When you let yourself feel how you feel, all rationalizations aside, you strengthen your self-compassion like a muscle. The big Pisces energy in the air during this Aries season, with Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Neptune all convening in Pisces at one time or another this month, is almost like an extended winter, with winter’s self-reflective qualities spilling over into spring.
Values are tools in your toolbox to help you move through the random situations life throws at you. What are the most important things in your life?
As a long-time chronic overeater, I’ve basically stamped out my body’s ability to tell me when I’m full. I don’t have a full – I can eat until I’m so top heavy that I just sort of topple over and go to sleep. And honestly, I have a lot of shame about this behavior. I’m not trying to shame anybody else who might resonate with what I said, I am very much owning my own emotional experience.
On another note, today is day forty-nine of no alcohol and it feels like an inspired step forward. I had realized that the sensation of drinking alcohol felt like a step backwards for me, every time. When the alcohol would wear off the next morning, I felt like I needed to make up ground for the step backwards I took. I realized, eventually, that I didn’t want to keep taking those backwards steps. I decided to just try for a little while to not do that. To not drink. That was forty-nine days ago, and was where the first door opened to this new world of wellness I’ve discovered.
Just two days into not drinking, I had the energy and inspiration to explore bedtime yoga routines and I picked a quick twelve-minute one to try. I wasn’t that energized and didn’t want to spend a ton of time, but then the next day, I felt the difference. Those few minutes of stretching and gentleness and just sort of rocking my body and being in my body – it felt really nice. So I decided to carve out some brief time that day to do it again. And that was forty-seven days ago. I’ve been doing ten to fifteen minutes of gentle movement every day since, and then yesterday I felt inspired to kick the “intensity” up a notch and get my heart rate up more, push a little past my limits of comfort and ease, and it felt really good. I actually had the energy for it.
Just two days into not drinking, I had the energy and inspiration to explore bedtime yoga routines…
My body called for it so naturally. When walking out in nature I was drawn to this cool little patch, and then from there I turned around and saw this hill that made me think, “I wanna run up that hill.” And so I did! Eight times! And it’s just like that. I didn’t force it on myself, it was just naturally expressed – the desire to run up the hill. It felt amazing. Today will also be day eleven of meditation. Meditation is something I’ve resisted all along the way (a story for another day) but after forty-nine days of no alcohol and forty-seven days of yoga and exercise, the meditation piece was just the logical next step. And it came like the others – effortlessly.
One day I just woke up and meditation sounded so nice. I stepped into that for a bit and did about ten minutes of meditation. It felt really good, so the next day I carved out about ten minutes to do it again. And that was eleven days ago. Three days into that, I had the realization that I hadn’t had a food binge in a couple of days. I was amazed, because that just happened all by itself. I didn’t make an actual conscious effort to curb my binge eating, it just happened as a result of the other developments in my health and wellbeing. But once I consciously realized this, I decided to use that awareness to make the conscious effort not to binge that night (because it usually happens at night). I was successful! And that was nine days ago.
I didn’t make an actual conscious effort to curb my binge eating, it just happened as a result of the other developments in my health and wellbeing.
These days that I’m counting aren’t coming from a place of perfectionism, or trying to look a certain way or reach “optimal” health. If you’ve listened to my podcast or read any of my content, you know that my passion is emotion management, pursuing joy and getting in harmony with our emotions. When I made the whim decision to quit alcohol forty-seven days ago, I was just trying to do something to feel better. I didn’t expect that this decision would spark a whole inner transformation in my perspective on physical health. Once I started feeling good (two days in), the momentum grew and one thing led to another, which eventually led to my discovering Fit2Fat2Fit. Yet another natural and divinely-timed next step.
Since learning about the impact that food can have on our emotions, I can see now that eating whole, natural, nutritious foods will only serve to strengthen your emotion management tools. And as someone who has twice been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, to learn that the ups and downs in our emotions are tied to our diet is a major game changer. I’m a naturally rebellious person and I don’t do well with restrictions and limitations, but this truly doesn’t feel limiting. If anything, it feels freeing and expansive. I can eat whatever I want, but by choosing to eat foods that are healthy for my body, I can only improve upon all of the time and effort I’ve put into emotion management.
I can eat whatever I want, but by choosing to eat foods that are healthy for my body, I can only improve upon all of the time and effort I’ve put into emotion management.
This ongoing transformation taking place in my body, my energy, and my life is blowing my mind. If I already am feeling so good that I want to run up a hill eight times, then I can’t even imagine how amazing I’ll be feeling in another few weeks! If any of this resonates with you, I encourage you to check out these resources I’ve listed that have opened my eyes and my heart and fueled me along this awakening to a new perspective of physical health:
Thank you for reading, dear friends! Find more articles like this one on the Owning Authenticity blog and hear more stories on my i Learned podcast. Explore the rest of my offerings on my website www.owningauthenticity.com
Content from Episode 71 of “i learned…” podcast by Carly Whorton, adapted by Maddie Billings
I’m what the industry (or society or whatever) would call a “skinny fat person.” I have a decent metabolism and my build mostly stays put – so I can eat a lot of junk before I start seeing it reflected in my body’s physical appearance. I used to assume I was in the clear, that I wasn’t negatively affected by the foods I was eating because I wasn’t gaining weight. But then I discovered this show, Fit2Fat2Fit, and it’s shown me an entirely new way of viewing food and nutrition. It has totally reframed my perspective on physical health and I’m so, so excited to share this new knowledge with you!
But then I discovered this show, Fit2Fat2Fit, and it’s shown me an entirely new way of viewing food and nutrition.
A bit about the show – it all began with the main guy, Drew Manning, who was a personal trainer that was struggling to help his heaviest of clients to get in shape. The most impactful of these clients was his brother-in-law, who he had tried and tried and tried to help lose weight using all kinds of methods, but nothing seemed to stick. Drew had the insight to see that the common denominator in these “failed” cases was him. Something in his approach wasn’t working. To figure out what that might be, he spent the next six months on a mission to gain seventy-five pounds.
He quit exercising altogether and switched to a sedentary lifestyle, and changed his diet to match those of his heaviest clients. That meant lots of fast food, sugar, soda, processed snacks – we’re talking thousands and thousands of calories a day. By the end of those six months, he had lost all his muscle definition and had gained a big ol’ beer gut (watch the show to see what I mean!) But what happens next is what’s really incredible. From that place of having gained seventy-five pounds and having lost all stamina, strength, and endurance, Drew and his brother-in-law tackled the weight loss journey, together, and from a level playing field. This is how he discovered the missing component to his approach.
Spoiler alert! The main component that he was missing was empathy. Empathy and understanding of that starting place – what it’s like to have extra weight on your body, not having the level of strength and endurance that’s built through a lifetime or over many years, plus battling a legitimate addiction to greasy and sugary foods (they affect your brain chemistry similarly to hard drugs!!) When a person is first starting to transition away from a highly processed diet, it can trigger actual withdrawal symptoms, like intense cravings and blood sugar crashes. It can be difficult to fully grasp that if you haven’t experienced it yourself.
When a person is first starting to transition away from a highly processed diet, it can trigger actual withdrawal symptoms, like intense cravings and blood sugar crashes.
Drew went on to write a book about his eye-opening experiment results, which then became the TV show that I’m referencing here – Fit2Fat2Fit. In the show, other trainers from around the country conduct a similar experiment, where they spend four months trying to gain twenty-five to thirty percent of their body weight. From there, the trainer and their client attempt to lose the weight together. Most of the time it’s successful, but sometimes it’s still not – and it’s interesting to witness those who still aren’t successful in this scenario. It paints a clear image of the strong hold that food can have on people (myself included) and how real the emotional component is.
Binge eating has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember. To have a food binge every single day was just kind of the way that I ate. Eating nothing all day long and then eating 4,000-calories in one sitting and promptly going to bed, any variation of that, was my normal. It was so normal to me that I didn’t really even think anything about it. But then I discovered this show, and I watched these healthy, happy, fit, energetic trainers go through the same cycles that I’ve gone through all my life. Across the board, when they first start the weight-gain part of the process, they’re all so excited to splurge and have a big cheat meal. To eat all of the things they normally never do, with reckless abandon – and most of the time, they throw up afterwards. Their bodies are not used to junk food, to the point that it physically rejects it.
But after some time, they adjust (besides one chick who threw up the whole four months!) and even start to crave processed foods. What initially nauseated them was now calling their name, and they’d admit that the craved-food tasted soooooo good once they got it. It was mind-blowing to see how quickly the body can adjust to what we put in it, and it sparked a whole new line of thinking for me about food and nutrition. I’ve felt inspired and motivated by weight loss experiment shows like The Biggest Loser, sure, but a weight gain experiment? This was totally revolutionary for me, because I really saw myself in it.
It was mind-blowing to see how quickly the body can adjust to what we put in it, and it sparked a whole new line of thinking for me about food and nutrition.
By about two months in, every trainer hit a wall and began to experience depression. They’d nap a lot, sleep in later, didn’t feel like going anywhere or seeing anyone, fought more with their spouse and engaged less with their children. That’s where they all were at the two-month mark, because food had taken its toll and created brain fog, depression, and zero energy. Wake up feeling bad, then attempt to feel better by eating a bunch more of the food that made you sick in the first place – it’s a cycle, one I’m no stranger to. You fall into this cycle and you’ve lost the energy needed to pull yourself out, so you feel stuck. By the end of the four months, they’re undeniably miserable and sick on every level.
Watching how processed food can suck the life out of perfectly healthy people in such a short period of time had my jaw on the floor, and now I don’t ever want to eat fast food again. These people became so depressed and anxious, full of self-loathing energy and were falling into patterns of isolation – and I thought all of that stuff was just me, parts of who I am. I always thought I was just a depressed person, suffering from a melancholy personality, but no. I was just feeding myself toxic crap – but I won’t allow that anymore. Now that I know better, I will not accept this for my body.
These people became so depressed and anxious, full of self-loathing energy and were falling into patterns of isolation – and I thought all of that stuff was just me, parts of who I am.
Any other time in my life that I’ve made a conscious effort to get healthier, it’s been from a place of wanting to change my body’s appearance. I’ve struggled with body image issues all my life, which is a talk for another day, but every single time I’ve tried to engage with healthy eating it’s been about an exterior motive, an aesthetic transformation. What Fit2Fat2Fit has demonstrated to me is that healthy eating is an emotional transformation, first and foremost, and that’s where true staying power lies. I’m only one week into my new health journey, but I can already feel the difference, because it’s coming from a place of pure hope. From a desire to genuinely feel good rather than just to look good. I’ve made a whole lot of progress with emotional management and raising my vibration while still eating crap foods, so it makes me wonder – what is possible if I’m no longer limiting myself by eating processed foods?
When I eat healthy and I’m active, I have more self esteem, more confidence. I just feel better about myself, but I never really credited that to the food itself and its physiological impact on my emotions. Prior to this past week, I had no idea how much the food we put in our bodies impacts our emotional wellbeing. But I know now. And the fact that I know now means that I can make a different choice if I want (and I do very much want!) which feels so empowering. As I move forward on this exciting new path toward holistic health, I’ll hold those feelings of hope and empowerment close to my heart – and I’ll be sure to share my journey along the way!
Thank you for reading, dear friends! Find more articles like this one on the Owning Authenticity blog and hear more stories on my i Learned podcast. Explore the rest of my offerings on my website www.owningauthenticity.com
Content from Episode 71 of “i learned…” podcast by Carly Whorton, adapted by Maddie Billings
A while back, I lost about forty pounds. I gained those forty pounds during my first year living in Dallas working at a software company (which you can read more about here) but eventually I ended up losing the amount I had gained and then some. I was feeling really good but by the time I reached my lowest weight, my blood sugar was crashing frequently. Something that Abraham talks about, which goes along with the idea of just following your impulses in general, is to apply the same idea to the way you eat. To eat what you feel like eating, when you feel like eating it, and to trust that your body is craving and calling for things that it knows will meet your needs at your current vibration. As you’re doing the simultaneous work of raising your frequency every day, then your body will begin craving amounts and types of foods that match your higher frequency. Through that aligned way of eating, I’d say I put back on about fifteen to twenty pounds in the last few years – and honestly, I feel SO much better.
To eat what you feel like eating, when you feel like eating it, and to trust that your body is craving and calling for things that it knows will meet your needs at your current vibration.
On the down side, the little voice of vanity in my head likes to tell me I looked “better” twenty pounds ago, that because I’m a little pudgier now and have indent lines on my stomach, I don’t look as “good” anymore. This is an area where social conditioning speaks loudly, and I know I’m not alone in that. Regardless of my feeling that I may have looked better before the weight, the way I physically feel now far outweighs that. I would choose to look “less good” but feel this great every time. When I was at my lowest weight, I was in the process of opening my first business, a grocery store in my hometown called Cecil K’s. I wasn’t taking care of myself during that hectic time and I was majorly stressed out and overworking myself.
I was lucky to have other people on that project who would bring me a bottle of water, or a sandwich, or invite me to eat with them. I was so hyper focused on my work – the to-do list was never ending and my desk looked like a sea of stickies. It was my first business ever, my first attempt at creating a business from scratch. Emotionally, I wore that like a ton of bricks, and this emotional burden I’d placed on myself was probably most responsible for my laser focus. That laser focus took a toll on my health to the point that other people were noticing – I was practically wasting away, hardly eating, and going nonstop for like twelve hours per day. Our bodies are capable of dealing with that for a time, but it is not sustainable long-term.
That laser focus took a toll on my health to the point that other people were noticing – I was practically wasting away, hardly eating, and going nonstop for like twelve hours per day.
I wasn’t listening to my body at all and was having multiple blood sugar crashes a day, and it was awful because I felt sick all the time. But then the grocery store opened, which was sort of a blessing in disguise. I walked in every morning to the delicious smell of baked goodies – fresh baked bread, cinnamon rolls – and over in the meat department they have all these beautiful steaks and cheeses and all kinds of yummies that need sampling! My whole job was now food. Plus, I was in charge of the beer section, and my job is to know the product, right? So “professional taste-tester” became one of my responsibilities, and with that I ended up twenty pounds heavier. I realize now that that probably saved me from a lot of health issues. The blood sugar issues in particular were concerning given the history of diabetes in my family. It was scary at the time to even think about that, because I felt way too young to be having any issues like that.
In the summertime, when I sit out in the kiddie pool in my front yard, in a bathing suit, cross-legged – there is literally no one there to see that but me. I look down at myself and see a little belly that pooches out, and some rolls. I look at it and I think, “you’re really saving my life here.” This little spare fat storage thing is really working out for me, so I’m embracing it. I try to eat a balanced diet as much as I can, but I also eat intuitively. So if that means yogurt, or chicken, then sure. If that means half a pizza or a donut, then yes – I fucking go for it. I allow. And it all is a really great practice in trusting your intuition, because your body knows. It’s connected to the All, to the energetic Oneness, whether or not your mind consciously is. If you’re looking for a way to begin connecting with Source energy, start with your body.
And it all is a really great practice in trusting your intuition, because your body knows. It’s connected to the All, to the energetic Oneness, whether or not your mind consciously is.
Back when I was overworking myself to get Cecil K’s up and running, I was treating my body like a work vehicle. There were no frills, no time to even feed it yummy things because there was always more work to do (and usually I’m the queen of yummy snacks, so that’s saying something!) It just goes to show that we can live with our thinking mind disconnected from our body, or we can give in to what our body is asking for. That’s what I’ve been doing, and yeah, maybe I had to buy some bigger pants along the way, which is not always the funnest moment of one’s life – but what I’ve learned is that I’d rather feel good. I’d rather feel good on the inside than look a certain way on the outside. It’s just not worth it anymore to me to weigh twenty pounds less and then have to deal with the health issues that came from that. That isn’t the size that my body wants to be right now, and that’s okay. That doesn’t mean it isn’t a good size for someone else’s body, or even that it will never be a good size for my body again.
Bodies change, seasons change, we change. Our bodies, like us, are meant to be wherever they are at any given moment. As I’ve let the path unfold beneath my feet, I’ve learned that the way I eat is no exception to this unfolding. Now, when I feel hungry and I ask myself, “What do I feel like having?” – the world is my oyster, there’s a whole Universe full of limitless possibilities for what I could feel like eating. It’s not at all limited to what leftovers I’m “supposed” to be having or whatever I “should” be eating.
Reflecting back on that time when I was starting my business and wasn’t listening to my body, I can see how much I’ve learned to trust my intuition since then, both in food and in life. Seeing that growth starts to reframe the memory of those times more lightly. I put a lot of pressure on myself to do everything and ensure that it was all going to be profitable enough to pay off our loan in time – but I was actually a 50% partner in the business with my cousin, and we had a whole team of helping hands. I didn’t need to take on such a burden when I had all that support, but I can also see and appreciate my hard working-nature and excitement to take on a challenge. Besides diabetes, something that also runs in my family is the love of a good puzzle! I especially love a puzzle where you start with a completely blank slate, without even a picture of the final product for reference. That part ruins the fun and the magic of figuring it out along the way.
As the journey of Cecil K’s continues, it really is the gift that keeps on giving. It was all a very spiritual process for me, and was a fascinating practice in the law of attraction as I watched pieces fall into place so easily. Every step along the way, if I even started to get a bit off track from what Source envisioned for this store, it would be very clear. For example, we interviewed sixty to seventy people to fill various positions and we ended up hiring about thirty of them. The first employee we hired to work in the store was supposed to start six weeks before opening to help us finish pulling it all together. I got a call from him the Friday before he was supposed to start and he told me he wasn’t coming. His job had offered him a raise and a new car so he would be staying there. As I listened to him talk, I felt a sense of relief wash over me. I instantly knew that it wasn’t a good match if he was willing to abandon our project just for that. I felt grateful, like I had literally dodged a bullet.
I called my cousin, my business partner, afterwards and we talked about the situation. Our solution was to bump up somebody else’s start date, the person who we hired to be the grocery manager. At first we were going to have the assistant manager come in before the grocery manager, but this worked too. Fast forward to today and this person who started out as the Grocery Manager is now running the store full time. He’s a lifer, a total dream come true. As an entrepreneur, I wanted to start the business but not necessarily manage it long term (something Source knew before I did!) and the absolutely perfect person to make that happen was put right in front of me – even though he wasn’t the person I initially hired.
I poured my heart and soul into that business and I handed over the reins to someone I completely trust and respect to carry it forward and keep it alive. As I’m now building my spiritual business, I’m learning all these lessons in hindsight from my journey with Cecil K’s and the unfolding of that process, and I’m bringing those lessons into my next business – the biggest key being to rest more. To listen to my body and trust my intuition. There doesn’t need to be a final destination, and you don’t have to do it all at once. There only needs to be you and your excitement and your inspired ideas. The “how” of Source bringing all this to you isn’t your business, and will only take your focus away from what really matters, which is your passion, your path of most fun. That’s your business.
As I approach my new business, I am absolutely walking the path of most fun. It’s happy, joyful, and deliberate, and everything feels so miraculous. I wouldn’t trade it for anything – especially not a size two.
Thank you for reading, dear friends! Find more articles like this one on the Owning Authenticity blog and hear more stories on my i Learned podcast. Explore the rest of my offerings on my website www.owningauthenticity.com
Content from Episode 11 of the “i learned…” podcast by Carly Whorton, adapted by Maddie Billings
Starting my podcast led me to unearth some deeply rooted pieces of my shadow. It gave me a better look at my full spectrum – the lightest of my light and darkest of my dark. On the one hand I was able to see a greater expression of the beauty I’m capable of creating, an exquisite experience, but on the other, I’m met with more of my shadow and unhealed parts than ever before.
To help me process these things I have my Leo Moon support group (and by “Leo Moon support group,” I mean group chat with a fellow Leo Moon pal.) Sharing this bold moon sign, my friend and I share many of the same shadow qualities – like worrying about what other people think or trying to fit in. Her and I have both spent a lot of time and energy living out that deeply-rooted Leonine desire to be loved. To realize I’m still going through this, when I’ve been through this, brings up a lot.
A few years ago I had a real moment when I found Abraham Hicks, got the deservability treatment from my therapist and all that. At the root of it all, what I ended up practicing and learning through these things was self love. My whole life changed in the process, and everything shifted for the better. My life became a reflection of the self love I learned to cultivate through my daily inner work, like journaling and reading my deservability treatment in the mirror.
Leaning into my authentic self through creating my podcast has sent me back through things I’ve been through before, but this time at a deeper level. To illustrate this point, let me tell you about Rita. Rita is someone who I (barely) know in real life but have known for a long time – she was one of my teachers in seventh grade, which was a very interesting year for me. These days she’s a patron of my grocery store, a dedicated pandemic volunteer, and just a generally lovely soul.
Rita is that person in my life who, in my mind, is the reason I can’t be my real self. She’s not the only one who plays that role in my mind, but she’s definitely the first one I think of that I’m “trying not to disappoint.” For the longest time, I’ve kept my personal Facebook page completely separate from my Owning Authenticity page (formerly My Intentional Gifts), where I share about my spiritual journey and offerings. I did that very deliberately because I felt that I wasn’t ready to unveil that side of myself on my personal Facebook page, and I felt this specifically with Rita in mind. I see her once every couple months, yet any time it’s time to make a decision about revealing my true self in a public way (which is pretty frequently these days), she comes straight to mind. Do you have a ‘Rita’? Or maybe, like me, more than one?
Despite who or how many, I learned that what gives our Ritas so much power really boils down to two things: wanting to be liked while also not wanting to explain yourself.
That second piece was a big revelation for me that resonated immediately (shout out to my Leo Moon support group aka Trudie). I realized that everything that I wanted to share, and was sharing “privately” through my Owning Authenticity page, was a product of the self love and happiness I had worked so hard to cultivate in my life. Inside, I was dying to embody that joy and share this path that I’ve found with the world. This path has yielded new connections, new friends, new opportunities, new growth, new levels, new experiences, new territory – all in the pursuit of mastering myself in a joyful way. So what did I feel was not “socially acceptable” about that? It became clear that my Leo Moon energy was at play, and that I still cared way too much about what other people thought of me. I knew it was holding me back.
That’s when a good friend swooped in to put me on a F*ck Budget. My f*ck spending was out of control – I was giving them out left and right, as if they were infinite. The F*ck Budget instantly brought that into focus and helped me to reign it in, but it was all from the starting point of practicing self love. Now I wanted to downsize the f*ck-giving again, and I knew just where to begin – more self love. More self love and more self acceptance, because at the end of the day (and the end of our lives), all we have is ourselves. To prioritize what other people want or expect from you is to deprioritize you, when the truth is that you came here for a reason, a reason which is actually worthy of your f*cks and deserves your energy.
I love where I am in life right now, and truthfully, I don’t want to present myself to anyone who is going to react negatively and then have to defend myself. But I’ve realized that I really don’t have to defend myself. Fairly recently I had one of my first experiences with sharing my work to my personal Facebook page, and not all of the feedback I got was positive. Someone who I’d known since high school left a comment saying that the project I’d shared was tasteless, offensive, and invalid. When I saw that, the reaction that first went through me was anger, but that anger quickly turned into “Eff you! Who cares?” This was my creation, and it felt good to make it. Others had enjoyed it, so anyone who didn’t could just get the f*ck off my page.
When the commenter, Jojo, didn’t get the response from me that he wanted, he sent a private message to continue the harassment and even concluded the message with a threat. That’s when I realized that it was him who was so desperately seeking validation, and that I didn’t have to give it to him. My giving a f*ck would have given him the validation he wanted, but instead I deleted the message, unfriended him, and sent him on his way with good freakin’ vibes. There was no room in my budget to give away another f*ck to yet another overblown spectator in the peanut gallery, and I learned that by not engaging, in this case with Jojo’s negative comments, the collective volume of my Choir of Ritas lowered. I was putting my true, badass self out there, and anyone who didn’t like it could get out – their loss.
Thank you for reading, dear friends! Find more articles like this one on the Owning Authenticity blog and hear more stories on my i Learned podcast. Explore the rest of my offerings on my website www.owningauthenticity.com
I absolutely adore the wild adventure of creating my podcast and watching it all unfold – including the shadow work that comes along with it. Bearing my soul, episode by episode has definitely dredged up a lot of different things that I had no idea I was carrying around with me. I thought I was somewhat “done” with processing my own shit, but putting myself out there and leaning into finding my voice by launching my podcast basically walked me right into the belly of the beast without realizing it.
It feels really, really good to allow my voice to say what it wants. I can feel it shift my overall energy, like I’m moving to a new level, and all of my resistance and my baggage need to be healed and my loose ends tied up before I can truly arrive at that next level. The things that come up feel ridiculous and sometimes repetitive, like the morning when I woke up eager to record my fourth podcast episode (I had literally done this three times already in as many days) and then sat and aimlessly brainstormed ideas for hours, feeling nervous and unsure of what to say.
Why was I suddenly back into this energy? What was this nervousness all about? I almost felt like I should have outgrown that already, and I caught myself slipping into a self-critical place (not unlike during a vulnerability hangover.) Rather than beating up on myself, I pointed my attention to the “observation deck” as I call it, and I observed those emotions. I asked myself, “What are you so afraid of? What is it that you’re actually worried about?” and allowed the mental space for a response. Honestly, I still couldn’t really come up with anything. All I got were some old ideas and thought patterns – as they came up I could immediately identify that they weren’t valid. Things like, “What if people don’t like it? What if they think less of me because they’re seeing the real me?” resurfaced when I thought I had worked through that already. I had already decided I wasn’t going to let those fears hold me back anymore, so why were they creeping back up, telling me the same old story?
I learned (and am still learning) that we never really graduate from our baggage once and for all. It’s something that happens in layers. You can make your way past it in the moment only for it to come back sooner or later. When I woke up that morning so excited to record an episode of my podcast and then felt nervous and fearful, instead of becoming self-critical, I observed that fear and asked it, “what are you afraid of?” And it turns out, this was the key.
It was only by asking that I could realize the fear I was feeling was rooted in outdated information. I didn’t believe that reasoning anymore, and what I learned is that you can feel a fear, observe it, and then choose to weigh other information against it. I factored more things into the equation, things like my passion and the fact that I wasn’t able to sleep the night before out of sheer excitement to wake up the next morning, have my coffee, and record a podcast episode. I really wanted to do it, but this familiar fear crept in and came over me. The experience of consciously choosing to have this conversation with myself, realizing the source of my fear, and remembering the lesson I’d already learned lead me to move past the fear with intention. In this process, the fear shrank, and I learned that each time I’m faced with this same fearful feeling is yet another opportunity to shrink it more and more.
Fear wants to protect. Its presence in your body triggers the fight or flight response, releasing adrenaline and sending you into survival mode, ready to defend your life. The fear, while well-intentioned, can get blown out of proportion in our subconscious, where it lives. It bubbles beneath the surface and by the time it reaches your conscious mind it feels real and “right now.” The trick of the observation deck is to allow emotional energy to move and to recognize it’s not permanent. The best thing about our emotions is that they’re all temporary. Moment to moment, second to second, our emotions are shifting. You don’t have to discount the energy that’s present, though, because it shows up to have a conversation with you. As any piece of yourself rises to the surface and wants to be heard, try your best to hear what that piece of yourself has to say. Even though some pieces may sometimes show up as fear, which is scary and painful as it reminds us of the “what ifs” and worst case scenarios, it’s still a part of yourself which deserves love and acceptance, just like the rest.
In all of this, I’ve learned that the only way to get used to something new is to repeatedly expose yourself to it. As a Taurus rising, I’m pretty comfortable in what I know, but at the same time I have all this Gemini energy that is constantly forcing me to step out and learn something new, do new things. This is one of those times where it’s so easy to stay in comfort, but so worth it to step outside of it. I learned that I’m still a little nervous about what people are gonna think of me – and at only four episodes in, I think that’s perfectly okay. As I’m telling these stories and revealing my true self through my podcast, I’m really not trying to be anything or anyone else. I’m just being. And yes, it’s scary, but as I settle into it little by little, I’m realizing it’s pretty damn comfortable here in this place of self-acceptance too.
Thank you for reading, dear friends! Find more articles like this one on the Owning Authenticity blog and hear more stories on my i Learned podcast. Explore the rest of my offerings on my website www.owningauthenticity.com
I woke up Saturday morning, July 9, 2016, and it became Day 1 of the rest of my life. The literal start to the day came as I popped awake with a Very Clear thought in my mind that fell out of my mouth as I let the awareness wash over me that I was Done with living a depressed life. Either I was going to figure out how to have a happy life, or I was done. That weekend I maxed out my self-care. My mantra was “I’m going to do self-care until I feel better.” I used every tool I’d come across. Gratitude, journaling, exercise, water, sunshine, meditation, and the crown jewel, the Deservability Treatment.
