Shame on ME!
"A painful feeling of humiliation or distress caused by the consciousness of wrong or foolish behaviour"
Well that's what Google says SHAME means.
Why I am writing about it
But the reason I wrote this particular blog post is because the other week I was out on a morning run and I tuned into a new podcast episode.
Listening to a podcast when I run is good for two reasons:
It distracts me from the running, which I need at times.
I pay more attention to what's being said during the episode.
So this one particular podcast is by an incredible lady called Lucy Superfox (I'll pop her Instagram link on the end of this post.) and she did an episode called "SHAME & FEAR - What to do if you keep saying 'should'?
The title alone called out to me and I just had to listen.
What Lucy had to say…
Lucy talks all around how shame showed up in her life and the impact it had on her. Particularly during 2020, and how she had an idea of how she thought her business would go and that's not what happened. Lucy had a "concept in her head of where she should be by a certain time period...."
Sounding familiar?
Yes! This is where I want to bring my story in as I have just come back from the gym and despite the endorphins my energy is low and I am feeling disempowered about certain areas in my life. I feel this way because I too believed that my I should be at a certain level by now and I am not as so I feel shame and I feel like a failure.
Why I feel this way
Now it's hard for me to say it but I want my blog to be as authentic as possible and my business is where a lot of my shame lies. I believe that I SHOULD be further along in my business than I am, I SHOULD have seen more 'success' than I have, people SHOULD be coming to me for help, I SHOULD be the one inspiring others, I SHOULD be the one seeing the big jumps but I'm not.
It’s all in my head!
Now, no-one has directly said to me that I should be at a certain point by a certain time to be able to call myself a coach, or better yet, a successful coach. However, entering the coaching world through a group programme, I was exposed to many people at different stages of their journey and the main people we heard from were the ones making leaps. It was amazing too see such success, but it hit me more than it lit me up. Every time someone succeeded, I felt more like a failure and that is because I compared myself to people way more than I should. Comparison NEVER makes me feel good, it doesn't motivate me, it doesn't make me do more, it simply shuts me down and takes the wind out of my sails.
So when I listened to Lucy's podcast episode around shame, I totally connected with what she was saying. I did feel shame because my life wasn't where I decided it should be. Having coaching friends tell you, you are their ideal client is never taken as a positive by me because to me that's a reminder that they are a real coach, getting paid and I am the one still paying for a coach.
Stepping back a bit
Taking the emotion out of it, I am just over a year into starting a coaching business and I came in as a total newbie. I had no influence over my audience, I didn't know what it meant to run a business online, I didn't know what it meant to run a business full stop but here I was. In the grand scheme of things, one year is absolutely no time at all for a new business but, again I do find myself in this toxic comparison mode when I see other coaches who were on the course at the same time as me having way more success than I have seen.
I don't want this post to feel all doom and gloom or like I am a proper miserable sod who brings you down. What I want to share is that, this is how I can feel when I allow my mind to drift towards negative thoughts, because when you think of one, you can then think of one more. Our brains are like Google, you give it a question and it will find the answer, so when I say I am failing, my brain will find all the 'evidence' from my past memories to back that feeling up.
If you are in this feeling right now or catch yourself in it, here's some things I want you to do:
Allow yourself to feel into this feeling, because underneath it all, you will find the source or the limiting belief.
Forgive yourself for feeling this way, it doesn't make you a bad person, it makes you human.
Journal through it - whether it be with pen or paper (probably more powerful) or on a device like me because I find it easier and quicker.
Ask for help or talk to someone - these feelings and beliefs I am going to take with me to my next session with my coach. They'll be hard to open up about but she may just give me guidance that will support me on overcoming this limiting belief and what is truly holding me back.
Go listen to the episode, you can find Lucy's podcast The Way I See It on Apple podcast and Spotify. https://open.spotify.com/episode/6OSJYCB2vbLI9OCUPeGU1C?si=852689c95ba545aa
It really helped me to get this down on virtual paper and I'm looking forward to sharing it with you all. If this post resonated with you or you are currently living with this feeling of shame, know that you are not alone. I am always open to receiving messages about your biggest takeaways, feedback from my posts and ideas for future ones.
Now,
Turnanewpage x
To connect with Lucy online, you can find her on Instagram athttps://open.spotify.com/episode/6OSJYCB2vbLI9OCUPeGU1C?si=852689c95ba545aa Lucy Superfox - Small & Sassy (@lucysuperfox) • Instagram photos and videos
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