The question isn’t how messed up the world outside is but how willing am I to look within & nurture the soul inside?
Deep inner work, Imma work in progress…
FULL DISCLAIMER:
This Work in Progress, Deep Inner Work blog post is all about me and my own journey, and I am not entirely sure if you will find value in it, but I sincerely hope that it will help ask yourself some deep insightful questions?
As you read the below, please know that none of this is coming from a place of ego but from a place of self-awareness. And the level of self-awareness that I have comes from the inner work that I have done for as long as I can remember (since childhood, yep!), except, I didn’t know that it is what I was doing until I joined Jay Shetty Coaching Certification School.
“Inner Work is the process of deliberately changing yourself through bringing an awareness to what is happening inside you and how it affects what you do in the world.”
“Inner work is the psychological and spiritual practice of diving deep into your inner self for the purposes of self-exploration, self-understanding, healing, and transformation.”
Image Source: Morgan Harper Nichols
Something unexpected hit me real hard last Monday morning and I hadn’t been able to come to terms with it. The bit about ‘not being able to come to terms with something’ is really hard for me to deal with.
Given the kind of person that I am, I need to process things, make sense of it, either find a solution to a problem and put it into practice so I can resolve it, or make peace with how things are at the moment and move on. But this unique circumstance + who I am and how I operate didn’t make space for me to do either.
So it was especially hard for me as I cannot simply dwell on something or moan about it forever.
All in all, that entire week was an out and out s***show and I haven’t dealt with anything quite like it in about a decade… a roller coaster of emotions, thoughts, beliefs, ideologies, and more importantly me questioning them all, all of which when I was least expecting it (duh, life!) so you can only imagine the depth and intensity of what the week might have looked like…
My head/heart was a clusterf***, to say the least, and not a pretty place to be.
The whole darn week was full of deep raw emotions, buckets and buckets of tears, and oodles of confusion. And for the first time, I was even caught off guard by the imposter syndrome (what I call type 3 imposter syndrome).
Not that I am not humble when I say I don’t have imposter syndrome, but the kind of imposter syndrome I have (type 1) is one that makes me get better at what I do, rather than stopping me from doing what I want to do (type 2), or question if I should even be doing it in the first place (type 3, the worse kind). Again, not a pretty place to be or a pretty thing to feel.
FYI – Classifying Imposter Syndrome as type 1, type 2, and type 3 is something I do, I don’t think it is ever described that way anywhere else.
While I haven’t written a single poem in my whole entire life, these words naturally flew out of me last week –
What you want to rid at all costs
Is what chases you the most
Life doesn’t let you off that easy
When there are lessons to be learned
And lots of work to be done
Growth happens at times of distress
Time to break the mold
Leave behind old patterns
What got me here won’t get me there
But the million-dollar question is, what next?
After some mind-boggling-heart-to-heart conversations/dialogues with some incredible people, including with my Life Coach (couldn’t thank my stars enough for this support system in my life right now!) and now that I’ve had a moment to catch my breath, I am kinda incredibly grateful for this opportunity to learn/stretch/grow from these experiences. It was as if the universe conspired to put me through it all to really give me what I NEED! In a way, I was the one who had set the intentions for it at the beginning of the year, except, I didn’t know how it was going to come about and unfold (oh the irony, oh 2020!).
Now I know WHAT NEXT, and right now, nothing resonates with me quite like how a waterfall does – fluid, ever-changing, renewing, flexible, open, powerful, letting go…
Related Posts: Read all the inspiration, motivation, & tips here
BUT, as I pondered more about those mind-boggling-heart-to-heart conversations, I asked myself how did that even happen? Because I am not one to talk about the details of my thoughts and/or life with others (except with my hubby), but I did just that last week, and that too over and over again with multiple people.
So how on Earth did that even happen?
But first, the reason that I do not talk about the details of my life is not that I do not want to talk about it, but because I haven’t had people in my life who can resonate with what I say from the perspective I do. Plus, (I say this with all due respect) I can’t stand preconceived notions, judgment (not that I care but I just feel like I don’t even need to get into it or be there), and the never-ending opinionated advice (trust me, I will NEVER do anything with it unless I am absolutely sure you know where I am coming from. Yeah, I know, I am a tough cookie).
That’s not to say that I think I know it all and that I don’t need help, I have no hesitation reaching out to folks for help. But just that up until now I hadn’t found those people who could really help me where I need the most. when one is on the path of a never-ending personal growth journey as me, I have always found the kind of advice/inspiration I need from folks who I look up to (and follow) online. Again, because I didn’t have that in real life until recently (besides my hubby of course).
I have typically been the one on the other side lifting people up (and helping them peel the layers) but last week I needed all the help, and for once I leaned on other folks because I knew I have finally found my tribe! And boy was I blown away!?
All of this would probably make more sense to you if you were to hear my story and my journey from when I was as little as 5-6 years old, yep, no kidding (tying it back to the inner work that I have done, started back then at that early age)! It is absolutely fascinating to think about how we evolve from being those little humans to whatever we end up becoming later on in life.
My group coaching ladies can totally vouch for it as they got a glimpse of my past, present, and (even) future! Something that only my hubby has been privy to until now.
This dawned on me as I started chatting more about it with my hubby at the end of last week. And suddenly it all made total sense about the recent heart-to-heart conversations that I have had with other people… Because, these conversations give me exactly what I want and what I need, these people talk about the REAL STUFF.
Those dialogues did not revolve around making me feel better or feel nice about myself (trust me, I already do that for myself, I genuinely take pride in who I am as a person and how far I have come, while also honestly acknowledging all the work that I need to do to get better in life day after day after day, it is a lifelong journey!).
And talking about REAL STUFF is all about peeling the layers, one after another, asking probing deep insightful questions, challenging one’s beliefs and thoughts (in a healthy way), no biases, no judgment, calling each other out on our BS, allowing ourselves to stay in that place of discomfort. I (and the people I spoke with) not just survive but we thrive in such a level of discomfort!
Because I see every difficult and uncomfortable situation and/or person as a lesson that I haven’t yet learned and that offers me the opportunity to learn/stretch/grow.
So the work I need to do now is that deep (deep) inner work, which is where I always felt lost. Wasn’t sure where exactly to even begin? But I think that last week was an excellent opening to it. Dang UNIVERSE!
Does any of it make sense to you at all!?
Either way, just know that when a conversation begins with ‘I don’t have much to say/contribute today’ is a great opening leading up to an intense-mind-f’n 5-hour conversation, phew!
Current Mood —
Deconstructing…
Piecing the puzzle together…
“As long as we remain vigilant at building our internal abundance—an abundance of integrity, an abundance of forgiveness, an abundance of service, an abundance of love—then external lack is bound to be temporary.”
Namaste,
Kusum
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