As a business owner/entrepreneur and self-development nerd, I have been making a conscientious effort to spend more time around people who are a few years ahead of me in their “success”. This is partly because being around such people is inspiring, but also because that’s what I’ve been coached to do throughout the years. I learn how they think, what motivates them, how they handle stress, etc. and try to utilize that in my own life and practice. Sometimes these people are friends and colleagues and sometimes they are blog writers or book authors.
One of my friends has an enviable life. She has a successful business, a healthy and happy marriage, balances work life with adventure and play, manages stress well, is organized, fit and healthy and on the path to creating some really cool things.
Normally when I hang out with her it motivates me to continue to create my wildly successful life, but after spending a weekend with her I found myself jealous and wishing that things just seemed to happen as effortlessly to me as they did to her. Have you ever had a friend or acquaintance like that?
My little inner critic voice was being ridiculously loud, telling me I wasn’t doing enough or taking the “right” approach to life. This certainly wasn’t a moment of pride, and from what I gather from many clients sessions and talking with my close group of friends is that we ALL have these moments of jealousy, fear, or thoughts of being “not enough”. I’m sure even SHE has those moments. The thing is that comparing ourselves to other people robs us of joy. We all have our own unique paths and journeys. We all have different core competencies, gifts and even desires for how we want to feel on a daily basis, thus driving the things we choose to participate in. In addition, we never know what other people are REALLY experiencing, no matter how “perfect” it all seems on the outside.
So instead of continuing to let the inner critic get the best of me and rob me of joy, I decided that I needed to evaluate what wasn’t working and adjust my approach. In this case the approach was how to respond. One of my favorite quotes by Viktor Frankel says:
“Between stimulus and response there is space. In that space lies our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and freedom.”
The stimulus is this case was being around her, watching her thrive and the initial response was feelings of jealousy which led to negative thoughts. The space between that stimulus and my automatic response was tiny. There was a time where those feelings and thoughts would have rapidly spiraled out of control and before I knew it, I would be stuffing myself with food to numb it all out without actually knowing what in the world was happening. I then would have felt guilty about eating the food, and having a lack of control with eating rather than about having the inability to tolerate the emotions that I was avoiding feeling by eating.
Now being equipped with tools from all of my work in becoming an intuitive and mindful eater, which means being an intuitive and mindful individual, I got to practice being intentional in creating space. I noticed, with curiosity, that by feeling and thinking that way, I was then paralyzing myself.
So I allowed those feelings to be there for a moment, for many moments actually. I accepted and acknowledged them, let them flow through me, and noticed the lightness that comes from doing so. Then it occurred to me that even the most successful people in the world have moments of jealousy or self-doubt. The difference is, that in that space after the stimulus, they choose their response.
With now even more space, I was able to choose to think some really empowering and positive thoughts. I started focusing instead on being grateful and proud for all of the ways my life IS wildly successful and instead of being paralyzed by “not-enoughness” I’m aware of the richness of life and am inspired to live that out. And from THAT place, I’m able to move forward in a blissful way.
All because of awareness and space.
Where in your life do you notice an automatic response to a stimulus where you could make some space, and by doing so, choose a more positive response?