I had been so busy. I had a full schedule and too many things on my plate. I had very little support and was so overwhelmed I felt like I was spilling over. I had been so busy, I was even out of time for my meditation practice. I would just collapse into bed at night and wake up to my daughter crawling on top of me.
It was too busy, even for me. Finally, I had an evening to myself; it was quiet, no kid, no dog, just me. I made myself dinner and sat down on the couch. It was kind of novel for me to have so little to do. For the first time in weeks I got quiet. I just sat there for a while, drinking in the silence.
It started slowly, my own emotional demise. First, I started judging the space around me that I had just moved into. The judgement was something about it not being a full house, about how I was paying more for a rental than I’d paid for all the other mortgages I had had in the past. Once that dialogue began, I quickly went in for the kill. I began to question my worthiness because I found myself alone and not socializing; this, even though I wanted to be alone and not socialize. Being alone was ripe ground for dismantling my self worth. Suddenly, the story was, “no one likes me, I am so alone in the world…blah blah blah”.
Because I had been so busy, I had not made time to be with myself. I hadn’t been able to get quiet and allow my thoughts to drift in and out or even think about how I was doing or what was going well in my life. The moment I finally got quiet, I got mean. It was brutal. Eventually I stopped myself and I was able to hear the dialogue and realize how my own words offended me. At some point I laughed and tried to get a little gentler with my words. I began to relax with myself, and the negativity eased off. I took time to witness how harsh I was being, and I made fun of the way I was being so unkind.
When I went to bed that night, I had not fully recovered from my own meanness, but I had softened my language substantially. I went to bed with the knowledge that when I open myself up to that kind of dialogue, I can’t just pull out of it immediately. I knew setting an intention to be kinder to myself in the morning was important. I said a prayer for myself.
I woke up feeling refreshed and optimistic. I went for a early run with a friend and laughed a bunch. I wasn’t the same person I’d been when I went to bed. I was kind and far less concerned with myself. I was ready to go to work and be of service in any way I could that day. I could look at the events of the night before like it was a film I had watched. It was something that I was aware of, yet it wasn’t something I needed to believe in.
We tend to do this, be incredibly mean to ourselves. We take away our sense of well-being in order to be harsh and critical. It only becomes a problem when we are unable to hear ourselves or witness the dialogue. When our language becomes cruel and unchecked we don’t even notice we are doing it.
We can get so caught up in life and being ‘busy’ that we don’t make time to reflect and bear witness to what it feels like to be us. We can get caught up in our frenetic lives and forget to make the time to be quiet, whether it’s through meditation, yoga, prayer or nature.
What happens to you when you don’t create time to be quiet? Is there a cruel dialogue that has been left unchecked in your unconscious? Have you been mean to yourself lately?
I hope you realize how amazing you are. You are well loved. When we are kinder to ourselves those around us are also kinder to us.
With love
Noelle
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