“I hate my life,” I cried to my husband. “How can this be my life? How did I get here?”
He, in his kindness, began to make suggestions: “Why don’t you go on a trip? Or why don’t you go on a drive? Book a massage?”
But inside, there was an inner knowing. I love trips, but a trip won’t heal this. I could drive across the country, and it wouldn’t heal this. I could get the best massage from the best masseuse on planet earth, but it would not heal this.
My hatred of my life isn’t because life is stressful, although it can be, and it isn’t because my life is bad. I hate my life because I have sought the approval of others over trusting myself for almost my entire life.
I have sat on and suffocated a million dreams, fearful that I will fail, not trusting that I can actually succeed if I try. I have tamped down my dreams and drowned out my inner voice. I have participated knowingly in a daily dying.
I don’t believe I’m alone in this. I think many of us live this way.
A month ago, a dear friend passed away, far too young, suddenly.
He, too, had many dreams. He, too, sat on them for many years. And a few months before his passing, he, too, had mustered the courage to start moving toward them.
The gift he left behind for me, and for many, is the knowledge that life is too short to live it for other people and that daring to resurrect our dreams, to risk, is worthy work. It is the only work that makes us feel like we are actually living.
Recently, I asked my mom why she thinks I’m so risk averse and if I was like that as a child. As a firstborn female, avoiding risk and people pleasing can be part of typical birth order behaviors, but mine has always felt particularly intense. My mom’s response surprised me: “Yes, because you never had to make choices growing up. All of your choices were made for you and you were generally very obedient. We didn’t let you take risks, so you never learned how to take them. I wish we had done that differently.”
I never learned to make, or trust, my own decisions.
Trusting ourselves is a practice. One we embrace as children but often learn away because we experience pain or punishment. I see the effect of this in my daily life even now in my 30s. When life is hard, decision fatigue sets in rapidly. Making even the simplest choices feels out of reach and risky. What should I wear? What should we eat? What workout should I do? Which work task should I tackle first? Should I buy the green or the blue? Which font should I use?
When the decision is bigger and more life impacting, rather than listen to my own inner voice, I ask for opinions, I research to the point of exhaustion, I write pro/con lists, pull out white boards, make my own friend-based focus groups, and take tally of everyone else’s thoughts and feelings on a subject…except my own.
When it gets really bad, I start dishing out advice about other people’s lives like it’s my job. You should really try this, do this, read this, buy this. I throw myself into “helping” or “advising” all while avoiding dealing with my own choices and desires. All while avoiding risking, avoiding living.
And when it has gotten even worse, I completely drown out my own needs and dreams with busyness and work and stress and darting from task to task.
So, I’ve started a practice to bypass my brain, to stop the daily drowning, and to start trusting myself again. It goes something like this: I pause. A lot. When someone shares what’s going on in his or her life, my previous response would have been to forsake my own feelings or energy level and save the day for them; now, I pause. When a decision arises, whether big or small, I pause. I imagine saying yes. I experience how that feels in my body. I imagine saying nothing or even saying no. How does that feel in my body? Does it make me feel opened, expanded, light, airy, or does it make me feel constricted, constrained, heavy, panicked? Or do I feel neutral?
I’m slowly learning to trust my body’s response. To trust that inner knowing. To say yes and to say no with inner authority. I’m learning to stop asking so much for outside opinions about things I already know I want or don’t want. I’m learning to build a trusting, loving relationship with myself. I’m learning that my body knows what I need far more often and far more accurately than my mind.
Because that’s the key: trust. When I don’t trust myself, when I disconnect with my body, I forsake myself and live for other people or don’t live at all. When I trust myself, I start to dream again. I start to live into those dreams. I start to live the life I actually was designed to live.
Lyndsey Amen Ribble lives in San Antonio with her husband and four sons (aged 5,4, 2 and 2 mos). She loves reading, writing, traveling, food (cooking it, eating it, taking pictures of it…), wine, hole in the wall anything, and forming community in unexpected places. She has a heart for bringing restoration to broken people and loving the unloved. She writes about all of these things and attempting to find balance at inlamensterms.com.
