Friends, family and clients all have one thing in common. I often hear about how tired they are. Sometimes it seems we are living in a world of tired people.
How do we manage to get through the day? How do you function at your optimum when you feel that you physically have to lift each leg with your hands before you can move forward? How can we be the best partner, parent or employee, manager or entrepreneur? We live in a world filled with stress and anxiety.
We live in a fast pace world and we feel trapped. We are in constant competition with the outside world and criticize ourselves constantly. We measure our growth and our success by the speed of other. And each day, we build on our stress and anxiety. Our anger and guilt.
We live our lives outside of ourselves.
There is that old saying that if you are going to judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will always fail. And that is true of us. We honestly do not have an idea of the challenges and changes another person experience. Yet, we all compare ourselves with each other and feel inadequate. We can’t all be teachers, lawyers, nurses, firefighters, etc. You say that, yet you weigh yourself up against other people.
We are each unique. We each are special. Embrace your specialness.
We each learn our lesson and grow at our own rate as to what is relevant to our life at that moment. We are no longer in school where when it is 10 am we all sit down and learn History. At 11 am we all learn Math. At 12 pm we all learn English. NO, we are now in the real world. There is no timetable, there is no syllabus. You will learn the lesson as you are ready for it in your life. You will grow at the rate as you are ready to grow at.
Can you see why you are always tired? You are living in the shoes of 20 other people.
How do you stop and how do you find your energy within?
1. Become still. Listen to yourself. Hear and feel what makes you happy and feeds your psyche. Start making a list every day of all the things you do and rate each one out of 10 as to the joy they give you. We will always have “responsibilities” that we cannot delegate and that we do not like, but if you can, delegate the ones bring no joy and energy to your life. Take on “responsibilities” of other people that you like to do, and free them up to fill their life with the things they like to do – it might be something you do not like to do. Especially within the family. It might be a huge benefit to all, and apart from that, a life lesson to your children. Start seeing the stress disappear.
2. Look after your physical health. Look at what you eat. When do you eat? Do you exercise? The catch 22 with exercise is that we do not feel as though we have the energy to get up and do some exercise. But, if you do even the least of exercise, you will start feeling better, which will encourage you to feel like doing more exercise, which will make you feel better, and you do more exercise, and you feel better, etc. The less you feel like doing exercise, the more you should. And exercise does not have to mean you rushing off to the gym. Why not just walk around a few blocks in your neighborhood? You will be out in fresh air. You might have the opportunity to greet your neighbors. Heaven knows, they might even join you. Why not take turns to cook instead of living of fast food? Or buddy up with another family member. Not only will you start eating healthy, because suddenly you will become more aware of your food, you will build relationships within your family.
3. Look after your emotional, spiritual health. Do you ever allow yourself to be still for a while, with only your thoughts? Not thinking about anyone else, what still must be done, what anyone did to you, etc.? Do you feed the stress and anxiety within you? Do you ever allow yourself to hear what you have to say to yourself that is not critical? Do you ever praise yourself for a job well done? For being kind, considerate, generous, helpful? Do you ever tell yourself that you are okay, that you are enough and that you are doing fine? Do you feel the hurt you feel, the anxiety you feel, the guilt you feel, and allow it to pass? “Yes, I feel you emotion, but you can now go.” You do not have to load your life with all these emotions – most of which do not even belong to you.
4. Have gratitude. I will never be able to impress enough on you, how important it is to have and feel gratitude. If you had built yourself a world of never having enough, of always living in lack and wanting, you will continue to live like that. No matter what you achieve, do or build, it will never be enough. Why? Because you keep walking in the shoes of the 20 other people that you judge yourself against. Start living in gratitude. Appreciate and feel the gratitude for all that is good and right in your life. I always make my clients start with 1 thing a day that did not cost them a cent that you appreciate and have gratitude for. And before they have finished their course with me, they ask me will it be okay if they write down more things? Will it be okay? YES!!! YES!!!!! YES!!!!! Thank You. Thank You. Thank You. Make that your mantra today.
5. Love yourself. Only by loving yourself, unconditionally, will you know how to treat yourself with respect, compassion and love. We all love our children unconditionally. They can mess up, they can break our hearts. But, come 5 minutes from now, we will love them all the same. Why do you not give that love to yourself? Why do you keep on beating yourself up, days and week and months on end? Can you accept that sometimes you will mess up? Can you accept that it will not change who you are and that you still deserve respect, compassion and love? You live with your voice 24/7 365 days for your whole life. If you spoke to your children the way you speak to yourself all the time, how would they feel? What would they think? Am I really loved by my parent? Give yourself that love. You are you and not the other people you are trying to measure yourself by.
The moment you step into your own shoes and into your own life, your energy returns. Why? Because you no longer give it to the outside world. You use it to the best of your life. We are all here on this earth, to be the best person we can be. Why would you give the energy away and struggle to become that person? Why shoot yourself in the foot every day?
You are amazing. No matter the life you choose that fills your heart and soul. That life you choose, will have an impact on the world. Maybe in your eyes, it will only affect one person, but perhaps, that one person will have an effect on a million people. So, how many people benefited from you living your true life?
Live your true life and feel the energy rushing back to you. You have it all within you, stop giving it away.
Sue Leppan
Transformation Life Coach
NLP Practitioner
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