No Need to Get Your S**t Together
Loves, have you ever experienced any of these?:
You put your idea, talent or dreams on hold because you get the sense that you’re incomplete and you had better wait.
It’s like you’re feeling not whole enough, complete enough, knowledgable enough, something-else enough to claim your voice or role because, hey, who are you to teach others when you don’t feel whole or healed?!
Perhaps you’re waiting to share your vision with a friend or show up publicly with your creativity because you think that you’re just “not there yet”. And what an elusive target ‘there’ is, all the time being pushed from here to there by any number of factors.
So you wait to get your shit together, to have all your ducks lined up, to have your affairs in order … before you feel that you’re allowed to feel confident enough to offer yourself to others.
Why do we so easily believe that something in us is incomplete or not good enough?
I’ve been there so many times and in fact am partly there right now! So I know it’s easier said than done when I say—there’s no ‘there’ that’s not already here.
I’m in the midst of creating a video course on breaking free from limiting beliefs, and while it’s true that my cat is still in a critical state and I need to monitor his ketone levels and blood sugar levels and calorie intake day and night, it’s not the full picture of what is keeping me from getting this video course over the line.
Part of me was kidnapped by the old, familiar belief that I just don’t have enough of something in order to create a great course. The perfect course.
Sometimes it just feels like what we’re looking for is buried under a pile of rubbish, or concealed by loud noises, so that it’s difficult for us to notice.
And the sense of being incomplete can feel so real and reasonable that we can miss out on the fact that this prevailing narrative that we need to be somehow perfect or whole or healed is a capitalist narrative.
Rather than glitzy products, we are in fact messy beings. Our life is messy in spite of all efforts to fold it neatly into a five-year plan.
Sometimes we do need to learn some new skill in order to be of better service. Or to read another book in order to widen our perspective on the the themes we’re talking about publicly.
But what capitalism landed us with is the imperative that what we already have now is not good enough so we need to endlessly chase ‘more’. It’s not an individual truth or a fair description of the totality of an individual’s beautiful complexity.
Here are some of the ways I witness this in my 1:1 work with women:
Maybe I’m (just) imagining this
I probably ask for too much
I don’t know what whole feels like so I can’t help others
If I’m still struggling I’m probably doing something wrong
I won’t be liked if I show the real me
I don’t have the right to share about my mother because it’s not my story
I’d like to offer you some alternatives to disentangle from the enchantment of the limiting belief that your experience doesn’t count (enough):
1. Embrace humbleness. It’s ok to frame your work, your contribution, your thoughts, within the scope of your current experiences. Instead of bouncing between being an expert to being nothing, name your middle ground and stand on it firmly.
Being humble is not in opposition to self-appreciation.
2. Search for a new language. A big part of my work is helping women connect with their experience, not just the story of their life.
For example, if I tell you that I’ve been waking up in panic every night over the past month because my cat is unwell, it’s a story-line. Though it’s true, it’s valuable to connect also with the experience itself—The anxiety, the worry, the tiredness, the hope, the learning.
When we drop below the story we begin to find new language that’s not available when we tell the story-line because stories tend to be repetitive and reinforce the current, familiar beliefs.
A new language to frame our experience opens up our imagination, makes our sense of living more receptive to possibilities that were previously beyond our scope of attention.
Sometimes we find language to speak about the unspeakable, to articulate the ineffable strength that we cultivate in the messiness of our life.
3. Connect. For many women the mother wound is a personal story laden with personal experiences that happened in a very personal space. And yet, I don’t see the mother wound as just a personal story.
We are daughters of mothers who are daughters to their own mothers and so goes the matriarchal line that bestows upon us the burden of all that history of oppressed women.
Connecting with others who understand you, who will not judge you, who will give space to your presence without you making an effort or needing to prove you’re worthy of it is a resource that we forget when we’re so absorbed by trying to fix something in ourselves in order to be more accomplished.
Real connection reminds us that we are not broken.
4. Take a risk. Believing that you can do it is a risk. Mostly a psychological risk but sometimes a physical one, too. But yes, there’s risk involved. Call it a leap of faith, call it doing it anyway: I call it breaking the fault-consciousness.
Fault-consciousness is a state of being that is consumed by the imperfectness of our being which is situated in the context of external voices telling us how we should be different.
Growing up in a society that demands the approval of institutions for anything that is knowledge- and experience-related makes it difficult to hold on to the belief that there’s value in our efforts of making a clearing in all that we haven’t yet resolved and all that we haven’t yet figured out to a T.
This institutional mentality means that for sure there will be enough individuals out there who stand ready to prove us wrong and to tell us that our personal experience cannot be quantified and therefore cannot be considered real.
Sometimes, all that can sustain my efforts to keep moving is recalling the number of times I heard from so many women I’ve worked with that my personal journey, sharing with them my personal experiences and my way of being, has given them so much strength, inspiration, a sense of meaning and belonging and the confidence to not fault themselves.
When you go out there I promise that these individuals are also waiting for you to tell you just the same.
What becomes possible when you’re not taking on board those narratives of perfection?
Removing the make-up of perfection and the pressure to be completely well packaged, you’ll discover many things are possible. For each this looks different, but the underlying common experience is the demystification of needing to get our shit together.
The video course I’m designing for you is not going to be perfect. There, I said it.
Instead, what I want to offer you is a sincere approach to facing limiting beliefs and share with you some breakthroughs from either my personal experience or from those I’ve worked with over the past decade. And of course the path to get there which you also could follow.
I’m particularly inspired to offer this video training because I know it can give you that kind of language that helps to reframe experience through the release of shame, guilt and fault-consciousness.
Here’s what’s included:
Teachings on the mother wound
Demystification of limiting beliefs
The keys to unlocking limiting beliefs
Creation of a belief map
Inner child work and beliefs
Boundaries and beliefs
Nourishment and the embodiment of empowering beliefs
If this speaks to you, the 50% pre-launch discount is still available, until Sunday night, Sep 17th
Not there yet? Here a couple of way to stay connected:
Sign up to my Museletter for regular useful content on healing the mother wound
