How to Connect to your Inner Wisdom?

We all have a lot of inner wisdom we most of the time ignore or neglect. Inner wisdom that creates the possibility to make different more sustainable decisions both for ourselves and for the community around us. For me working with archetypes is a way to connect to my inner wisdom.

There are all kinds of exercises and tools to tap into your archetypal energy. One way to do so is every now and then take the time to have an inner archetypal team meeting. For example right before or after an important assignment. These archetypal team meetings help me to connect to my inner wisdom. As a result I have a more kaleidoscopic view on the topic and therefor I take different decisions.

In this blog I explain an exercise for a practical visualisation of an archetypal team meeting. In the blog ‘Flipping my “not-good-enough-stories” I show you the result of an archetypal meeting I had some time ago.

What is an archetypal meeting?

An archetypal meeting is a pre- or reflection tool through which you deep dive into yourself to face -most of the time at least- your deepest fears. Fears that are holding you back in real life to become the best version of yourself. By visualising and/ or meditating about what is happening inside you, you become more aware of how your inner activities influence your ‘outer’ life.

Focussing on the different dominant archetypes and pay attention to what they say or do, creates a structure in the exercise.

An archetypal meeting is like any other meeting in person, but now the meeting takes place insight you. It helps if you have an agenda, otherwise the active archetypes in you will go everywhere and there won’t be a clear outcome. Which often happens in meetings without a clear agenda in real life too by the way…. 😉

If you are a bit more experienced in working with archetypes, or if you are curious what happens, if you just let your dominant archetypes talk, you can do a so called ‘LOTT-session’. LOTT means ‘Legs On The Table’ session. The aim of these kinds of sessions is to see what is bothering you in the subconscious undercurrent.

How to do an archetypal meeting?

In a normal archetypal meeting you take the following steps:

1. Have a notebook and a pencil.
2. Decide what is the agenda or at least the theme for the meeting. In my case the theme was the online training I gave.
3. Pick one or two archetypes which are normally in your boardroom. Connect to their specific characteristics.If you want to discover which archetypes are in your boardroom, please read ‘Doing business in disruptive times’.
4. Let these one or two archetypes ‘prepare the meeting’ based on their qualities. Do this by focussing on their characteristics and look at the theme from their point of view. I write everything down what these archetypes ‘tell me’.Probably other dominant archetypes will try to intervene already in this step, but try to avoid that.In my case, for example I let my Inner Hermit and my Inner Cook shortly reflect on the online training I gave. I set behind my desk and connected to these two archetypes by visualizing them sitting on the other side of the table. After a while they both came up with  some questions they suggested to ponder on during the meeting. One question was, for example, which ingredients of the trainer would or could I reuse a next time and which ones weren’t really a success?
5. After this preparation the meeting itself starts. Imagine yourself sitting at the head of a big round table in the conference room. Before you open it officially  take a look at all the chairs and at all the archetypes sitting in them. Which ones are attending the meeting? Are there empty chairs of archetypes you had expected, but who aren’t there?
6. Write down their names and their light and shadow side characteristics. This will help you as chairman of this meeting to create a structure in the discussions during the meeting.
7. Start the meeting by inviting the other archetypes to say what they want to say on the topic. If you have prepared the meeting (step 4) some time ago it might help to first reconnect to what you have written down then, before you invite the other archetypes to say or do what they want.
8. Wait and see which archetypes stands up first. If there are more than one pay attention to one of them and then go to the others. Write everything down that you hear them say or what you see them do. Some of my clients close their eyes while having the meeting. As a reporter they tell about what is happing and just record that. I personally prefer to write and/or draw everything down that is being said and done.The hardest part of this step is to turn off your inner Judge about what is being said. Just write everything down without any judgement on it. The meaning will become clear later on during or after the meeting.
9. Pay attention to every archetype that is attending the meeting. But also take notice of the discussions that are taking place. Keep on writing everything down.
10. At a certain point -most of the time after 1 – 3 hours (!!)- you’ll notice that one or two archetypes want to end the meeting. Honour that and thank one by one every archetype that was contributing to it.
11. Take a walk outside for at least 30 minutes after this exercise. Try not to stick to the meeting but really get out of it.
12. Take a look at your notes and see what meanings are in there for you. Some of the notes mean nothing to you at this moment, which is perfectly ok. Just focus on what makes sense for you. Write those lessons down. Create actions you want to take out of the meeting.

Minutes of my meeting

Curious on the minutes of one of my meetings? Read ‘Flipping not good enough stories into something value’.

To be continued…