to thine own self be true

I agreed to do something that in my heart I did not want to do.  I found a justification for it.  Its only ..... Its ok because.....  Its a one off...., I could go on.  I allowed myself to be persuaded because I knew it was what the other person wanted me to do.  And that is it, he knew I found it hard to say no, so I agreed.  Now I feel like I have left myself down, I have not been true to myself.  I had a decision if I was asked this I would say no and yet I caved in and said yes.  What does that say about how I treat myself.

"This above all: to thine ownself be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man."

My father used to quote Shakespeare to me, mostly the Julius Ceaser but also Polonius speech from Hamlet.  I miss my Dad but I do have all the things he used to repeat over and over and over to me firmly ingrained in my head.  I used to tell him to shut up but now I appreciate some of the stuff he said.  

Love many trust few always paddle your own canoe.  

That was another favourite.  I get tired of paddling my own canoe sometimes.  But in the long run its better to do that than to allow someone else steer you into rocks.  

I have not been true to myself at all.  I am very sad about that.  I need to reflect on what exactly the problem is.  I decided to base my decisions on evidence and not on beliefs and feelings.  I agreed to proceed on a certain condition.  I was told that a certain condition was fulfilled.  I checked the evidence.  It was not fulfilled.  I felt left down and taken for granted, in fact I fell disrespected and considered not worth being honest with.  I suppose I gave the other person an opportunity to step up to the plate and I found him lacking.  Time to renegotiate the contract and rewrite the rules.  Or perhaps end the game.

I think its best if I take a few days to think it over.  Mostly things have been good for me.  there have been a few other incidents that make me wonder.  I suppose the question is now can I live with the betrayal.  It has brought up other times when I trusted and was left down.  My heart tells me to walk away but my head says the costs do not yet outweigh the benefits.  Last time this happened I was 21 I was hurt, I lashed out and ultimately lost out.  I always wondered if I had not lashed out and been petulant what would have happened.  Would it have worked out different, or would I have lived a whole life feeling worthless.  

I did a guided spirit meditation today to connect with your spirit guide.  I see this as a good way to unlock stuff from your subconscious.  Three people appeared, the first was myself at aged 5 in a pink and yellow hot pants swinging on the gate telling me to come on there was loads to do yet.  the second was the man who took my ability to trust and love, the third was my grandmother as a young woman.  5 year old me told me it was safe and ok.  The man gave me a gift in a box.  when I opened it it was my heart.  He gave me back heart it was very beautiful in a beautiful purple box.  My granny made me cry. I last saw her when she was in a coma and dying.  She put her hand on my shoulder and as i looked up she turned from an old woman in to a beautiful young girl.  She came today to give em a letter with the word love on it.  She was dancing around her long black hair swinging and skirts twirling.  She was totally free and very happy. 

I am still a little puzzled by the meditation but I felt much lighter after it.   Usually my inner child comes to me because she is scared.  Now she is telling me its time to have fun.  So is my grandmother.  Have fun for myself and not for others.  do what I enjoy and not what others think I should.  

My father always advised me not to rush into decisions.  I was a very head strong child, I always knew best.  no I don't know best, or rather I dont do what I know is best.  I am going to bring my joyful child with me for a while and see ho much easier life is.  People laughed at her but she did not care, she just swung her head tossed her hair and kept on doing her own thing.  

So take its time to take my subconscious minds tip for today.  Take back your heart, take the offer of love from others, swing on a gate in the sun, and when others ask you to stray from your path, toss you hair swing your skirts and dance off on  your own path.  

love many trust few and don't paddle your own canoe get an out board motor to make it easier.

Happy Monday

hear me roar when i whisper

I have vertigo.  In short I have a label to explain why my head feels like it is spinning.  I think it is a physical manifestation of an emotional imbalance.  I have been feeling shame again recently.

According to wikipedia, shame is a volition of cultural or social values, while guilt arises from violating our internal values.  Not conforming to cultural values seems to be the story of my life. shame it seems is about evaluation of the self and guilt about the actions. the difference between saying i am bad and i did something bad.

why do I think I am bad? I have not experienced shame in quite a while but last week it rushed up into me again.  Like a bad visitor who I thought I had got rid of.  What is bringing me to this place and why have I lost my confidence again.  I feel a loss of power and motivation.  Some people can tap into that sense of low self worth I have carried with me for many years.  I thought I had got away from it but maybe recent incidents have made me feel it again.  I have many memories of shame and confusion from my childhood. Mostly of people laughing at me as a child when i did silly childish things.  I could not work out why they laughed at me but they did.  I did ask but I never got an adequate explanation.  this week someone said to me I was a big old silly.  It reminded me of what my mother used to day to me.  don't be worrying about that you are a silly goose to worry about that.  I needed to have my fears listened to and to be understood, to have the world explained to me in a way I could understand.  It keeps coming back to that for me.  I thought my inner child was all grown up but yet again she has popped out to be heard.  I have woken up crying at night because I feel so confused and I cannot even label the confusion or where it is coming from.

I think that the shame is that I am not conforming to the expectation of others.  I am been asked to accept something that goes against my better judgement.  I know others can accept such things but I cannot.  I agreed to accept it and since then I have been feeling ashamed that I did not.  I am ashamed that I have left myself down.  I have not stuck with my beliefs and I feel an internal conflict that is immobilising me.  When I try to move I get dizzy and unbalanced.  so it seems I need to do some work on this again.  Time to make a list of all the things that are confusing me and find answers for them.  I suppose I need to know that I am doing the right thing for me.

So in summary I need to be still and settle.  This is making me stay still and keep my eyes closed and to turn off my mind.  Perhaps I am trying to force a realisation that is not there.  perhaps it is only exactly what it is an inner ear infection that gives me symptoms similar to panic attacks without the emotional cause.  I lived in a constant state of panic for so long that this prolonged dizzy spell is reminding me of all of them.  I t is deeply unpleasant to relive them and perhaps I need to just relax and let the dizziness pass in the same way as I would let the panic attacks pass.

So now I think I have it, it does not matter why I feel bad I do.  Instead of beating myself up about it I need to tale car of myself and not pressure myself to be any better than I am.  Its ok to be ill and although there is an emotional cause for illness there is also a physical one.  I may be a receptive host to the virus but that does not mean I am a bad person.  I can learn from this.  This is a sign that I need to look after my physical health better.  So its time to stop blaming myself for getting sick and be kind to myself and allow myself the time and space to heal.  So its all about healing and not poking at myself to uncover the hurts just accept that they happened and learn to comfort myself in healthy ways.  It is time to open up my tool box and see what i left myself the last time I recovered from a bit of a downer.  From memory i put juggling balls, a crochet pattern and a list of recovery tools in an actual box to be there for when I felt bad.  time to root out the tool box and the guidance from the well me.  I do take care of myself really.

Today's realisation is I know what to do and I know how I feel I just need to allow myself to be myself. oh and I need peace and quite too:)

no more berating myself for being dizzy i shall live on my bed and think of nice things I can do when i am well again.

Happy Sunday  

Experience

They say that experience is learning to recognise your mistakes each time you make them. I am experienced. I returned from annual leave and had a feeling that yet again something would have happened in my absence that would leave me in the doodoo. And it did . it was implied that I had not sent important information to someone and embarrassed the boss , however it was untrue as I never recall being asked for it. It may have been an oversight on my part I thought but then I read the email trail , it was unreal , someone else had been getting many emails on the subject and had failed to pass them on to me.  I remembered that something similar happened each time I was on annual leave. This is experience , learning from the past. the real lesson is not what I learned but what I do with what I learned. I had expected this based on past experiences and yet I was unprepared to deal with it. I have been upset about it since it happened. I am unsure how to proceed . I think that I would like for this to stop happening and for me to be able to fully relax and enjoy my time off . I did indeed enjoy it and I think the best course of action is to let them explain to me what happened.  I can explain away what happened as an oversight on the part of another or a cowardly act if displacement of blame but at the end if the day I have to decide on what course of action to take. I care very little about my paid employment anymore mostly due to things like thus. I find it hard to committ to it with the passion I once felt , now it is drudgery at best.  I feel let down and now it is time for me to learn what it is to be adequately assertive to prevent someone thinking I am the kind of person who will accept this. I could not find the request anywhere and I conclude that I need to trust myself. If I think I am right it is time to stick up for myself . I think the best strategy to adopt is to pretend that I am there to protect an innocent colleague from damage to her reputation from the lies if others. I think this is an opportunity to find a new aspect if myself one that puts me first , one that really believes in myself. I lost that part of me years ago. It was almost like brain washing . The gradual decent into my belief that I am worthless.  I think I should go back in time and reexamine the experiences I had where I allowed my confusion to prevent me from believing in myself. I don't need to be anyone's good girl to approve if myself. I approve of myself as I am.  Do whatever happens tomorrow I am still the same me. A me that comes first and communicates her confusion and disappointment clearly do that others can see she will witness wrong doing and not collude with it. I am woman hear me roar :) 

new dawn new day Again

I stopped blogging as I had nothing to write about.  today I had the urge to write.  I have been very busy for the last few months and just took the time to stop and stay still for the last few days.  It is quite amazing what you see when you really look.  I saw things in people I had not noticed before and I saw things in myself I thought I would never see again.  I felt my sense of self in a very profound way almost as the opposite of an out of body experience - I felt totally at peace with myself and the world.  I suppose it was a moment of total clarity.  In the past people went on retreated or mediated to gain this, i just went to bed for three days and slept, well not exactly but i did spend a great part of three days asleep or resting.  It was almost like being a new person and seeing the world with totally new eyes.  I was amazed at how much people have been taking me for granted and how much I allowed that, I was amazed at how much people try to put me in a box, I was also amazed at  how many people are happy to let me just be myself and support me.  Life is pretty strange for me at the moment, I feel as great sense of transition and of realisation that there are so many life experiences waiting for me.  So many new things for me to experience things that I don't even know exist or can even imagine.  I have just had a very positive year and remember back to this time last year, to the confusion I felt, to the lack of confidence and to my lack of direction.  the big difference is that now I fell safe expressing my uncomfortable feeling, particularly when I am confused by something and when I don't fully understand.  One of my new favourite memories is of me singing for my mothers friend and her laughing at me.  At the time I was deeply embarrassed and confused and that was a feeling I felt alot as a child and until fairly recently.  I used to hold in that feeling, the awful shame and guilt and confusion.  since I have learned to express myself with confidence I can now say I don't understand why you are laughing and I as an adult I know that it was because of my earnestness and pure seriousness, I was indeed a very serious child.  I had to work out everything for myself.  I did not know how to ask for help or clarification and now I do.  I have been able to go back through all those memories where I felt less than ok and confused and reimagine what life would have been like had I been able to understand and ask for clarification.  Wow it was amazing indeed mostly I found that I imagined people explaining things to me in a way I could understand.  I cant relive my past but I can reimage it.  I can change how I view those memories of shame and remind that little girl that she is ok as she is.  My inner child grew up in the past year and no longer need other peoples adults to approve of her.  I approve of her and that is what matters.  Having a sense of confidence in myself and my abilities is so incredibly liberating and I feel as free as a bird.