Putting My Oxygen Mask on First – I Am Enough

As many of you know, I was on an amazing trip last week (a Mediterranean cruise) with my favorite traveler partners – my kids. My favorite things to do are travel and spend time with my kids. You’d think I’d be over the moon the entire time…but I wasn’t. I had bouts of sadness.

I’m working on not resisting my emotions – especially ones that the “old me” would label as bad emotions. (There aren’t good or bad emotions.) Instead I tried focusing on the sadness as interesting data that is telling me something.

Some of the sadness may have been aggravated by my not bringing my vitamins and supplements, and not always eating 5+ veggies per day. If you think nutritional deficiencies may be impacting your emotional health, reach out to my friend Meg at Nourish Integrative Solutions.

Some of it may have also been a lapse of mindfulness. Instead of being present and enjoying the current moment, I was mourning the fact that it might be the last time that we all go on spring break together.

But as I kept digging into the cause, I think a key part was that I was struggling to feel “enough” without daily accomplishments. Every day, I do a mirror exercise where I look into the mirror and complete these 4 sentence stems with 7 responses for each –

“I am proud of you for…”

“I love that you…”

“I forgive you for…”

“I commit to you that…”

I was struggling to complete “I am proud of you…” without daily accomplishments. I still haven’t completely embraced that “I am enough” to just be and enjoy.

I am going to continue my quest to accept myself as “enough”.

1)I will continue my daily mirror work, and start listing things that are more about who I am than what I’ve accomplished.

2) I will continue to post reminders that I am enough. (My teens roll their eyes because I have it written in lipstick on our bathroom mirror.)

3) I will spend 5-10 minutes each day journaling about my feelings and emotions.

4) I will continue to be consistent with my daily meditation.

5) Maybe most importantly, I am going to make sure I make time every day that is NOT focused on accomplishing anything – so that I can practice accepting that I am enough even when I am not striving to get something done or complete a goal.

Please let me know what actions you’ve taken to own that “You Are Enough – exactly as you are”.