Hopefully, over the past 10 lessons I have exposed some of the myths and the belief systems that keep you either distracted or making unconscious choices about what you want out of your boundaries versus what you want in them.
Now, it’s time to get out your journal again and be prepared to answer some critical questions about YOU that help you outline your character motivations. This is the brass tax, I suppose. It’s almost not even a character motivation discussion as much as it is a production budget discussion.
I know some may say humans have unlimited access to energy. I love this concept. It’s great! I am personally working on increasing my ability to tap into that flow of unlimited energy. However, I still need to take account of where I am spending my energy of that which I currently have access. Today, specifically, I take into account why I have made those expenditures and what positives they have given me. You, too, still need to take an audit of where your budget for your energy is going. I think you’d agree that most people who are not budgeting, not conscious of their choices or who are trying to please everyone are not experiencing endless volumes of high quality, clean energy. While that experience is something I am always working toward, I just spent the past 3 weeks dealing with the symptoms many describe as “long Covid.” I still managed to make accomplishments through my health challenges, but I would be lying if I didn’t say there were times I felt depleted. I am certainly not in nirvana, yet. If you were, you wouldn’t be reading this, either. Am I right?
The saying is coming to mind for me right now, “where attention goes energy flows.” One might feel prompted to ask: where is my energy going? Well, that’s a good question which I think we have been looking at throughout this series more and more, but there are better questions underneath this. One of which we address today, we need to ask to unearth the behemoth of unacknowledged truth that keeps us in the same boat, making the same choices and dealing with the same uncomfortable issues with the same disharmonious people. Hopefully, after doing the work today, you will have noticed the behemoth is not so scary after all. Rather, you will acknowledge some big, untapped, self-love under it all that you have never accessed. That’s a clean energy none of us can turn our noses up to.
Ready? Of course, you are!
Get out those journals, kiddos! Here’s today’s big ques-chee-oh-knee!
What have you gained by choosing to focus your energy where you have even though it’s not on what you ultimately desire?
While your first answer may be “nothing,” I urge you to take yourself seriously. I think if you take a little more time and be completely honest with yourself, you might come up with a deeper answer. You might be gaining some kind of outside validation from your family for being dutiful to someone who has shown you no respect. You could be getting some kind of financial compensation in the case of tolerating a nasty employer for a job you don’t love. You could be staying in a marriage for the sake of your children. You could feel something more general. To boil it down to a word, you might have some kind of safety to gain because making a different choice and going after what you want or what you love requires a certain amount of risk. With risk comes the inherent chance of failure. It might be safer to just not think about what you want. For now, it feels like doing the same thing is just autopilot-not having to choose.
But, I want you to acknowledge without judgement, that indeed, it is a choice.
Another thing is that the current choice doesn’t feel like it requires the “big” energy a change might require. It often feels like the status quo is easier somehow. And, if we already feel tired, low, sad or depleted, we can’t imagine where we would get the energy for a change.
My point in this isn’t to give you the answers. You are a unique individual. I just want you thinking in a way that gives some credit to the choices you’ve been making, even if unconsciously. All the possible answers I have suggested so far are extremely credible. They are even justifiable as conscious choices. The important thing is that you do start becoming conscious of why you are doing what you are doing, choosing what you are choosing, saying “yes” to that which you say “yes” and saying “no” to that which you have declined-even if it’s your self, your dreams or your desires. Underneath those choices, even if you weren’t thinking of it, there is likely a very reasoned reason, logical reason and justification even for why you are choosing what you are.
So, whatever it is for you, get out your journal and work out your own answers, the long and the short of what you have been choosing in your life and the why. Don’t discredit it. In fact, you may start the journal heading with gratitude.
“Today, I am grateful to myself and even my subconscious for thinking ahead of some of the risks I might face if I changed course. Here below are the reasons and benefits received from having chosen what I have, even though it seems like I am not exactly getting what I desire. These reasons are all valid reasons. Though my perspective on them may be shifting, I take pride in the awareness I am taking today by being accountable to myself. The accountant has never been out to lunch. She/he has been here all along budgeting and making calculations, doing the hard work completely unacknowledged. But today is accountant’s day! Today, I am grateful as I hear him/her out now about what choices have been made and why. The justifications and benefits for the choices I have been making up to now are: ______________________.”
Hopefully, you love yourself and honor yourself enough to come up with at least a paragraph or two to justify and explain why you have been choosing things you don’t wholly desire. I think you have reasons. I think they are GOOD reasons. I want to honor you today for looking at them and respecting that you aren’t a bimbo. You aren’t a dummy, and you aren’t a fool. You are extremely wise.
Underneath my own shitshow, I personally have a lot of valid explanations, not just excuses, for why I have been doing what I have. All of them came in some part from loving myself enough to protect myself from something, some pain, some loss, some lack, some reality. I want you to look at this while seeing the self-love behind it. You choose what you do because you love yourself. Today, you are going to start acknowledging those choices, loving yourself for taking them and acknowledging the loving, self-preserving nature from which they were made.
So, before you start thinking of yourself as a self-saboteur, give yourself a little credit. Everything has a risk-benefit calculations. If you are already defining yourself as a “sabotager,” (that’s how I would say it) you missed some of the benefits you have received for your choices that deserve to be acknowledged, just as you deserve acknowledgement for those wins. If you have received benefit, you have won in some way. Give yourself credit today. You are a smart cookie. You got you this far. I find that admirable in itself.
Ok, go acknowledge your good reasons now, celebrate your wins and pat yourself on the back. Keep a good record of it all. Enjoy yourself. You DO deserve it!
And only from that place of confidence and self-trust can you be willing to be open to making your own improvements and hearing constructive criticism.
So be loving and confident today, cuz tomorrow, we’re going to smash this all to shit, so we can get what we really desire!