What Becomes Possible When You Start Choosing Yourself Again

In last week's blog I shared my story about finally quitting downhill skiing because it was something I had been doing for other people, not myself.

When I stopped this and some other things I was doing, I expected to feel like I was letting people down. What I actually felt, almost immediately, was relief. A lightness. From not doing something my whole body was quietly resisting.

But it's not just relief, it's expansion.

Once I stopped abandoning myself in those small, specific ways, I had more presence with my kids because I wasn't performing the role of "good mom," I was actually there. My marriage got more honest, because I wasn't spending energy managing what Dave thought of me instead of just telling him the truth. My work started to feel like mine again, because I was finally building it as me instead of who I thought I needed to be.

You don't heal by repairing old beliefs, you heal by building evidence of who you're becoming. 

Quitting skiing is a small thing. But it was evidence and evidence adds up. This isn't a personality transplant. You don't wake up one day and become a completely different woman. Self-abandonment becomes self-devoted slowly. Invisible becomes seen slowly.

It's not one huge brave decision, it's a hundred small ones, the same way you left yourself in a hundred small ones over the years.

• Telling your sister you'd rather not host Christmas this year, instead of "no, no, it's fine, I'll do it."

• Texting your partner "can you grab dinner on the way home? I'm running on empty," instead of making a home made meal feeling nauseous from being so tired.

• Lying down for 20 minutes before you make dinner, while the laundry sits unfolded on the bed, and letting it wait.

• Putting on the dress that's been hanging in your closet with the tags still on, on a regular Tuesday, not saving it for "someday."

• Signing up for the 6pm yoga class and actually going, even though dinner will be late and someone will ask where you're off to.

• Saying "I can't make it this weekend" to your mom, then letting the pause on the other end of the phone just sit there without rushing in to fix it.

That's what's actually on the other side of this work. A more honest version of you, more present with the people you love, more magnetic in the work you do, because you're finally building a life around who you are instead of who you learned you had to be.

If you've been circling this, wondering what's actually possible if you stopped abandoning yourself in the small ways you do every week, I built a free masterclass around exactly this. "Where Did I Go?" is live Monday October 5th at 7pm ET, 60 minutes.

I'd love to have you there.

Mel x