The Personal Cost of Being "Nice"
I had such fun in the last group conversation I hosted centered around exploring what sovereignty means in each of our lives! In fact, I created my first ever "podcast" style soundbite from the introduction to this conversation and posted it here.
In this conversation I discovered that although women seek to be sovereign, we often hold ourselves back from honouring our full potential by capitulating to stories, conditioning, and habit instead of surrendering wholly to our personal power.
Women are conditioned to give up parts of our personal power to some story around ... keeping the peace; sustaining the relationship; educating another; appeasing another....and so on. We tell ourselves stories about what we need to do to keep the external peace all the while our bodies are screaming: no!
How many of us go along to get along, only to find we have betrayed ourselves yet again?
The word that comes up for me around this is resentment. Acting a certain way because we "should" when our bodies are clearly screaming for our attention, inviting us to pay attention differently, and perhaps, choose differently.
So what I'm interested in exploring with you this month is your experience of the personal cost of being nice.
* What has been the personal cost of being nice / a good girl ? Has it been worth it? How so? How not?
* What is your relationship with the "shoulds" in your life? "Resentment"?
* What is the cost of capitulating to the story / habit / conditioning instead of surrendering to the brilliance of the moment (for those familiar with WEL-Systems®: living at the choice point)?
* What is your relationship with knowing your boundaries? Expressing them out loud?
* What are your fears around the consequences of setting boundaries, first and foremost within yourself?
* What would it take for you to consciously choose, in the moment you are in, a different process than the habituated one? (and by a different process, of course, I mean Quantum TLC)
* What else might be available to you if you made choices that aligned with your own internal truth? How would your life be different? What's getting in the way?
Perhaps you can sense viscerally how women have been conditioned to find self-worth in being the keepers of relationships, in sustaining the happiness of another, in being responsible for the quality of the lives of those around us.
What is your self-worth independent of the story around the quality of the relationships in your life?
In essence, I'd like to explore with you notions of:
* self-sacrifice / self-abandonment for the sake of the story / the conditioning / the habituated response* fears driving the bus of your being nice, i.e. fear of being alone or fear of failure or ...
* good girl conditioning as it relates to a good wife or a good mother or a good woman
* setting boundaries and saying NO with conviction
* being comfortable in discomfort yet standing firmly in our truth
* the role of the body in revealing to you your own internal truth
Our bodies are constantly trying to communicate with us to pay attention. How willing, and able, are we to listen?
If you'd like to participate in this three hour explorative conversation around the cost of being nice in your own life, first please read this blog post I wrote a couple of years ago on "Stories Stagnate: Instead, I choose Growth". Although this is an exploration of my own experience, revealed, notice what comes up for you as you read. What makes you uncomfortable? Pay attention to that. Stay in the discomfort with deep curiosity until your body stabilizes and you know something different about yourself.
I also ask that you read "A Storied Existence" by Louise LeBrun, as it contextualizes the magic of living unstoried, breath to breath, from the depths of our own impulses...Again, notice what is easy for you to read and what causes "friction".
It is not easy for us to stand in the moment we are in and allow the moment to consume us, to become us...so that we know something different about ourselves. It is quite easy to instead resist / brace against / pull back from the moment and lead with our intellect, our stories, our shoulds. We've had a lot of practice living this way...And yet, resistance is futile...
If this invitation peeks your interest to explore your Self, join me and a small group of women in conversation framed within the WEL-Systems® paradigm.
Date: Wednesday March 23rd, 2022Time: 5:00 – 8:00 PM EST
Investment: $25 (e-transfer)
Maximum number of participants: 8 (space is limited)
Please reach out to me via email if you'd like to join us. I’ll be sending out the zoom link to those who sign up a day or so before the call along with a calendar link.
***If you have any questions or concerns about participating, please don't hesitate to email me and let me know. If I can help in any way, I will.***
Once again, please share this opportunity with any woman you believe would be interested in this conversation. In that simple act, you would be honouring yourself, her and me.
I will leave you with this wonderful poem I read in a book by jaye simpson called "sea glass".
