One of the most important things we find as professionals is that the seemingly most insignificant events can create lifelong issues. For me, it was Elvis Presley.
Imagine this – My 15th birthday is coming up, and Elvis is going to be in Philadelphia ON MY BIRTHDAY. I’m gonna die of excitement right here, before he even arrives. At the time, my Dad (who became my Dad when I was 5 – this will be important later), worked as General Manager of the Philadelphia Eagles. So he walked by a ticket office every day. The Spectrum, where Elvis would be playing, is also right across the street from where he worked. That meant for concerts, we could park in his reserved spot at the Vet (Veterans Stadium) and just walk across the street. HOW COOL IS THAT?! And I know my Dad can get tickets – like impossible-to-get tickets. He knows everybody, and everybody loves him. (He’s also known for starting the first Ronald McDonald Houses for families with children in the hospital.)
Once, he even got REALLY close up tickets for my friend Susan who JUST ADORED Donny Osmond. I mean the crying, melting, young teen kind of adored. (jeez) Anyway, I am so excited I will get to actually see Elvis in person on my birthday. It’s going to be the best night of my entire young life.
My birthday comes around…. and I’m so excited. As we’re leaving, I ask, “Is Mom going or you?”
He looks at me and says, “Oh, I forgot to get the tickets.”
FORGOT?! A note here, this is called a UDIN moment – unexpected, dramatic, isolating, no strategy. It’s what causes a trauma. For me, in all my happiness, I was devastated and actually just couldn’t believe it (shock). And then to top it off, ELVIS DIES LESS THAN 2 MONTHS LATER. I’ll NEVER see him in person (reinforcing event).
Big deal? Nah, right? Just a young girl who didn’t get what she really wanted. Happens all the time, right? It’s just a concert, right? Hmmmm…..
So I buried it. It’s no big deal. But I’ve since realized that I stopped playing Elvis songs, I stopped watching Elvis movies, and anytime I saw anything Elvis, I’d look away. Anytime an Elvis song played in a store or on the radio, I’d do my best to ignore it, or I’d just leave – FOR 40 YEARS!!!!!!!!!!!
This morning, I got sick and tired of it. I thought to myself, “For Pete’s sake, just go Matrix the thing, would you?! You’re Matrix Reimprinting’s first trainer in the entire United States and you haven’t Matrixed this stupid little thing yet?! But it’s no big deal. WELL MAYBE IT IS!!!!!! YOU KNOW BETTER THAN THAT!!!!!!”
FINE. Let’s just DO this silly thing.
Now a couple things. First – when you walk into the Matrix and work with a teenager, you usually get a fight or at least an argument. So be prepared, be patient, and especially be persistent. Second – 99% of the time they’re going want the bad thing to never happen. I teach an hour course on what you can change and can’t change in the Matrix. Essentially, there are levels of changing things and (simple but important) rules that you should follow.
So I walk in and she’s at the Jersey shore sitting on the deck. (Hmm, I had forgotten that part. Note that remembering details when you step into the event in the Matrix happens all the time.) I go up to her, tell her who I am, that I’m there to help her through something and can I tap on the side of hand. She says yes and “uh oh.” See she knows when I show up that something bad is about to happen (if it already hasn’t.) So she’s nervous. I ask if we can tap on that and she says no, let’s just get on with it. So I tell her about forgetting the tickets. Now at the time it actually happened, I was so hurt, I said nothing – AT ALL (shock). This time, the younger Karin got angry as well. “WHAT?! HE FORGOT?! HOW CAN HE FORGET? He didn’t forget SUSAN!” And then it hit me. I realized the reason I had kept pushing this away all the time. See, younger Karin had interpreted this even as if he cared about Susan more than her. So it must have been that I wasn’t important to him. As a professional, I don’t say that realization out loud to the client, I let the client figure it out on their own – which always happens. So in this case, I just asked Karin if I could tap on “How can he forget?!” And she pushed my hand away and said “No, don’t. Just give me a second.”
So I asked, “OK, can you at least tap on your own collarbone point or something?”
She said, “FINE.” Lots of feelings came pouring out and I just sat there and tapped and listened while she tapped and lamented. Then the questions and arguing started. She wanted answers. “How can he forget? For real, it’s a question. How can he forget?!”
Oh boy, see I don’t know. It’s been 40 years, I’ve been carrying this around and I wouldn’t allow myself to think about it so I don’t know. And then it hit me. After all these years, I’VE GOT IT. “You know how Dad gets when it’s going to snow?”
“What does that have to do with any of this?!”
“Give me second to explain. You know how he gets? One snow flake and he freaks. He doesn’t want anyone to leave the house, nobody is supposed to drive, is there bread and milk in the house, does the entire family know it’s gonna snow so they’re prepared, is everyone safe…”
She rolls her eyes and says “Yeah….jeez”
I say,” It has nothing to do with you. It’s has everything to do with Elvis”
“WHAT?!”
“See Elvis is, well sort of sexual when he sings. He stunned the world when people first saw his moves. So Dad wants to protect you. He didn’t forget. He purposely didn’t get the tickets.”
“WHAT?!” Pausing in complete disbelief and more anger… and she says ”You’re telling me that Elvis is a snowflake?!”
I laughed, “Exactly.”
“IT’S NOT FUNNY.”
“I meant that you got it REALLY quickly, and came up with a sentence that’s perfect. Yes, Elvis is a snowflake.”
“Yeah well, too bad. It doesn’t matter. What – watching somebody wiggle in a concert is going to make me jump in bed with him? GGGODDDDDD.”
I remind her, “IT’S A SNOWFLAKE. ” She sighs, and we keep tapping while she’s sitting there processing. Then she suddenly wants to run. What? Oh I get it. To let off steam. We starting running down the beach. Not long and she turns to me and wants to go back. I ask her if I can hold her hand, and she actually agrees. We walk back.
Finally, I ask her, “OK, are you ready to go through this?”
She pauses a moment and replies, “No. I want him to tell me the truth.”
Oh boy. Somehow, I know that this is inherent to the negative learning so it can’t change in the Matrix. So I ask if his higher self can tell her but she won’t let it go, “No, his human self. He has to tell me the truth.”
I answer, “OK, so if we do this, then we just have to do it again where he doesn’t tell you the truth.”
“OK, FINE.”
So we go in, and 15-year old Karin can’t say anything so I ask her if she wants me to. She does. So I introduce myself to Dad and tell him that Karin wants the truth. And he says “I just forgot, that’s all.”
Younger Karin says (rather loudly), “You’re lying.” Whoa there girl.
I say, “What Karin is saying is that she really needs to know the truth – did you really forget?”
He stares at us, deciding. We wait. He says, “Forgetting is better than telling her she can’t go.”
I turn to Karin and simply say, “Snowflake.” As I suspected, it didn’t help. She’s still mad he lied and she’s still peeved that he thinks making her not go will do anything. We go back outside, I tap on her hand and start giving her more information. Karin LOVES information. Understanding something makes everything better. So I tell her that her closest cousin will marry a Baptist man and they’ll raise their kids through homeschooling, that the women can only wear skirts and dresses and their children can only listen to gospel music – all until they are 18 years old. I tell her that the man she marries has a brother who believes that too and raises his children the same way – no socializing outside of the church community and no music except gospel. I tell her I have a client who moved to a different country to get her daughter away from a boyfriend that her daughter wanted to move in with at 16 years old. I know it doesn’t help you much now, but it puts things into perspective. “He could’ve told you the truth but he thought this was easier on you – and easier on him for that matter. He was wrong, but he didn’t know that.”
She pauses and says, “OK,” but with resignation.
I prompt her, “OK, what?”
“OK, Elvis is a snowflake.”
Everything had changed. She now understood. She still didn’t like it AT ALL, but it wasn’t because she wasn’t important to him, it was EXACTLY the opposite. So we Reimprinted– It wasn’t +10 great feeling, but it was extremely different. She WAS important, TOO important. So important that he had to protect her from the snowflake just in case.
And that’s not even the important part. Before I get to the important part, I’ll share that the following year, she asked for tickets again. This time it was to see Prince. Now she did want to see Prince but it wasn’t all that important. It was more to give him the chance to prove that she’s wrong, she actually is important to him. Dad said sure, and then, of course, he “forgot” again. She wasn’t surprised, it just showed her even more that she wasn’t important to him. But now all that’s different. Now she sees that Prince was just another snowflake. (And now so do I.)
It hurt too much to “go there” in all those years. And it was “such a silly thing.” So I just buried it. Who’da thunk. And like after most matrix sessions, it all looks so clear now, OF COURSE.
So now the important thing: I have found over the years of working with clients that after we reimprint and “flip the learning” as I call it, if a person sleeps on it or even has just a little time, more insights will appear. So I get out of bed after doing this early-morning Matrix on myself, I walk into the kitchen, and it hits me. I realize that all my life, ever since THAT MOMENT, I believed that if it’s important to you, you better do it yourself or you’ll be let down. It permeates everything for me. I have to do it myself or I will be let down. If I try to rely on someone, they’ll fail me – not that it’s their fault at all, it’s just the way it is. So, of course, I attract even more of that – I hire people who are TERRIFIC at something, but when they try to do it for me, something always goes wrong. I can’t tell you how many people over the years have quit by saying “Karin, you are the best boss I’ve ever had. You are thoughtful and patient and wonderful to work for. But I just can’t do it. For some reason, I’m always disappointing you and you tell me you aren’t disappointed and it’s OK, but I just can’t seem to do things well. Even the things I KNOW how to do. And I can’t keep doing this to you. I know you’re going to say it’s OK like you always do, but it’s not OK with me. I can’t keep taking your money and not delivering.” Even people like plumbers, house keepers, electricians, web people. EVERYONE. My. Entire. Life.
On that summer day, I unknowingly made a decision. That’s just the way it is. If it’s important to you, people will fail you, so you may as well do it yourself. No hard feelings, it’s just the way it is. Later on, after I started doing this work, it became more that it’s the way it is FOR ME. Because ALL people don’t always let ALL people down. One day I’ll figure it out. Well, that day finally came. And it’s cleared. Thanks to Matrix and my buried “silly” Elvis box refusing to stay closed.
Moral of the story? Nothing is too small to matter. Just Matrix it, you never know.