Serendipity has been my constant companion as of late. Most commonly, it’s appeared in the form of reminders about self-love. I’ve gotten this message more times than I can count over the years. Friends, employers, mentors, passages from books, and flashes of insight during my quiet times have reminded me of the importance of being kind to myself. It took me a long time to start listening and seeing how this applies to my life. Even then, it was only within the last week that I fully realized how the lack of sufficient self-love negatively impacts both my mentality as well as my performance at almost everything I do outside of solo activities. Feeling as if I’m not good enough or that I won’t be able to handle what’s on my plate often acts as a self-fulfilling prophecy. More often than not, I manage to do well, but I still feel uncomfortable throughout the process and the relief at the end never lasts long or translates into long-term confidence.
I feel best whenever I’m being super kind to myself and my hardest times occur when I’ve forgotten the importance of that compassion. Thanks to regular reminders, I’ve spent a lot of time in the past week working on this. During a coaching session earlier this week, I gained many insights into what’s going on and what I can do about it. My inner judge, as I initially called the feeling of hardness and condemnation within myself, is there to keep me safe from things that scare me. That I’ve known for a long time now, so I asked it what can be done to convince it that we’ll be able to handle whatever comes up just as we’ve handled everything else thus far. The answers were to make a list of successes, lean more into who I want to be, and surrender to the flow of life rather than resisting it. I also asked it if there’s another role besides judge it would like to have. Confidant and friend were what came up, and part of those roles involve helping me solve problems and keeping me on track. The insights from that session gave me a huge sense of relief. I’ve spent time each day working on integrating everything that came up and it’s already paying off.
This feels like the big one for me. If I can get this sorted out, everything else will fall into place. This is the source of most (if not all) of my anxiety, depression, discomfort, paranoia, strained relationships, and fear that I’ll flub everything outside of a narrow range of activities. I’m determined to make these realizations stick by continuing to work toward where I want to be. Even then, I’m going to keep working to maintain that progress so that I don’t backslide into my old, harmful habits. What’s on the other side of fear and pain? Nothing but freedom, and that’s where I’m headed. I’ll see you there.