I’m not going to write a lot today. I spent most of the day out of the office running errands.
In a conversation with my friend and coach Lynn Ellis, I had some insights about the nature of addiction and finding different ways to deal with the feelings I use addictive behaviors to avoid.
The main points of our conversation were:
- Where I feel most challenged is when I don’t feel validated by other people or I’ve disappointed them, etc.
- But I have no control over whether or not people will approve of me. I guess as a business owner I began to believe I could and should be pleasing people (customers) and I based my feelings about how good I am as a human being on whether or not people liked my services.
- If people don’t like my service I may not have a business but doesn’t have any effect on my worth as a human being.
- So why did I still feel so bad about my self?
- Lynn’s suggestion was to take time this week to contemplate who I really was. I like this idea and I’m going to use a picture of myself when I was a baby as a way to remember my “whole” self. The reason I like using my baby picture is I can look at my baby picture and see my true self without the baggage of bad decisions and behaviors.
- That essential self doesn’t change and my essential self is whole and lovable. It’s only after I add all the layers of shoulds, coulds, etc that I lose touch with myself.
What I’m getting at here is I want to learn to love myself and have compassion for myself. I’d like to get to the point I can express myself clearly and completely in the world knowing that whatever the reactions are, it really isn’t about me. I’d like to get to the point in which my first priority is to live in a way that reflects my values.
On a different note: one reason I stopped shopping online was the amount of time I was spending on shopping sites as well as the time I spent trying things on and returning things I didn’t like. I’m already spending a lot less time on email because so much of my email was from retailers announcing “new arrivals,” sales, “the perfect party shoes you must have this season,” etc.
I was spending at least 30-minutes going through my inbox. I only spent 15 minutes on my email yesterday and today.
It’s nice to be experiencing positive benefits so early in the process. Yay!
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