What if you focused on who you are?
Instead of who you are not?
Some days I want to write but I don’t know what to say. Except this isn’t entirely accurate. I get in my head and I think I shouldn’t say what I truly want to say, so I pretend I don’t know what it is. It’s because of the usual fears that all writers and creatives face: I don’t want to sound stupid, I don’t want to be criticized and I don’t want to waste people’s time writing things that perhaps don’t matter. Blah blah blah
But why do I judge myself so harshly? I have an old belief that vulnerability is not safe because it leads to rejection. This belief isn’t universally true, but I have plenty of evidence that it has been true in my life.
If I didn’t judge myself harshly, or believe that I will be rejected, or that vulnerability is unsafe, I would just write about the things I think about and the things I know. That’s what I’m practicing doing here. Writing and tending to the sensations of discomfort that rise and fall in my body, and the meaning that my mind desperately wants to make out of everything I experience.
Tending to our inner world and navigating the roller coaster of sensation, emotion and meaning making is an ongoing conversation with my healing clients, my friends, and the writers who come to my writing circles. I’m grateful to know I’m not alone on this winding path.
Recently I’ve been deliberately revisiting this simple truth: creating change is as simple as changing our perspective. This doesn’t mean it’s easy because our brains have deep trenches dug by the repeated flow of thousands and thoughts throughout years and decades. But it’s possible to make consistent progress in digging new trenches through a new focus.
My experiment this year is to focus deliberately on being as present as possible in each moment, and to to question my thoughts of not belonging, not being loved, of not doing enough. I simply ask myself: What if I have done enough? What if I am wanted here? What if I am loved? What if I do belong? And most importantly, what if I love myself the same way that my partner loves me? Or my best friend? Or the friend that I laugh with and pull tarot cards with over tea every few months? What if I allowed that to be true for me instead?
I’m definitely laying down some new trenches in my thought patterns and resulting emotions and sensations. It’s still taking a lot of conscious focus but I love the progress I’m making.
Have you ever wondered what would happen if you always focused on who you are instead of on who you are not?
And what if when you wrote, you focused on the writer that you are? Not on the writer that you are not?
The world is so persistent at telling us what we are not. That’s the basis of most marketing campaigns and consumerism culture. You need this thing we’re selling to make you happier, thinner, better, more desirable, richer, more creative, more fill in the blank that we insist you’re currently not.
But it’s all an illusion, isn’t it?
Certainly some things and experiences are lovely to have, but we are enough without them. We are whole and worthy and divine just as we are. As humans, as writers, as parents, as lovers, as creatives, as ourselves.
Try this right now:
Sit down somewhere comfy and feel your butt being supported by the seat. Rest your attention there for a moment and allow the support to be your main focus.
Now, say to yourself: I am enough, whole, worthy and divine.
Notice what happens in your body? What part of you constricts? What part of you relaxes? What thoughts immediately pop into your mind that either agree or disagree with that statement?
What did your body tell you when you tried this?
You get to choose what happens next:
You can follow the thoughts that disagree with your wholeness and enoughness and find the evidence to prove them.
Or you can follow the thoughts that agree and find evidence to prove them.
It’s that simple. It’s not always easy because of those brain trenches I mentioned. But it’s a beginning.