What a weekend. I haven’t blogged in a while but this was a weekend worth blogging about. I did something called Soul Collage on Saturday that has had my heart and mind stirring all weekend. Because I had to go to Utica for work this weekend I also got a chance to clear my mind and walk around Starved Rock with my good friend Alyssa… and being out in nature and hanging out with a good pal is always a huge rejuvenation for my soul.
Soul Collage… I’ll be explaining this later because I’m totally going to have a Soul Collage “party” at my house. It’s something that I’ll be getting some training on because it will for sure be a part of my therapy practice one day. In a nutshell, it’s art therapy. It helps you unpack the inner workings of what makes you you in a visual way. More to come on this later… right now I will share what I’ve been in the process of coming to understand lately.
There is such peace in understanding my limitations. I’ve been fighting with myself for so long and finally this massive life slap-in-the face snapped me out of it. I’ve been humbled. When I it say out loud now, I realize how insane I sound. I actually thought that I could learn a new language, take three psychology classes, and work three jobs…. and do it all well. HA! I would say, “What was I THINKING!?” but the problem is that I do know what I was thinking… it was just wrong. I was wrong. I’ve been very wrong.
1. Pace. Again. Finally, I think I got it. I just want to get school done and finish paying off my debt… I’m SOSO close and I can taste it!!! But, anyone who has ever walked anywhere with me, you that when I’m on a mission, I walk ridiculously fast. I don’t do it intentionally, really. I just know where I’m going and I want to get there. I know what I want to do with my life and I was just trying to get there… except for that you can’t rush life. It goes by fast enough and I’ve rushed through life far too long and it’s killing me now. Like actually killing me. Heart palpitations, anxiety, sleeplessness… all these things I know are bad especially being that I study this stuff!!!! I put myself on fast forward and now that I’m stuck in this mistake, I have to live through it and swallow my pride and say, wow, I’m not capable of doing this. There are things that I am definitely going to mess up. After this humbling experience, I can promise everyone, and mostly just to myself, that I am slowing down and stopping to smell the roses on the way. I think everyone struggles with this, especially when you’re in a hard time. Hard times suck and you just wanna get out of it… but sometimes the same hard time keeps coming back because we haven’t truly dealt with the issue that keeps bringing us back to the similar hard time over and over. EVERY single person on the face of this planet has hard times and does dumb things and everyone needs to remember that and give people more grace and love. Most of all, you need to give yourself grace and love.
2. The big humbling: It turns out I don’t have any special abilities to take on extraordinary amounts of work. I think I actually thought I did. Very dumb, I know. However, I think EVERYONE does this. In our culture, we actually try to one-up each other all the time on how many things we have going on in our lives. I hear it all the time. “Oh, you got 5 hours of sleep? Oh honey, I only got 3.” Like they are in some kind of race against to be the one that is pushing themselves harder.. so they can just die quicker and earlier because of how they’ve treated themselves. Maybe that’s why over 50% of the population suffers from depression and anxiety!!!??? Anxiety does uuuugly things to your body. TREAT YOURSELF WITH LOVE AND KINDNESS. Anxiety comes from judging yourself to harshly and not giving yourself the room to mess up. We hold ourselves up to these standards that our culture has put in place… well screw them! Depression and anxiety comes from dealing with what we wish was true and what really is true. We struggle with what we wish we were or what we wish our lives were like versus what is our true reality. When you cant come to accept who you are and what your life is, anxiety and depression almost always follow. I have finally come to truly understand this and anxiety has basically vanished. Living in fear is a choice… fear of screwing up, fear of losing someone, fear of being alone, fear of not being liked (which comes from fear that you are not lovable)… people are controlled by fear every day in one way or another. Most people in my age group fear that life isn’t going to turn out how they wanted it to… I know now that I was choosing to live in fear and as soon as I let those things go and embraced my limitations I felt like I snapped out of some cloud I was in. It was instant. It might not be like that for everyone but it was like I just went “OOOOOOOHHHH!!!” and it was ok. Hm. Yup, sometimes people won’t like me and that is ok. I know my heart and my intentions and if it gets misjudged, oh well! It happens all the time. Embrace your limitations and face your fears and you will be free.
3. Knowing what to throw away and knowing what to keep. My big theme of the year. Everyone’s got to cut things or people loose sometimes… and sometimes you have to fight harder for the things worth keeping. YOU prioritize your life for yourself and don’t let other prioritize your life for you. You have to stay true to what is important to you… you have to have boundaries.
2013 has been QUITE a year… on of those years where I’m not the same person I was at the beginning of it… and I still have 2 more months to go. Yeesh.
Here’s some of my favorite pics of Starved Rock!
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