Oh c’mon gentlemen – is that what you always think about first????!!!!!!
I’m talking along the lines of fear. And getting out of your comfort zone. I did a few things last week that before I did them seemed HUGE AND IMPOSSIBLE (and I firmly believed I could ‘never’ do):
- Cold showers at the end of my normal shower
- Updating the coaching page on my website
- Opening my business for clients
- A fast for a day
- Allowing myself to accept a gift (when I didnt feel deserving of it)
- A photo shoot for someone I don’t know screaming my lungs out breaking through a wall of water
And maybe they don’t sound that big to you. That’s all part of our never ending judgement of other people to try and make ourselves feel better about ourselves. If I was you I would be thinking that!!! But to me they were ginormous. Things I firmly believed I COULDN’T do. I wasn’t capable of doing them. That they were too hard, too terrifying, too much for me to handle. I wasn’t good enough. What if I failed at any of them? It was always easier to just not say yes to the hard things just in case. But I did them. And they weren’t that bad. I followed my new way of experimenting by just being curious about them. If they didnt work it wasn’t going to the end of the world. They didnt have to be perfect. They just needed to be something. I just wanted to see what would happen. I wanted to see how strong I could be. How capable.
And now I’ve done them, I look back, and to be totally honest, feel a bit silly for thinking they were huge scary things. They weren’t. (Ah the benefit of hindsight). And there’s another negative judgement of myself – but I am slowly learning to let the negative go. I am definitely more aware of negative straight away so I can have a giggle and change the thought to something positive. I then allowed myself to have a Sunday night celebration (which turned out to be a big pile of nothing on Netflix)! To write a list of how I felt (so I wouldn’t forget) – proud, amazed (I never did think these were things for me), pleased, joyous and I really smiled at myself and celebrated myself. I did a happy dance! I allowed myself to feel all the great feelings and know that it’s totally acceptable to feel proud of yourself and your achievements. It’s ok, and even a good thing, to focus on the great things, rather than the things that didn’t happen on the list last week. I don’t believe we can change the world in a day or a week so why do we sometimes expect that we can?
So are there any things in your life that feel too big or too hard or too impossible? Is it possible that maybe you are stronger, smarter, more capable than you think and you could actually do them? How long do we wait before we start believing in ourselves a little more? Wouldn’t that make life much easier? Don’t we deserve more credit? We’ve come this far…
Be kind to yourself.
Wx
