Our Ability to Change is Not about Willpower

(This is a repost from a year and a half ago. I forget myself, my writing, and my truth until I read my pieces and say “Heck Ya!”. Enjoy.)

If it were a matter of willpower, we’d all be willing ourselves into success and abundance and skinniness. Yes your ability to change starts with your intent and your why but after that there’s a trick to do what you want. Your belief in your worthiness and your self-trust are what’s standing between you and what you want. And your fear is what’s in charge until they are.

I detest the formulas out there to my success which depend on me “just doing it”. I see and read so much about your ability to change your life and your plethora of choices and I want to scream, “Your missing the part where I believe I can and I’m worth it”. My low self-esteem might have been called out but it is by no means been completely reversed.

If I don’t trust myself as reliable, honorable, and capable of following these steps to success and achievement, I am not starting. I already know I’ll fail myself. Why would I want to put myself through that over and over. It’s easier to assume I can’t than to bear the pain of starting and then discovering (surprise!) that I can’t follow through.

At the beginning, we are either worth the effort or we’re not. We claim we know that of course we are worth it but many people feel unworthy of so much secretly. The world has shown them they aren’t worthy. Their parents just weren’t there or asked them to be someone other than who they knew they were. The opportunities they saw other people getting were not offered to them. And layer upon layer upon layer of unworthiness build up. Until giving up is way less painful than trying.

I have held a campaign for self-trust for myself for some time. As in over five years consciously. It is a steep hill to climb and yet, I am finally at the point where I am feeling the scales tipping. Witness my feeling of I can vs I can’t in this recent piece.

Life is a “Do It Yourself Project” of the largest degree. And every facet of your life and perception is malleable, changeable. Every thought we have is subject to our own scrutiny of validity. And in this introspective process, a noble self-respecting way of thinking arises. And through that, the understanding that our relationship with ourselves, our self-care, and our honor are all of our own doing.

Somehow, we need to grab ahold of the concept that we are all undeniably worth our own mercy and we then begin again. The nobility of beginning again is fathomless. And the wonder of our own faulted humanity is held by everyone, especially the person who’s holding your hand when you decide you are worth the effort.

If you enjoyed what you read, please subscribe, via the subscription box in the sidebar, to my thrice weekly posts via your email box. And visit me on Instagram to see my daily pictures, friend me or like my page on Facebook. Or come find me on Twitter or Pinterest too. I am always practicing Intentional In-touchness so chat at me please. I live for conversations.

And, as always, Thanks to you for your visit.

Re-Being Me

I struggle with being myself. I have spent a lifetime trying to be the right me. “Just be yourself” confuses me. All the efforts to restore myself or find my way back are a nice concept but I don’t know if I ever felt 100 % safe to just to be me. I am working at re-being the me I was intended to be.

Ten years ago, I had a therapist tell me I had low self-esteem. I flew into bits because that was not who I thought I was. Except I realized she was right. Who I thought I was wasn’t who I really was.

And then this past November, I again hit a bump in the road that dumped me and the contents of my self-perception cart out onto the street and I feel like I am still picking myself up. Still deciding which bits are me and which I need to leave behind.

Perhaps we all go through this perpetual reconsideration of self. I somehow think many people just know who they are. I envy them. But I am in the process of fighting to find my footing when it comes to knowing who I am. I am not ashamed of this. It is all a very human process. And if anything I have shared helps you to give yourself permission to just not know, then I feel even better about my confusion.

I do know that I am inspired when I read my stories and hear others’ stories. Freedom from getting it right is in the letting it be.

And If you enjoyed what you read, subscribe, via the subscription box in the sidebar, to my thrice weekly posts via your emailbox. And visit me on Instagram to see my daily pictures, friend me or like my page on Facebook. Or come find me on Twitter or Pinterest too. I am always practicing Intentional Intouchness so chat at me please. I live for conversations.

And, as always, Thanks to you for your visit.

Knowing Myself Will Connect Me To You

It continuously occurs to me that the better I know myself, the better I can understand my value to the world and to you whoever you might be. When I connect with me I can connect with you. And becoming myself is one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do.

I envy those people (all except the narcissists) for knowing what they are and the strengths that they bring to what they do in their lives. What a gift to have such confidence in what you are, your strengths, your gifts, and your purpose. No, not everyone has this.

Some, like me, grew up with hazy mirrors reflecting back their self-worth. Or no mirrors. And it can be very difficult to build something when you don’t have a recipe or a plan for it. Why would you even try or know where to begin?

Becoming myself is one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do.

We had a little old cat who was skittish and had never been petted. Until one day I snuck a pet in. And she liked it. A lot. It took her 15 years to find out how great affection was. And then she was a pet junkie. How do you know something even exists unless you have felt it? Same with self-esteem. 

Building self-esteem is like building something from air sometimes. You take it on faith that you need to build self-esteem and that it will work if you keep working it but it’s an act of faith. Without the faith you’re worth it,  you’re not. See? Your actions prove your value but your value isn’t there yet. What I have noticed recently is that the surer I feel about myself, the easier it is to speak with others. I come from a place of knowing and this brings me ease. And I am all about the ease.

I don’t doubt my need for self-esteem building so that I may understand my weight and purpose in this world. Knowing and fulfilling my value to my fellow humans is one of the most important tasks/jobs I will ever have. And so I fight ever onward in the invisible storm of developing myself.

And If you enjoyed what you read, subscribe, via the subscription box in the sidebar, to my thrice weekly posts via your emailbox. And visit me on Instagram to see my daily pictures, friend me or like my page on Facebook. Or come find me on Twitter or Pinterest too. I am always practicing Intentional Intouchness so chat at me please. I live for conversations.

And, as always, Thanks to you for your visit.

Why I’m OK Teaching a Creativity Workshop

If I had a dime for every time I heard, “Oh Shalagh you are so creative”, I’d at least have five bucks. This became one of those phrases that made me twitch perhaps because I didn’t think of myself as having any kind of creative superpowers which was obvious to them but not to me, until it finally was. I think perhaps what they meant was they wished they knew the secret creative permission spell too.

Fast forward to the past several years when I intentionally indulged myself in creative challenges to gain creative confidence. I followed many of my creative curiosities until I finally owned that I was an Uber-creative. And I am beginning to understand that I believe in creative living aka Creativism as a way of life, one that is at odds with the consume and destroy mode of existence I see all too much of.

So if there is a purpose to my life, one of the facets seems to be sharing my creativity with others so that they too have permission to create.  To this end, I am offering a creativity workshop locally this Fall because I believe that everyone can benefit, and perhaps heal, from increased creativity in their lives.

Each of us looks to understand ourselves based on our interaction with the world. The advertising propaganda would have us believe conformity and possession would be our best safe bet to easy existence. But in fact, we crave to understand our uniqueness through our interactions. We long to be carefree, to be unique and yet connected to our community at the same time. We want self-confidence that comes from owning our own uniqueness and perspective. Not only are these human needs, they are only a few of the many benefits of creativity.

Somehow, as we become older, we conform to the idea that creativity will get us outcast from the tribe. That we need to focus only on the earning of money and security for our family. My hope is that by opening up a conversation with people, and consequently they with themselves, the tantalizing benefits will begin to tickle people slightly out of their fear zones so that they may try creativity in small bursts in their lives. A little creativity in one’s life is better than none. And the money people can save by ceasing to try to find themselves by spending rather than creating will make it an even more enticing proposition.

My final realization is that I don’t have to be a “professional” artist to legitimize my knowledge and experience around creativity. I can be a small “a” artist. I only need to acknowledge that I am creative and share what I feel and know to be my truth around this process as it relates to my growth and development as a more rounded human being. I can honestly say that the permission I have given myself to create has created a better happier more confident me. And that is a completely good thing.

And If you enjoyed what you read, subscribe, via the subscription box in the sidebar, to my thrice weekly posts via your email box. And visit me on Instagram to see my daily pictures, friend me or like my page on Facebook. Or come find me on Twitter or Pinterest  too. I am always practicing Intentional In-touchness so chat at me please. I live for conversations.

And, as always, Thanks to you for your visit.

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The Year of Doing

This year was about doing. Saying I can because I did. And if I did, what else could I do? Because all the talking in the world doesn’t get it done.

You can certainly plan out your steps. In fact that’s a great way to prepare to get it done. Pro-activity is always a plus. But getting it done turns out to be just you taking the time to do the work.

My fear threatened to take me off the right track on these occasions when I went in for the work kill. There was a chorus of cants. I would just let them blow by me like the hot air that they were. Step away and set the time to return. And then I returned.

There’s power in making your intentions into actions. As I pondered all of this here, I noted there’s power even in the tiniest tasks.

“You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face, you are able to say to yourself, I lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along. You must do the thing you think you cannot do.” — Eleanor Roosevelt

This is an amazing realization to know you have the power to change your whole outlook by mastering something and proving you can. I am pleased to have learned it and perhaps a little scared that I will never ever be able to say I can’t again. So I guess I’ll just have to keep seeing that I Can.

And If you enjoyed what you read, subscribe, via the subscription box in the sidebar, to my thrice weekly posts via your emailbox. And visit me on Instagram to see my daily pictures, friend me or like my page on Facebook. Or come find me on Twitter orPinterest too. I am always practicing Intentional Intouchness so chat at me please. I live for conversations.

And, as always, Thanks to you for your visit.