Wow. Well I think the practice of ‘feeling proud of myself’ could be a major missing piece of my healing and wellbeing jigsaw. I allowed myself to feel proud at all stages of yesterday… and heavens, executive functioning was so much easier. And I felt less exhausted and drained by the end of the day.
‘Feeling proud of myself’ puts a plug in the bath tub of my self-esteem. I can actually gather a sense of achievement, reward, dopamine, validation, well-being for work done. NO ONE else can give me that… how ever much I seek their applause. EVEN IF I get someone to say, “Oh, well done!”, it only sticks and gathers if I contribute my own sense of “Oh, well done!”
‘Feeling proud of myself’ takes away the need for approval seeking. And it gathers compound interest.
‘Feeling proud of myself’ is a completely different self-orientation to the normal for me. The normal for me says, “Oh heck, I’ve got all this stuff yet to do. Bad me…. It’s not done.. ‘ So I clear the stuff, and wait for someone to say, well done. They may or may not do, but it still leaves me hungering. So I do more stuff… Still hungering for validation. I WAS THE MISSING LINK!!! I have to give myself the Well Done! And truly feel it. Not from time to time, but again and again.
For heavens sake, we’re living through a pandemic, and an insane government who has pushed our national stability off the rails… We’re all doing well to get through it, and we should all feel proud of ourselves. We are all brilliant. Yes, even those nutters in government… they are doing the best with what they have (including blind privilege and relentless narcissism)!
If we all APPRECIATED and RECOGNISED and VALIDATED ourselves (aka felt proud of ourselves) how much more stable and calm we would be! I wouldn’t even have a job!
I have a big 5 party mediation to co-mediate today. It’s the 21dec20 when Jupiter and Saturn are meeting for the first time in 800 years. May this day be blessed for us all. May we all feel proud of ourselves by the end of today.
Look at this in TPP:
‘When we feel lack in any aspect of our experience, it’s because somewhere or somehow we are attempting to get what we want by taking from others whatever we perceive to be lacking in ourselves. Here is an important realization to digest: Our wanting, which is driven by our unintegrated emotional charge, leads us to believe that what we seek in order to feel satisfied is something solid and tangible – money, a car, a new house, a position in the workplace. But it isn’t. It’s never the “thing” that we are really after, but the resonance associated with possessing the thing. We therefore ask ourselves: “What is the resonance associated with having what I want?” Then, instead of chasing this thing, we give ourselves this resonance by feeling it now. We feel this resonance without condition.’ The Presence Process p219
Well, I can now see, the driver behind so much of what I’ve done across my life, is the subconscious, inadmissible desire to ‘feel proud of myself’. THAT’s the resonance I craved since childhood…. and sought to take from others by pleasing or wowing them. I may not have craved a car/money/house, but if I ask why I want to do the work I do, or why I want to build SoD… it’s so I can feel the resonance of ‘Good girl. Well done. You did a good thing. You should feel proud of yourself.’ Poignant, eh?
And how beautiful to know you can grant yourself that resonance right now – without losing momentum, but in order to gain focus and power to advance in your mission and your external goals.
If you would like to see what else is possible for you, tune into self-recognition. Take the standards you apply to others, and apply them to yourself. You will see that you are undertaking good work, with good personal discipline, and that your work ethic is just as strong as you could ever have hoped for it to be.
My work ethic… I hadn’t thought of that as an important factor.
Are you kidding?! That’s why you withhold self-appreciation and self-recognition – because you uphold an almost impossibly unattainable work ethic standard for yourself. You do two days work in one, and feel low at the end of the day… Why, because you don’t recognise what you’ve done, and then a) nor do you feel the accomplishment and pride arising and b) you expect yourself to do the same the next day, without a break.
Really?!
Really. Grant yourself some recognition, and see how you find balance in your days. Like G. who takes breaks, and goes at a sustainable pace. Did you notice how tired you were on Sat? [In bed til 6pm] By more accurate self-recognition, you will become more focussed (quality not quantity) and choose your work with greater precision. Only you can recognise your worth effectively.
Thank you for these beautiful practices. May we all know our own worth, on this day of days. May we all feel pride, awe, joy. May we all appreciate and recognise that which we bring to the collective which is the human race. May we learn to love ourselves unconditionally, in all the ways possible.
I am practising self-recognition