As the new year unfolds before me, I’ve spent time reflecting on the year that passed, and how I will grow in 2012.
What was in 2011…
What were some of your favourite moments?
- Looking out over the lights of downtown Toronto from 50 stories up while a snow storm blew outside
- Meeting Jack for the first time
- Taking Jack to the park for the first time
- Signing my first car lease
- Landing on Big Island
What challenged you?
- My self-confidence
- Being a true partner to my husband
- Not caretaking
- My performance anxiety
- Being a loving and supportive parent to myself
Thank you for your love and support this year!
all my love,
I behave and you think it’s because of you.
You take my choices personally.
It’s not about you
My choices have nothing to do with you.
Even when they are in reaction to you.
How I behave is about me.
It’s my stuff
It’s about me. Despite what I might say.
Even when I tell you you’re not good enough.
I’ve learned something about myself. I have performance anxiety.
It cripples me. It makes me freeze.
When it envelopes me, it blocks me from seeing the whole. It’s hard to see out of it. All I can see is through it.
I’ve had it since childhood, but before now, I hadn’t seen it for what it was. Even thought she’s been right beside me for so long.
Here She Goes Again
My negativity, the voice in my head, she is ANXIETY. FEAR. JUDGEMENT. over what I am. Before I thought she was helpful, saving me from my own embarrassment. But now I see that she acts better than me, in attempt to keep me down. She needs to feel better than all the shit I create.
Trying to be good enough for Them, I’ve created an image of perfection, that I do not fit.
Not being perfect, I reject myself.
Getting older, I see that perfect is no longer about being good enough for Them — it’s about being good enough for my Self.
I’ve been hiding from you.
Okay, I’ve been hiding from myself.
I’ve been calling myself a coach for a while now – and it does fit, sort of. I mean, it is a part of what I do…
But at the heart of me, I am not a coach.
At the core of me, what I am, what I have always been, is a designer. A designer and a writer. Doing those two things brings me the greatest pleasure in this world.
The wonderful people I meet and co-create with, and the way in which we design together (through coaching) is important, but is secondary to my deepest pleasures and god-given talent.
I was hiding my designer behind a coach because…
I thought I’d like me better as a coach.
I thought I sometimes think that my value lies in what I do for others, not in who I am. Being a designer, in my old mind, wasn’t “good enough”, it was too much aesthetics and not enough about strategy and helping others. Even though design, to me, is all of those things and more.
Coaching felt safer. It kind of fit and I felt more confident with the description. It helped me to not deal directly with my denial of my designer.
