Here's something I wrote to my clients that best describes where I have been, where I am, and where I choose to go in 2012....My apologies for the length (learning to edit is goal #1 in 2012) — Lucila

I know that even though I have been a Life Coach for many years I considered being vulnerable myself a weakness (although I wouldn't admit it for many years). In more recent years, I started to see that the reason to "hide" (and not share how I was truly experiencing life) is because I thought I was the "only one." My unconscious little voice would say "there is something wrong with you." The context I had created for my life was of feeling good when I thought I was "better than others" or "good" and beat myself up for not measuring up.

Then I started to play with putting the past in the past (in my mind where it belongs), not in the future, and all of a sudden there was an opening to CREATE from a place of choice (like a clean slate). I started to see others as human beings with their own pasts and interpretations of their worlds and the world was full of possibility. I could love even those who had "wronged me" because I was present to the fact that they had "stories" they were not even aware were affecting them. I started to feel a lightness in my being I had never felt. I felt invincible and unstoppable, because "failing" no longer meant "you are not good enough" (this comes from my past). 

And then, as I restructured my business, I started to feel anxious again. The comparison game began. I started to question every move I made and the judging became my normal once again. I would wake up in the morning and not be motivated and felt scared of every opportunity because I could "fail." And I started to tell myself a story (my created truth) that I was now an even bigger loser because I had known what freedom and peace of mind felt like, and now I had 'failed" at that too. 

A person like me, I told myself, who knows the practices and tools, and can't use them to feel good, must be a loser. 

Through the support of my Coach, I continued to practice "noticing" without judging and "choosing" moment to moment to put the "you are not good enough, something is wrong with you, you are a loser" interpretations in the past.  I asked myself many times, "why am I still practicing this? It's not working!...I still feel anxious, down, upset...".

And slowly I started to notice moments of peace of mind again and then I would notice moments where I was wrapped up in my my story again and felt anxious. 

This way of being continues today, yet I have found a key ingredient that allows for those "wrapped up in my story" moments to be just that. You see, what I started to notice is that I would create a story about me being in my story! And I would judge that and myself! The key ingredient is that I had forgotten to LOVE MYSELF. 

In his book "The Pursuit of Perfect", Tal Ben-Shahar writes "...We routinely refuse to accept our own humanity.... If your daughter did not earn first place in a competition, would their imperfect record diminish your love for them?  Probably not. And yet when we ourselves fall short, we often regard ourselves as wholly inadequate, utter failures."

He goes on to write: "There is much research pointing to the importance of self-esteem when dealing with difficult experiences. Recently, however, psychologists Mark Leary and his colleagues have illustrated that especially in hard times, compassion toward the self is actually more helpful than self-esteem is.  Self compassion helps people not to add a layer of self-recrimination on top of whatever bad things happen to them. If people only learn to feel better about themselves but continue to beat themselves up when they fail or make mistakes, they will be unable to cope non defensively with their difficulties.... Self compassion includes being understanding and kind toward oneself, mindfully accepting painful thoughts and feelings and recognizing that one's difficult experiences are part of being human."

So when we pick a goal, we want to be aware of why we choose this goal. Is it because we are trying to "prove" something in order to be good enough. Or perhaps we think that we will finally feel good about ourselves when we achieve the end result (so we stay fixated on the result). Once we put the stories which no longer serve us in the past, we can re-visit that goal and either drop it or choose to go after it with new found passion or excitement because there is no longer a fear that you might fail. AND if you do happen to "fail." you can now choose to beat yourself up or choose self-compassion. 

And yes, this is a practice. This takes practice. But we don't need to practice to get somewhere. There is no longer a need to go fast with it or to "finally" learn it or get it. The ups, the downs become ups and downs and something we can "notice" as part of our humanity rather than a BIG honking story about why we can't or can do something. The practice of choosing self compassion, the practice of "noticing" a thought without judging it, the practice of choosing to put our stories in the past, the practice of choosing to create a goal that inspires us "just because" becomes life itself. And then we can truly be present to create possibility. We can be present to our own contribution in the world. We can be present to our humanity. We can be present to our greatness.

We can be unstoppable.