Day #1: A New Beginning – Change Your Life In 30 Days

Looking at “essential self”. I do like the phrase “essential.” Reminds me of one of my favorite quotes from The Little Prince by Antoine Exupery:

“It is only with the heart that one can see rightly. What is essential is invisible to the eye.”

So yes, I like the word Essential.

And am happy to be applying to me. The essential me.

Important to define our terms. If we’re using things like, “I want to feel great.” “I want to be successful.” What do those words mean? What does Great look like? What does it mean? What does Success look like?

My friend and mentor Wyatt Woodsmall told me that these words are actually called nominalizations. They don’t have true definitions, so we all have our own meaning for them. Words like love, happiness, success, courage, etc.

The more specific we can get about how our lives are going to change, the more likely we’ll be to succeed. When defining your terms, see if you can ignore the “social definitions” and let your own definitions come up.

Activity

Being true to myself would mean: Caring about me. A lot. Considering my feelings and needs as a priority. Understanding exactly what I’m capable of in any given moment and allowing myself to function within that capacity instead of trying to force something else out of myself or into myself. Really understanding how this body and this self works best. Giving myself what my body and me require in order to be happy and feel good.

If I were true to myself I could: Feel more relaxed. I would feel safe in any situation because I would know that I would be on my side looking out for my own best interests. There’s a lot of safety and comfort that I’d feel. I would feel good knowing that I am being cared for.

If I were true to myself, I would let go of: Worrying about what’s going on with other people. I’d let go of comparing myself to others and worrying about my social status. Worrying about what others are thinking about me. I’d let go of thinking others are meant to protect me and watch out for me. I could do that job and love whatever support from others happens to come. It would be a bonus at that point. Being true to myself would also involve letting go of trying to control others. I’d simply focus in on me and everything would be taken care of that way and then ripple out in the best possible ways.

Success defined: Feeling good about what I’ve done. Success has a lot to do with feelings for me. It’s not just about getting things done. It’s about feeling proud of what I’ve done. Enjoying the sense of accomplishment. Success also needs to be holistic in order for me to really enjoy it. My mind, body, and outward results need to reflect the success. If I get something done, but I’m exhausted because I worked too hard, that’s not a success for me. I’m into whole experience success.

I felt successful when: I felt successful when I wrote an ad for a personal assistant. I had fun doing it, it was creative, and I was able to do it relatively quickly and easily. Then I watched the outside results start coming in with lots of applicants replying. I felt successful when I bounced on the mini-trampoline yesterday after reading about the importance of moving the lymph system. It felt great and I bounced for 3 whole songs and danced around while I bounced.

I would be more successful if: If I had more self-care systems and rituals worked into my day (as I’m starting today) so that I am consistently built up and strong and centered in myself. I’ll be more successful when I really get that I can take care of myself excellently (without pushing and *making* myself do things) and still get amazing things done.

What I need to do in order to have a successful life? Continue to put me at the top of my list. This seems so obvious, yet I haven’t been doing it. It’s been a big learning for me over the last several years. I was well-trained in putting myself last in many situations and that became the default. In order to change my life, I need to turn the pyramid upside-down. Instead of only a little of my attention going to me, and lots of attention going to others at the base of the pyramid, I will get the most attention and others will get less. And I trust they will be okay.

What I have to let go of in order to have a successful life: Thinking that I have to do it all. Thinking that there’s anything that HAS to be done, really. It’s the *have to’s* in my life that really hurt me. Those are the things that did me in. The times when I *made* myself do things that I didn’t want to do because I thought I should, or that I had to. My new choice is that I let go of have to. I let go of should. I let go of need to. Those things are not real. There’s nothing I have to do, should do, or even need to do.

More Reading…

Noticing that there is room for more clarity and specificity in my definition of success. What are the outward things that would define it? I have lots of inner things like feeling good and being proud of what I’ve done. How would someone else be able to tell if I were successful? What would they see?

When we’re answering Big Questions like: Do you want to quit your job? Ask this follow up question to help you stay true to yourself:

Who am I being when I answer this question?

Maybe we’re answering questions as one of our parents would have answered it. Maybe we’re answering from fear. Maybe we’re answering from the place that makes us seem smart and right.

Keep asking the Big Question over and over until you realize that you’re answering from your own internal guidance and not from someone else’s.

She’s suggesting that we get a friend to support us during the next 30 days. Someone who can cheer us on and tell me the truth. I’m going to ask my Sweet Bee to cheer me along. I just asked him and he, in one of our favorite cute voices that we use with each other, agreed and cheered me on to do the program and said Yay!

So I’ve got my cheerleader. : )

Activity: Today, Practice Being True To Yourself

How would being true to myself change my life: Oh, that’s a big one. It would change so many things. It would boost my confidence. I would probably have less auto-immune health issues. Yeah, I’ll just say it: it would help my body feel awesome! I would feel strong and empowered when dealing with others who seem to have more intensity or strength than I do. I would love doing whatever I was doing (and it would feel easy) because I would know that I was with me and on my side. It’s really about partnering with myself. That’s what being true to myself would do for me. It would help me be my own partner. My own best friend. My own mother. My own father. My own caretaker.

If I am true to myself, what am I afraid might happen? I love questions like this to help get to the nitty-gritty stuff that might be holding me back or leading me to feel resistance around this stuff. My fears around being true to myself have to do with what other people will say or think about me. What will they say if I stand up for myself? What will they think of me? When I am not true to myself, I am not strong enough to deal with their reactions. That’s where the fear has come from. I have been afraid that if I am true to myself, that people won’t like me. And that they will not enjoy being around me.

What has stopped me from becoming the best me possible? Hmmm. Yes, it’s feeling very attached to the me that I think I am. I have been scared of seeing who I would be if I weren’t like me. My friend Wyatt says that if you want to make changes in your life, you have to learn to become “not you.” If you stay the same you, that’s the same. That’s not changing. So change involves being “not me.” I admit to being afraid of “not me” because I’m so familiar with the way that I tend to do things. I wonder what it would be like to do things another way. And then the little line from I Heart Huckabees comes in: How am I not myself?

Describe the me that I would like to be in 30 days: I wake up happy and excited to see what the day has in store. I feel so good about putting myself first every morning. I am easily able to discern what is good for me and what is not for me in a particular moment. I understand more about how I work. I am unique and I’m more familiar with me than I am with me in comparison to others. I am vibrant and honest. I feel shiny and sparkly inside. I am clear and confident. I’m proud of being me and love how I’m taking care of me.

What is the 1 thing I’m willing to do today to be more true to myself? Yeah…let’s ge into some practical action stuff here. So, what I’m going to do is ask myself at the top of each hour: Am I being true to myself right now? If yes, I will thank myself and acknowledge what I’ve done. If not, I will ask myself what’s required in order to start being true to myself in that moment.

Reminder: Being true to myself involves understanding what I’m capable of in a particular moment and giving myself whatever is required to feel good without pushing and making things happen.

Rhonda’s 4-Point Review

1. Defining a word helps clarify what I believe.
2. Being specific with an answer accelerates growth.
3. Wanting a better life is really a desire to be more true to myself.
4. Telling the truth is an important part of discovering who I am.

So, that’s the end of day 1. Fabulous.

Stuff I noticed…some of my answers were not very specific. That’s okay. I’ll find my specificity as I go through things. Right now, I’m really into the feeling part of things, so that’s where I noticed my answers were coming from. Makes sense after coming out of a week of feeling like I was dying in some ways. Not being able to eat and drink with ease and having lots of pain in my mouth and eyes. So yes, it’s totally okay to be focused on the feeling side of things.

And I’m taking away a desire to want to be clearer with my definition of what being true to myself means. I’d love to have a little short version that I can use to help make more sense of it to me. “Being true to myself” is one of those nominalizations and I think it’ll be helpful to really refine what it means to me personally.