Stopping me in my tracks – this weeks round up

Do you ever stop suddenly and remember that you have veered far from your intended path? Sometimes this can be a positive veer, filled with opportunity and new ideas. In my case this week was a real eye opener.

For many years now, in fact since I completed and formulated ‘Project: Me!’ I have had a solid sense of soul. I have know what, at the bottom of everything, my solid foundation is. The problem is, it’s so easy to forget and return to old conditioned behaviour and old patterns of hurting yourself.

In the final part of the ‘Project: Me!’ programme I suggest ways to keep this sense of self and intention at the forefront of your life; this week I found myself going over old ground. I had fallen back into my old habit of being over-competitive, of risking my integrity for very little, of selling out. I know who I am and I know what I need to do. Yet I had almost given up on this and meandered into a pointless, fruitless circular trek after the transparent dangling carrot, as Alanis would say!

I have spent more time that I would like at the hospital this week. First I had an operation, then a follow up, then my daughter went into premature labour and had a Cesarean Section. This meant spending time away from my desk, time outside myself first caring for my body, then caring for my children. The welcoming my new granddaughter into the world. It brought into sharp perspective the pattern of these return to old habits; if I spend time with people (even virtually) who are financially motivated and lusting for fame (even the superficial kind of fame where they have sold out) then I am devoured by it.

Then I lose the love for myself. I become the object of my desire, it shapes my actions and forces me to make the nuances of other people’s conversations, and the gaps in them, relative to my cause. They become my competition and I am in danger of entering a dangerous dynamic.

Yet I know, at the bottom of my mind, that there is no real reward in this round after round of pushing. I know that I am happy and balanced within my own construction of what is morally acceptable. Retracing my steps through my own, original ‘Project: Me!’ portfolio has reminded me of what is really important in the breadth and depth of my own life. It stopped me in my tracks and made me smile.

Where I had temporarily felt bound by other people’s demands, by the way people can totally miss the happiness of a situation and, instead, focus on the competitiveness of it due to guilt and insecurity, I was released back to myself. Where I was caught up in pointless drama, the ‘he said, she said’ that drains the joy from life, I was suddenly free again.

Family. Writing. Psychology. Looking after my body. Paying no attention to irrational drama. Loving myself. Isn’t that what (my) life is really about?

1 thought on “Stopping me in my tracks – this weeks round up”

  1. Well put Jacqui – we are all prisoners of everyday competitions, aren’t we? I know the feeling of ‘drain’ well – I’d be a hermit it I could – but t’internet draws me in like a siren… I wish I could stop, I really do.

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