Quote of the day
I have some goals for my New Year. They are part of my wintry mix: writing the new book, sharing my emotional life with others, allowing myself to face more and more of my uncomfortable or frightening feelings, and becoming more healthy - physically and emotionally. From: A Wintry Mix
Reading over last year's December posts, I realize that I actually fulfilled all the goals I had set myself for the new year ahead, even though once I had written about them, I immediately forgot them!
I'm getting the hang of looking back and thinking forward. I find that reflecting on, and understanding the past helps me make the changes I want for my future in the present. Being an adult is enormously freeing. Indeed, the older I become, the less fear I have about feeling, thinking, or acting differently.
For this coming New Year, I have only one goal, and I do believe it might be the hardest one yet. I want to learn how to ask for what I want and need without fear. In my upcoming book, which will be published next year, I deepen the research for my self, and really come to grips with how I learned not to feel deserving of anyone's attention. I realized while writing the book, that I am unable to ask for what I need, if I don't feel deserving in the first place. I discovered it - not as some kind of cognitive, intellectual act - but viscerally, physically and emotionally. It felt as if all the years of therapy finally came together and showed me a well-lit path from far away into my childhood leading me out into my present reality. This "awareness" thing that I so longed for is, in fact, excruciatingly painful, like having deep surgery into my emotional memory.
I must admit that I welcomed the pain, as uncomfortable as it was throughout the summer months and into early fall. For, it is being followed by healing, clarity, and freedom from fear. I have become even more passionate about the importance of strengthening our quality relationships with young children. I know from personal experience that they need our understanding and validation in order to thrive emotionally. They need us to be present and to connect, while taking them seriously, and showing them how worthwhile they are.
We all need that.
For the New Year, I am setting myself a goal: to feel deserving enough to ask for what I want and need without fear of being thought of as demanding, a burden, trouble, or in the way. I am going to try and change the paradigm of my self and feel worthy enough. I realize it is easier said than done, and like last year I will probably forget I set this goal as soon as it is written.
However, for some time now I already sense a stirring, a shift in how I perceive myself. So ... I think I am already on my way ...
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