How do you make sense of your life if there is nothing wrong with you?
I’ve been sitting with this question lately in reflections inspired by Michael Neill’s Advanced Course. (Highly recommended, btw.)
I’m not considering this philosophically, but personally.
Because for most of my life, there’s been a subtle background refrain of:
“Something is wrong. Something is off.”
Now if you ask me directly, I’ll tell you that I don’t believe people are broken. I don’t think the world is broken. Life isn’t a self-improvement project, and I’m not some fixer-upper in need of repair.
And yet, if I’m honest…
That assumption is often still humming along underneath the surface.
“Something’s off.”
“Something is wrong.”
“I need fixing.”
But when I set aside the assumption of wrongness, even briefly, my life starts making a whole different kind of sense.
It becomes:
“Oh. That’s just how it is right now.”
Maybe there are some useful skills I haven’t learned yet.
Maybe I haven’t seen through the fear yet.
So what?
My “embarrassing” relationship patterns always made sense from the inner world I was living in at the time.
The money choices I made always looked reasonable when I made them.
Even the painful parts start looking less like evidence of failure and more like the natural consequences of my state of mind.
There’s a nice feeling to that.
It feels like sighing. My shoulders drop. My breath slows.
And then another question appears:
What if it’s okay to feel however I feel?
Sad. Angry, Impatient. Ashamed.
What if it’s really okay and there’s no wrongness there, either?
Not because I’ve transcended these feelings – hardly! – but because whether I approve of them or not, they’re happening.
Oddly enough, the moment I stop fighting them, it feels better.
Then comes the deeper question:
What if feeling this way doesn’t mean I’m not enough?
Again, I would tell you, “Of course I’m enough!”
And yet…
In stressful moments, I still hear the echoing refrain, “I try so hard and no one understands!”
Translation: no matter what I do, it will never be enough.
But if this moment is okay the way it is, then maybe I am, too.
Not someday once I’ve solved my issues and overcome my childhood dysfunctions.
Now.
Lately I’ve been seeing (again) how much of my life was still organized around the needs, desires and opinions of the imaginary people in my head.
I’d been running my life from there, trying to gain approval and fit inside of someone else’s world…instead of my own.
And two days ago, these words came out of my mouth with surprising force:
“I’m done with being poor.”
I meant it. I’m just done.
It’s not that my current situation isn’t okay. It’s perfectly okay. I’m just done with it.
And somehow, the moment I stopped trying to fix myself, there was suddenly nothing in the way anymore.
So I changed.
And the world looks different, too.
Maybe that’s what happens when we stop treating ourselves like problems to solve and let it be what it really is.
Yours in love and play,
Steph 🐲❤️
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