It is morning and here I am trying to get up and get on with my day. Like the past couple of days, today is another early start, with little-to-no sleep. I try to get myself out of bed, and with all my attempts, it feels like my body isn’t ready. I tried to negotiate with it. Giving it time, but it’s not working. I lean in and ask it, “What do you need to wake up?” What I heard isn’t what I wanted and yet was not surprising. My body responded, “I need you to care, to care for me, for you, let me be today, as I can’t be with your schedule”. I listen to it and go about postponing my daily commitments. As I write about my first meeting, I find myself writing that I am physically unwell and need to reschedule. Then, I did the same for the other commitments. I appreciated people’s understanding, and yet even if they didn’t, it was okay, as it’s not about them, but about listening to my rhythm and needs.
As I go about resting my body, I find myself checking in with some intentional breaths, and each time I did, my eyes started watering and a beam of light shows above my closed eyes. I am present to a sense of release in my lower abdomen and my face. I sense the throbbing in my throat and the lightweight of my heart.
It is noon, and I am just ready to get myself out of bed. I walk downstairs for some morning coffee and share how I feel with my husband, only to find myself needing to leave the house for some caring times with my dear companion and confidant over the years, the trees of mother nature. I walk and look around and ask the trees, why do I keep falling into the same hole even when I see it? What is it that I need to release and let go of? I ask the trees to help me see what I am not able to see, yet I can sense it in my cellular memory.
I notice how angry and frustrated I am on the walk and how looping thoughts keep showing up, so I decide to speak those thoughts aloud, as voicing is part of my release process and centrering practice.
Now, I start to notice the things on my walk—the cloudy sky, the rain, the wetness of the ground, and the dogs that passed me. Now I am present and grounded in the experience.
As I make my way home, holding the same intention for clarity, I find myself connecting to the word “abundance” and my relationship with it, which is resistance and skepticism. I always believed you work for what you have, and you work hard and never drop the ball. Things don’t just happen, and even when you reach them, you still need to continue the work.
So, I was the hamster on the wheel of life
As I get home, I find myself writing down a whole entry in my diary of how my beliefs around abundance, taint my view of my worthiness and get in the way of me saying “No” or slowing down even with my best intentions. I initially thought my creativity and desire to initiate and imagine a new world was getting in the way of me caring for myself. And yet, this morning, this belief isn’t really true. It was just a scratch on the surface of a much deeper ingrained pattern.
See, although clients, family friends, and even strangers praise the person I am, I don’t hold the same opinion of myself as others do of me.
I know that I am good at what I do, and I also know that I am a good person, but I don’t give myself enough credit. I believe that we are all good, so I’m nothing special. So I feel that when people reach out and trust me with their lives and the lives of their people, they were doing me a favour by working with me and giving me the chance to continue serving my mission and to continue learning. I always felt that I didn’t have the upper hand. I didn’t truly see the exchange between me and the other as one of equal power.
Although, there was nothing of such from the other side. This was a pure internal toxic belief of mine. This toxic belief is getting in the way of me even recognising myself and having a blurry vision of myself and my worth. Pure and utter madness, yet that madness has been playing me and guiding my life blindly for years, until this moment in time, where I cared enough for myself to listen for things to surface.
I realise that if I want to truly care for myself, and not fall into the same hole again, I need to remember that abundance is my birthright, and now, more than ever, I’m deserving as I am doing and continue to do the work on myself and with others. I am choosing to see rather than avoid it.
I am noticing that I get in the way of my own progress by not seeing the person I am becoming and not giving that person the care it needs to continue serving my mission and doing the work I love. I know that I need to listen more to my needs and set boundaries to better care for myself.
I also know, that now more than ever, it’s critical to work together with others, and if I want to do it without burning out, I need to learn to create those boundaries in my relationships more consciously.
Abundance is unconditional, it is infinite, we can all tap into it, and we don’t need to compete for it, and there is no need to force things. We are only worthy of a life of abundance, and we don’t need to feel the need to seize it and jump into things that don’t serve us and get in the way of our liberated life.
