The Sky’s The Limit
The Sky's The Limit
I am writing this while waiting for a flight at the airport. Airports seem to bring out all the feelings in people. Boredom, frustration, love and tears, goodbyes, hellos, excitement of going on a trip. Sadness of leaving. Anger and stress, especially if small children or not-so-small children are involved.
I generally find I have a lot more time than usual at the airport. I get here and then the waiting. No kids with problems for me to solve. No dishes to wash. No laundry to put on or put away. No fights to referee. No dinners to make. Only the immediacy of 'what do I do next?' What's my next move? Wander over to the gate or go to the bathroom again?
It's a great place to get some writing done. And there are all kinds of people to watch and wonder about. I wonder where they are all going? I wonder what they are going to do when they get there? Maybe they are going home?
A friend and colleague of mine sends out a daily email to his subscribers. Today’s was a question to ponder. "What would you do if you trusted yourself completely?"
I've been wondering about this question on and off all day.
As soon as I read it, I realized I'd been second-guessing myself about a project I was working on. I was going around and around with circular thinking about it. Using up a lot of energy needlessly.
What would I do if I trusted myself completely?
I dropped the second-guessing thinking. I felt so much lighter, and a giant sense of freedom rushed up. I knew what steps I wanted to do for this project. So, I went and did them. I got three times as much done as I generally would have. Without the unnecessary thinking, we have so much more energy and clarity.
Other situations arose in my mind for consideration. What would I do here if I trusted myself completely? Again, a huge swath of unnecessary justification and thought dropped naturally. I don't need it. I do and can trust myself completely.
Two more situations came to mind, and I cleared out the thinking that was created from a habit of thinking I had to justify myself because I had learned not to trust myself the first time.
Why would I not trust myself?
I don't actually know anymore. That might sound funny, but we do it all the time. Not trust ourselves, I mean. We make decisions and then explain why we did to whoever will listen or not listen, as if they care. Maybe they do. We seem to try to soothe ourselves with our proofs of "good decisions".
So often, if we declare something to another person, the knee-jerk response is "Are you sure?". In school, we are trained to prove everything with reasons and rationalizations.
This is a time killer in many ways.
We get into these habits of circular thinking, proving what we know to be true, the direction we want to go in, even down to what we want to eat for lunch. But we know.
At a recent retreat day, I led an exercise in which participants were told to "Go do whatever you want to do right now for the next 3 minutes."
When I asked them after "How did you know what you wanted to do?", everyone gave a whole list of reasons why the thing they did was the thing that they wanted to do. But not really "How did you know?". Eventually, we got down to it. In every single instance, it was "I just knew" or "it came to me" or "it popped into my head".
We know.
What would you allow yourself to do if you trusted yourself and your knowing completely?
I remember when both of my kids started to not trust themselves.
When they were really little, especially before they started school, they would just do what they wanted or ask for what they wanted.
We have a funny story we tell in our family about my daughter Juliet. My son is five years older than her, and he would always ask if he could have something like a cookie or a treat. It wasn't that we particularly trained him that way; he just naturally always asked first. My husband and I got really used to this, and so we didn't work to put treats up or away from little hands.
Juliet naturally just reached out for what she wanted. She was always very clear and firm about what she wanted and what was right for her from day one. It was impressive.
We had moved into a new house not long before, and I was sitting on our couch in the living room/great room/kitchen combo when Juliet went tripping on by up to her room. She was about five years old and had a fresh-baked chocolate chip cookie in her mouth and another in each hand. They'd been cooling on the kitchen table. She saw nothing wrong in this. I asked her, "Who said you could have those cookies?". "I did," she replied, firmly confident.
I had been wanting her to keep her confidence and trust in herself, and so I gave her a high five on her cookie hand, and she carried on her way.
As she started school and interacted with teachers and friends, she too eventually fell into the habit of second-guessing and not trusting herself without external validation.
What would you do if you trusted yourself completely?
I really think the sky's the limit.
With Love,
Sara Joy
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