(BREAKTHROUGH MOMENT)
I love working from this Cafe Nero in Covent Garden London. Something about the high windows and massive amount of light just draws me in every single time. The coffee is pretty good too..
So I've been sat here for about an hour or two trying to put into words what it is I discovered on Wednesday evening. Massive breakthrough moment for me. Been doing a lot of internal work lately.
I was actually on my way home from a long day when it dawned on me:
I take so much better care of every other single person in my life than I do myself. I guess since I am me it's sort of hard to do a 360 self-analysis but working with my coach made me realize such an important point: You need to take care of you! And it's so important to see your own blind spots.
Take a second and go read those last two sentences again. Reread them two times if necessary. Let it sink in.
And I think from a purely logical perspective I always understood that: "yes take care of yourself.. yes self-love..etc..!!" And people had talked about it before. But it hadn't clicked for me yet.
But then it dawned on me that I have actually been one of my harshest critics. And not in a good way (if there even is a good way). I hold myself to such high esteem and set the bar so high that it's actually detrimental to my own well being.
You know that feeling of anxiety or stress when you haven't done something you were supposed to do. Or you just get kind of stressed out when you feel you should be doing more. Basically beating yourself up psychologically??
Well turns out that's not how you're supposed to be living life. And I draw my attention now to kids who are the best example of how to live life most naturally. They just do. They don't have these set standards. Expectations. They just are. They flow. They play. They laugh (something like 300 times a day on average I think I heard a few days ago). They rock at just being.
Then we grow up and everything becomes "should've" or "could've" or "would've". And that's where the crucial point lies. Do something or don't, make a decision, BUT don't beat yourself up for it after. Breathe.
Don't get me wrong I am generally on a super high and I feel happy a lot of the time BUT those feelings related to expectations prevented me from flowing fully. They impeded me. And who knows maybe you feel the same way.
The solution to all this: AWARENESS. What I started doing was being aware. Just start noticing those moments where you get tense. Those moments where you feel an impending amount of stress come to you. Just let it come to your attention. Don't defy it, don't wish it away. Just be with it. "Oh right, there you are.", "Hey there", "Ah.. you again".
Open up and start listening to yourself.
This has helped me see things from a completely new perspective and so I wanted to share this with you in the most concise way I feel I can.
Just by making a few changes in how I turn up and treat myself I am seeing opportunities flow my way in 2017:
- I will be speaking self-development for a business and entrepreneurship class at a university in mid February.
- I am in talks with a top British bank about doing team coaching for their managers in February when I get back from my travels to India, Sri Lanka and Japan.
- and I will be launching a powerful coaching program on this specific topic, "how you treat yourself" with my sister, Olivia Charlet (top performance coach in the women empowerment space) in the following weeks. Stay tuned.
Hope you find reading this as useful as it was for me to write it out.
Happy Friday to you! ✌️️