I have a few unexpected moments to myself since the phone meeting I had scheduled for 5 minutes ago must now be rescheduled, due to the person I was supposed to meet not being in his office yet. MIA client, no meeting.
So whenever my brain is not otherwise occupied with work (which isn't that often lately) it decides to take a meandering trip, and who knows where it will end up. Ergo... this post.
Earlier today I was driving around town doing some errands: returning the skunk smell-removal spray that we never used (dog-sitting for my sister's Golden Retriever who decided to chase down a skunk on Friday night -- don't even ask); checking out the summer sales at the local cheapo clothing store (good place to get inexpensive t-shirts); going to the post office to get stamps (amazingly, NO one was in line when I got there and it was even lunch time); and then picking up a sandwich for my lunch.
While I was in the car, I had on the Norah Jones CD, Come Away With Me, which I just love. I was listening to the second track, "Seven Years", as I've done many times before, but today for some reason the lyrics hit home in a different way:
Spinning, laughing, dancing to
her favorite song
A little girl with nothing wrong
Is all alone
That line -- A little girl with nothing wrong is all alone -- has always resonated with me, but I never stopped to think about why. Until today.
I realized: How much of my time do I waste by finding things "wrong" with myself? By finding fault? By thinking myself too fat, too unattractive, or not "enough" of whatever it is I sometimes think I'm supposed to be in order to gain love and acceptance? By sometimes wondering if I will ever find love again? By being frustrated because some of my goals aren't happening fast enough to suit me? If I had to add it all up, I've probably spent YEARS of my life listening to that inner critic. What a collosal waste.
Then I had a radical idea: What if NOTHING is wrong with me? What if -- despite my very real human flaws -- there is still NOTHING wrong with me and what if I am already perfect just as I am?
Wow. What a thought.
It's a thought I already believed intellectually and one which I have spouted again and again to my clients when I was a life coach... but something that until today I hadn't realized I wasn't really practicing. All talk... no action.
What if I could manage to shift my self-perception to realize that yes, while there are external things I want to change about myself or my life, that at the core there is absolutely not one single thing wrong with me. What would THAT allow me to do and be, if I really believed that to be true?
The truth is, there IS nothing wrong with me. Or with you, either, for that matter. The person I am on the inside -- my Bold Soul -- is flawless, perfect, wonderful, and doesn't need to change a thing or be anyone other than who she already is. End of story.
And the outer stuff I'm still carrying around with me, the stuff I don't like and am always focusing on trying to "fix" -- excess weight, being lazy about exercise, not liking the way my teeth look, living where I don't want to be living and pining away for where I DO want to be living, a non-existent sex life -- those are all external things that I have created as part of my human experience in this lifetime. That's all they are. And they can be changed whenever I feel like it.
It's when I lose sight of the distinction between who I really am on the inside and the outer person I'm always finding fault with, that I get myself into trouble. I have been confusing the outer me, the one that admittedly needs some work, with the inner me who is already perfect "as is" and needs no tweaking whatsoever. I may even be "all alone" right now, but that's not because there is something "wrong" with me.
What if I started carrying myself as if I were "a girl with nothing wrong"? That doesn't mean, by the way, that I just do nothing to fix the outer things that could be better. But what it does do, is change my motivation completely. Instead of approaching myself as something broken that needs to be fixed -- my usual M.O. and what most people do when it gets right down to it -- I would be approaching myself as someone who is already wonderful, beautiful, perfect and amazing, someone who deserves to have me take care of the outer self so that it is in completely alignment with the inner self.
Big difference. HUGELY big difference.
It's a funny thing when all the gears in your head click into place. And you get that "ah-HA" moment.
