Lately, I have been spending a lot of time working on being accountable to myself. I am always there for others when they need me. Whatever the issue. For me, I tend to take a backseat and I am actually tired of it…finally. Time to do some deep work!

I can give the same care that I give to others to myself. Don’t even have to apologize for choosing me. Listen, you don’t have to apologize for choosing you, ok? You are just as important as the other people in your life.  MORE important! The most important person in your life. Do you know why I believe that? I believe it because when we don’t take care of ourselves, we are no good to anyone else. When we do not know how to love ourselves, we can’t love anyone properly. We cannot give away what we do not have. Have to save ourselves first! No apology necessary.

Putting Yourself First is Hard

You have every right to take care of yourself before anyone else. It is not selfish, it is self first. And that is good for everyone that loves and needs you in their life. We have to stop trying to pour from an empty cup.

We have to remind ourselves that we have the right to be who we say we want to be. There is no rule that we have to wait until everyone around us is happy with what we provide them. I remember as a young wife and mother, I thought that if I was eating a warm meal, I forgot to do something. Don’t remember where I heard it but it stuck with me. Mothers and wives don’t eat a hot meal? And that was because they were busy serving and taking care of themselves last. It seems cool and sounds beautiful to be a martyr. Why are we taught that as women? You deserve a hot meal or two for all you do.

Take Care of You

Do you ever take the time to visualize your future self?  I do and I know that I have the right to feel worthy, confident, even sexy! The right to love and trust myself. I fall short many days because I am too busy taking care of the people in my world. Who are they taking are of? THEMSELVES! If this is so…who is taking care of me? I know the answer to this and that is why reflecting on what I want for myself, I need to do the things I need to do to feel worthy, confident, loved, trusted, and sexy…according to me. This is my truth, I can easy help my clients in my coaching business but sitting with myself to find my next moves can be tough. Guess that is why I have my own coach huh?

I want you to know that even though we want a lot for ourselves and we plan to do things for ourselves with the best intentions, it is ok when we let our guard down and miss the mark. We are gonna be ok even when we don’t know what we are doing. It is okay to feel lost, or to not have everything planned and perfect. All is well even when we are disappointed about missing something. We are not always going to be the centered, amazing, mindful, loving, and damn near perfect person that we are today. (winks) That is okay!

You are a human BEING, not a human DOING. That means that what you do (or don’t do) does not take away from who you are. We have the right to feel how we feel and still be the beautiful human being that we choose to be. Feel what you feel. Where we may get into trouble is when we react, not respond to our feelings. We are a work in progress and we are learning. I know I am learning to get away from reacting to anything. Just take a breath and respond in a way that keeps me at peace and in alignment with how I want to feel. Hard work! Not impossible though.

You are Human

We can be angry and still pursue our happy place. Say Wosahhhhhhhh. We can struggle with a relationship that needs to be let go of and still continue to work toward closure for ourselves and find peace. There are times when I feel hurt by people I trust and instead of going off like I did in the past, I have learned not to take things personally. People respond from the beliefs, experiences and upbringing. I try to remember that when I am communicating with others. It is not about me…most of the time.

There is no way that living in this world, in these bodies, will we be some perfect person who never feels down about themselves, or feels anger, upset or defeat. YOU ARE HUMAN! WE are human. I don’t believe that we can think fast enough sometimes to control how we feel in a moment. What we can do is take a deep breath and think about our response and how we want to feel when the dust settles. There is nothing wrong with us feeling anger, sadness, embarrassment or any other emotion. Nothing to be ashamed of. Just think on how you want to feel when things are all said and done, then respond accordingly.

I need to remember to do this more often. We all need to practice this at some point.

Positivity DUmp Not Necessary

We don’t always need to immediately think on the positive like we many times pressure ourselves to do. All of our feelings are valid and they mean something. We can take time to see what they mean. Perhaps reframe our thoughts when need be. We can’t just cover how we feel with fresh paint. Just now I was thinking about painting. When we are painting over an old color, we need primer.

We have to clean up the old so that the new feels fresh and is exactly what we want it to be. When we don’t have primer, the old color bleeds through and everything is all muddled up right? Same thing with our thoughts and feelings. The primer is where we find out where the feelings are coming from and if they align with who we want to be. Deep work.  Then we have the room to reframe and apply who we want and respond in a way that keeps us aligned and in peace.

I think that we shouldn’t force ourselves to say things we don’t believe. Believe me, I get it, “fake until you make it”. That’s cool and all but we need to do the work that gets us to “make it”. Eventually, we have to move from “fake it”. We have to do the deep work that it will take so that we are living our truth without apology. If we constantly force ourselves to put the positive spin on things, we are going to ignore our feelings. We need to feel our feelings. They are important. We welcome everyone else’s feelings around us. It is healthy to feel all of your feelings. Look into them with curiosity, not judgement. Do the work.

It’s All Good

It is okay to be human. We can’t learn from what we ignore right?

Whatever the feeling. If we see it as good or bad. It is yours. The good thing is no feeling is forever. We have the opportunity to heal and overcome when we take the time to sit in and get curious about how we feel.

Curiosity may have killed a few cats but it can also heal a few humans.