Self- Doubt

I have something that I could be doing that would solve a lot of financial issues and be potentially life changing. But I find myself sitting in self-doubt, not wanting to move forward incase I let someone down. 

The evidence to the contrary however is constantly building and it's very evident that where I fail is in not giving myself enough credit. If I step back and view my current reality with a wider lense it's pretty clear that I can do hard things, I have the ability to be creative and pivot at a moment's notice. Being a dementia carer is honing those skills. It's just that I automatically apply those skills in my role as a carer for my friend, so rather than standing out to me I just see it as the norm. 

It reminds me of job interviews when they ask you how you would handle a certain situation and your mind goes blank. Because so much of what we do is day to day and is literally done on auto pilot. There is no narrator of your actions, they just are.

The answer to fear is being brave and as I've said in an earlier post because we don't analyze our actions on a daily basis few of us realize how brave we actually are. Most of us tackle the hard stuff on auto pilot and it's not until something new that we have time to ruminate on comes along that we throw ourselves into self doubt. It's the contemplation and the stories that we tell ourselves that are what sink us into fear.

I may have mentioned it before but there is something that being a dog mum taught me. Dogs lack the part of the brain that creates story. It's how you can yell at them one moment and the next moment they're giving you kisses.  They are so in the moment that their brain says I'm being yelled at and then they move on. As humans we would attach the story about why we're being yelled at, how it makes us feel and how mean the other person is. Dogs don't do this.

In the last few months in order to get through the sadness of loss and be able to function I've used this as a technique. I can think of what happened even tell someone about it and I'm ok as long as I don't attach the story and the emotion. The only thing that cracks me when I'm doing this is when someone is being compassionate to me.

Which leads me to think that this concept could be useful for facing up to situations that provoke a fear response and hold me back. Maybe if I be 'like a dog' and drop the story I may be able to push through and maybe that thing that I need to do may actually get done.

Lib xxx

Photo by Kelli McClintock on Unsplash

 

Unstuck

A couple of days ago I unstuck myself, I've been stagnant for months waiting for a shift in energy. When we sold my parents' house, I kept a lot of their furniture to replace the mish mash I'd collected over the years.  There were also books and belongings that my sister and I wanted to keep, and then on top of that boxes of things that we didn't have time to sort. We underestimated how long the pack up would take and as a result my sister and I have both absorbed boxes, furniture and appliances into our homes. I've had the boxes and furniture, in almost every room including the front hallway and I've been oscillating around where to start. Until a few days ago I couldn't see the way to fit things in but finally something shifted in my head, and I unstuck myself. I started to see the solutions and find a way forward.

I'm not sure if it was the David Kessler grief webinar or his book that I'm listening to on audible, or it could be the Jenna Kutcher Pinterest marketing program I just signed up for. One or maybe all these things propelled me forward.

The night before last I rearranged my bedroom and it's starting to look like the sanctuary I'd envisaged. And then then last night I tackled my art room. I reassembled the Ikea sewing desk my parents bought me when I was a teen and subsequently became mums' office desk and now here it is back as my sewing desk. There was a lot of mowing things around but I'm finally starting to see pockets of space reappear.  It's far from perfect but it's a start. 

Slowly I'm starting to get my motivation back, I'm seeing the possibilities again and there's a sense of urgency to get going. I need to make some changes and move away from the 9-5 work environment. It's time to create my world the way that I want it.

The grief is still there, the sense of loss I feel for my Dad and Charlie is huge. David Kessler says that the grief doesn't get smaller we just have to learn to get bigger. These same words were echoed in a video I saw of Robert F Kennedy Jr talking about the losses in his life. He said, "while our grief would never get smaller, our job was to build ourselves bigger around it". 

I'm working on the getting bigger and I'm working on finding the pieces of me that got pushed to the side last year. My current reality still has me in 2nd place to the people who need me but I'm gradually working towards carving my own space in amongst this reality.

Little by little I'm starting to find my way forward. For now I'm unstuck and that's a big step in the right direction.

Lib x

Photo by Steve Johnson on Unsplash