Every choice you make, from whether to get up early to meditate/exercise or lie in bed, what to have for breakfast, whether to lose your temper or not. Every one is a choice and its always the same choice, just dressed up differently.
Love or fear? Are you acting from love or fear?
What are you choosing today?
I feel like we’ve been conditioned into not voicing our needs and wants, ‘it’s selfish’ for us to even think about putting ourselves first. I sometimes think we’ve reached a stage of supressing our needs so much that we’ve conditioned ourselves to almost not notice them, never mind to voice them out loud.
School, society, families all teach us to share and put other people first, especially as women, we should put our children’s needs before our own, our parents, our partners, and we put our employers needs before ours, our friends, our colleagues, even our hairdressers!
Have you ever gone in for a trim and come out with a fringe and short hair? I have, simply because I couldn’t say ‘No, that’s not what I want!’
And by the time we’ve allowed everyone else to have the best of us, there’s no time or energy left for what we want.
I truly don’t know that I have the ability to ask for my needs to be met by my friends, my family, my lover. I don’t know what that would look like or feel like.
I agree to other people’s wants and needs: I end up on night’s out that I didn’t want to go to because someone just wouldn’t go without me; I watch films at the cinema that don’t interest me because that’s what someone else wanted to see; I eat at restaurants that don’t cater for vegetarians because its another person’s favourite place; I watch tv shows that bore me rigid when I’d rather be at a philosophy group.
Sometimes, we agree to do things we really don’t care for, we still agree to go along. and if we voice any dissent, it’s usually a diffident, hesitant ‘Oh, I’m not sure I really want to’, kind of protest that usually means our point of view gets overlooked regardless. And never do we hear our own voice ask for what we want.
You deserve to have your thoughts, your needs and your wants valued, not least of all, by you. You deserve to live out in the open, not hiding your opinion, not afraid to voice your like of something others might consider weird, able to speak up and say no, even if you’re going against your whole culture, you deserve and have the right to ask for what you want.
Be unafraid of judgement, of not fitting in, of not being considered cool. Accept the labels of outsider, weirdo, loner. If someone doesn’t want to give you what you ask for, they have the right to say ‘No.’
Think about this, if one of your friends asked you for something or wanted to do something you didn’t like, would you judge them, would you label them, would you think they are somehow lacking? Would you decide they are no longer fit for your company?
No, you’re not that superficial or fickle. So do your friends and family and loved the same honour and consider them steadfast in their love and admiration of you.
Then I want you to honour yourself, honour your choices, your preferences just as much as other peoples.
Don’t hide what you want, what you need. Ask for it, be vulnerable, be open, be authentic, be you.
Standing like wonder woman, hands on hips for just 2 minutes every day can increase your sense of self. Body language can affect not only how others see us, but how we see ourselves.
Watch the brilliant Amy Cuddy explain the science.
I do this every day. At first, it was a chore and I would keep looking at the clock, thinking’ How bloody long can 2 minutes be?’
But now, I do it after my Qi Jong practice. I stand in my power pose, hands palms up to the sky and I imagine the Universe poring love, light and power down into me through my palms. And the magnificent, magnetic power of the earth flows up into my feet, and all this energy and power combines in me with my personal energy and power.
And those two minutes go past in the blink of an eye and I’m invincible, I’m divine, I’m amazing.
Try it, and keep doing it for 40 days. You’ll feel different by the end of that time and you’ll never want to stop doing it because it makes you feel so good. Whether you wear the costume or not is entirely up to you.
Cynthia Curry 