When I started this blog, I promised myself, and you, my readers, that I would be honest about my journey. I promised I would share the good and the bad, the ups and downs, the highs and lows, because that's what a spiritual journey is all about: the roller coaster ride between the times when everything is going well (and sometimes even better than expected), and faith and trust are high, and the times when everything is shot to hell and we're in the pits of despair and can't seem to find the tunnel, let alone the light at the end of the tunnel, and we're doubting everything, ourselves and God included.
These last eight months since I've moved to Nashville have been tough. I don't know what I expected when I made the move, but I didn't expect that it would be this challenging. I didn't expect that at this point in my journey I would be contemplating leaving it all behind and taking on a 'normal' nine to five job like most of the people around me.
Yep, that's my dirty little secret. I've been thinking about quitting. I've been doubting myself, my gifts, my Divine connection and purpose. I've been questioning it all. The thought has even come to me that maybe I'm a fake, a fraud, maybe I've only been imagining that the work I've been doing has been of benefit to others. Maybe somehow I've pulled the wool over every one's eyes, including my own, and the reality is, it's time to face the truth and get a 'real' job!
Am I scared of moving forward? Well, given the nature of my thoughts, I'd have to answer that with a giant "YES!" Although I've taken leaps of faith in the past with very positive results, this time the size of the leap seems larger, and my faith seems too small to get me through.
So maybe that's why this morning, even though I was in the middle of my spiritual practice, I answered the phone when it rang and God gave me a reason to remember another big leap of faith I took and how it all worked out.
The call was from a fellow Reiki master who was asking me how I decided to start taking an 'offering from the heart' as payment for my Reiki sessions rather than charging a set fee. In answer to his question, I told him "The Sock Story," as I call it.
At the end of 2006, I decided to raise my rate for an individual Reiki session from $100 to $125. All the various holistic practitioners I was using for my own healing were raising their rates, and since I hadn't raised my own since 2004, it seemed like the right thing to do.
I sent out an email letting everyone know that beginning in January 2007, my rate would go up to $125. I also said that if folks wanted to buy gift certificates at the current rate of $100, I would honor those after the rate increase, so they could save a little money.
January first came and I put the new rates into effect. At the end of January, I had to have some minor surgery on my foot, and during the long weekend off, I was doing a more lengthy spiritual practice when I heard that little voice in my head, my God voice, say, "You know, you went the wrong way with that fee increase."
"What do you mean?" I asked. It repeated, "You went the wrong way." and then added, "The people who need you most can't afford that fee." "But you know I always make allowances." I responded. "But the people who really need you are too proud to let you know they can't afford you. They simply won't call. You need to start charging 'an offering from the heart.'" it replied.
"What does that mean?" I asked, my heart nearly beating out of my chest. "It means that at the end of the session, you ask them to sit quietly, place their focus on their hearts, and ask God what they should offer for what they received."
I began to argue, "I can't do that. I'm already draining my retirement fund to keep things going as it is. If I do this, I won't make enough to pay my bills. People won't give me enough. They don't recognize the value. They won't listen, or they'll say they don't hear anything."
And I heard, "If you do this for me, I'll take care of you." "What does that mean?" I asked. "Well, for one thing, you won't have to pay for advertising anymore! (God does have a sense of humor!) Once people find out what you're doing, they'll spread the word and everyone will want to come."
This is crazy, I thought, but how do you argue with God? So I said, "Okay, I'll start it on Valentine's Day." (Pretty appropriate, don't you think, asking for 'an offering from the heart' on Valentine's Day? I thought so, and besides that, it gave me two weeks to get used to the idea, or talk myself out of it!) But The Voice said, "No, you'll start it on Tuesday when you go back to the office."
I drove myself crazy all weekend thinking about that conversation and what was going to happen, part of me wondering if I'd imagined it, but then realizing there was no way in the world I would tell myself to do something like that. It had to be real. And if I believed it was real, how could I say no to God?
So Tuesday morning I went into the office and was just finishing up the email to let my clients know about the change, when my first client showed up at the door. As I was heading to the door to let her in, I was telling myself that since the email hadn't yet gone out, I was still going to charge her the $125. No sooner did I think the thought, when I heard The Voice say, "No, you'll make it an offering from the heart."
My client was the CFO (chief financial officer) for a large company, and when I told her of the change, she looked at me in shock and almost shouted, "That's no f'ing way to run a business. You can't do that!" I looked at her, pointed upward and said quietly, "But I'm not running the business."
After her session, as she was digging in her purse to find her checkbook, she asked me what she owed me. I told her I couldn't give her an answer to that, that she would have to decide for herself. She became irate, and said "I can't do this. I need to have boundaries. You need to tell me." When I refused, she angrily told me I was lucky she knew what I normally charged, forcefully wrote out her check, folded it in half, shoved it into my hand and walked out the door without another word, obviously distressed. When I unfolded the check, I discovered she had paid me $25 more than what I normally would have charged! I was dumbfounded.
My next client that day had a gift certificate, so I didn't have to worry about telling her about the new pricing. After her session was over, she reached into her purse for the gift certificate, and when she handed it to me, also gave me cash. When I reminded her that the session was covered by the certificate, she replied, "I know. But when I was leaving the house, God told me I needed to give you money too." And then she picked up a plastic grocery bag that was sitting beside her on the couch, and said, "And I'm supposed to give you this too."
Opening the bag, she pulled out two pairs of brand new socks, one light gray and the other a light teal color. Holding one pair in each hand, she studied them for a moment, and then extended the light teal pair and said, "I think these are the ones you're supposed to have." As I reached for the socks, I began to cry.
In December I had gone Christmas shopping at Costco, and picked out a three-pack of these fluffy aloe-infused socks to give to my son's girlfriend, Tiffany, for Christmas. She was always complaining about cold feet. And since my feet were always cold, and the socks were so pretty, I decided to buy a three-pack for myself. The only problem was, when I got to the checkout, I didn't have enough money and had to put my three-pack back.
Tiffany was thrilled with the socks, and all I heard during my visit each time she put a new pair on, was how soft and warm they were. I was berating myself for not having been able to buy any for me, and went back to Costco after Christmas to remedy that. Of course, by that time, Costco was out of them. I was really disappointed.
The three-pack of socks that I had to put back that day, contained three different colors of socks: pink, light gray, and light teal. Out of the three colors, the light teal was my favorite!
As I touched the pair of light teal socks my client held out to me, the exact same socks that had been in that pack I'd had to put back, in my head I heard The Voice say, "If I can give you the exact pair of socks you want to warm your feet, how can you doubt that I will take care of you?"
I continued to accept an offering from the heart for my healing work until I closed my office in Pittsburgh in 2012. Interestingly enough, once I began that practice, I never had to take another penny out of my retirement monies.
The money didn't always come in in the way I might have expected, and it didn't always come in from my clients for my work. When I had my hip replaced in 2007, an old friend who had been out of my life for over fifteen years, offered me a $6,000 loan with no interest and no time frame for repayment to help me cover my expenses.
Once it came in the form of a gift from my mom, and once it was a no-interest-for-a-year cash advance check from a credit card company. And in 2010, when I had my knee replaced, it came in bits and pieces in myriad get well cards from my friends, clients, and students!
It really doesn't matter how it came, it only matters that it did. And although I'm telling you it came from my clients, a friend, the credit card company, my mom, and all those wonderful folks who sent me those get well cards, they were really only the messengers. Truth is, God was taking care of me just the way He promised that He would.
And if He made that promise to me in 2007,and did what He said He would do, and I'm still doing His work in the way that I feel I'm being guided to, there's no reason to think that He'd break that promise just because it's 2014 and I'm doing the work differently. I just have to remember that promise and continue to trust.
So I'm not quitting. You won't be seeing my resume on Monster.com or find me reading the want ads in my local paper. I'm sticking it out and moving forward, and when I get big time scared again, because I'm human and I know I will, or I begin to doubt just how powerful He is and how much He cares, I'm going to log onto my blog and read this post again.... and again, and again and again, as many times as it takes. But what I'm not going to do is quit!
Wednesday, April 23, 2014
Thursday, April 17, 2014
He's Got My Back!!!
It's been a while since I've written anything. For whatever reason, I just haven't had the words I needed to fill the page. But a couple of things have happened lately that have made me remember something that happened in 2006, when we finally found a buyer for my mother's house, and somehow it feels like it's a story I need to share.
My mother got sick in March 2004, and although we hoped that she would be able to resume living independently once she got well, she never got well enough for that to happen. So in 2005, I cleaned up the house and got it ready to put on the market. A year went by without a single offer. We lowered the price a couple of times, and I was beginning to wonder what we'd do if we couldn't find a buyer at all. Finally, in August 2006, I got a call from the realtor, who told me she had a buyer for the house and they wanted to close within thirty days.
Although I'd gotten some of my mom's things out of the house by then, and had cleared out the attic, there was still a house full of stuff that needed to be sorted through. I knew we'd have to have a house/yard sale, but with my only brother living in California, my son in Tennessee, my mom walking with a walker and not up to much physical labor of any sort, and no other close family to help, the bulk of the work was on my shoulders, and I had no idea how I was going to get it all done, especially when the realtor called again and said that the buyer had some kind of issue with his financing, and the sale could only go through if we could close in twenty-one days!
I remember being in shock, thinking there was no way in the world I was going to get it all done. I went to see my chiropractor because my neck and shoulders were so tight my head felt like it would explode, and he asked me if I'd sent out a request for Reiki and prayers to help with everything I had to do. I told him I hadn't even thought of it, and he thought that was pretty crazy, since I was always sending out requests for everyone else.
So I went back to my office and wrote an email asking everyone on my email list to send Reiki and prayers to help me get the house and its contents ready for sale. I've never been very good at asking for help, so it wasn't an easy email to write, and I was relieved when I finished it and hit the send button.
I had several other emails I needed to write to let folks know I was closing up the office for a week and that I wouldn't be around. I finished those and then noticed that there was still an unsent email in my outbox. When I checked to see what it was, I was surprised to find out that it was my request for Reiki and prayers for myself. All the other emails I'd written had gone out, and they were written after my Reiki/prayer request! That just didn't make sense to me, because usually if the first email doesn't go out for some reason, the ones you write after that won't go out either.
No matter what I did, I couldn't get that email to leave my outbox. I tried retyping it, I tried reformatting it, I tried everything I could think of. That darn email wouldn't go. I even wrote a couple of extra emails for other things and tried sending them, and they went! But my Reiki and prayer request wouldn't leave.
I finally gave up and headed home. I packed what I thought I'd need to get all the work done, picked up my mom, and headed for Hermitage, PA. (That's the city her house was in, and the city I grew up in. Funny, isn't it, that I now live in Hermitage, Tennessee.)
When I walked into my mom's house that night and looked at everything that was still there (three bedrooms, living room, kitchen, garage and full basement all crammed full of stuff from over fifty years of living), I was overwhelmed with such feelings of hopelessness and impossibility that once my mom went to bed, I sat at the kitchen table and cried. I couldn't figure out how I was going to manage to sort, price, sell, and clean out everything that was in that house in one week's time.
And then I heard this quiet little voice in my head (I've come to call it my God voice.) say, "Just pick a place and start. Any place at all, just start. It will be all right." So I dried my tears, blew my nose, opened a cabinet in the kitchen and began pulling things out, pricing them and putting them to the side as I continued with the next cupboard and the next one after that, working my way through the house, one room at a time, over the next few days.
There's a lot more to the story of course, but the important thing is that I started all that on a Monday evening, and by Friday afternoon (with only some intermittent help from my son and two very special friends), everything was ready for the sale, and by Monday, only seven days after I started, the sale was over, the house was empty and cleaned and the closing took place. As I left the realtor's office after the closing, I truly couldn't believe it was all done.
I took Tuesday off work to recuperate, and when I went in on Wednesday morning, the first thing I did was turn on my computer to catch up on emails. And as soon as I opened my email, I got a message that my email had been sent. When I looked at my sent messages folder, the message my computer had just sent, was my Reiki and prayer request, the one that wouldn't leave my outbox the week before, no matter what I did. I remember laughing and shaking my head, and wondering to myself why that email could go out now, when all the work was done, but it wouldn't go out when I needed/wanted it to.
And then I heard that same small quiet voice in my head again, the one that I'd heard that night in my mom's kitchen when I felt so overwhelmed. This time the voice said, in answer to my unspoken question about why that email wouldn't go out: "You needed to know that I had your back. You needed to know it wasn't everyone else's prayers for you that were being answered, or all the Reiki that they sent. You needed to know this was between you and ME. You needed to know that I heard your prayers. and I answered."
I haven't thought about all that in a long time, but I think it came to mind now because a couple of doors that I thought God had opened for me, just closed, and I was wondering why He opened them in the first place, if He had no intention of keeping them open. But just like He wouldn't let that Reiki/prayer request leave my outbox in 2006 because He wanted me to know He answered my prayers, and not everyone else's prayers for me, I think God closed these recent doors because I was counting on other people to answer my prayers, and God wanted to make sure I know that what happens next is because He's the one who has my back!
My mother got sick in March 2004, and although we hoped that she would be able to resume living independently once she got well, she never got well enough for that to happen. So in 2005, I cleaned up the house and got it ready to put on the market. A year went by without a single offer. We lowered the price a couple of times, and I was beginning to wonder what we'd do if we couldn't find a buyer at all. Finally, in August 2006, I got a call from the realtor, who told me she had a buyer for the house and they wanted to close within thirty days.
Although I'd gotten some of my mom's things out of the house by then, and had cleared out the attic, there was still a house full of stuff that needed to be sorted through. I knew we'd have to have a house/yard sale, but with my only brother living in California, my son in Tennessee, my mom walking with a walker and not up to much physical labor of any sort, and no other close family to help, the bulk of the work was on my shoulders, and I had no idea how I was going to get it all done, especially when the realtor called again and said that the buyer had some kind of issue with his financing, and the sale could only go through if we could close in twenty-one days!
I remember being in shock, thinking there was no way in the world I was going to get it all done. I went to see my chiropractor because my neck and shoulders were so tight my head felt like it would explode, and he asked me if I'd sent out a request for Reiki and prayers to help with everything I had to do. I told him I hadn't even thought of it, and he thought that was pretty crazy, since I was always sending out requests for everyone else.
So I went back to my office and wrote an email asking everyone on my email list to send Reiki and prayers to help me get the house and its contents ready for sale. I've never been very good at asking for help, so it wasn't an easy email to write, and I was relieved when I finished it and hit the send button.
I had several other emails I needed to write to let folks know I was closing up the office for a week and that I wouldn't be around. I finished those and then noticed that there was still an unsent email in my outbox. When I checked to see what it was, I was surprised to find out that it was my request for Reiki and prayers for myself. All the other emails I'd written had gone out, and they were written after my Reiki/prayer request! That just didn't make sense to me, because usually if the first email doesn't go out for some reason, the ones you write after that won't go out either.
No matter what I did, I couldn't get that email to leave my outbox. I tried retyping it, I tried reformatting it, I tried everything I could think of. That darn email wouldn't go. I even wrote a couple of extra emails for other things and tried sending them, and they went! But my Reiki and prayer request wouldn't leave.
I finally gave up and headed home. I packed what I thought I'd need to get all the work done, picked up my mom, and headed for Hermitage, PA. (That's the city her house was in, and the city I grew up in. Funny, isn't it, that I now live in Hermitage, Tennessee.)
When I walked into my mom's house that night and looked at everything that was still there (three bedrooms, living room, kitchen, garage and full basement all crammed full of stuff from over fifty years of living), I was overwhelmed with such feelings of hopelessness and impossibility that once my mom went to bed, I sat at the kitchen table and cried. I couldn't figure out how I was going to manage to sort, price, sell, and clean out everything that was in that house in one week's time.
And then I heard this quiet little voice in my head (I've come to call it my God voice.) say, "Just pick a place and start. Any place at all, just start. It will be all right." So I dried my tears, blew my nose, opened a cabinet in the kitchen and began pulling things out, pricing them and putting them to the side as I continued with the next cupboard and the next one after that, working my way through the house, one room at a time, over the next few days.
There's a lot more to the story of course, but the important thing is that I started all that on a Monday evening, and by Friday afternoon (with only some intermittent help from my son and two very special friends), everything was ready for the sale, and by Monday, only seven days after I started, the sale was over, the house was empty and cleaned and the closing took place. As I left the realtor's office after the closing, I truly couldn't believe it was all done.
I took Tuesday off work to recuperate, and when I went in on Wednesday morning, the first thing I did was turn on my computer to catch up on emails. And as soon as I opened my email, I got a message that my email had been sent. When I looked at my sent messages folder, the message my computer had just sent, was my Reiki and prayer request, the one that wouldn't leave my outbox the week before, no matter what I did. I remember laughing and shaking my head, and wondering to myself why that email could go out now, when all the work was done, but it wouldn't go out when I needed/wanted it to.
And then I heard that same small quiet voice in my head again, the one that I'd heard that night in my mom's kitchen when I felt so overwhelmed. This time the voice said, in answer to my unspoken question about why that email wouldn't go out: "You needed to know that I had your back. You needed to know it wasn't everyone else's prayers for you that were being answered, or all the Reiki that they sent. You needed to know this was between you and ME. You needed to know that I heard your prayers. and I answered."
I haven't thought about all that in a long time, but I think it came to mind now because a couple of doors that I thought God had opened for me, just closed, and I was wondering why He opened them in the first place, if He had no intention of keeping them open. But just like He wouldn't let that Reiki/prayer request leave my outbox in 2006 because He wanted me to know He answered my prayers, and not everyone else's prayers for me, I think God closed these recent doors because I was counting on other people to answer my prayers, and God wanted to make sure I know that what happens next is because He's the one who has my back!
Friday, March 7, 2014
Self-loving vs. Self-soothing
This is my seventh week of exercising! Not just the putting on my tennis shoes and going for a walk kind of exercise, where I can slow my pace whenever I'm distracted by the thoughts in my mind or the sights around me. No, this is a dedicated exercise program that gets my heart rate up and my sweat glands working. The kind of routine that requires a shower afterwards, and a cool down period so my breathing and my heart rate can come back to normal.
So what's the big deal? There are lots of folks who exercise on a regular basis. Problem is, I've never been one of them. I've never liked exercise. Even riding a bike when I was a kid wasn't fun to me. I did it because the rest of the kids in the neighborhood were doing it and I didn't want to be left behind when they took off to explore, but I couldn't wait to get back home and bury my nose in my favorite book. (And probably eat a bowl of ice cream or a piece of pie while I did so.)
I've tried exercising like this before, I really have. And each time I make it for about three weeks, and then I get sick. No kidding! Every time I've tried to change my eating habits and get into a regular exercise program, I've gotten sick. Usually it's bronchitis that hits, and I have to get an antibiotic and I'm pretty much out of it for at least 3-4 days, and it takes a lot longer to be able to breathe normally. And of course, by that time, I've gotten out of my routine and lost any and all interest in trying to exercise again. Until the next time my clothes don't fit and I decide it's time to try again. And no lie, I get sick again and it all goes down the tubes.
So what's different this time? For one thing, I'm not looking at this as something I need to do just until I can lose weight. I'm finally realizing that my body works better when it's exercised! With a long history of arthritis in my family, and strong evidence that it didn't miss my DNA, I know that exercise helps lubricate my joints and makes it easier for me to move, once I get moving. So if I want to continue to be able to keep up with my granddaughter (and I do!), then I need to do this for myself.
And I think that's the biggest difference: doing it for myself. I'm not doing it to look better in my clothes, although I can already tell a difference in my jeans. They don't feel like sausage casings anymore when I have them on! I'm not doing it to have a better chance of attracting a mate. I'm not doing it because someone else said I should. I'm doing it because I've finally come to realize that exercising is a way of loving my body, loving myself. It's a self-loving activity, rather than a self-soothing behavior.
What's the difference? A self-soothing behavior is something that helps lower your stress/anxiety level, which is also what exercise does, but a self-soothing behavior often started as a spontaneous reaction (as opposed to a well thought out response) to a stressful situation when we don't have more positive behaviors available to us. For instance, a baby will cry when it's hungry, but if it doesn't get fed, might attempt to sooth itself by sucking its thumb. It doesn't have the ability to get itself something to eat. So it does the best that it can to make itself feel better.
When things became uncomfortable for me in my home when I was growing up (Dad was an alcoholic. Mom had a lot of emotional baggage and took her anger at dad's drinking out on me in a variety of forms of abuse.), I never thought to ride my bike or go out for a walk. I'd never been encouraged to do anything physical, and sports programs for girls were just beginning to become popular in school curriculum programs, so I didn't have any experience of seeing how physical exertion could help with my stress. What I did have were excellent role models for using food and alcohol as coping mechanisms (self-soothing behaviors), and when people overeat and drink copious amounts of alcohol, they're not prone to exercise while they're doing it!
Okay, I've known for a long time that exercise was good for me. But that never made me want to stick to it. Something is different this time. And I know that, because, believe it or not, three weeks after I started exercising, guess what happened. I got sick! This time it was a head cold, and I felt miserable, but I kept on exercising! Every day. Every single day. I just told myself I'd do it for as long as I could and when I couldn't do it anymore, I'd quit. But I finished the routine each day.
And my mind set is different this time. I'm not telling myself I have to do it every day, and do it perfectly. If I miss a day, I don't beat myself up because I did. And when I'm finished, instead of all the negative self-talk I used to have going on in my head about how much I hate doing this, and how tired I am and how much my body hurts, I thank my body for making it through and I congratulate myself for making the time and finishing the routine. And I'm really proud of myself for doing it! I also notice that when I'm done, the stiffness and pain in my body has diminished considerably. My mood seems brighter; I have more energy; and I find myself thinking about the next day's schedule and when I'll make time to exercise again!
WHOA!!! Who is this person? Where did she come from? And why has it taken me so long to find her?
Good questions, all of them. I've been doing a lot of work on myself for a lot of years, trying to heal the wounds from the past. Perhaps I've finally dug deeply enough through the layers to remember who I really am, and to recognize the difference between, and the importance of, loving myself into wholeness rather than soothing myself into complacence.
Seven weeks isn't really a long time, but it's longer than I've ever managed before, and so to me, it's miraculous. Something is definitely different. I think I'm going to quit counting the weeks now and just relax into the routine. I'm also going to find some other ways I can love myself better and see where they take me. I'll let you know what I find.
So what's the big deal? There are lots of folks who exercise on a regular basis. Problem is, I've never been one of them. I've never liked exercise. Even riding a bike when I was a kid wasn't fun to me. I did it because the rest of the kids in the neighborhood were doing it and I didn't want to be left behind when they took off to explore, but I couldn't wait to get back home and bury my nose in my favorite book. (And probably eat a bowl of ice cream or a piece of pie while I did so.)
I've tried exercising like this before, I really have. And each time I make it for about three weeks, and then I get sick. No kidding! Every time I've tried to change my eating habits and get into a regular exercise program, I've gotten sick. Usually it's bronchitis that hits, and I have to get an antibiotic and I'm pretty much out of it for at least 3-4 days, and it takes a lot longer to be able to breathe normally. And of course, by that time, I've gotten out of my routine and lost any and all interest in trying to exercise again. Until the next time my clothes don't fit and I decide it's time to try again. And no lie, I get sick again and it all goes down the tubes.
So what's different this time? For one thing, I'm not looking at this as something I need to do just until I can lose weight. I'm finally realizing that my body works better when it's exercised! With a long history of arthritis in my family, and strong evidence that it didn't miss my DNA, I know that exercise helps lubricate my joints and makes it easier for me to move, once I get moving. So if I want to continue to be able to keep up with my granddaughter (and I do!), then I need to do this for myself.
And I think that's the biggest difference: doing it for myself. I'm not doing it to look better in my clothes, although I can already tell a difference in my jeans. They don't feel like sausage casings anymore when I have them on! I'm not doing it to have a better chance of attracting a mate. I'm not doing it because someone else said I should. I'm doing it because I've finally come to realize that exercising is a way of loving my body, loving myself. It's a self-loving activity, rather than a self-soothing behavior.
What's the difference? A self-soothing behavior is something that helps lower your stress/anxiety level, which is also what exercise does, but a self-soothing behavior often started as a spontaneous reaction (as opposed to a well thought out response) to a stressful situation when we don't have more positive behaviors available to us. For instance, a baby will cry when it's hungry, but if it doesn't get fed, might attempt to sooth itself by sucking its thumb. It doesn't have the ability to get itself something to eat. So it does the best that it can to make itself feel better.
When things became uncomfortable for me in my home when I was growing up (Dad was an alcoholic. Mom had a lot of emotional baggage and took her anger at dad's drinking out on me in a variety of forms of abuse.), I never thought to ride my bike or go out for a walk. I'd never been encouraged to do anything physical, and sports programs for girls were just beginning to become popular in school curriculum programs, so I didn't have any experience of seeing how physical exertion could help with my stress. What I did have were excellent role models for using food and alcohol as coping mechanisms (self-soothing behaviors), and when people overeat and drink copious amounts of alcohol, they're not prone to exercise while they're doing it!
Okay, I've known for a long time that exercise was good for me. But that never made me want to stick to it. Something is different this time. And I know that, because, believe it or not, three weeks after I started exercising, guess what happened. I got sick! This time it was a head cold, and I felt miserable, but I kept on exercising! Every day. Every single day. I just told myself I'd do it for as long as I could and when I couldn't do it anymore, I'd quit. But I finished the routine each day.
And my mind set is different this time. I'm not telling myself I have to do it every day, and do it perfectly. If I miss a day, I don't beat myself up because I did. And when I'm finished, instead of all the negative self-talk I used to have going on in my head about how much I hate doing this, and how tired I am and how much my body hurts, I thank my body for making it through and I congratulate myself for making the time and finishing the routine. And I'm really proud of myself for doing it! I also notice that when I'm done, the stiffness and pain in my body has diminished considerably. My mood seems brighter; I have more energy; and I find myself thinking about the next day's schedule and when I'll make time to exercise again!
WHOA!!! Who is this person? Where did she come from? And why has it taken me so long to find her?
Good questions, all of them. I've been doing a lot of work on myself for a lot of years, trying to heal the wounds from the past. Perhaps I've finally dug deeply enough through the layers to remember who I really am, and to recognize the difference between, and the importance of, loving myself into wholeness rather than soothing myself into complacence.
Seven weeks isn't really a long time, but it's longer than I've ever managed before, and so to me, it's miraculous. Something is definitely different. I think I'm going to quit counting the weeks now and just relax into the routine. I'm also going to find some other ways I can love myself better and see where they take me. I'll let you know what I find.
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