People don’t give themselves enough credit. They focus on themselves, listening to their inner guidance, pay attention to their conscience, take action to bring their lives into harmony with all that, start moving towards making their dreams a reality and then they ask, “So, you think I’m on the right track? Is this what I’m supposed to be doing?” **OMG Yes!**
This isn’t a failing, really, it’s that sometimes we can’t see the forest for the trees. We’re so inside what we’re doing, we have a vague notion of how big it is, how life altering, how amazing, but we don’t see the incremental changes happening. We need something outside of us to hold up that mirror. Also, we just don’t value this work in ourselves. It’s a weird thing in our culture. We see heroes as wonderful other people. We see them in the media, in movies, on TV, and they are fantastic because they are so not us. We see the inflated, dramatic, out of the ordinary heroes because that’s what is enjoyable entertainment and what sells product. So we begin to have skewed notions of what heroic actions look like. We devalue the Herculean tasks we set for ourselves and get a warped vision of who we actually are and the amazing things we are doing day by day.
Many times we take on more than one monumental task at a time. We decide to launch into a new career at the same time we’re making changes in our personal life and we’re moving house and we’re learning new skills. Then we wonder why things aren’t going as quickly as we planned, why things feel so sluggish and we just don’t have any energy for anything. 🙂 If we’re doing all this great work, if we’re making our dreams reality, shouldn’t we feel better about it? Shouldn’t we be happier and full of energy? Yes. That would be true if we were doing one of these things at a time. But because we don’t give ourselves enough credit for how much we are doing and we are in a hurry to get to the good part, to get from here to there, to get out of the in between and the unsure, we don’t take the time to validate our experience, care for ourselves or breath.
So the voice of our soul gets a bit drowned out, we get a bit worn down, we don’t see ourselves clearly and all that hard work that deserves applause and appreciation goes unnoticed. But we can change that. Today, write a note to yourself and put it somewhere prominent. Write: Today I give you full credit where credit is due. You have done a great job. Your debt to your old self is paid in full. Take a break. You’ve earned it.