What’s Stopping You?
Happy New Year! ‘Tis the season for making resolutions for ourselves. A time of self-inventory where we can ask the question, how would I like to grow this year? This question often plays a kind of whisper down the lane in our minds, what do I want to be different, where am I not satisfied with my situation, where am I not doing enough?
Too often the concluding question that frames our goals for the year is, “Where am I not trying enough?” Whether we set intentions or resolutions, the impulse is to choose where we are not enough and a commitment to do better. So we enter 2023 with a yearning to strive harder than ever.
You may have already started down that path. You bought the gym membership, started the gratitude journal, put the first family game night on the calendar. These are all WONDERFUL things! Perhaps you have an excellent track record with these goals for personal growth. In which case, share your secret! We’d love to know what is working for you and pool our resources for community growth!
I’m speaking right now, though, to those of you who are resonating with the idea that, if you’re honest with yourself, this year’s goals are about trying to satisfy a lonely emptiness in you that echoes the message, “you are not enough.”
For you, I wish to say this. You are so brave and strong to take this task on. To fight against those deeply held beliefs about who you are and try to be something different. I see you trying so hard to make ends meet despite yourself. The problem is, no matter how much success you have, deep down, you’ll still know it wasn’t enough. And eventually you’ll exhaust yourself or slip up on your goal and it's liable to throw you into that tailspin of “of course!” Of course I failed, of course I couldn’t escape that echo chamber that tells me I’m not enough!
So, this year, let’s try something different. I’m going to suggest something. Maybe it will sound radical to some. The problem is never that you haven’t tried hard enough. You have probably exhausted yourself 10x over by this point, that can’t be the answer here. We love to blame a lack of effort because it's convenient. It tells a story about what is going wrong and we like our stories because they contain our deep grief over things not being as they should, regardless of how self-deprecating or outrageously untruthful they may be.
So if we peel back the story about you from your experience what do we see? Consider finding some time in the coming week where you can check in with a few things.
1. Where do you feel stifled? Literally, where does your body feel like it's being held back? Maybe you feel a pulling sensation in your gut, or a quivering quickness in your forehead, notice that is where your dreams, unique expression of self, your “enoughness” is feeling stifled.
2. What is being held back? If that sensation could be put into action, what would it do? And what meaningful purpose is behind it? A desire to grow? Explore? Care? Soothe? Let yourself feel it in your bones until there's no discomfort too great to hold you back from moving towards what matters to you.
3. What are those barriers getting in the way? What stories from the past has your mind been playing on repeat as if it still has to be your reality? What skills have you yet to learn? What external barriers are getting in the way of the resources you need?
4. If you were to take just one next step, the very next one, what would it be?
The answer is that you are already enough just as you are… AND there are very real barriers that impact how we live into the world. So this year let's try something different. May this be the year that you set aside whatever marathon you had intended, listen to your own wisdom enough to see where there is an opportunity for your fullness to be expressed more meaningfully in the world, and with one bold step at a time, let yourself be.