Halloween will soon be upon us and, with modifications for social distancing, children everywhere are gathering their costumes and preparing to go trick-or-treating. <\/p>
Halloween costumes can be great fun \u2013 \u00a0for children and for adults.\u00a0 Costumes let us try on different identities, even identities that scare us.\u00a0 Put on a costume and you can be a firefighter, action hero, fairy princess, NASCAR driver, witch, master chef, doctor, or demon.\u00a0 You can be frightening or adorable.\u00a0 You can be saucy, nerdy, scary or just plain weird.\u00a0 And what\u2019s more, people give you candy!<\/p>
Costumes can be fun \u2013 but they can also be limiting.\u00a0 What \u201ccostumes\u201d do you wear every day? <\/strong>If your job requires you to wear a uniform, you know that people react to that uniform as much as to what you do and who you are.\u00a0 But what about uniforms and costumes that are less obvious \u2013 the \u201cuniforms\u201d of corporate manager, soccer mom, socialite, or trendsetter?\u00a0 Or the \u201cnon-uniform\u201d \u2013 the sloppy, I-don\u2019t-care-how-I-look-or-what-you-think-of-me uniform?<\/p> Costumes can serve us.\u00a0 Uniforms help people identify us and get help \u2013 whether they need a police officer, a store clerk, or a nurse. \u00a0You can often \u201cfake it till you make it\u201d by putting on the right physical and mental costume and starting to play the part, even if you don\u2019t feel fully prepared.\u00a0 <\/p> And\u00a0costumes\u00a0can help us \u2013 and others \u2013 feel more comfortable in social interactions.\u00a0 Imagine if you turned up at a PTA meeting in a ballet leotard or went to dance class in your blazer, skirt and heels. But costumes, uniforms and attire can also build walls between us.\u00a0 As much as they help us identify others seemingly \u201clike us,\u201d\u00a0 we can also subconsciously identify people in different forms of attire as \u201cnot like us.\u201d<\/p> What about the mental costumes we wear<\/strong> – the masks and roles we put on that sometimes limit our vision?<\/strong>\u00a0 We don some of the masks in an effort to protect ourselves, thinking that, in certain situations at least, our true self is not appropriate or acceptable.\u00a0 At other times, we mask our true selves, thinking (consciously or not) that if we hide our true self, we can\u2019t get hurt.\u00a0 Other masks develop from ideals (our own or others’) that then turn into limiting habits and beliefs. Here are a few common examples: \u201cI am a manager, so I have to keep my decorum at all times.\u201d\u00a0 Or, \u201cI have to maintain a sense of authority in order to be an effective parent.\u201d\u00a0 Or \u201cGood girls don\u2019t cause a stir.\u201d<\/p> Our spiritual teachers encourage us to be our authentic selves.\u00a0 But what is our \u201cauthentic\u201d self, anyway, and how do we get to it? <\/strong>\u00a0I don\u2019t claim to know the secret.\u00a0 My working definition of my own authentic self is: \u201cthat part of me that is grounded and centered and connected to Truth and Love (which I often name God); that part that does not feel a need to either hold back or insist on my own way; that part that is open to what wants to unfold, for the higher good of all.\u00a0 (And, incidentally, the higher good for all does include me \u2013 and it has taken me a good while to get to that.)<\/p> Invitation to Action:<\/strong><\/p> Halloween will soon be upon us and, with modifications for social distancing, children everywhere are gathering their costumes and preparing to go trick-or-treating. Halloween costumes can be great fun \u2013 \u00a0for children and for adults.\u00a0 Costumes let us try on different identities, even identities that scare us.\u00a0 Put on a costume and you can be […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1402,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wingedlifecoaching.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1400"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wingedlifecoaching.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wingedlifecoaching.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wingedlifecoaching.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wingedlifecoaching.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1400"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/wingedlifecoaching.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1400\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1416,"href":"https:\/\/wingedlifecoaching.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1400\/revisions\/1416"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wingedlifecoaching.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1402"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wingedlifecoaching.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1400"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wingedlifecoaching.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1400"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wingedlifecoaching.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1400"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}