerhouse.

My logic and my magic.

My devotion and my flakey magpie who’s busy looking for the next shiny object.

My softness and my Hulk (the part of me created as protection when the 5-year-old me had no power over her world).

My off-the-charts-extrovert party animal and my lone wolf.

My grace and my Mr Bump (my childhood nickname because I am *that* clumsy).

And… most challenging of all… my face. My quirky broken-nosed, wonky-toothed, ‘she’s the clever one not the pretty one’ ugly duckling face and my beautiful swan that I glimpse now too (which I’m struggling to even admit it to here for fear of you thinking “She’s delusional, she’s really not beautiful.”)

I approve of my divinity, my humanity, my shadow, my gold and all.

Writing this piece has brought tears and a further depth of approval, which means even more of me feels welcome to be here.

It would be nice if you like this version of me but it’s OK if not, because I approve of myself… fully and deeply.

Are you ready to approve of yourself too?

P.S. If you’re feeling the call to see how I can help you become your magic, follow your next breadcrumb to Waking The Wild Medicine

Why I write about my fear, doubts & uncertainty

Written by Lian Brook-Tyler

Most of what I write about is what’s shown up several times in recent conversations and then I feel a tug to write about it.

Once the tug has been acknowledged, I often feel resistance to honouring it because I know it will require outing something that I’ve kept hidden from others – and also often from myself – and usually for very good reason.

And that’s how I know it’s exactly what I need to write about. For my readers’ sake, yes, I’m often told how reassuring and hopeful it is to read about my less-than-glossy aspects… but it’s for my own good too.

The more our shadows are exposed to light the less they can have a hold on us. It’s like the quote of Jung’s that I constantly quote/misquote:

“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”

(I actually think I can quote it perfectly these days but I still apologise and stumble over it because I don’t trust myself after I’ve spent so many years butchering it!)

But it’s important to be clear that shining light on our shadows doesn’t mean helplessly wallowing around in them, clutching at others to reassure us that they’re not true or making ourselves wrong for them, it means creating the sovereign elevation to see our fearful patterns with perspective and from there to lovingly welcome back the scared, ashamed part of ourselves.

I may not always spell that out but it’s exactly what’s happening when I write.

I’m sharing my most hidden, fearful, embarrassing parts of myself with you as an act of bringing awareness, love and often levity to them.

Like “Oh there you are, sweet darling, I see you’ve been doing your funny thing. And it’s OK, all is welcome. You’re safe now.”

So what I’m really doing when I write about my mess and mishaps is loving myself back home. Knowing in doing so, that you’re being given an invitation to love yourself back home too.

P.S. If you’re feeling the call to see how I can help you become your magic, follow your next breadcrumb to Waking The Wild Medicine

The things you wish for… are you ready to run your gauntlet?

The Gauntlet

People often say to me “I wish I could do [insert thing I appear to do easily 🙂] like you.”

The things they wish for range from creating content like podcasts and fb posts to how I enrol, coach and teach.

The truth is NONE of those things have come easily for me even though all of them are sourced from my deepest gifts.

I’m naturally adept at speaking directly to people’s wild souls, manifesting exactly what I desire in a way that looks like magic (maybe because it is), seeing people’s deepest gifts, understanding complex patterns and articulating all of those things in the spoken and written word… they are all aspects of my deepest gifts.

What’s made it incredibly challenging for me is:

I worry about what people think of me… it’s only very recently that it’s felt safe for me to be seen in anything close to my full power.
I doubt my abilities a lot… It’s taken most of my life to even begin to accept my deepest gifts (I see other’s much more easily).
I’ve struggled with a host of seemingly insurmountable difficulties, including being deaf for a decade and having chronic pain for 15 years (now both cured… as if by magic).

Those three fears – dragons in the Valley of Uncertainty – have made for a terrifying gauntlet to pass through (even now, I’m not yet out the other side).

So yes, whilst I’m appreciative of the gifts that allow me to do the things I do, I’d bet that even with those gifts, doing the things you envy me for has not come more easily to me than doing your Soul Work will for you.

You will have your own gifts and you will have your own gauntlet. I believe your gifts will be no less valuable than mine and that your gauntlet, whilst terrifying, is really no match for your wild soul.

The only question is… are you ready to run your gauntlet?

P.S. If you’re feeling the call to see how I can help you become your magic, follow your next breadcrumb to Waking The Wild Medicine

Art: Matthew Henry, Unsplash