I feel like something has been unleashed. A being that has been dormant for so long. A beast really. A beast awakened. Ready to give battle to the niggle, to mediocrity; to my lack of responsibility and responsibility to my true self. The last one might not make sense. I quite frankly don’t care.
I am ready to begin my journey back to my best self. The one I let go with lack of integrity, and take ownership of responsibility. Maria was right. After the accident it was like my brain and being itself was shaken like a snow globe. It hasn’t settle yet. And that is partially my responsibility. I didn’t know how to get beyond myself. My self doubt, my judgment, my awareness, my bullshit story, and when it comes to down it, pride. My pride has been holding me back. To state publicly that I fucked up. That my integrity has been out of alignment for close to three years. For three years almost I haven’t done what I said I would do.
One of my core values historically has been integrity. I lost that. I lost that like a floating dock in a flood. I let go of my tether, of myself, and ultimately my core circle. All of it was my doing. I have a lot of damage to repair. Some of it might not be repairable, and I respect that. I am letting go of the shame of the past mistakes. Judgment and shame does not provide service to anyone. It focuses on the act, and not the person. I screwed up. I screwed up immensely, in a variety of ways.
The key? The key is to figure out how to apply the lessons from those obstacles to how to improve your life and the life of others. It’s about not taking the shame internal, but bringing to light. Brene Brown (I’m paraphrasing) says, “shame cannot live in the light. It breeds in the darkness of our soul.” I am not perfect. I don’t want to be perfect. Because it doesn’t exist. It by definition can’t exist. If you have carry judgment against yourself, LET IT GO. It is not serving you. I promise you, it is not serving you. If you have judgment against others, let that go too. Both of those are not easy. We expect perfection in this culture. We expect greatness.
I have experienced greatness, and I have experienced epic freaking failure. Out of those two experiences, you want to know what unnerved me the most? Was my own expectation of greatness once I achieved a certain level. I had PLENTY of expectation of failure and disappointment. Greatness and achievement? Not so much. I had everything going for me, and I was poised for the next level.
Except I wasn’t ready. I got to that level in my social marketing business mostly because people said I couldn’t, and I wanted to prove them wrong. Which for me means BRING IT ON. It’s a low vibration reason to achieve something, though. Afterwards, my subconsciously was like “now what?” I didn’t achieve that level of excellence for me. I did it to prove that they were wrong, not that I was right. I also brought on an onslaught of change in a short period of time, and clearly I wasn’t ready for the impact. It was first the breaking the codependency, then it was the car accident, and then it was PTSD, and subsequent therapy. All valid reasons, but also things to hide behind; they became excuses delaying my journey to my best self. They were excuses to bring myself down to safe and mediocre. No one is meant for safe and mediocre. They both suck. They are safe and easy. When was the last time anything great happened when you were in a safe and easy space? My guess is none.
Best quote of the night from my friend Chrissy, “we all hope for impact, but we are surprised when it’s long lasting.” This was a free write, and I like it. I figured I’d share, and go with my moment of inspiration and creativity.
AKponderings 