How many times have you found yourself saying, that you’ll try again next time? That you’ll do better starting tomorrow, or next week, next month, next year? Now, how many times have you rinsed and repeated that phrase every single time that next whatever came rolling around? Personally, I’ve practiced this habit more times than I could count…
Then finally one day, I began asking myself why. Why do I keep self-sabotaging? It had to be that, I recognized the common symptoms; they usually looked like procrastination-itis, and such, so why? Did I really not want to try again or do better?
I really began to contemplate my answers, scribbled down whatever random thought that came to my mind in my journal, beat myself up about my “lack of” and kept going about my day, still not do anything about anything. Then one day, I stopped ignoring the things I didn’t want to look at about myself and whatever it was I didn’t do that I was supposed to do…
When digging for my own why(s) I found that most of the time, my mirror of truth revealed that if I was going to triumph over the same old symptoms, I needed help. But, I felt guilty that I needed help. I felt guilty that I constantly fell short on the “Strong Woman” label, the so called “positive” stereotype I should be. So naturally, that led me to more stinking thinking, which led me to feeling and eventually becoming stuck. I knew that if I was going to breakthrough these thoughts, and feelings, I needed to breakdown my walls of guilt, pride, and fear (they seemed like good places to start).
Now here’s where we sometimes miss our lesson. We work to breakdown, while also thinking we need to tear down and become something new, something other than who we are because, well, the old us wasn’t cutting it. We learn our why but neglect to own up to our part in the process that brought us to our present “stuckness”. How did we get to the here and also since we’re trying to see the positive, what goodies did we bring along for the ride? You know goodies like our gifts, skills, talents, abilities…essence?
Transforming your mind, and ultimately your habits so to get busy living doesn’t have to feel so overwhelming that your dreams and goals becomes a laundry list of to-do’s that never get to-done. This is why I shared a post about hope when circumstances sometimes feel hopeless, when we sometimes feel that we ourselves are hopeless. (I figured I’d put the excerpt here again just in case you didn’t click the link).
“Yellow, a very special caterpillar, searches for more in life. She knows the pain of the climb. She knows that this is not for her. She knows the pain of the end of a relationship, but she will not let the pull of Stripe, her partner, make her do something she knows is wrong for her. Still, she does not know what is right for her. She trusts in herself that there must be something more in life. She wanders. And she meets a grey caterpillar spinning a cocoon. Thinking that he must be in trouble to be doing something so peculiar, she offers to help him. He signals that he is doing what he needs to do to be a butterfly. Yellow is excited. And when she asks what is a butterfly, she is told that this, a butterfly, is what she truly is. Puzzled, she questions how such a transformation is possible.
‘How can I believe there’s a butterfly inside…when all I see is a fuzzy worm?’
‘You must want to fly so much that you are willing to give up being a caterpillar.’
‘You mean to die?’
‘…What’s really you will still live. Life is changed, not taken away.’”
Last post, I asked you are you living? This post I wanted to reassure you that you in your true splendor didn’t have to forsake who you really are in order to do so. Just start right where you are, just as you are. You wouldn’t want to take nothing from your journey, now would you?
Until next time…Peace!
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