Do you ever listen to how you speak to yourself?

Personally I thought I had done a fair amount of work on switching off the negative self-demons yet an observant friend of mine points out I still have “should have” and “need to”, “don’t know enough and need to study”, “am not fit enough to walk the talk to my clients” and “I don’t help enough people”, in my daily dictionary. Not all the time, however these words sneak in when I feel I have let the ball drop regarding how much I feel I should be doing. There is still a cut-off point below which I feel useless, lazy, and not good enough. Aren’t I lucky to have a friend aware enough in his own journey to be as honest with me as I can be with him and even more honest than I thought I was being with SELF.

On the plus side I have made a good effort on the self-sabotage, procrastination, perfectionism, body hate, ‘I am not good enough’ record player that was on repeat in my head for most of my teens and twenties. I see this as an insightful gift as I have yet to meet a client with health problems that completely loves themselves. I have been there, got the t-shirt and can empathise completely with how you are feeling about yourself in your own mind.

I did however think that I was now at a place of listening to my body; the thing is; are you ever fully there? This week while away on holidays I felt tired (a lot; utterly wrecked), I had a head cold exacerbated by freakishly high pollen counts which resulted in a permanent hay fever headache.

I told myself to listen to my body, rest, walk when you want and to eat intuitively. I even acknowledged to myself my progress, I was able to slow down and not feel guilty.

But

Ha-ha yes “but”. Speaking to friends and family I slipped in how I had a cold and was tired and so was taking time off work and training. The realisation that it mattered to me what others thought of my lack of work and training hit home; I still needed permission to rest. I thought I gave it to myself however it mattered to me what others thought. I had to prepare my excuse for looking lazy in their eyes; I was suffering with colds and hay-fever and this was a great excuse as no one then thought I was lazy. In fact I think the truth is that I needed these excuses for myself. Thinking about it I wanted a break, and I had to manifest some silly head-cold and head-ache and utter exhaustion to give myself a time out from all the work, and books and study that I had loaded in the car to do here while on my holidays, and to give myself permission to leave my running gear in the drawer and the kettle bells and weights in their new job as door posts.

We really are extremely conditioned to feel we always must be doing, working, exercising, moving; anything but sitting still. In our heads we have an internal drill sergeant that says “go, go, go”. I grew up in a family that most certainly has “do stuff or move” hyperactivity’. It has taken me years to find more peace within regarding finding a healthy rest-work-training balance and yes it now appears I could benefit from letting go of what others think.

Have you examined your relationship to how you speak to SELF?

Do push yourself to always be doing or achieving? Do you force yourself to run that 10 km or go to the gym? Do you feel lazy if the kids aren’t immaculate, the house sparkling and the garden ready for Chelsea flower show? Do you compare yourself to other friends, celebrities, co-workers, or your siblings? Do you feel that when I am _______ I will be ok (sort of); until I set the next goal. Are you never there? Never quite good enough? And do you, for all that you do, feel lazy? Lazy, useless, tired, worthless, too fat, too lazy, too greedy…… and every other word that you may throw at yourself? Over and over because let’s face it; we are really good at beating ourselves up like a broken record player.

If you don’t achieve x, y, and z how do you beat yourself up? Do you punish yourself? Or hold yourself back from achieving your true dreams because you “just aren’t good enough”. What do you say? Would you say this to your best friend or worse still your children (they feel exactly what Mummy and Daddy is thinking about themselves and projecting)? Are you aware of just how hard you are on yourself and how this eats into your beliefs about yourself? If you don’t nurture yourself and you believe yourself to be a failure, how do you ever expect to achieve your dreams? If you believe yourself to be unworthy, your subconscious will find a way to validate this as we like to prove what we think; we like to be right. If you want to fly, you must believe that you can fly.

Are you able to sit in peace and quiet and do nothing? Do you like yourself enough to spend time with yourself?

Do you give yourself time to be creative or daydream?

Do you teach your children how to get lost in doing nothing?

Do you listen to your energy and desires?

Do you balance rest, work and play according to how you FEEL.

Do you listen to when you want to be sociable and with people, and honour when you need time alone?

Do you frequently take a time out in nature? And let your mind wander and your energy recharge in all the negative ions of mother earth? And no I don’t mean haring up a mountain on a bike!!

Do you listen to your heart and soul and follow the path that feels right?

When you spend time alone daydreaming you start to feel your true SELF and soul path; the messages of your hearts desires become clear. You gain clarity, perspective and the answers will come. We all have an important contribution to make to the world and this is also where we find happiness. This does not mean you have to become Mother Theresa or Gandhi; something as simple as smiling and chatting more to the people you cross may make ALL the difference to their world. They then may be the one to make a crucial difference to the world. I see it like a domino effect. In my heart I want to save every soul and fix the world; I feel so very small and like I’m not doing enough. Yet every ONE that I help back to health then goes on to help many MORE in their world…. See it’s dominoes 🙂

In my clinic I see many people who suffer with chronic fatigue. When I refer to chronic fatigue I absolutely avoid using this term as a diagnosis, preferring to see it as an adjective. You suffer from chronic fatigue; YOU are NOT chronic fatigue. I believe chronic fatigue to be a multi-faceted condition; that is highly individual to the client. However for simplicity’s sake I believe there is a complex interplay of physical symptoms, hormonal imbalances, infections, organ dysfunction, environmental toxicity, energy imbalances and emotional factors playing a dance that result in the patient feeling EXHAUSTED.

The more I work with this condition the more I believe that we do, in part, manifest some of the fatigue, because we simply are not happy with our life and we feel weak and powerless to change things. I believe that to completely heal, we must look at how the condition is protecting us and preventing us from making some revelations about our lives and difficult decisions about what to change. Please, if you suffer with chronic fatigue do not feel like I am judging you. I myself experienced chronic fatigue in my life and yes there were many serious health conditions going on; however I was far from being happy in my life, my relationship, mySELF and I was a million miles from living authentically. My journey with chronic fatigue has in retrospect been the most fantastic gift once I unravelled what was going on, who was negative in my life, how I reacted to life, and started to listen, believe and implement change.

I am starting to believe that our symptoms are increasingly a manifestation of our emotions. Is it any surprise I had to get ‘sick’ to give myself permission to take time off? Lesson learnt 🙂