Turns Out I’m Not As Caring As I Thought!
I sat on the lounge chair during our journaling session staring at what I had just written. The pounding of the surf was making it difficult to hear my own thoughts so I gave up on thinking and dropped into the feeling in my body. I felt huge tension and openness at the same time. I could feel the familiar anxiety in my stomach along with the fluttering of amazement at this new realization. Then I began to feel a bit nauseous and panicky about what was most likely ahead of me.
I was on retreat in Mexico – attending the Way of the Happy Woman SHE Retreat – and we were just coming to the halfway point of the retreat when I realized….
I don’t believe that I deserve self care.
Deep breath….
We had been in silence for 3 days (we spent the entire 6 days in silence) and while I had already had many aha’s, realizations and shifts in my perspective, I wasn’t quite prepared for this newest revelation.
I had been observing a pattern of tension in my body over the previous few days. I didn’t understand what was causing the tension until I gave it my full attention (which you can do when you can’t talk, read, journal, text, listen to music or go online for a week). Aha! I was trying to figure out how I was going to teach everything I was learning at the retreat to you – my readers, clients and students. The tension was a result of trying to remember everything my teacher was saying, feeling like I didn’t know enough about all the concepts being shared and believing I would have to do extra work to learn what I didn’t know before I could teach/share what I was learning.
“What if you didn’t have to teach it?” A quiet voice asked from deep inside my heart.
I felt a flood of relief and the tension left my body. But only momentarily. The all too familiar voice of my inner critic roared in my head.
“Of course you have to teach what you’re learning here. What other reason would there be for coming to this retreat??”
And there is was….I only allowed myself to come on the retreat by justifying that I could use what I learned here in my coaching and yoga classes once I returned home. As my inner critic so harshly questioned…”why else would I go on retreat?!”
Do you struggle with taking care of yourself? Do you allow yourself times for rest, contemplation, fun and renewal? Do you go to the gym or the yoga studio because it nourishes something deep in your heart or because “they” say it’s good for you? Is it okay for you to receive support, love and gifts without feeling that you have to reciprocate?
In that moment on my lounge chair by the ocean, I realized that most of what I have done for self care was not because it truly nourished me but because it would contribute to the way I could help my clients or because some “authority” said it was what I needed to do to be healthy, strong, beautiful, successful, etc, etc. All these years of coaching and teaching women (and some men) to get their needs met, listen to their own wisdom and love themselves and I was completely shocked to learn that I wasn’t leading by example! (Insert shame face here!!)
How do you change the belief that you do not deserve? Fortunately I know a good coach who can give me some ideas 😉 and I will keep you posted on my progress. What I know is that it takes a willingness to slow down, to listen to those quiet voices in your heart and to question the long held habits and patterns that we unconsciously default to in every moment.
So take good care of yourself – not because it will make you more productive or successful, not because I told you to, not because it will give you more energy to care for your children, parents, partner, neighbor, community….
……but because you are so very deserving.
Love,
Deb
