Have you ever noticed yourself resisting, judging, or urgently trying to fix or change things about yourself? Where in your life are you not meeting yourself where you are?
Whether it’s with your exercise goals, parenting, at work, or when you experience negative emotions, that internal monologue of fixating on your inadequacies, ruminating on how you’re wrong or bad, and generally beating yourself up never actually helps you make the changes you want to see. Counterintuitively, showing yourself grace and meeting yourself where you are in these moments does, and I’m showing you why this week.
Join me for this episode to discover how meeting yourself where you are allows you to be more deliberate and effective in making habit changes. You’ll hear what not meeting yourself looks and feels like, three reasons this is a problem, and the benefits of beginning to practice the skill of meeting yourself where you are.
Have you ever noticed yourself resisting, judging, or urgently trying to fix or change things about yourself? Where in your life are you not meeting yourself where you are?
Whether it’s with your exercise goals, parenting, at work, or when you experience negative emotions, that internal monologue of fixating on your inadequacies, ruminating on how you’re wrong or bad, and generally beating yourself up never actually helps you make the changes you want to see. Counterintuitively, showing yourself grace and meeting yourself where you are in these moments does, and I’m showing you why this week.
Join me for this episode to discover how meeting yourself where you are allows you to be more deliberate and effective in making habit changes. You’ll hear what not meeting yourself looks and feels like, three reasons this is a problem, and the benefits of beginning to practice the skill of meeting yourself where you are.
If you find yourself curious about coaching, even if you aren’t a woman physician and you’d like to connect, you can schedule a consult with me to discuss if we’re a good fit for your goals by clicking here!
We are celebrating the huge milestone of one whole year of podcasting! To get this show into the ears of people who need it, and to thank you for listening in every week, sharing the show with your friends, writing in your questions, and rating and reviewing the show, I’m doing another giveaway. To win a Day Designer planner, leave a rating and review of the show on iTunes, then click here to let me know you’ve left a review. Make sure to stay tuned for future episodes to hear if you’ve won!
If you want to learn more about how to better understand your patterns, stop feeling reactionary, and get back into the proverbial driver’s seat with your habits, you’ll want to join my email list. All you have to do is click here!
What you'll learn from this episode:
- What happens when you ruminate about all the things you could fix or change about yourself.
- How it looks and feels when you’re not meeting yourself where you are.
- What it means to meet yourself where you are.
- The importance and benefits of meeting yourself where you are.
- 3 reasons why not meeting yourself where you are is a problem.
Listen to the Full Episode:
Featured on the Show:
- Follow me on Instagram!
- Click here to join the mailing list.
- Join the Habits on Purpose Facebook group!
- Click here to send me any questions that you would like addressed on the podcast!
- 1: The Habit Change Advice You’re Missing
- 3: You Might Be a Perfectionist If…
- 6: How to Feel Better Now Part 1
- 7: How to Feel Better Now Part 2
Full Episode Transcript:
Welcome to Episode #54. This is your host, Kristi Angevine. Have you ever found yourself thinking that there's something wrong with where you are at today, feeling like there's always something to fix or to change? Well, today, you'll learn the importance of meeting yourself where you are. And how, counterintuitively, this helps you be deliberate and more effective about making the changes you want to make.
Welcome to Habits On Purpose, a podcast for high-achieving women who want to create lifelong habits that give more than they take. You'll get practical strategies for mindset shifts that will help you finally understand the root causes of why you think, feel, and act as you do. And now, here's your host, Physician, and Master Certified Life Coach, Kristi Angevine.
Hello, hello, everyone. Welcome to today's episode. If you are new to the podcast, welcome in. Thanks so much for taking a chance on a new podcast. I know your time is precious, so I'm really delighted that you've chosen to press subscribe and press play.
If this is your first episode, ever, that's amazing. And, I recommend you go back and listen to a handful of the previous episodes after you finish this one, so you can get a sense of the overall philosophy and some of the fundamental concepts I talked about. I recommend Episodes number 1, 3, 6, and 7. They're really great ones to kind of dog-ear for yourself.
I've gotten some questions lately from several people asking me if I do group coaching only, if I do private coaching, if it's just for doctors, if it's just for women, etc. And it occurred to me that although I've shared things about my Habits On Purpose for Physicians Small Group Coaching program, I really haven't elaborated on the other things that I do. So, here it is.
I run a small group coaching program that's specifically designed for women physicians. And then, I also coach people of all genders and all occupations, individually. Now, group coaching and private coaching, both have their unique benefits. Groups come in a variety of shapes and sizes, and structures.
But in a nutshell, they provide things like didactics, content that's released regularly, a sense of community, and all the support that you get from having things normalized by seeing other people share that they're experiencing what you're experiencing, so you don't feel alone.
And group coaching also gives the benefit of being able to observe others be coached, and have other people bring things up that you didn't consider bringing up or you wanted to bring up but didn't feel comfortable bringing up. You end up benefiting and getting coached even on things that you didn't know you needed coaching on.
Now, individual coaching, benefits are things like privacy, extra intimacy, and having the sheer time to deeply explore all the facets of your personal experience. Both modalities are amazing, and I personally participate in both kinds of coaching. So, if you find yourself coaching curious, even if you aren't a woman physician, and you'd like to connect, you can schedule a consult to discuss if we're a good fit for your goals at HabitsOnPurpose.com/consult.
So, now let's dive into what I'm going to talk about today. Here in Central Oregon, if you're listening to this episode when it comes out live, it is the beginning of February. Central Oregon has four distinct seasons. In the winter, there is snow, and there's really close access to skiing.
My family and I right now are learning how to ski. The town we live in is where many people do all sorts of winter sports with so much ease and glee. We moved here about six years ago, and for all sorts of reasons, we just haven't yet dipped our toe into winter sports.
So recently, we had our first alpine ski lessons, and it was so much fun. I really loved how our instructor said that starting from scratch is how you lay a solid foundation and then don't find yourself unlearning bad body mechanic habits later. And as somebody who does coaching work on mental and emotional patterns of behavior and habits, I found these body-based habit comments really appealing.
In approaching learning this new sport, I noticed all sorts of parts of me coming up saying things like, “You're just now getting started on this? You should have done this sooner. Kristi, what's your problem? You have missed the boat for the optimal time for your kids to learn. If you had started six years ago, you'd have been six years further along, but you didn't. What the heck?”
I share this sort of internal monologue as a segue for the topic today, which is, meeting yourself where you are. So, think about what happens if I listen to that monologue and I believe it. And trust me, I did this for a while. Well, I feel discouraged. And when I feel the emotion of discouragement, I start doing all sorts of things that are very unpleasant.
I noticed how other people are doing things better. My mind comes up with a list of all the acquaintances I know whose kids are shredding down the mountain. I flash forward to a place where I have all sorts of regrets for how I used my time. I fixate on my own inadequacies, as a skier. I ruminate, and I beat myself up.
And you know what I don't do? Because I'm in my head, I'm not very present in the present moment. I’m not present with my family. I'm preoccupied. I’m grumpy. I'm very much primed to be defensive, to take things personally. I don't make plans to ski or to practice. I walk around with somber background music playing in my head, with these thoughts that sound like, “I should be further along. I’ve messed up.”
It becomes a lens through which I interpret and experience everything. So, I start seeing other areas of my life where I'm working on improving as evidence that I've just messed up. When it comes to exercise, I'm not where I should be fitness-wise. When it comes to emails, I should be more caught up. When it comes to friendships, if I were a good friend, I would have scheduled a phone date with my bestie by now.
And because I'm prime to see all the problems I've created for myself, if, say, my kid gets stressed out because, let's say, he needed to do some homework and he forgot or needed some laundry for the next day, I might take his stress, and turn it into a situation where I think he's blaming me.
Or, if my spouse is having a hard day, in my discouraged state of mind, I hear, “My bad day is your fault,” even if that's nowhere near reality. So, it's kind of hilarious, rather absurd. And yet, it's what happens mentally, when I am not meeting myself where I am.
Let's contrast this to what happens when I do meet myself where I am, with this example of skiing. What happens is I don't make myself wrong for being where I am. I don't judge. I don't resist. It sounds like, “I don't yet know how to ski. No big deal. It makes perfect sense that I've not learned yet. I've been busy doing other things. This is where I am. And it's okay.” And when I think like this, I feel so matter of fact, and my experience isn't so depleting.
What you're going to learn today is the importance of meeting yourself where you are, and not just with behaviors or skill sets, but with everything. I'll give you examples of what it looks like to not meet yourself where you are so that you can start noticing where you might do this in your life. And then, I'll talk about the benefit of meeting yourself where you are. I'll give you examples of what it might sound like. And what you learn today can change your entire life, no exaggeration.
So that you understand exactly what I'm talking about, let's define what it means to ‘meet yourself where you are.’ To meet yourself where you are is to acknowledge what is currently present. Then, without judging, resisting, worrying over, or trying to fix what is present, you intentionally make space and give yourself time to be with whatever you've got.
Then, the advanced move is to take a moment and notice how you feel about what is currently present for you. So, here are some examples of what it might look like and feel like when you are not meeting yourself where you are. And in general, these are times when you are making it wrong or bad to be where you are. Or, you have an urgency to fix how you feel. Or, you believe you shouldn't feel as you do or be where you are.
Say you're having a day at work where you're just running late all day long. You feel thin-skinned, a little frazzled, and kind of harried. Your to-do list is growing instead of shrinking, and you catch yourself being kind of surly. Then you come home from work, and you’re edgy. You’re snappy. And you notice that you're being edgy and snappy with the people you love the most, and you get irritated with yourself. You think in your head, “Why am I being so pissy? What is my problem? I can't leave work at work?
And then, to add to this mental pile-on, you grab beer, pizza, and cookies, and you binge-watch a series on Netflix until two in the morning. And that experience of Netflix and beer is glorious until you wake up after three hours of sleep. And you beat yourself up for making these choices right before having an early day.
Or, how about this? You've done enough coaching or studied enough personal development work, or maybe you're a coach, and you know that your thoughts influence and create your feelings, and your feelings drive your actions.
You happen to find yourself in a funk, right when you thought you were gonna have a chunk of time to play catch up and finally get to that pile of papers you want to organize. But your kid or your partner gets sick. Or, your roof starts leaking. Or, that deal at work that was supposed to finally be complete, just goes belly up. Now, it's going to be months before it's actually done. And you thought this week was your time to celebrate a job well done, and finally have some space.
So emotionally, you're just at a low point. You frankly don't know how you can keep rolling with the punches. But you do have the sense that the way things work is that your external circumstances, they don't cause your feelings, your thoughts do.
So, what do you do? You start overthinking everything. You resist feeling what you're feeling. You resist the funk that you're in, and you say to yourself, “I just need a better way to think about things. I know better. I shouldn't be feeling so badly. It's not my circumstances; it’s what I'm choosing to think. I shouldn't just need a break. I should be able to manage my mind.”
Another way that ‘not meeting yourself where you are’ shows up with many of my clients, is related to body metrics or exercise, be it weight, fitness level, or habits of movement. It could be that you're working on getting stronger or faster or losing weight or gaining muscle, or just moving your body in a way that feels great to you.
And not meeting yourself where you are, sounds like, “Ugh! I know what to do, but I just can't seem to do it. I've been doing all the things. Why is the scale not showing me the change, I expect? I should feel better at this pace I'm running. I should be faster on this bike course, by now.”
Not meeting yourself where you are, can even show up in things that are as simple as being in a yoga class and pushing your body to do a stretch or pose that’s just beyond what your body can handle, in that moment, because you think you should.
Not meeting yourself where you are, is common with negative emotions that are unpleasant, and we want to fix them ASAP, instead of just letting them be there. So, anxiety? Bury yourself in work. With disappointment? Quickly find a silver lining. Frustration? Think to yourself, “This is not how it's supposed to be.” With anger? Suppress it, and then tell yourself it's just unprofessional to get angry. With sadness? Try to coach yourself to feel better by finding a better thought or better perspective.
Now, the problem with this is threefold: Number one, you make yourself wrong for being where you are and feeling how you feel. Number two, you disconnect with where you are and how you're feeling in the present moment. And number three, you don't get access to understanding why you feel like you do.
And together, all this actually makes it so much harder to feel better, or make progress toward a goal. When you shift to meeting yourself where you are, you give yourself validation. And the message, that you make sense. It's okay to be where you are, even if you're not at your goal. And even if you're not feeling how you want to feel.
When you do this, you connect with where you are. And when you connect with where you are, you can better understand why you are feeling that way and why you are where you are. This, ultimately, makes it easier to feel better and make progress.
And as a side note, if you repetitively disconnect from how you feel when you are having negative emotions and negative experiences, you set yourself up to disconnect from positive experiences and positive emotions, too.
So, what does ‘meeting yourself where you are’ look like and sound like? First of all, there's no judgment, there's no resistance, and there are no urgent efforts to fix. It sounds like, “This is what I have today. This is what's here, right now.” With behaviors or physical things? “This is where I'm at. And that's not a problem.” Or, as my yoga instructor, the other day said, ‘This is the truth for my body, in this moment.”
With emotions? “I feel sad, I feel stressed. I notice I feel discouraged. This is what's hard for me right now. And that's okay.” Notice, in all these statements, the implicit message is, you make sense, and it's okay to not feel okay. It's not a problem to be where you are physically, emotionally, mentally, etc. When you deliberately look for how it is true that you make sense, you internally validate your experience. You connect to where you are.
So, if you have the habit of ‘not meeting yourself where you are’ when I mentioned what it's like to meet yourself where you're at, it can actually sound like this is just another subtle form of self-pity. A way to kind of complain or wallow and just go belly up and stop trying your best. But I assure you, it is actually none of these.
The irony is, as soon as you meet yourself where you are and stop making yourself wrong, you're actually much more easily able to take practical steps towards making it change.
So, where in your life do you have the habit of resisting, judging, or urgently trying to fix things? Where are you making yourself wrong and not meeting yourself where you're at? Is it at work? In your marriage? In your home life? In your parenting? With your personal goals? When it comes to your body? Maybe it's with negative emotion. Maybe it's with charting.
My invitation to you is to start watching for this and then choose on purpose to meet yourself where you are. Now, this seemingly simple concept can be a game-changer for everything. So, give it a shot, and I guarantee you'll notice a difference.
Now, if you liked what you heard, I would love it if you would consider leaving the podcast or review on iTunes. I'm actually in the middle of celebrating the podcast being one year old. And I'm asking for your help to celebrate by getting you to help write a tiny review.
Reviews are so important because they help the podcast be more discoverable and get into the ears of more people who want to hear these concepts. So, your review can literally be a phrase. It can be a couple of sentences or a paragraph if you want, but it's totally your choice.
And to make it worth your while, I'm doing a drawing for everybody who leaves a review, and I'm giving away two Day Designer planners. To enter, you leave the podcast review on iTunes. And then you go to HabitsOnPurpose.com/review, and you leave your name, your email address, and the title of your review so I know that it's you. Then, in the future, we will do the drawing and announce the winners. Simple as that.
Thank you so much for listening, and I will see you next week.
If you want to learn more about how to better understand your patterns, stop feeling reactionary, and get back into the proverbial driver’s seat with your habits, you’ll want to join my email list. Which you can find linked in the show notes, or if you go to HabitsOnPurpose.com, you’ll find it right there.
Thanks for listening to Habits On Purpose. If you want more information on Kristi Angevine or the resources from the podcast, visit HabitsOnPurpose.com Tune in next week for another episode.
Welcome to Habits On Purpose, a podcast for high-achieving women who want to create lifelong habits that give more than they take. You'll get practical strategies for mindset shifts that will help you finally understand the root causes of why you think, feel, and act as you do. And now, here's your host, Physician, and Master Certified Life Coach, Kristi Angevine.
Hello, hello, everyone. Welcome to today's episode. If you are new to the podcast, welcome in. Thanks so much for taking a chance on a new podcast. I know your time is precious, so I'm really delighted that you've chosen to press subscribe and press play.
If this is your first episode, ever, that's amazing. And, I recommend you go back and listen to a handful of the previous episodes after you finish this one, so you can get a sense of the overall philosophy and some of the fundamental concepts I talked about. I recommend Episodes number 1, 3, 6, and 7. They're really great ones to kind of dog-ear for yourself.
I've gotten some questions lately from several people asking me if I do group coaching only, if I do private coaching, if it's just for doctors, if it's just for women, etc. And it occurred to me that although I've shared things about my Habits On Purpose for Physicians Small Group Coaching program, I really haven't elaborated on the other things that I do. So, here it is.
I run a small group coaching program that's specifically designed for women physicians. And then, I also coach people of all genders and all occupations, individually. Now, group coaching and private coaching, both have their unique benefits. Groups come in a variety of shapes and sizes, and structures.
But in a nutshell, they provide things like didactics, content that's released regularly, a sense of community, and all the support that you get from having things normalized by seeing other people share that they're experiencing what you're experiencing, so you don't feel alone.
And group coaching also gives the benefit of being able to observe others be coached, and have other people bring things up that you didn't consider bringing up or you wanted to bring up but didn't feel comfortable bringing up. You end up benefiting and getting coached even on things that you didn't know you needed coaching on.
Now, individual coaching, benefits are things like privacy, extra intimacy, and having the sheer time to deeply explore all the facets of your personal experience. Both modalities are amazing, and I personally participate in both kinds of coaching. So, if you find yourself coaching curious, even if you aren't a woman physician, and you'd like to connect, you can schedule a consult to discuss if we're a good fit for your goals at HabitsOnPurpose.com/consult.
So, now let's dive into what I'm going to talk about today. Here in Central Oregon, if you're listening to this episode when it comes out live, it is the beginning of February. Central Oregon has four distinct seasons. In the winter, there is snow, and there's really close access to skiing.
My family and I right now are learning how to ski. The town we live in is where many people do all sorts of winter sports with so much ease and glee. We moved here about six years ago, and for all sorts of reasons, we just haven't yet dipped our toe into winter sports.
So recently, we had our first alpine ski lessons, and it was so much fun. I really loved how our instructor said that starting from scratch is how you lay a solid foundation and then don't find yourself unlearning bad body mechanic habits later. And as somebody who does coaching work on mental and emotional patterns of behavior and habits, I found these body-based habit comments really appealing.
In approaching learning this new sport, I noticed all sorts of parts of me coming up saying things like, “You're just now getting started on this? You should have done this sooner. Kristi, what's your problem? You have missed the boat for the optimal time for your kids to learn. If you had started six years ago, you'd have been six years further along, but you didn't. What the heck?”
I share this sort of internal monologue as a segue for the topic today, which is, meeting yourself where you are. So, think about what happens if I listen to that monologue and I believe it. And trust me, I did this for a while. Well, I feel discouraged. And when I feel the emotion of discouragement, I start doing all sorts of things that are very unpleasant.
I noticed how other people are doing things better. My mind comes up with a list of all the acquaintances I know whose kids are shredding down the mountain. I flash forward to a place where I have all sorts of regrets for how I used my time. I fixate on my own inadequacies, as a skier. I ruminate, and I beat myself up.
And you know what I don't do? Because I'm in my head, I'm not very present in the present moment. I’m not present with my family. I'm preoccupied. I’m grumpy. I'm very much primed to be defensive, to take things personally. I don't make plans to ski or to practice. I walk around with somber background music playing in my head, with these thoughts that sound like, “I should be further along. I’ve messed up.”
It becomes a lens through which I interpret and experience everything. So, I start seeing other areas of my life where I'm working on improving as evidence that I've just messed up. When it comes to exercise, I'm not where I should be fitness-wise. When it comes to emails, I should be more caught up. When it comes to friendships, if I were a good friend, I would have scheduled a phone date with my bestie by now.
And because I'm prime to see all the problems I've created for myself, if, say, my kid gets stressed out because, let's say, he needed to do some homework and he forgot or needed some laundry for the next day, I might take his stress, and turn it into a situation where I think he's blaming me.
Or, if my spouse is having a hard day, in my discouraged state of mind, I hear, “My bad day is your fault,” even if that's nowhere near reality. So, it's kind of hilarious, rather absurd. And yet, it's what happens mentally, when I am not meeting myself where I am.
Let's contrast this to what happens when I do meet myself where I am, with this example of skiing. What happens is I don't make myself wrong for being where I am. I don't judge. I don't resist. It sounds like, “I don't yet know how to ski. No big deal. It makes perfect sense that I've not learned yet. I've been busy doing other things. This is where I am. And it's okay.” And when I think like this, I feel so matter of fact, and my experience isn't so depleting.
What you're going to learn today is the importance of meeting yourself where you are, and not just with behaviors or skill sets, but with everything. I'll give you examples of what it looks like to not meet yourself where you are so that you can start noticing where you might do this in your life. And then, I'll talk about the benefit of meeting yourself where you are. I'll give you examples of what it might sound like. And what you learn today can change your entire life, no exaggeration.
So that you understand exactly what I'm talking about, let's define what it means to ‘meet yourself where you are.’ To meet yourself where you are is to acknowledge what is currently present. Then, without judging, resisting, worrying over, or trying to fix what is present, you intentionally make space and give yourself time to be with whatever you've got.
Then, the advanced move is to take a moment and notice how you feel about what is currently present for you. So, here are some examples of what it might look like and feel like when you are not meeting yourself where you are. And in general, these are times when you are making it wrong or bad to be where you are. Or, you have an urgency to fix how you feel. Or, you believe you shouldn't feel as you do or be where you are.
Say you're having a day at work where you're just running late all day long. You feel thin-skinned, a little frazzled, and kind of harried. Your to-do list is growing instead of shrinking, and you catch yourself being kind of surly. Then you come home from work, and you’re edgy. You’re snappy. And you notice that you're being edgy and snappy with the people you love the most, and you get irritated with yourself. You think in your head, “Why am I being so pissy? What is my problem? I can't leave work at work?
And then, to add to this mental pile-on, you grab beer, pizza, and cookies, and you binge-watch a series on Netflix until two in the morning. And that experience of Netflix and beer is glorious until you wake up after three hours of sleep. And you beat yourself up for making these choices right before having an early day.
Or, how about this? You've done enough coaching or studied enough personal development work, or maybe you're a coach, and you know that your thoughts influence and create your feelings, and your feelings drive your actions.
You happen to find yourself in a funk, right when you thought you were gonna have a chunk of time to play catch up and finally get to that pile of papers you want to organize. But your kid or your partner gets sick. Or, your roof starts leaking. Or, that deal at work that was supposed to finally be complete, just goes belly up. Now, it's going to be months before it's actually done. And you thought this week was your time to celebrate a job well done, and finally have some space.
So emotionally, you're just at a low point. You frankly don't know how you can keep rolling with the punches. But you do have the sense that the way things work is that your external circumstances, they don't cause your feelings, your thoughts do.
So, what do you do? You start overthinking everything. You resist feeling what you're feeling. You resist the funk that you're in, and you say to yourself, “I just need a better way to think about things. I know better. I shouldn't be feeling so badly. It's not my circumstances; it’s what I'm choosing to think. I shouldn't just need a break. I should be able to manage my mind.”
Another way that ‘not meeting yourself where you are’ shows up with many of my clients, is related to body metrics or exercise, be it weight, fitness level, or habits of movement. It could be that you're working on getting stronger or faster or losing weight or gaining muscle, or just moving your body in a way that feels great to you.
And not meeting yourself where you are, sounds like, “Ugh! I know what to do, but I just can't seem to do it. I've been doing all the things. Why is the scale not showing me the change, I expect? I should feel better at this pace I'm running. I should be faster on this bike course, by now.”
Not meeting yourself where you are, can even show up in things that are as simple as being in a yoga class and pushing your body to do a stretch or pose that’s just beyond what your body can handle, in that moment, because you think you should.
Not meeting yourself where you are, is common with negative emotions that are unpleasant, and we want to fix them ASAP, instead of just letting them be there. So, anxiety? Bury yourself in work. With disappointment? Quickly find a silver lining. Frustration? Think to yourself, “This is not how it's supposed to be.” With anger? Suppress it, and then tell yourself it's just unprofessional to get angry. With sadness? Try to coach yourself to feel better by finding a better thought or better perspective.
Now, the problem with this is threefold: Number one, you make yourself wrong for being where you are and feeling how you feel. Number two, you disconnect with where you are and how you're feeling in the present moment. And number three, you don't get access to understanding why you feel like you do.
And together, all this actually makes it so much harder to feel better, or make progress toward a goal. When you shift to meeting yourself where you are, you give yourself validation. And the message, that you make sense. It's okay to be where you are, even if you're not at your goal. And even if you're not feeling how you want to feel.
When you do this, you connect with where you are. And when you connect with where you are, you can better understand why you are feeling that way and why you are where you are. This, ultimately, makes it easier to feel better and make progress.
And as a side note, if you repetitively disconnect from how you feel when you are having negative emotions and negative experiences, you set yourself up to disconnect from positive experiences and positive emotions, too.
So, what does ‘meeting yourself where you are’ look like and sound like? First of all, there's no judgment, there's no resistance, and there are no urgent efforts to fix. It sounds like, “This is what I have today. This is what's here, right now.” With behaviors or physical things? “This is where I'm at. And that's not a problem.” Or, as my yoga instructor, the other day said, ‘This is the truth for my body, in this moment.”
With emotions? “I feel sad, I feel stressed. I notice I feel discouraged. This is what's hard for me right now. And that's okay.” Notice, in all these statements, the implicit message is, you make sense, and it's okay to not feel okay. It's not a problem to be where you are physically, emotionally, mentally, etc. When you deliberately look for how it is true that you make sense, you internally validate your experience. You connect to where you are.
So, if you have the habit of ‘not meeting yourself where you are’ when I mentioned what it's like to meet yourself where you're at, it can actually sound like this is just another subtle form of self-pity. A way to kind of complain or wallow and just go belly up and stop trying your best. But I assure you, it is actually none of these.
The irony is, as soon as you meet yourself where you are and stop making yourself wrong, you're actually much more easily able to take practical steps towards making it change.
So, where in your life do you have the habit of resisting, judging, or urgently trying to fix things? Where are you making yourself wrong and not meeting yourself where you're at? Is it at work? In your marriage? In your home life? In your parenting? With your personal goals? When it comes to your body? Maybe it's with negative emotion. Maybe it's with charting.
My invitation to you is to start watching for this and then choose on purpose to meet yourself where you are. Now, this seemingly simple concept can be a game-changer for everything. So, give it a shot, and I guarantee you'll notice a difference.
Now, if you liked what you heard, I would love it if you would consider leaving the podcast or review on iTunes. I'm actually in the middle of celebrating the podcast being one year old. And I'm asking for your help to celebrate by getting you to help write a tiny review.
Reviews are so important because they help the podcast be more discoverable and get into the ears of more people who want to hear these concepts. So, your review can literally be a phrase. It can be a couple of sentences or a paragraph if you want, but it's totally your choice.
And to make it worth your while, I'm doing a drawing for everybody who leaves a review, and I'm giving away two Day Designer planners. To enter, you leave the podcast review on iTunes. And then you go to HabitsOnPurpose.com/review, and you leave your name, your email address, and the title of your review so I know that it's you. Then, in the future, we will do the drawing and announce the winners. Simple as that.
Thank you so much for listening, and I will see you next week.
If you want to learn more about how to better understand your patterns, stop feeling reactionary, and get back into the proverbial driver’s seat with your habits, you’ll want to join my email list. Which you can find linked in the show notes, or if you go to HabitsOnPurpose.com, you’ll find it right there.
Thanks for listening to Habits On Purpose. If you want more information on Kristi Angevine or the resources from the podcast, visit HabitsOnPurpose.com Tune in next week for another episode.
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