‘you designed yourself’ ~ jay-z
This weekend while relaxing, despite having planned the day for rest, I got the overwhelming urge to ‘get off my lazy ass & do something.’
With this urge, a warm, all-encompassing, familiar energy came over me like a tidal wave. Smacking me down & ordering me to get back up, with the threat that if I didn’t, I’d regret it. There’d be hell to pay. Or, I’d lose.
Lose my integrity; credibility; comfort; and, my focus.
This is when I saw it. My survival pattern. The shame. The neglect. The fear. All of it pulled me inward with concealment, embarrassment & anxiety, about the rest that I wanted but felt I didn’t deserve.
Why don’t I deserve rest?
I’m not a millionaire yet.
Other people are working, who have less, so I should be too.
No one gets anything from sitting on their lazy, undeserving ass.
Because I have a survival pattern with worthiness around rest as worthlessness that guilts a proving, desperate action.
This survival pattern of worthiness & worthlessness often comes with the narrative “…if I’m ever to amount to anything, I best get off my lazy ass & get to work.”
When the familiar awareness of guilt-ridden shame hit, instantly I became warm with anxiety.
a survival pattern response can be a fear-based, anxious response.
A survival response occurs when our limit of capacity has been reached or exceeded, & we respond to that breach of a boundary with a triggered reaction. This behavior is caused by seeing Self as wholly the feeling of what we are reacting to. Such action can be motivated by a fear of threat.
The hyper-vigilant action I was drawn to, to hustle over relax, was certainly motivated by fear. The pattern is to respond from fear by taking guilt-driven action to immediately circumvent, reverse, or prevent any negative potential outcome. It was indeed a known trigger response from the threat of instability as a result of rest aka laziness.
When this occurs I respond from guilt.
The guilt of panic flows through my body, tensing it & freezing my mind.
The guilt of urgency activates a muscle memory to automatically spring into a reactive response.
The guilt of radiating desperation, like I’m already behind & the inevitable destructive consequence will be my fault.
The guilt of a common feeling that accompanies honoring needs in a way that differs from a constant, hustle mentality.
The guilt of an internal battle that defies societal standards & believes work does NOT have to be hard for it to pay off.
This is my survival pattern. A reactive response to the presence of fear that comes from an urge to honor myself, which translates as a shameful act of defiance. Shame is a known reaction in circumstances where I feel diminished, targeted, or guilty of wrongdoing. A defense mechanism to protect personal integrity, safety & a favorable image over honoring Self.
Survival Pattern: When I feel overwhelmed, I can catastrophize, be defeatist, codependent, emotionally possessed, & careless, or move too fast.
When I saw the fear, shame & guilt, I paused to fully feel it & to give it attention. It did all the usual things it does, like use pressure to impress upon me why I should be using my energy more productively. Asserting that rest is nonproductive & I’m a lazy fool to believe it is. That’s when I noticed the voice shaming me into action wasn’t coming from me.
It was an inner dialogue, of course. But its energy & urgency wasn’t mine. It was something I learned. Something that was given to me, which at that moment of awareness, I decided to become curious about to determine whether or not it is an energy I’d like to continue, modify, or cease.
In my curiosity, I noticed that the shame I felt wasn’t necessary. It, using force to motivate action, wasn’t even something organic to me. It’s simply not who I am NOR who I would like to be.
Furthermore, the rest I was taking might be a time when I could have been productive in other ways. But what the forceful internal voice was missing, is that the rest was designed to help maintain a more sustainable, long-term, ongoing energy. It was for the whole of me & to the benefit of future longevity.
The inner dictator voice then, was ignoring something far greater than what 1 day’s of activity could perceive. It was disregarding that taking time to relax is a purposeful endeavor. It wasn’t laziness. It is a source for resource to ensure my energy & efforts could be continually focused & intentional.
Curiosity is our bullshit-o-meter. It allows us to see that you can’t flimflam a flimflammer. You Can’t bullshit a bullshitter. when we find ourselves flummoxed, confusion can be a sign that something is up & we are right to be curious about it, as well as question if it’s bullshit?
Curiosity can give presence to reconcile where we perform from FORCE.
Curiosity can provide a pause in reactivity to notice any automaticity to respond with an urgency that lacks intent.
Curiosity can validate what we feel is real but also that what motivates feeling it doesn’t actually belong to us.
Curiosity revealed to me that the desire to rest is real & the desire to contribute is too. It allowed me to stop & consider not only where the shame & guilt stemmed from, but how to have compassion for it. It created empathy for who I was when the survival pattern emerged. It revealed it wasn’t because I am a pushover. It’s not because I’m impressionable. It’s not because I’m a masochist.
Curiosity unveiled why I bought into such a heavy & dominating survival pattern in the first place. Because it tapped into a deep inner urge to do something meaningful & contribute as my currency. Engagement & exchange of value is not only important to me, but it gives me purpose.
Curiosity showed that I find meaning & value in holding space with others, but up to now, that didn’t include considering the meaning & value found in understanding what supports sourcing myself.
Curiosity allowed me to see myself & survival pattern response with compassion & accountability. It allowed me to question current desires for accuracy. It enabled critical thinking to determine if perhaps what I had planned to do, was no longer what I wanted to do, & thus, a wild hair of creativity. It helped assess the motivation behind what I was being called to do with my energy to debunk the truth.
I have a survival pattern with invisibility & worthiness. Noticing it helps honor personal integrity. pausing with it in curiosity helps recognize energy & if its expression is something I am willing to be 100% accountable for & contribute, or NOT.
I have a survival pattern with invisibility & worthiness, worthlessness.
My patterned reaction to invisibility & worthlessness is fear.
My fear is being forgotten, seen as lazy, not serious, not worthy, or mediocre.
My survival pattern reaction is to act in fear making myself visible, proving, & ‘doing’ to be felt or seen as serious, & good.
In my invisibility survival pattern, I move with force.
When I move from force, I get hot, anxious & desperate, move with a fearful, anxious & desperate energy.
When I move with fear, anxiety & desperation, it’s the energy I contribute, incite, attract & spread.
In a survival pattern response with invisibility & worth, it is my responsibility to be accountable for my intent & energy.
In a survival pattern response with invisibility & worth, it is my responsibility to be curious, to come back to wholeness to ensure that what I contribute, attract, & spread, is an energy I’m willing to be responsible for.
Notice the energy behind your inner thoughts.
Notice how it feels, how it’s propelled, what energy it inspires & incites.
Notice why you ARE or AREN’T willing to be 100% accountable for it.
Is the energy that moves you one of excitement? Freedom? Encouragement? Fulfillment?
Or is it one of guilt? Shame? Punishment? Force?
When moving from fear, we can take action from a disempowered space. Almost like retribution. Responding to a threat.
A threat that you’ll be a disappointment, fail, or get bad karma if you don’t do something. When this happens, we can move from desperation. We can move from an objective energy outside of us.
What propels us in these moments isn’t an internally sourced energy, but something externally impressed upon us. Something we learned. Something we saw. Or something that was given to us.
What can come with operating from such a space is reactivity. Resentment. Scared action.
Reactivity can cause us to go to extremes. use energy in a way that unhealthily depletes us. It can cause us to shut down, go numb, take unconscious action, & become reckless.
Reckless to others & ourselves.
Reckless to neglect & notice how we’re spinning our wheels or abusing energy.
Reckless in our actions.
Reckless intent. Desensitized. And, slightly, if not totally, unconscious.
When reactive energies appear, noticing is a practice that is essential to our development. Wholeness. Accountability. Responsibility. Recognizing such discernment requires acknowledging energy. Valuing it as an entity. It takes respecting it.
Noticing energetic variability & shifts is akin to recognizing the variability & shifts of a personality. It leaves clues. It’s informational.
Energy invites us to heed internal cues for what we feel & for what feeling reveals.
Energy helps us recognize what it means to be nurtured vs not.
Energy aids us to notice what inspires fulfillment, contentment, balance & peace, to name & understand what it is when it is.
Energy allows us to identify what nourishing or resourceful energy isn’t to name its opposite.
Energy is capacity & personal identity.
Energy teaches us capacity. It teaches us how to spot what nurtures to understand how nourishment does & does not feel. We need to learn to spot what sources us and what doesn’t.
When we’re able to identify what is not for us, we can pause in moments where contrary energies are being served or trying to motivate us, to notice if or when we’re inclined to operate without integrity. Without accountability of & consideration for capacity. Without knowing if what we’re about to engage in is something we’re willing to take 100% responsibility for.
If we become desensitized to what infringes on us, neglects us, & acts without regard for us, we can not only become unconscious of how it negatively influences us to act without intent & responsibility, but numb to even notice that it is. We can start to believe it is ok to threaten us into action. Natural, normal, even. It becomes our programming. It becomes a survival pattern reaction to force effort, with a hyper-vigilant DOING response to threatening energy.
When we operate from threat, it can not only influence self-government but relational engagement. It can cause us to infuse forceful energy into how we engage others. We can become unconscious of trusting that energy & then unknowingly enact it everywhere.
Noticing incongruence is our mission. It is our assignment to each become accountable, & lovingly boundaried with energies that DO deliver positive ends. Acknowledging what is supportive creates awareness of influences that are not & DO NOT encourage intentional effort.
How do we develop an awareness of what positively influences vs what DOES NOT encourage intentional action?
We can spot this by noticing how we respond to rest; leisure; choice; authenticity; and self-care. Recognizing discerning energy helps us become critically curious. It turns us into super sleuths at identifying anything that tries to motivate us with fear, threat, or by force.
When encouragement to self-abandon comes from within, becoming curious about its point of origin empowers integrity & creates an ask to answer if we’re willing to be 100% responsible for such behavior.
This inner discovery of what voice, influence, or experiences encourage unintentional effort is critical. Investigation can reveal the energy behind it isn’t something we condone. Proving a pattern of responding to pressure by taking frantic action we do not fully align with or intentionally want to do.
Observing the energy of incongruent action can unveil learned behavior to respond because of threat not to. It runs on doubt & uses manipulation & scarcity to control us. Guilt us. Shame us. And, it controls us even if the entire time, while under its spell, it feels bad, misaligned & desperate. Even if we are or are not aware we are moving, generating, & producing from force. Fear.
Identifying that scared action isn’t internally motivated can reconcile its cessation.
Unconsciousness can come from self-abandonment. It can persist when we disregard capacity & accountability for personal contribution. It can harm us & others when we ignore the energy coursing through us is also coming from us. Thus, it is also what we’re pouring into others, projects, life, etc..
When we learn to spot unintentional reactivity, we can also come to terms with deconstructing what about it makes it an incongruent behavior.
We don’t want to be on some bullshit. Grant that grace.
We don’t want to be confused & act out of integrity. Welcome that compassion.
We don’t want to choose incongruent behavior. Give yourself more credit.
We can accept & reconcile such behavior when we validate it is an automatic survival-based response. Not laziness. Not apathy. It is action we had to perform to survive.
We don’t want to be unconscious, ignorant, destructive or irresponsible.
We can analyze what makes it incompatible to perform.
We can see how it is a Self-betrayal to move with an energy that is not convicted.
We can identify how dangerous it is for us, & for those who engage with us.
We can develop curiosity to investigate what behaviors are fear-based, belaborous, demoralizing & depleting.
We can understand where it is exhausting to engage what doesn’t source us, bring us clarity, & deepen relationships with Self or Others, to instead find what gives us purpose to move from a more aligned, resourceful & accountable place.
If you’re uncertain about the integrity of your actions & energy, begin a practice of noticing it. Become curious about what is a nourishing energy & not. Begin to ask & answer what motivates movement & the life it creates. Confirm if the behavior you exercise is what you are willing to be 100% responsible for.
Are you fluid & confident in your actions or tense & desperate?
Are you convicted about how you’re nurtured by what you nurture? Or are you dutiful & depleted?
Are you sourced & supported finding enjoyment in decisions?
Are your conscious of what motivates engagement & willing to be 100% responsible for it?
Are you respectful of energy & personal capacity & is your personal capacity & energy respected with the company you keep?
Be good to yourself for fucks sake. 💋
With Blessings,
