FEELING LIKE ENOUGH

We are whole and enough in everything we are; everything we are giving and endeavoring. In our growth and reaching, we are perfect and whole way before we even attempt the reach. We were born enough.

Are you fracturing your light in multiple directions? Are you feeding your passions but not yourself? Are you feeling like between the demands of your work life, your family and friends, YOU actually disappear? Is your spiritual practice and connection suffering because in the chaos of “getting it all done”, and the endless striving for fulfillment, the only place you can find to put it is the bottom of the priority list? We are splatter painting what we want to happen out to the Universe. Scattering our essence only creates more opportunity to over-extend and feel unfocused, depleted, and like we’re not enough.

We need to stop trying to be everything to everyone all the time.
The habit, addiction and to some degree cultural expectation of chronic over-extension is contributing to the plaque on the vessel of our souls. Over-extension in my experience does not lead to fulfillment; it leads to fatigue, breakdown and the slowing of all that we desire moving toward us. It gets in the way and obstructs our flow making things more challenging, making the perceived need to force our way through even more urgent. It is exhausting our nation. Our deep sense of inadequacy and unworthiness, the feeling that we are not enough, is not just coming from our environmental cultural acceptance, habitual patterning, old insecurities and childhood stories. It was also born with each of us: we came from the unlimited and now we’re in little, limited meat suits. We are humans, and therefore limited. And within those limitations we are exploring and growing our capacities. We are learning and developing. But doing it all, being it all, and having it all is a myth, a trap, and a dangerous game without a prize.

I have been the poster child for over-extension, exhaustion and burnout.
I felt behind and blew my back out. I felt overwhelmed and cried with exhaustion. I was running too fast and got into an accident. I was squashing my light and had anxiety that interrupted my sleep. I didn’t make time to speak my truth and ended up spoken for. I invested everywhere and got nowhere.

Now when I start to feel like everything is spinning out of control, and there is too much to do, and I can’t possibly swim through it all gracefully, I get quiet and remember that my human ways are small. I remember that the world isn’t happening “to” me, that I am co-creating my experience. I take responsibility and remember that I am intrinsically worthy of Divine miracles, and a much more aligned priority list that carries me toward my joy and my highest expression of loving service. I have a choice to focus. As Iyanla VanZant says, “Holiness to the rescue.”

“Be still and know that I am God.” Psalms 46:10.
Whatever God consciousness is to you, whatever form the Divine takes, nature, science, love, this simple verse cam still ring true. For a corporate go-getter who bled masculine fixer, warrior, leader energy since I was a toddler, the idea of letting something besides my own ego lead me was outrageously foreign. Yet this is where my journey into surrender, stillness, self-love, and the depth of trust I now work from began.

I am not suggesting that we need to stop striving, growing, emerging and evolving. My suggestion is more along the lines of alignment. Alignment not only with what is in terms of our unique limitations, but also with what is true for our individual expression versus what we perceive the world is asking for or demanding of us. Choose experiences that gently replenish, become a little bit more self-serving about where you are investing your time. Align your priorities with what you think and feel and know to be true for you, and as I wrote last month, release “supposed to”.

Take a few mental notes:
Where do I feel like I am not enough? Where am I not showing up? Where is my energy going that I don’t desire for it to? What is sucking the life force out of me? What am I doing purely out of obligation? Where am I spending my vitality? Where do I desire to give more? Where do I desire to be more? In what area do I most desire to grow? Where do I feel called to serve?

PIE CHART COMPASS
There is only one pie that is you. You might have several extension vessels that are also pies in your life, but you, your beautiful unique expression is only one pie.

Create two pie charts:

• The first one is an honest breakdown of where you are actually spending your time, your precious energy and your unique expression.
• The second one is your vision for your life relative to what you most desire to be doing and how you desire to be dividing your time and your precious energy. Make sure YOU are represented on your chart, as the pie is reflective of you and where your intentional energetics are spent, so “me-time” whatever that looks like to you should be represented within the new pie chart.
• Compare the pie charts and make shifts toward your more aligned priorities, then pray and/or intend on miraculous support for your alignment shift. Also share the comparison of what you learned about yourself with any family members, colleagues or friends who help keep you accountable, or whom you share decision-making responsibilities with.

I had the pleasure of leading a women’s circle recently with several wise women of all ages and we did this pie chart exercise. The grace in leading always comes from the learning. During one of the women’s sharing, this insight struck me: the very places we feel we are not enough, are generally the places closest to our hearts. “How can I be a better mom to my kids?” “How can I support my husband more?” “How can I give more to my employees and make my company better?” “How can I be closer to God?” The simple answer to all of these questions lies in the comparison of the two charts we create. Simply decide to, and walk towards this. Check in to the responsibility of where your time and energy is going currently and make shifts into your higher alignment.

The pie charts that the ladies created were amazing. One woman who came from a very strategic and analytical world in her old career was inspired to take the lines and percentages off and draw squiggles representing her freedom, flow and flexibility as well as her commitment to finding God consciousness in all of it. One friend who recently underwent heart surgery drew her pie chart as a heart and divided it that way as a symbol of loving devotion and connection, trusting, following and spending her heart energy where she felt most guided to spend it.

Setting intentions can help create a vision and can help us feel stillness in the trust that we’re growing toward our highest, and with that it is important to love ourselves without agenda, in purity, right now. With that purity we’re open and receptive. Settle into the knowing that you are right where you need to be. Remember that wherever you are, and however tangled your messes, the Divine sees us as perfectly worthy, perfectly capable, perfectly limited. You are precious and divine. You are always enough. Start treating yourself with that knowing.