Honor Thyself in 2020
Earlier this month, I was thinking about the decade challenge that was all over the internets. Honestly, the past decade has been tough for me. It started off amazing, with the birth of my youngest, but in the last half, I cared for and buried a parent and both of my in-laws in the span of five years. I burned myself out at work. I was sick all the time. I mean ALL the time. I felt terrible. I was constantly fatigued, and not just because I also now had a teenager in the house or because Donald Trump is President (although those things definitely contribute).
So, now I’m supposed to tell you how it all miraculously got better with coaching, and therapy, and taking care of myself, and yoga, and now life is a glorious Instagram glitter-filtered rainbow.
Here’s the thing. It has gotten better. Most days. Not every day. There are definitely some days where I want to stay in bed and shut the world out. And although getting coached and being a coach have been game-changers, there are still days where I beat myself up with thoughts that I’m not doing enough.
Along the way these past ten years, I’ve learned some important lessons about how to care for myself, how to show up, how to come back from burnout and how to do the necessary work to feel the way I want to feel most of the time. Here are a few.
Self compassion is more important than self care. Kristen Neff describes self compassion as honoring and accepting your human-ness. That means treating yourself kindly. Speaking to yourself as you would to your closest friend. Offering understanding and kindness to yourself when you make mistakes. I could do self care activities all day long, but if I’m still judging myself or speaking to myself harshly, I’m not really caring for myself.
Self-compassion is hard! We— especially those of us who identify as women— are programmed by culture and society to think we are not enough. We can never do enough. We have to do it all. Perfectly. We can’t make mistakes. And, conversely, we also can’t be too much —take up too much space, be too loud, appear angry. Self-compassion calls bullshit on all of that. When we truly treat ourselves as we would a dear friend, we are enough. We are fabulous and perfect as we are. We see our own suffering and meet it with kindness.
Alone time makes me better at everything. I am an extrovert. I love talking to people. I love connecting. It gives me energy. But I also need to be alone. A lot. As I’ve gotten older (I see you coming, 50), and as my house has gotten louder (did I mention two boys?), I need alone time even more. When I take time to myself to meditate, write, walk in nature or just sit behind a closed door, my entire day feels more expansive and I’m able to show up as clear eyed and patient.
Working on my thoughts is a super power. In the kind of coaching I do— and have done with my own coaches— we practice a lot of thought work* because your thoughts directly relate to how you feel and how you respond to situations.
An example: your boss says employees are not working enough hours. Can you be curious about her concern or does your mind immediately think, “is she talking about me”? If you assume she’s talking about you, you might start feeling anxious. You might get angry at her. You might concoct what you’ll say if asked about your hours. You can make what she said mean all sorts of things. Do you see how that thought hooks you and sends you into a spiral of your own making? Whereas, if you heard your bosses concern and approached it with curiosity— saying, for example, “Interesting. Tell me more.” —you might find out it’s not at all about you. It’s a legitimate concern about someone else who is underperforming. That scenario probably hooks you less.
When you learn to question the thoughts that cause you to spiral, you see that maybe those thoughts are just thoughts, and that you’re making them mean something completely different. You can take it even deeper and uncover the thought underneath that is causing your reaction. That’s where the real magic happens. Unearthing those deeply held beliefs is like turning compost. When you expose them to new air and light beautiful things have room to grow. It’s lovely and so very freeing.
It is possible to experience profound joy even when the world is shit: Oh, the world right now. It often seems like it’s completely falling apart. It’s hard not to despair. Separated families, destructive fires, giant orange Cheeto destroying democracy. You know all the reasons. And yet...my son has the most adorable way of crossing his toes when he’s concentrating; there’s a few minutes more sunlight every day; the fresh flowers on my desk smell lovely; I get to coach amazing people; and my dog is curled up at my feet. When I notice these little things, my day is a whole lot brighter and the world seems more full of possibilities than problems. Intentionally noticing changes my day for the better. But intentionally noticing takes intention— starting with turning off my phone, closing my computer, and looking up on a regular basis.
I can never treat myself as too much of a queen: One of the biggest things I have learned is that I can never do too much to take care of myself. Seriously. I have squads upon squads of people dedicated to aspects of me. Coaches and therapists and trainers and doctors and healers (acupuncture, cranial-sacral, myo-fascial, and deep tissue, oh my!). It’s amazing, a lot of money, and completely worth it. When I treat myself as a queen, I feel like a queen. It’s delicious. And I am so worth the expense.
All of these are ways that I honor myself. Ways that I put on my own oxygen mask first. Because if I don’t do that, I have no oxygen to share with anyone else.
My resolution for 2020 is to deeply, radically honor myself. When I’m at a crossroads, or I’m not sure what to do in a particular situation, or I find my hackles up, I’ve been practicing this phrase:
What would I do if I deeply honored myself in this situation?
The answer is always amazing, deeply true and the exact right thing (even if it’s scary).
Think of what the world would be like if we all deeply, honestly and radically honored ourselves?
Sounds pretty great, right? Let’s get to work and do it!
XO,
Patty
*For more on thought work, see The Work by Byron Katie and the Self-Coaching Model by Brooke Castillo.
P.S. If you want to honor yourself with some coaching this year, I am always here to help. We’re all going to need it to get through 2020. Email me to get in touch, set up some time to chat or PM me @pattyfirstcoaching on Instagram.