Tonight I am grateful for the prospect of getting a little rest. I am taking a day off from work. In part I am going to do some work at home that I need to do, and yes, a bit of office work that I also need to get done. But by and large I plan to rest a bit. For one thing, I’m going to “sleep in” until about 7:00 a.m., which is downright decadent. For another, I’m simply going to take it a bit easy, as best I can.
This morning, as part of my leftover exercises informally assigned to me by my brother during our conversation yesterday was to begin to write down what I want in and for my life. As I was writing along in my journal I realized I was procrastinating in writing down what I want. “Hmmm, that’s interesting,” I said to myself, beginning to notice that’s what I was doing. (I love when I begin to notice one of my less helpful behaviors. Rather than berate myself for it, I simply notice with a friendly, mildly curious, “hmmm, that’s interesting.”) I realized, not for the first time, that I have a really hard time thinking about what I want, let alone actually writing it down on paper. When I began to interrogate what that was about I began to really get to some seriously limiting beliefs I hold about whether or not I deserve to have what I want. Ouch!
Without getting too deep about it (and I really am too tired to get too deep), I suffer what so many others suffer from–chronic unworthiness: I’m simply not good enough, not something enough to deserve good things to happen to and for me. As I began to dig beneath the surface, I was able to quickly find one of the sources of my unworthiness, and let me tell you, it is deep and longstanding. Nonetheless I’m grateful for the awareness of what is in part holding me back from being able to enumerate what I want in my life. And awareness of the limiting belief is the beginning of changing it. I continue to be grateful for my brother’s check in with me yesterday. He challenged me to think about things I either hadn’t considered or hadn’t felt I had permission to really look at them.
I’m a little too tired to write any more this evening, not if I hope to remain relatively coherent. But I want to add that I did in fact write down a few things that I want. Once I hurtled over the obstacle of unworthiness, letting go of what I don’t deserve, I was much freer to write down a few things that came to mind. I believe I’ll keep at it and see where it takes me. With gratitude as my companion, I am confident that I’ll be able to break through some of the limiting beliefs I’ve held that keep me from fully realizing who I am and what I can be. At the end of this day, that’s a really good thing to accomplish. And for that I am exceedingly grateful.
