Don’t walk through this world looking for reasons why you don’t belong or that you’re not enough. Because it’s guaranteed, you’ll always find exactly what you’re looking for. I’m reading Braving the Wilderness, by Brene Brown. In it she says, “In the absence of love and belonging, there is always suffering.” For sure, sometimes suffering just seems easier than fighting the battle of change. Because to change we have to work on ourselves. We have to start believing that we belong and that we are more than enough.
I had lunch with a friend this week and we were talking about how busy life can get. She asked how my business is going, and I replied that I work really hard to interest people to come and work with me and the horses. And that everything I do seems to fall on deaf ears. I spend time, money, and energy on a particular topic and get all excited to present it. . . and then nothing. Crickets! Is my time worth the effort?
But what I’m really asking myself is “Am I good enough? Is it me? Am I looking for reasons to quit?” I commented that it would be easier to just train and sell the horses, than to build the people side of my business. What I’m really saying is that it would be easier to focus on the horse than to focus on me.
In the absence of love and belonging, there is always suffering
The Bible says to love your neighbor as yourself. As a recovering alcoholic, I’ve had to work on loving myself. I didn’t decide to stop drinking because my life was going perfectly. I chose to stop because my life was out of control. I had to start thinking about me, differently. I had to start finding ways to belong and love myself, enough.
It’s easy for me to love and empower others. It’s not as easy to love and empower myself. In recovery, I’ve had to learn how important it is to not only talk to myself in an empowering way, but also to listen to what I say. The stories I told myself when I was drinking allowed me to continue with my bad behavior. And until I deleted that story, I wasn’t able to write a new one. We become the stories we tell ourselves. As long as my story was that I liked to drink and that I wasn’t hurting anyone but myself, I gave myself permission to continue on the alcohol treadmill. Once I started listening to my new story, telling myself that I didn’t like to drink, that it would only make me sick, and that if I continued I would die from the disease, did I start healing.
As a coach who partners with horses, I help guide you into a story of your life that is both empowering and joyful. In the book on my perfect life, I would never write that I wanted heartache, pain, and trouble; I would write about love and joy and pleasure fulfilling my days. The beautiful thing about horses is they don’t think about all the ways they’ve been wronged or have hurt another horse or even a human. They stay in the now, in the moment. We humans spend so much time reviewing the mistakes of our past, that we sometimes find it hard to enjoy the present. The horse will help you write your new story.
Come join me on December 5th for the first part of my webinar, when we’ll focus on all we accomplished in 2017. Then on December 26th, we’ll focus on our intentions for the new year and begin to write the story of our dreams. We’ll write a vision and create a vision board. Isn’t it time you were the author of your own book?