Four little words that are stealing away your true power (audio blog)
**Personal Story Ends and Content Begins at 6minutes 28seconds**
Audio Transcript:
Hello hello it’s Nicolette Stinson, Feminine Embodiment Coach here to chat about 4 little words that steal your power, my experience with these 4 little words and how you can take your power back from the disempowering stories that might be playing out in your experience and I’m here with a little bit of a new format for you. I’ve decided to start creating podcast style audio blogs. I’ve been drawn to creating a podcast over the last year or so and as a way to ease into that and test out the audio waters I decided to make it a little easier on myself and start creating these audio blogs and perhaps one day they will morph into an official podcast for you.
So thanks for being here and listening in today. I’m just getting back from a two week vacation in California. I am currently living in Hawaii for those of you who didn’t know, so I was visiting family and spending time in Bass Lake, CA which is just outside of Yosemite and the place my husband and I were married 5 years ago. So it was really beautiful to be there and to be able to travel and visit with family for the first time in quite awhile.
And prior to this vacation I had been super immersed in creating my first embodied movement experience and program called Reclaim Your Joy and supporting a small group of women through it as beta testers, which was really awesome and exciting. But my time and focus was really consumed by that process and I haven’t been able to stay really present on email or on social media. The combination of creating that program, sessions with private clients, enrolling new clients, I also had a brand photoshoot and then going on vacation, all of a sudden weeks have gone by and I’m now creating that momentum to re-engage and feeling into what I want to share, what would be valuable and what you might really need to hear right now as it relates to feminine embodiment.
And so, side note, if there is anything that you would like to know about feminine embodiment coaching, or embodied movement practices, or especially if you’ve maybe been feeling overly busy, burnt out, disconnected and like your kind of stuck in the dullness and monotony of life and what your really desiring is more joy, pleasure, confidence, purpose, self-acceptance, self-love or self reverence, and you are wondering how feminine embodiment coaching can support you to close that gap please do let me know what your questions are around any and all of this and I’d be happy to do my best to answer them in upcoming audio blogs.
But, back to my story, something my embodiment training and practice introduced to me is this concept of calibration. So as I prepared to re-engage with work and my content creation and I was feeling into this question of what would be valuable to share right now I could sense that I needed to practice this concept of calibration.
What this means is that instead of kind of pushing or forcing myself to just get something done or even just immediately jumping into the “doing” of content creation and my work yesterday morning instead I did an embodied movement practice and went to the spa in the afternoon and got a massage, knowing that what would serve me and you most is really allowing my body and my energy and my being feel into this question of what would be valuable to express and share with you and low and behold during my massage I was letting my mind wander and just enjoy this lovely gift to myself and I started to naturally think about how I hadn’t reached out via email or social media in several weeks and I felt a little bit of this old sense of disappointment in myself for not being able to “keep up” with what I thought needed to be done, which to me is posting everyday, creating new content, enrolling clients, serving clients, updating my website and sending emails every week….but I simultaneously as I felt that I was also really able to release that feeling and I also truly deeply felt a newer sense of deep trust and knowing that it’s all perfect and that I am doing my absolute best and it’s all working out and this is really where my being landed- I didn’t know this was exactly what I needed, but this deep trust was what I gave my body an opportunity to calibrate to and to ultimately fully embody, so that i wasn’t operating here from an energy of disappointment in myself and “keeping up” but instead I could offer up something that felt really true and right to me right now while honoring my body and my self.
And then I thought wow that is really powerful and something you might want to hear about and I’ve been wanting to try this audio thing out so I thought, I’m going to share an audio blog about this and here we are!
**In my experience and in my opinion this sense of not being able to “keep up” with all of life’s demands and this underlying sense of not “doing enough” is really pervasive in our world right now and especially as a modern woman with all the sometimes mixed messages of who we “should” be in the world and the expectations we hold to be all of this, which may include being this flawless, beautiful, well-rested, put-together feminine woman and a perfect wife, mother, sister, friend and an ambitious career/business woman all while being devoted to meaningful causes and movements, tenderly supporting the people around us and being sexy and turned on -only when deemed appropriate of course though. There is a lot of messaging going on for women. I’m sure you’ve felt pressure around keeping up or “doing enough” in one if not all of those areas. And those are just to name a few. It’s a lot.
I know a good chunk of my life so far a lot of my time and energy has been spent in servitude to this voice that was telling me “I’m not doing enough” and because in this world, so much of our value gets wrapped up in what we “do”, this ultimately is the voice telling us “I am not enough”. And this is a story that every woman I know has been touched by. This story is a whole other blog on it’s own.
So, for me, this story of “I'm not doing enough” was a bit sneaky because I really thought and believed that this was what I wanted and I thought all this “doing” was really making me a “better” person. I looked around and it was what I saw most everyone else doing, especially if they were successful. And It was really just like the water I had been swimming in my whole life, I didn’t really even know it was there and I didn’t know anything different.
And I wish I could tell you I had some big epiphany and everything changed,never to go back to the same again but this didn’t happen, for me it has really been a slow process of coming to understand and relate with my “doing” and my approach to taking actions in my life and in my work in starting to take action in new ways and simply making incremental changes. So now I can look back and see how far I’ve come but it hasn’t happened all at once and it can honestly still be easy to slip into old patterns because it is the water that we are swimming in.
And this story of I’m not doing enough, although it used to be much louder, once in a while, it still has me feeling guilty for needing breaks, telling myself there’s something wrong with me and sure that I’ll never be able to reach the elusive level of success that is always somewhere out in front of me. And I know I’m not alone in this. These four words, I’m not doing enough, are embedded deeply into the operating systems of most modern women and most people in general. We are absolutely steeped in a culture of doing, one that values rational intellect over feeling and progress over true presence.
And sure, maybe, at times these four words, I’m not doing enough, they can and may actually hold some truth. We all can have moments of swinging too far into the emotional, into a lack of structure and out of integrity with committed action and it may serve us to start doing more of the things that will support us and our lives, that is a real thing as well…… but for most modern women, most of the time, these four little words, I’m not doing enough, are stealing away their true power and perpetually living inside this story is a sure sign that you’ve disconnected from your body and the source of power that lives within your body.
When we are disconnected from our body and the truth and the wisdom, life source energy and power within our body it’s often because there is something within us, a pain, a small or large trauma, a shame, something that we don’t want to or don’t feel safe to allow ourselves to feel and any of those, or even just the demands of life in general cause us to become really outward focused, overly busy, prioritizing productivity over all else and in either case living this way causes most of our energy to ascend and pool up in our heads…. So we are essentially operating from the neck up, in a disembodied state.
And this is actually how our culture, especially, if you live in the west like I do, prefers us to be and at times it demands from us that we just get used to being this way….. Which can include feeling disconnected, numbed out, depleted and too exhausted to change. I believe rest and slowing down, has in many ways, become a revolutionary act in a world addicted to instant gratification and doing more, more of the time…...and that embodiment is essential to the well-being of people and the planet and a sustainable future.
Your devotion to doing the things to connect you with your body, and these may at times feel like your not doing anything or at least not anything productive, your devotion to doing these things that actually connect you to your body and it’s deep currents of feeling and sensitivity vs. doing all the things you think you should or have to be doing, the things that perpetuate this disconnection and this disempowering story that you or what you are doing is not enough or any other disempowering story, this devotion instead to your embodiment is essential if you want to live a life of joy, pleasure, purpose, passion, if you want to take back your power, reclaim your joy and if you desire to be a part of planet and a future that is connected, healthy and thriving.
But often times we will have a thought, like I’m not doing enough, and we keep it up in our heads, swirling and circling around and collecting evidence around us for why that thought is true and then building a whole story around that thought, and these stories build and build in our heads, stories like what I’m doing isn’t enough, it’s not working, I need to change, my life needs to change, I’ll never have everything I want, I’m not enough, I’m flawed, I’m broken, I’m worthless. All of these thoughts and stories flying around in our head directing the overwhelming amount of actions we need to take to just get through the day.
Embodiment practices give us the time, space and safe container to explore our inner world, to examine not only what we are thinking but how these thoughts actually make us feel. And generally when we can really allow ourselves to feel the consequences or the felt emotion surrounding these disempowering stories, to let them fully land in our heart, we simultaneously allow them to be released from the pressure cooker that is the head or the mind. And a deeper embodied truth then has space to replace that old story. Like for myself in my story at the beginning of this audio blog, when I felt and released the disappointment in myself that came along with the old story of I’m not doing enough, I allowed a deeper, wiser embodied truth to fill my being, that I can trust myself and my life, that I am doing my absolute best and it’s all working out in my favor always.
So….question for you, what thoughts and stories are you telling yourself that might be stealing away your power currently? Perhaps you can relate with this thought or this story around “I’m not doing enough”. Perhaps it’s something similar but maybe for you it takes some other form or voice. Maybe it sounds more like, I’m not enough, I’m too much, I don’t matter, I’m not beautiful enough, I’m not fit enough, nobody understands me, nothing ever works out, I have to do it all or no one else will, if I stop or let down my guard I will drown. Each of these thoughts and stories, on the surface, they are only a few words but each has the potential to thoroughly drain you of your life energy and your power. And each of these stories has a potential deeper, embodied wisdom patiently waiting to be revealed to you as you devote yourself to lovingly connect with your body, with your pleasure, your heart-felt self acceptance and your innate joy.
So, one last question for you to ponder today is how will you connect with your body and her felt sensations today, tomorrow or this week?
And if you are intrigued or called to learn more about Feminine Embodiment Coaching please reach out. I’d love to connect.
I hope you enjoyed these musings today. If you are still listening and you received an insight or something of value from this audio blog please pass it on to someone in your life you feel would appreciate it and benefit from it as well.
I have a lot more coming for you soon and again if you have any questions for me that you’d like me to address in upcoming audio blogs please send your comments and questions my way.
Thank you so much for joining me in my first audio blog. Sending so much love to you!