STUCK IN GROUNDHOG DAY?
🐽 Groundhog Day isn’t just about a rodent seeing its shadow or not.
Its also a movie about someone that needed to learn a lesson.
Unless you are perfect, you probably experience some kind of groundhog day habit in your life.
And just like in the movie, the people in your life either don’t know, don’t believe you, or don’t understand.
Your groundhog day might be:
- Relentless feast or famine
- Losing 10lbs and then gaining it back
- Commiserating in comfort eating
- Buying things to make you happy for a moment
- Despising gaining weight or wasting money
- Regretting giving in to urges and letting yourself down
- Facing the same problem again and again
- Feeling stuck in a job/relationship/town/body
- Trapped in the same emotional state
- Waking up to the same old sh*t
- Never feeling truly or deeply satisfied
- Never feeling fulfilled or complete
- Going round and around in circles
- Caught in a vicious cycle
🔄 It could be cycles of: self esteem and self loathing, weight loss and weight gain, endless insomnia, never ending fatigue, a lifetime of insecurity or a deep sense that you are wasting your life or squandering your potential in some way.
Deep down it makes us feel bad if we are honest, and the feelings we stuff down and refuse to acknowledge form our rejected self or shadow 👣.
Do you see your shadow - or avoid acknowledging it at all costs?
What’s the point of a half life like that, might be a much bigger question than you are prepared to tolerate right now?
But you can’t take philosophy out of psychology any more than you can take politics out of the price of bread.
🪨 Having prepared the way to bring up the myth of Sisyphus shortly, lets take a moment to consider time.
🗓️ Groundhog Day is an arbitrary, unscientific date when we are all encouraged through ritual to consider the arrival of spring.
Its a bit like valentines day, only massive corporate entities haven’t figured out how to profit from it yet.
🕯️ Every year on February the 2nd, you are invited not to take your life for granted. It evolved from a pagan celebration involving lighting candles called Candlemass (not the doom metal band).
💡Shadows are only formed from shining light, so if you insist on living in the dark about your shadow, you probably will never see it and never experience the growth opportunity it offers you.
You see, painful realizations are our friends, not our enemies.
Your shadow self is pregnant with possibilities, but gives birth to none of them if you never never look deep inside or listen to your inner voice.
Like the Universe itself, time isn’t particularly kind, caring or considerate.
Its relentless in its pursuits to devour you like the ticking crocodile in Peter Pan, that hounded the crooked kidnapper captain hook.
Time will move on, even if you feel stuck.
Time won’t cut you a break or extend special privileges to you, no matter how many satanic contracts you sign in blood or how many virgin’s hearts you drink dry 😜
❣️ Blood is a metaphor for life, and shadows are a symbol of the unknown.
Punxsutawney Phil is a symbol of divining certainty, and groundhog day is metaphor for changing your life by changing yourself.
The movie’s main character, weatherman Phil Conner (played by Bill Murray) is a grade A ass*ole (a technical term for narcissist).
He believes he can charm his way through life, oblivious to his many failings and faults - unaware of his many failings.
Throughout the movie he resits seeing his shadow.
But it is only when he decides to do the work to improve himself instead of playing people for a comfortable life, that his endless nightmare ends.
👥 We tend to think of villains as dark figures, lurking in the shadows, laying in wait to invite us into distress, despair or involve us in some diabolical scheme. Not a part of us.
But it is a part of everyone, and far from trying to harm us, our shadow self invites us to improve.
Without the painful reminders we might endlessly cling to comfort and seek to ignore our calling, like Peter Pan, running away from his shadow and refusing to accept responsibility for his life.
🎰 Sure we can attempt to pacify ourselves with endless empty purchases and relentless passive pleasures.
But that’s never never never going to turn you into the best version of you or come anywhere close to manifesting your best life.
Achieving anything more than fleeting fun is going to require you to make a commitment to overcoming some discomfort.
You are going to need to face your shadow.
🪨 Challenge and adversity await you, like that philosophical icon Sisyphus (the greek dude tasked by God to push a heavy rock up a hill every day, only to have it roll all the way back to the bottom every night).
Some might think his tale is one of pointlessness and madness. But its really about developing character. Winners don’t give up.
I don’t know what your specific struggle is, but I know without hesitation that the best version of you doesn’t give up trying to overcome it.
The best version of you makes a strong commitment and perseveres with great intention until they succeed or die trying.