Unlearning Me
My inner writer is showing herself today….as I consider the conversation I had with my therapist yesterday. I’m always learning something new about myself and the WHYs that make up the version of myself that shows up from day to day.
I’ve been working through some crazy anxiety since my birthday and finding the root cause has been my entire focus since it hit. Being a wellness practitioner, I’ve always dote on breathing, grounding, reiki and meditation as ways of reconnecting to myself while re-establishing the control I have over those anxious moments that creep in from time to time. But when I realized that none of my methods were working, I started to realize that there was more to why I couldn’t put the fire out.
The first 41 years of my life have been like a high speed car chase. I’ve been racing with myself down the road of life to create a level of stability and abundance that I did not know growing up. I felt I needed a goal or something I was aspiring to in order to feel whole and complete. Like my life mattered and I was doing something important or significant with myself. That mindset and life concept started truly defining me and becoming who I knew myself to be. It has become so bad that everyone who knows me doesn’t move around me too much without mentioning my DRIVE and PASSION. “You finished that one thing. You ain’t gonna do nothing but find something else to do.” I laugh every time I hear these words in my head because the truth is, it’s who I’ve been. They aren’t lying, reaching or saying anything that hasn’t been known to be true. But after I achieved my recent career goal, I started to feel a sense of emptiness I can’t ever remember feeling before. Oddly, that emptiness hasn’t compelled me to access the old spaces that would have led me to finding yet another thing to chase after. Something has been weighing even heavier on me than being driven and that is being PURPOSEFUL.
I’ve created a life for myself as the person I have been most of my life and now that I look around at the life she created, I am staring at it from a different vantage point…as a different version of her. I’m no longer the person who had the vision to build these things in this way and it creates that anxiety that is starving my ability to see just how to navigate the way forward. When I was talking to my therapist it was clear, I don’t want to race myself for the next 40 years of my life. I don’t want to chase any goals or aspire to anything else that is not purposeful or intentional. I do not want to do things just to do them or fill my life with things just because that is what I used to do to make it feel it all made sense. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that what IS has not been meaningful or without reason. It’s been an amazing journey so far no matter the challenges. What I am saying is, I may have more time behind me than in front of me…what does that need to look like as me? Who am I void of the person I’ve always known myself to be? Can our worlds co-exist?
Perhaps the biggest of all these questions for me is, how do you unlearn the person you’ve been to embrace the person you have become? Familiarity can be stifling. Becoming accustomed to the person you have been even when you see that things within you have changed, can create that comfort zone syndrome which pushes you away from newness. Now you are pushing back on the transformation that you know you are being required to fold in to. Coming into a deeper knowing of myself and what is happening around me is what has created this feeling in the pit of my stomach that nags me to abandon the things I’m used to and BEcome more of what works best for my soul presently. But do I need to completely abandon it all? Self realization is an entire beast I couldn’t conquer in such a small set of words!
I value all I’ve been able to do and accomplish and I will always be grateful that I had what it took to shake up all I knew as true to co-create what I never knew could exist for me. Now I see the battle ahead being my ability to exist within this world that I manifested as the old me while creating something new….as a more elevated me that values the present just a little more than before.
Advice For Life: As you peel back the layers of yourself and embrace the things you discover, it calls you to use your greater perspective to transcend to the next level. Never be afraid of what you see, feel or begin to understand as the journey unfolds for you. SO MANY PEOPLE quit because it’s raw, uncut & real and we don’t always like what is revealed. You can never un-know what you know but you can use it on your journey to growth….healing….change.
Love & Light
Nita
