Why would I say this?
Because most of us have no real practice in daily, deliberate and uninterrupted acts of self-love.
A new year begins. We say we want to do things differently. This time we really mean it, no more fucking around.
We’re tired of starting and not finishing, tired of not doing that thing we keep claiming we want to get done.
It’s a new year. Dammit. This is going to be the year. I’m not playing.
Hold on a sec. Slow your roll. Because there’s something we need to think about if we’re finally serious, if after all this time we’re determined to lose that weight, write that book, give that side hustle everything we got, write that song, unveil our creation, repair that broken and neglected thing, clean out that room—whatever it is. Before we dive all the way into our new way of life.
Let’s throw some light—instead of shade!—onto the one area we’ve been trained to avoid discussing. We don’t talk too much about this because it looks like a weakness. And weak-looking traits of character are exactly what we’ve been publicly shamed into avoiding.
The fact is: YOU’RE GOING TO WANT TO GIVE UP.
Yup.
It’s true.
And guess what? That feeling of wanting to give up is nothing to be ashamed of. It’s just a feeling and it comes with the territory we call CHANGE.
Don’t get it twisted. Don’t think I’m standing on a soapbox as some all-knowing wise woman, tossing her pearls of wisdom. Phffft! Nope. I’m writing these words for myself.
Right now—and for the past few days—I’ve been fighting through panic. Panic that whispers paranoia, panic that has me saying: I don’t want to do this anymore. I don’t want to be here, being so friggin public about every damn thing.
Yeah, panic like that. I can’t help but wonder what it might be like to turn the clock back a little and return to my anonymous life.
I’ve been a runner my entire life. Whenever I got scared, in situations which overwhelmed—too many people, too many obligations, too much work, too many expectations—I’d freak out and walk away. No announcement. No goodbye note. I’d just leave.
Why?
All I’ve ever known is self-hatred. Of course, I didn’t know this on the surface of my thinking. It’s not the way I wanted to be. It’s what I came to understand through soul-searching and increased self-awareness.
Lies I’ve told myself: you don’t deserve, you’re not worth it, you don’t belong. How dare you want? How dare you ask? How dare you take up this space?
It’s taken me a ridiculously long time to get here. To be at this place in life today. To get to this place where I understand my own gifts and abilities. I’m on a new level of self-perspective. But I’m not yet completely fluent in the language of self-love. Sure, I taught myself how to speak it. But my self-hate accent is still there sometimes.
I wrote and published my first book. I’m working on the second book.
I built this pretty website.
I create content. I show up (not without a struggle, no matter how comfortable I look) on social media platforms.
This is hard.
Making change happen isn’t the hard part. The hard part is sticking with the changes. Seeing the changes all the way through.
Emotions are going to happen. No one talks about all the ways that emotions tend to be linked with attempts at making change.
Dieters get hungry. Hustlers feel overwhelmed by the competition. Writers lose their thread of creativity. Me? Well, I’m going through it with this blog, with book publishing, and all the online stuff that’s required of me. I’ll start missing the familiar home of solitude. Pining for my lonely, little hidey-hole, where no one can see me. And then, here comes the FEELINGS. Frustration. Fear. Resentment. Anger. All of it snowballs. All of a sudden I can go from feeling scared to feeling pissy.
Sound familiar?
Have you ever tried to make a change happen in your life? Well then, you know what I’m talking about. Once the newness and excitement begin to fade and your already full life gets busier, you wonder if NOW is really the best time to see those new year changes through.
You tell yourself things like: Maybe now’s not the best time. Maybe I’m not ready. Maybe next week. Maybe next month. Maybe next year. How about maybe fucking never?
Right.
I’ve wanted to give up plenty of times.
Hell, I want to give up right now.
I’m still here though. Why? Because whether we realize it or not, sticking with any change comes down to how much we feel we deserve it. How much we feel we’re worth it. If it feels too hard, it’s because we’re not used to doing the harder things in life for ourselves. Oh yeah sure, we can do it for someone else, for someone we love, for the person beyond ourselves who we think needs it more than us. Or maybe we just like being charitable to others. Doesn’t matter, as long as it’s not for us. For someone else, hard things can be a cakewalk. We could do it in our sleep. But for ourselves? Ugh. This is too hard. I don’t really have time for this.
I’m still here because I’m learning to accept the fact that I deserve to be here. I deserve the love and priority I’m giving myself to make these changes stick.
Emotions are going to happen, okay? Fear, anger, panic, resentment—the whole nine. We’re not robots. Any change we make will come with the emotional adjustment that needs to happen as a tester. And when—not if!—you pass the test, your success becomes the adhesive that makes the change stick. Until the next time emotions come and you do it all over again. (Don’t worry, you can do it.)
Emotions are not the weak links we’ve been taught to see them as. Emotions are the rock-solid titanium core of our strength. Have you ever been in a situation that made you cry so hard, once you were done crying you were ready to fight, ready to rip someone’s head off? Yeah, exactly. Does that sound like weakness to you? That’s because it’s not. Emotions are our secret weapon. Emotions guide us to clarity, to safety, and to success. We just have to be willing to FEEL them. We just have to be willing to stop avoiding and hiding from them.
So let’s keep stepping into the future with bellies full of fire. Death and devastation are not the end. If you’re still breathing, it’s because you’re still here. And if you’re still here, it’s because you’re not done yet. Keep going. We need your not so hidden magic. Now let’s GOOO! Time to keep going with our changes.
Ok, I feel better.
Originally published January 11, 2021