Cut It Back: The Power of Less

Rats.

It’s the beginning of Autumn, when they attempt to sneak inside. Unfortunately they decided my ceiling is the place to be. My beautiful garden conspiring with shady boughs giving perfect access to all the nooks and crannies.

Today the secateurs came out to prune shrubs and trees, limiting rodent access and cover.

The more I snipped, the more it felt like a neuropsychological endeavour.

Each little branch like a belief. Some new, some ancient. Some supporting other growth, branches, foliage. Some venturing out on their own to find new ground to lay roots.

Much like our belief systems and the identity we’ve formed around them. Some inherited, some collective historical, and some uniquely our own.

It feels like we’re being invited collectively, yet experience it individually, to prune a lot of old beliefs and structures that no longer serve us, or limit our growth.  Some like the old gnarled trunks, have seen generations come and go from a strong foundation root/core belief.

As with my pruning, you can shape them little twig by little twig.

Today my pruning was bigger scale. My tolerance for rats inside is zero. My tolerance for staying small, limiting myself and limiting the infinite support around me, has shrunk substantially. So today I focused on the structural branches, the foundations.

My plants look different. There’s space around them, more light and possibilities for new choices to land.

While I’ve been snipping away, limiting belief systems, fog and foundational beliefs flowed into my awareness. Old scarcity models, not of me, but ones I had allowed to land to land in me rose. Showing me how they’d limited what I allowed myself to stretch into. Revealing old ancestral patterns walked so often they were wide highways. Old painful patterns so familiar they seemed fundamental truths.

What were they showing today: Scarcity: Financial, opportunities, support,  models of change. None of these unique to me. They’re old templates we live within. Showing up as “truths” or best practices. Often contradicting other beliefs of abundance, skillsets and connection.

This recognition freed me as I snipped to release them, feel into different possibilities, deeper truths previously unseen, different frequencies, spaces to occupy and create from.

Ive found venturing deeper into an authentic heart makes them easier to recognise and shed.

Your powerful, beautiful heart might help you too in this season of pruning:

Put a hand on your heart and imagine breathing into your heart-space.

Bring compassion for the ancestors/cultures these beliefs originated from, and younger versions of you that adopted them as “fact”.

Allow space for a deeper truth, even if you’re unable to see it yet.

Let your body guide you to move in whatever way it needs to, to let these old belief structures release.

Be gentle with yourself as you recognise these. There’s no fault or blame or need to be embarrassed by them. They’re simply ways of being you’re being encouraged to release and grow from.

Given the collective nature of a lot of these, it’s my experience that the more of us that recognise and change these, the easier it is for others to follow. As we do this enough, new motorways of beliefs and structures are created.