I’m an enormously huge fan of coaching. Clearly, because why else would I have become a coach? I’m also a giant fan of therapy. (Oh therapy, how I love thee.)
I would never have made friends with myself to the extent that I have if it weren’t for coaching and therapy. I don’t know where I’d be without them, but I wouldn’t be here.
In our society, those are the usual places we go when we want answers: therapy or coaching. Or books. (Or denial. But I think we can all agree that’s a less-than-helpful destination.)
But there’s another place to go, somewhere we don’t reference nearly as often.
This place is the real source of insight. This place is a direct line between where you are and where you want to be. Therapy and coaching are invaluable translation services for the insights you’ll find here.
But sometimes, the answers here can be accessed without outside help. Just you.
This place, this fountain of insight, is, of course, within you.
There is so much smartness inside your brain and body. It’s hard to realize that, however, unless you go within.
There are many ways to plumb your own depths for the insight you’re seeking. Meditation. Yoga. Dreams. Daydreams.
The written word is a powerful one to start with. When we’re thinking, thoughts move so rapidly that we can talk ourselves out of insights before they have a chance to land. But when we write? When we write, the truth can spill out before we have the chance to stopper it up.
When diving for internal insights, one of the best tools you can have is a good question. A good question will unleash the truths you hoped to, but never thought you would, find.
Below are 26 questions to ask yourself when you want a good, solid dose of pure insight.
Get yourself a pen and paper. And start scribbling.
How do I feel, physically, when I think about this situation?
What would {person you admire most} say to do here?
If there’s a lesson I’m supposed to learn here, what is it? (Only ask this if it doesn’t make you want to throw up.)
What lies am I telling myself about this?
What don’t I want to see?
What does this situation remind me of?
What does my wisest self have to say on this subject?
What needs to be said?
What sucks about this? (Full permission to complain.)
What advice would my five-year-old self give me right now?
What advice would my ninety-year-old self give me right now?
What beliefs am I letting go unquestioned?
What am I bursting at the seams to say?
What am I overlooking?
If this issue was a physical object, what would it be? What would its texture be like? Its size? Its shape? Its energy?
What’s the most outrageous way for this to unfold?
If I were telling this situation back to myself as a story, how would that story go?
If I decided to go off the beaten path here, what would that look like?
Why?
Why not?
How could I break my internal rules right now?
How could I break external rules right now?
What am I yearning for?
What object near me draws my attention? And what does it have to tell me about this issue?
If I had a genie to grant me one wish, what would I wish for here?
What am I thinking is wrong that’s actually totally right?
With this list, I wish you insights galore. And the experience of discovering your own shimmering genius.
Fear is a humongous, giant, important part of any sort of life coaching. At least I believe it is. Fear invariably shows up in the course of coaching — any coaching, with anyone. It’s the natural response to engaging in new patterns and trying new experiences, both of which happen a lot when someone’s being coached.
Even though fear is a completely essential part of coaching (and, of course, of learning to like yourself), I haven’t addressed it a whole lot here. But that’s about to change.
I’m very lucky to be a part of the winter tribe at Roots of She, where I’ll be exploring (and having fun with!) fear for the next few months. I’d love for you to join me and begin to learn about your own relationship to fear. If that sounds scary to you, I understand. Fear can be scary. But the scarier it sounds, the more that consciously (and gently — always gently) engaging with it will transform your life.
Join me at Roots of She, and start getting friendly with your fears.
I wondered for so many years what it meant to sit with your emotions. Because that’s what people would always say was the way to get through emotional eating, and all I wanted was to stop doing it. But what in the world did it mean to “sit with” your emotions?
I’d try to sit down when I was wondering what there was to live for. I felt squirmy, uncomfortable and like I was doing it all wrong. I felt unbearably awful. What was the point of sitting there and dwelling on it? My mind looped predictably through the downward spiral as I frantically pounded against my mind’s concrete walls, desperate for a way out. Eventually, whipped into a frenzy by my thoughts, breathless with panic, I’d barrel toward an escape, whatever that meant on that particular day.
I did not comprehend the meaning of sitting with my emotions.
Thousands of days later, thousands of dollars spent on therapy later, thousands of pages of reading later, and many hundreds of meditation practices later, I get it. But I’m guessing that if the concept of sitting with emotions was hard for me to grasp, there are other people who don’t get it, either. Here’s how I do it.
To sit with your emotions, you must first of all sit down. Sitting, I should point out, is not required. You may stand, or you may lie down. Sitting works best for me, because it allows me to consciously relax my body while maintaining enough alertness to remember to stay focused and not fall asleep. You may sit with your feet on the floor, or with your legs crossed. In a chair with my feet on the floor is a favorite for me. Rest your hands on your lap, and close your eyes. Take a deep breath, allowing your belly to expand like a balloon, then allow the breath to completely exit your body. Then breathe in again.
Notice the spots on your body where you’re holding tension.
We all hold tension in our bodies differently, and it may be that your entire body is clenched tightly and has been for many years. This is okay. We start where we are. No matter how tightly you hold yourself, there is hope for you to relax and let go and feel better. If you can, allow the tightest spots you notice to consciously relax. If they don’t seem to want to relax, that’s okay. Let there be space for that tightness. You could even say to those particular parts of your body, “It’s okay for you to be tight. You don’t need to release your grip if you don’t want to.” There’s no need to fight against the tightness.
Notice any emotions that you’re feeling.
If you’re in the grips of a hard moment, you might feel panic, or sorrow, or fear. You may be unable to identify any emotions at all because your thoughts are so loud and insistent that you shouldn’t be sitting down right now, because you need to fix your problems right this minute, and sitting here isn’t going to achieve that.
Ask yourself how you know you’re feeling what you’re feeling.
Identify the actual physical sensations of the emotions. This might take a long time to do. It might be that you’re unable to identify the physical sensations until you’ve tried this exercise many times. That’s okay. Anything you feel is valid. Try to trust that you’re feeling your emotions in the way that’s right for you. There’s no wrong way to do this, and you don’t need to tell anyone else what you’re experiencing.
If you’ve been able to identify any of the physical sensations of your emotions, investigate them now.
Do you feel tightness, squeezing, heaviness, stabbing pain, an inability to breathe, or countless other sensations? Can you compare what you’re experiencing in your body to an image you get in your mind? Do the sensations have certain colors to them, or textures, or weights? Continue to investigate what’s happening within your body.
Whenever your mind wanders (or pounds) back to any insistent, panicked, frantic thoughts, refocus your mind on the sensations in your body.
Most likely, your mind will wander back to your thoughts very, very frequently. For me personally, unless I’m doing this exercise with another person, and depending on how upset I am when I do it, my mind wanders once or twice per second. Your work is not to keep your mind from wandering back to the thoughts.Your work is noticing that your mind is returning to the thoughts, and redirecting your focus, over and over and over again, to the physical sensations of the emotions in your body.
Now that you’ve hopefully been able to feel the sensations of the emotions in your body, allow those sensations to be there.
Our goal here is not to make those sensations go away. Quite the contrary: trying to make them go away will only intensify them and hurt us. Allow sensations of pain, allow sensations of tightness, allow sensations of heaviness. If it feels safe to do so, you can even invite the sensations to intensify (but only if it feels safe to you). If it feels hard to allow those sensations to be there, you might say to them, “You’re allowed to be there. You have space. I allow you to exist.” As you do this, the sensations you feel may change location, intensity, or shape. Continue to observe that, and continue to allow that.
Again, when your mind returns to panicked thoughts that are trying to solve your problems rationally, redirect your focus to the sensations of the emotions within your body.
Once you’ve practiced this for a few minutes, shift your focus back to your whole body. Notice where you’re sitting, what that feels like, where your hands are resting on your body. Notice any sounds taking place in the room around you, and outside the room you’re in. If you’re ready, you can gently open your eyes and take in your physical surroundings visually. Allow yourself time to return from your inner world. Perhaps take some more deep breaths.
And that is how you sit with your emotions. Sitting with your emotions refocuses us from the thoughts we have about our emotions and instead allows us to experience their essences. You can think and reason with your emotions all day long, but in my experience, you can’t fully move through them until you’ve felt them without the thoughts attached to them. The way you do this is by returning to the physical sensations of the emotions, and allowing them. This requires a faith that our problems won’t be solved by reasoning with them.
If you’re anything like me, you’ve tried to get rid of your emotions through reasoning for years, and it’s never worked. So you might try this, either by yourself or with the guidance of a teacher, coach or mental health practitioner who is familiar with somatic methods of working with emotions. The worst that will happen is that you’ll spend five minutes in frustration. The best that will happen is that you’ll discover a way to process your emotions that will allow you to step off the treadmill of pain on which you’ve been stuck.
Because I know everyone learns differently, here’s a video of me practicing this technique on myself. Join me if you like!
It’s summer, which means it’s hot. I hate hot. I shouldn’t hate hot. Who hates summer?
I’ve made it to the car, which would mean relief, because soon the ice cream will be in my mouth and nothing else will matter. But it’s hot, which means I’m sweating. And that means I feel even more of the bunching of my skirt, the clinging of my polyester shirt to my bra, the bulging of my skin, the stomach I hate so much I’d like to cut it off and throw it right out the window. Even though that would hurt. And would also be bloody.
The hate and self-disgust is taking me over, burying me in its heat, and I want to make it go away. It doesn’t matter how painful it is to make it go away, or what promises I’ve made to myself that I’ll be breaking. I know only that I’m drowning in this excruciating hatred of myself.
Which clinches it. The windows can stay shut, I can suffocate in the heat of the car, and it doesn’t matter that I don’t have a spoon. I cup the three fingers of my right hand, scooping out the softening ice cream near the outside of the container. My fingers find their way into my mouth, and all is sweet and good and okay for half a second and that’s all that matters because if I can disappear into the cold and the sweet for a moment, maybe I won’t have to live any longer.
I’m still awake and alive, though, which means already the voices of rage and remorse are striking. I am not deterred, and I scoop my fingers again into the tub of ice cream. Back to my mouth. And again. Again.
It doesn’t matter that I don’t know or care what flavor it is I’m eating, or that someone might see me. It doesn’t matter that I’ll have to hide the evidence later, or that I’m not hungry, or that my fingers are now so cold that they’re aching. All that matters is that, for a moment, I can forget my loneliness, my longing, and my fear of gaining even more weight.
I don’t want to eat this ice cream. I don’t want to be sweating inside this hotbox of a car. I don’t want to feel the empty ache of my alone-ness. And so I continue to shovel the ice cream into myself, even though it hurts in so many ways, because the half-second of oblivion is worth it.
Like I said, this is not an inspiring story. This is a realistic story.
Now, it’s ten years later. Maybe not even that many. Maybe eight. Sometimes I feel lonely. When I do, I notice it, and I focus on feeling the loneliness. When I write that, it sounds simple and easy, but it’s not. It’s a challenge, because my instinct, even after years of working on it, is to eat something to distract me from what’s wrong before I even know something is wrong.
Despite my instinct, which leads me to the cupboard like a sleepwalker, I can’t remember the last time I binged on food (or anything, for that matter). I don’t know when the last time was that I ran toward that cliff and into oblivion. It took a lot of years, but I’ve become functional, and mostly happy. Not just that, but I know more is possible for me. If I didn’t, I never would have gone full-time with coaching and photography.
I’m not telling this story to escape from the shame I feel about living that moment, and countless others like it.
I’m not telling this story to brag about the fact that I escaped.
I’m not telling this story to convince you that working with me will take you from hopeless to footloose and fancy-free in three months.
I’m telling this story because at that moment, in that hot-as-hell car, I didn’t think there was hope for somebody “like me.” Now I know there is, because I’m here.
Here, where life is infinitely more hopeful.
This is the tiredest of cliches, but if I can do it, you can do it. I won’t say it’ll be fast or easy (and it definitely won’t be linear), but you can do it, whatever “it” is.
This is not an inspiring story. This is a realistic story. And sometimes, there’s a lot of hope in realistic.
. . .
Comments: I’m welcoming warmth and compassion today, and your own stories of triumph, regardless of whether your road is short or long, and regardless of where you are on it.
My heart’s been heavy since last Monday evening, when the wind began whistling through the trees in our backyard. I’ve felt fear. Fear for our safety, for our windows, for the people whose homes now look like wooden cages filled with sand. I’ve felt sadness. I’ve felt guilt.
Last week, the sadness and guilt were weighing me down. In addition to the enormous (seriously; enormous) gratitude I felt that we were completely safe and dry, I also felt some guilt. A lot of guilt, actually. Thousands of people on the outskirts of my borough, and on the coast, and in the Caribbean, are suddenly homeless and grieving losses of life and property, and I’m wondering whether my phone service will return for my coaching calls.
I could easily pretend it never happened.
The citywide sense of desperation is fading fast, like a receding tide. Yesterday, almost all the subways were back in full service. Millions of gallons of water had been pumped out of the tunnels under the East River, and tunnels look like they never flooded at all. That is not the case.
People are back at work. In the past few days, election frenzy has displaced hurricane frenzy. I noticed on Monday that the hurricane was no longer occupying top of the page real estate on the New York Times website.
For those of us who weren’t affected too much by the storm, it’s fairly easy to put it out of mind. I could easily stop thinking about the hundreds of older adults who were relocated from assisted living facilities in the Rockaways to rows of cots set up in elementary school gyms in Park Slope. But that doesn’t mean they’re not there.
On Saturday, we were in Red Hook, trying to find some volunteering to do. I talked to a little girl who I’m guessing was about 10 or 11. She was hunkered down on a park bench with two large laundry carts full of jugs of water, personal items, and food, all covered up with blankets. I asked her if she and her family needed anything (that was the volunteer job we’d been assigned). She said there wasn’t anything they needed. Because it’s not as if I could conjure an apartment for her family to live in for the next few weeks or months.
If I wanted to, I could stop wondering if that girl and her family have an apartment yet, or whether they’re still carting belongings around everywhere they go.
I don’t have to think about the more than 100 families in Breezy Point who lost their homes last week. Or the fact that the restaurant there where we used to celebrate graduations and birthdays is now a standing facade with nothing but rubble, sand, and sea behind it.
If I wanted to, I could stop thinking about the piles of garbage and furniture taller than me that we walked past on the way to the bus as we left Red Hook. Everybody who lived in the neighborhood was trudging through the necessary task of throwing things away. There was scrap wood and metal in the piles, and I wondered where it had come from. A few days ago, was that part of their homes?
Scruffy, dark-grey stuffed animals had slid to the bottom of one garbage pile. A water-stained baseball glove teetered atop a heap of stuffed black garbage bags on the other side of the street. An unfamiliar smell hung in the air that I can only place as reminding me of how it smelled in Nairobi when I went as a kid (the smell is the only thing I remember of that city). I don’t know if it’s the smell of generators, or electrical fires, or grief, but I know it’s not a smell I’ve ever experienced in Red Hook before.
Tragedy is still tragedy, and it still hurts.
Nonprofits, government organizations, and community volunteers are doing what they can to provide relief to the people who need it right now, but there’s a point at which we have to realize that nobody can make it all better. Hundreds of people’s homes have flooded completely or burned to the ground, and no matter how well-organized and plentiful the relief efforts are, tragedy is still tragedy, and it still hurts like mad.
Manhattan has power again, which means that most of the people I know who were affected by the hurricane are back to a somewhat normal cadence of life. But even though New York’s most densely-populated borough is once again full of light and moving briskly, that doesn’t mean people and animals and landscapes have stopped suffering.
News fades in days, but recovery takes longer.
Because of the nature of the news, each day, there will be less and less talk about what happened here last week. Increasingly, only the people who lost homes and loved ones will continue to suffer under the weight of this tragedy. But those who are suffering will probably continue to do so for months, maybe years.
How can you help?
When a crisis happens, there’s a disconnect between the needs that appear and the resources available to meet those needs. I’ve noticed that with the shelters here in Brooklyn over the past few days. Volunteers hear that one shelter needs men’s extra-large underwear, and that shelter receives more undies than it can accommodate. Then, another gaping need is identified somewhere else, and people rush to fill it. It’s imperfect, constantly changing, and unpredictable.
But people do want to help, and I know that. I’m one of them. Because of that, I wanted to share a list I’ve been compiling of ways to help (or to find out how to help), both for people living in the New York area and those across the country and the world. Because this is a crisis, these needs are changing constantly. I’d say that if you’re able to contribute financially, there’s a pretty good chance your contribution will be put to use.
Ali Forney’s drop-in center for LGBTQ youth was destroyed by flooding. (A friend of mine works there; they do incredible, much-needed work.) You can donate here.
Along with the compassion I know you’re all sending to the Northeast right now, remember to give yourself some compassion. Those on the outskirts of a crisis deserve comfort and caring, too.
*Trigger warning: This post mentions physical abuse. If you’re a survivor of trauma/abuse, please proceed with care.*
A Session with Dr. Drew
In Season 4 of Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew, Drew Pinsky sits in what I assume is supposed to be his office. He’s all silver-gray hair and Dockers and crisp pale collar and muted cream walls. His patient, seated across from him and also angled toward the camera, is an actor named Eric Roberts. His manner reminds me of an on-stage spoken word performer, his voice cooly lilting to an imaginary walking bass. There’s some dissonance between that performed self-possession and his loose pants and flimsy tank top. I have the sense that his facade is in the process of crumbling.
Drew asks Eric how he’s feeling (it’s Day 7 of rehab, and, therefore, Day 7 of detox). Eric begins to describe the unfamiliar emotions he’s begun to experience without the daily dose of marijuana he’s been using for years.
Anger. Disappointment. Frustration.
Eric says he’s feeling despondent. Drew insists that what he’s talking about is sadness, and that it’s immensely important for him to allow himself to feel that sadness and also allow other people to see it and share in it.
Understandably, Eric doesn’t seem particularly keen on doing this. He begins to describe the way he disconnected from his emotions during the abuse he experienced as a child.
Drew responds.
The Anguish of Emptiness
Drew: “That’s called dissociation. And that leaves behind what are called trauma-associated dead spots. Emptiness. It leaves behind a sense of emptiness. Feelings of emptiness and shame.”
Eric: “Right.”
Drew: “And I’m having a physical experience, like a tightness, in here.” (pointing to his lower chest.) “Do you feel that?”
Spontaneously, instantly, Eric breaks into gasping almost-tears.
Eric: “I feel it here.” (Pointing to his own chest.)
He gasps for breath again, shifts in his seat. He can’t sit still with the anguish of the sensation. I know because I’ve felt exactly like that, many times.
Eric: “It’s very fucked up.”
Drew: “No, it’s not very fucked up. It’s normal. I’ve felt this with people a thousand times.”
Eric: (Through tears) “I — I — I feel shame about it.”
Drew: “So many people have been through this. I don’t care when people have the chance to come to terms with this. I am grateful for that chance.”
I loved that moment of the show. It felt so human to me, so relatable. It focused my attention on my own emptiness, which I’ve tried so many times to obliterate, thinking, incorrectly, that I couldn’t endure the sensation a moment longer.
Nothing ever filled my emptiness. The only way to move through it was to embrace it. The only way.
Bliss within Unbearable Emotions
In The Awakened Heart, Gerald May writes about the importance of embracing your emptiness:
Emptiness, yearning, incompleteness: these unpleasant words hold a hope for incomprehensible beauty. It is precisely in these seemingly abhorrent qualities of ourselves — qualities that we spend most of our time trying to fix or deny — that the very thing we most long for can be found: hope for the human spirit, freedom for love.
This is a secret known by those who have had the courage to face their own emptiness. The secret of being in love, of falling in love with life as it is meant to be, is to befriend our yearning instead of avoiding it, to live into our longing rather than trying to resolve it, to enter the spaciousness of our emptiness instead of trying to fill it up.
What May is talking about here has also been my experience: that the most exquisitely blissful emotions are only separated from unbearable emptiness by a hair. Sometimes, they’re completely indistinguishable from one another. When we try to dampen our negative emotions with addictions, chemical or otherwise, we also steal from ourselves the opportunity to feel relief and pure joy on the other side. We don’t eradicate our emptiness; we just bury it deeper within us.
Embracing your emptiness does not feel comfortable. It can feel downright awful. It isn’t peaceful-feeling, linear, tidy, or pretty. At least not in my experience. It is, however, necessary, rewarding, critical work for living a full life and finding freedom from your addictions, no matter what they are.
Comments: Have you ever gotten familiar with your own emptiness? If so, what was it like?
As I write, a hurricane is descending upon New York City. She’s provided ample comedic fodder for the millions of restless Tweeters and Facebookers who, like me, have been indoors, relatively secure, today.
When the wind blows and hardy trees crackle-break like toothpicks, we receive a minuscule taste of how truly teeny-tiny we are in the scope of infinite time and space.
When that realization lands, we might feel, in our smallness, isolated from everyone and everything else.
The best way I know to regain a sense of connection to the rest of the world is to connect with the rawest of our emotions, get to know them, and share them with the ones we love. Brene Brown talks about the importance of embracing that vulnerability here (and, at greater length, in her books).
Even though I’m privileged with a cozy, safe-feeling home in which to weather the storm, I feel a little scared today.
This weekend, I had a photo session. It was a really good one. Super-fun client; gorgeous, warm autumn day; golden light.
When I got home after the session, I was, at first, all riled up. That happens for me with photo sessions. It’s exciting to be taking photos, to be chatting and laughing with whomever I’m photographing, and to be excited about how the photos will turn out.
I realized I needed to sit down on the couch and just kind of soak up all that had happened. While I was soaking, I uploaded the day’s photos to my computer.
After that, I noticed that I was completely pooped. I considered the possibility of starting to process the photos then, and I almost did, because I like to get started right away.
Then I realized that all I wanted to do was sit. Passively. I didn’t even want to meditate (focusing on my breath was just too much effort for that moment, you know?).
I ended up watching the first episode of Nashville on my computer. Wrapped in a blanket as the living room darkened into twilight, the only independent thought I registered was, “Wow. I’m totally pooped. I need to rest myself up.”
Years ago, I wouldn’t have known enough about my physical and emotional self to even realize that I was tired and needed to rest. Back then, I didn’t recognize the value of rest, and how it benefits me and those around me. I didn’t see that I deserved to have needs, and to meet those needs.
It was such a difference, noticing the shift I’ve experienced — a shift to knowing myself better and treating myself better. The way I acted the other day is far more in line with my values than the forceful me of previous years. I value rest a lot. And so I rest.
This all led me to think about how I go about resting up, or “refilling the well,” as I’ve heard friends say. What are our options for rest, and how do we decide which one is right for the moment?
Sleep: It’s a classic, eh? Sleep is great when we’ve calmed down from our exertions enough to actually sleep. It’s immensely healing and satisfying. You know it’s the right course of action when you’re fantasizing about snuggling into bed.
Passive Awakeness: This is what I did the other day after my photo session. It’s ideal for those situations where our brain has been working hard, and we aren’t yet ready to go to sleep but need a way to disengage a little bit.
The only problem I see with passive activities like watching TV or movies is that they can distract some of us from recognizing when we do become ready for sleep. Also, depending on what method of passive awakeness we select, we might end up more tired than we started.
The best way to avoid getting carried away with these passive activities is to consistently check in with ourselves to figure out what it is we’re needing and whether this activity is continuing to meet that need.
Intentional Rest: For me, there are many activities that fall into this category. You’ll be different, of course. However, here are a few: reading, doing yoga nidra, doing very gentle yoga, savasana, a Day of Nothing, journaling, and meditation. If you know that intentional rest is what you’re needing, check in with yourself and try to determine which of these is the best method to meet your needs. (Note: This checking-in doesn’t need to be rocket science. Just ask yourself what sounds delicious to you in the moment, and go with the thing that comes up.)
As with everything, choosing the right path of rest for each moment requires curiosity and some trial and error. Keep in mind that you don’t ever have to rest “perfectly.” Just do what sounds good to you, and that will be the right course of action for you in that moment. There is always, always room to learn and change things and then learn some more.
. . .
Comments: What cues tell you when you need some serious rest? How do you honor those cues for yourself?
It’s confusing, figuring out what it’s okay to want. Partly, I think, because girls (especially, though of course not exclusively) aren’t so much supposed to want a whole lot of things. Unless it’s wanting things for other people. It’s very much encouraged for us to want for him to have a good time at the party, and for her to enjoy that gift, and for the nonprofit to raise all the money it’s hoping to raise for the worthy cause.
But navigating the terrain of what we’re allowed to want, without somebody calling us selfish or bitchy? ‘Tis a challenge.
This is a problem for all the normal feminist reasons you’d expect. But it’s also a problem in the world of life coaching, where it’s extremely helpful to know where you want to go in order for us to get you there. I’m not necessarily one to believe that you must chart a course directly toward an end goal, and write down all your in-between tasks in an Excel spreadsheet. I don’t think it’s necessarily imperative that you visualize your ideal outcome every night (though it might help).
It’s just that it’s going to be significantly harder to get to a dreamy somewhere if you aren’t able to allow yourself to even want the dream.
Which is not to say that you’re doomed if you currently aren’t able to want what you want. I understand that. The world would like you to think that you’re not allowed to want things because you’re a “good girl” or a “good boy,” because you’re a queer, because you’re a person of color, because you haven’t done enough to “deserve” it. Sometimes it takes several small steps, and lots of support, to allow yourself to experience desire.
What if, today, you gave yourself five minutes to consider what it might be like to want something that you haven’t previously sanctioned yourself to want? Please note: this doesn’t mean you have to actually desire this thing. Right now we’re only considering what it might feel like to inhabit that desire. This is a very small first step, and yet it may still bring up your stuff.
Try it. See what happens.
Comments: I’d LOVE to know what it is that you might consider wanting. How do you think that wanting would feel?
For over three years, I’ve curiously watched the self-employment journeys of friends, acquaintances, and strangers writing on their blogs. When I was working full-time, the world of self-employment seemed so far away, so mysterious. And now, suddenly, I’m in it, already starting to get used to my office being my dining room table instead of a cube. Thus, I’ve decided to share with you a weekly pondering on self-employment: what it looks like, how it feels, and how the heck I got here.
Ah, Week 2. This week felt a bit discouraging overall, but when I go back and look at the specifics, I realize that there were actually a bunch of great things that happened. I also realize that this week was about coming face-to-face with my patterns that I most dislike, and utilizing my tools to respond more skillfully than I have in the past.
The DMV
The thing that really set off my discouragement was the discovery that I waited too long to change my expired Washington State license to a New York one, and that I’ll need to go back to Washington and renew my license there in order to, then, get my license in New York. But before I discovered that I can probably renew my Washington license, I thought that I was going to have to take driver’s ed. here in New York, and I kinda lost it.
Old scripts were replaying in my head, fast and furious, overlapping one another. Scripts that say “I’m irresponsible,” and “people at the DMV will be mean to me,” and “I can’t handle stuff that has to do with money and government.” I found myself trying to cry some cleansing tears over my laptop, and then remembering that I used to feel like this often. It happened in different situations, but the same feeling of overwhelm, and the same feeling that I’m alone in the world, were there.
The same feeling that I cannot possibly handle these overwhelming emotions, and I must escape them.
But that was then, and this is now. And now I have coping mechanisms I know how to use. I meditated and stayed with the (hugely uncomfortable) bodily sensations of all the emotions I was feeling. I talked about my fears, even though the critical voices were telling me not to talk about the fears because the license situation was all my fault and I didn’t deserve comfort.
I tried to allow myself to be sad and scared.
Then I went to the DMV and found out that they weren’t going to give me a New York license, but that I might still have the chance of getting one in Washington, without re-taking driver’s ed. The situation isn’t resolved, but I still feel better.
Imposter Syndrome. Awesome.
After my trip to the DMV, I went straight to the camera shop, because I’d been having trouble focusing my camera and getting it to take photos. I was convinced that there was something wrong with the sensor.
I enter the shop, and the man behind the counter takes lots and lots of photos with my camera. He has no problems. At all. Nothing appears to be even slightly broken about my camera. Which is kind of good news, but also kind of unhelpful, because what the heck is going on?
At this point, more of those lovely critical voices kick in, asking me whether my photographic talent has simply dried up, and if perhaps I should stop offering my photography services altogether. (No, really. This is how Negative Nancy my brain was this week.)
Anyway, after I went home and played around with my camera much more, I’ve come to believe that its shutter button has simply become less sensitive over the past couple years, and that I need to make sure to press it right in the middle, instead of to the side. When I do that, everything seems to work just fine, and I can continue to be a photographer. Cool.
Conjuring all the support.
These two events kind of took over my week, to be honest. But there were tons of good things that happened, too! I want to share them here, because, as I’m always talking about with my coaching clients, it’s so important to make a big deal of the good stuff. Otherwise, it’s easy for the bad to overshadow things.
I shared The Foundations of Self-Esteem, a free ebooklet, with my Self-Love Letters folks on Tuesday, and they loved it! I received kind emails and tweets from people saying it was helpful, and that was so darn great to hear. Especially because my own self-doubting voices were making such a racket this week.
I needed support this week, and I got it. I was able to have a chat with the lovely Marthe Hagen about being brave and moving forward in our businesses even when we’re scared. I had a good talk with my best buddy, where we gave each other support, as we always do. And, as usual, Mary and my mom reminded me that I do not suck, which is always a lovely thing to hear.
It’s especially funny to me that I was feeling so much self-doubt this week, considering I was thinking quite a bit about the difference between feeling confident and being in insecurity (hint: confidence is stronger and comes from inside you).
I could easily have sent myself deeper into the negative spiral by telling myself that I have no right to be teaching about self-esteem when I, myself, feel self-doubt. But, well, I didn’t do that. I remembered that I have just as much of a right to be talking about self-esteem as anybody else, because I’ve struggled with it. I’ve worked for so many years to like myself. And I’m working, now, on allowing myself to be in insecurity, and not hate myself for it.
For me, conjuring up all the support I can handle is the best way to move through insecurity and back into confidence. So that’s what I’m doing as this week comes to a close. I’m thinking of even more ways I can support myself, whether it’s by hiring a designer to help with my website or taking the time to do nothing for a while each day.
As long as I remember that I have support, I can do this.
