Your Mountain

You have been given this mountain to show others it can be moved. 

I’m sure you’ve heard this one already. If you’re anything like me, you’ve likely pondered the “Why THIS mountain? Why RIGHT now?” questions more than once.

I feel like I’ve been up against the Rocky Mountains for some time now, in the trenches of self doubt, self loathing and all that comes with summiting a mountain. The harder it gets, the more I push myself to dig into it and the more I want to scream. I finally get to a point where I feel some clarity coming on, like I’m making some sort of progress and then I look up and, in addition to being part way up the current mountain, I’m at the bottom of another. It. Is. Maddening.

One of the summits on my most recent mountain has been about belief, confidence, authenticity, being true to who I am (and who I am becoming) and all the things that seem to make up self-perception. I’ve been staring up at this mountain for a long time, dreading doing this work because I knew it would be tough to face some of my shit. I knew I was going to need to take an honest stock of the people and things and their value in my life and that it was going to be time to let go of some pretty self-defeating habits and people that no longer earned the spot they wanted to occupy. 

SPOILER ALERT: I am a recovering people pleaser. Well, mostly. I’m still working on it with a few people. I spent years going with the flow because it was easy. Comfortable. Non-confrontational. You don’t really have to make any firm decisions. The occasional head nod or shrug will get you through. The problem with a go-with-the-flow attitude is that you lose yourself in it. You allow yourself to be absorbed into everyone around you and suddenly you don’t recognize yourself or the words coming out of your mouth. 

I have a hard time with belief in myself (which affects the confidence piece) and to be honest, I’m not even sure when or where that started. I don’t know when the opinions of others began to outweigh my own. Over the years it has chipped away at me and I’m at the point where I am so full of fear and sadness from being frozen that I don’t always recognize the person looking back at me in the mirror. It was time to begin the climb to change this. 

My first move was taking a good look at my calendar and the chaos I had been unconsciously welcoming into my days. I’ve frequently heard that if you don’t control your calendar your calendar will control you and that was followed by the always popular “If it doesn’t get scheduled, it doesn’t get done.” Turns out those weren’t the eye roll-inducing nonsense I originally thought them to be. You should know that I’m not really a huge sleeper. I am at my best when I get 6-7 hours of sleep. Any more or less and I am a non-verbal, dysfunctional mess. So I go to bed when I’m tired and get up about 6-7 hours later. Most days I am even awake before the alarm goes off, my body is pretty smart that way. On the days where it does go off, I don’t hit snooze. I get my ass out of bed and start the day. If you’re one of those people that are tempted to hit the snooze button, I promise you that if you get up as soon as that first alarm goes off you will feel so much better. I didn’t realize until after I broke the habit how shitty those extra 9 or 18 minutes actually made me feel. I was so drowsy and it would take me forever to wake up. 

The next step was to create monthly commitments. These are the smaller steps that take me in the direction of my overall goals. In my experience, I have found that we focus so much on the end goals, we tend to neglect the little steps we need to complete to get there. It’s a little list that sits right next to my laptop and I have it memorized. I have become hyper-aware that we overestimate what we can do in a year and drastically underestimate what we can achieve in 5 years.  Built into that list are both personal and professional items that fuel me. I have been spinning my wheels for months and I think I’ve figured out why. I have given (what I perceived to be) so much time and attention to my professional goals that I let the rest fade into the background. I stopped doing the things that helped light me up and I started to believe that they were a waste of my time and energy and I didn’t realize how wrong that way of thinking really was. Let me be clear: I LOVE and am IN LOVE with what I get to do. Making a difference in the lives of others in any capacity makes me jump out of bed like a crazy person in the morning! And as I do more of that, my platform grows allowing me to increase the impact I can make. Pretty cool, hey? So in order to keep doing that I need to ensure that I make time for the things that fill my soul too. When my soul is overflowing, I feel like I can take on the world. I feel strong, courageous and tenacious. When my soul is starving, I shrink away from the world. I hide, I’m nervous, I feel unworthy. I lack direction and focus. And if you take a look at the post history on this site over the last year, I’m sure the length of my hiatus is noticeable.

For some reason writing helps me make sense of life, choices and moments. It helps me sort all the chaos that happen both in and outside. It’s a kind of meditation for me. When I get into my writing sweet spot, the world melts away and all I hear is the rhythmic tapping of my fingers on the keyboard. It feels magnificent. When I create space in my life to write, I get better at literally everything else. Have you ever noticed how much effort it takes to create momentum and how little effort it takes to grind it to a halt? Just get started. 

Last but certainly not least I made a decision to stop breaking promises to myself. I am excellent at keeping promises to other people, but for some reason, the ones I make to me are the ones that seem to be easily negotiable. I don’t know when I decided I was less important than everyone else around me. It’s not heroic to forget about yourself. It doesn’t make you selfless to disregard your own needs. I cannot share from an empty cup and neither can you. I can hear your thoughts and believe me when I say I am right. I have a ton of experience in this department and it will catch up to you sooner or later. When you take care of yourself, you are showing yourself the utmost love and respect and (if you have kids or nieces and nephews) you are teaching your babies to do the same. When you do these things you give others permission to do the same. Remember that how you treat yourself dictates how other people will treat you. After all, they’re just following your example. The best part is that you get to decide what this looks like for you. Read a book, take a bath, go for a run, meditate, write, take yourself out to lunch or a movie. There are endless possibilities. Show people the freaking Queen (or King) you are.

Mountain climbing (both literal and emotional) is hard. The journey requires work, sweat and, if you’re anything like me, tears. You can’t avoid it forever so you might as well get right with it and get it done. You getting to this place didn’t happen overnight so allow yourself the grace, space and time to do the work. You can do hard things. I can do hard things. Hard things don’t stay hard things for long. It’s time to get started.