Some things take time. Five months ago, I wrote an article called Shame won’t kill me. It was about walking through my deep-seated fear of failure, which was essentially a fear of not being worthy. In these past months, I have started living a more authentic life, doing the things that I love. Three weeks ago, I finally surrendered to Life, in the sense that I gave up my need to control and decided to let Life’s Flow determine where I go, trusting that things will work out for the best. As a result, I started to create opportunities for Life to flow through me. I set a time to write and a time to paint. What happened was miraculous, a kind of magic, where words just flowed out my hands on ‘paper’ with ease. It felt great.
Interestingly, after a week I started getting physically tired again. And at first I thought, “Okay, hitting a physical boundary, need to take better care of myself and maybe even take a step back.” Until my husband said, “Well, I don’t know, with you it’s always some limiting belief that is messing things up.” I mumbled something along the lines of ‘how did you get so wise?’, because of course he was spot on.
Next day, I took the sleep my body needed and after breakfast instead of sitting behind my desk I went straight to bed again, not to sleep, but to get still. And as always when I listen to that voice, Life helps me uncover what is holding me back. Still sitting in bed, I felt inspired to watch a seemingly unrelated video on youtube, a video from the goodlifeproject.com, an amazing series of interviews by Jonathan Fields in which he interviews all kinds of people about their life and asks them what living a good life means to them. In this video he talked to Kate Northrup, entrepreneur and author of the book Money, a love story. At a certain point in the interview she talks about considerable credit card debt and how she was able to turn that around after she realized that “my lack of financial consciousness and my unwillingness to take the necessary actions to pay attention to my money is in direct correlation to my lack of self-value, and it is a way that I am keeping myself small and plain.” It was as if a light went on inside my head. Most of my life, I have been uncomfortable with money. Not anymore with money persé, but still very uncomfortable with me making money. Listening to Kate I realized that my discomfort to receive money for my work is because I believe I am not adding value. OUCH! That is a painful ‘truth’ to discover. While letting that pain emerge and sitting through it, I wondered if I was still feeling unworthy? The answer was “No, I don’t”. I have let go of that longheld belief, but, big but, I have not yet embraced my worthiness, my value. On an intellectual level I can see that I DO add value, but I do not feel it yet. The time has come to integrate that knowledge, to feel it, know it and be it. I now understand that a healthy sense of value is not a quality some people just have and others don’t. Like many other things it is a habit. You can train yourself to see you own worth. You can become habituated in recognizing the value you add, whether it is in a smile, a good-timed cuddle, a healthy meal, a wel-written article or a painting.
This definitely is another milestone on my journey. I am celebrating not only this particular occasion, but this journey of self-exploration and self-healing. I have come such a long, long way! As I am writing these words, I can feel the value my journey has added to not only my life, but to the lives of the people around me. It humbles me and at the same time it feels incredibly good. I am SOOOO ready to feel more of this. I feel blessed to be living this. I am loving the unfolding of my life and am eager to live more of ME. I must say that I am very excited about the road that lies ahead. Things are really getting better every step of the way, my way.
image by Christian Ferrari