“The most fundamental harm we can do to ourselves is to remain ignorant by not having the courage to look at ourselves honestly and gently.” - Pema Chodron
Over the weekend, I read a comment on a Facebook post that really struck me. A friend of mine, commenting on photos of herself a decade apart, wrote that beauty is an inside job.
She has certainly transformed herself physically in the past decade, but it was really her her observation about the inner work that stuck with me.
Last week I wrote a post about thumbing over your scars when you walk into a gym or put yourself out to the world. But in reading her post, and in seeing the above quote from Pema Chodron, I was reminded that scars are an indication of healing.
While I know that we all have scars, I was also reminded that many of us still have some gaping, inflamed, and very painful wounds.
Many of us walk around everyday still carrying tremendous emotional wounds from our youth. Many of us, myself included, still have inside work to do. But sometimes we avoid that work because it’s more convenient to put all of our focus on the external work.
Everyday I meet with clients who are chasing not even happiness, but contentment. I work with people who, whether they realize it or not, are trying to figure out exactly what needs to happen in life so they can feel like they are enough.
We are all trying to be enough - good enough parents - good enough friends - good enough employees and children and members of our community.
When it comes to our physical appearance I think we are all trying to be pretty enough or handsome enough or thin enough.
In some cases, the real work comes when we hit those external goals - we lose the weight - gain the muscle - get the job - find the relationship - and discover that we still do not feel like we are enough. In many other cases, I sit down with clients month after month and we make goals and they don’t hit those goals and eventually it’s time to acknowledge that there is something getting in the way of them making the important changes they want to make in their lives.
If a client is coming up short on their goals, it might be a sign that they have some inner work to do. So much of our behavior as adults is intertwined with emotional experiences we had growing up. As adults, we pack that stuff away and don’t get me wrong, sometimes avoiding is how we cope.
But eventually, we need to acknowledge what’s going on with our inner landscape.
Healing ourselves takes work. Hard work. Persistent work. Frustrating and complicated work. Doing inner work requires finding a way to sit with the discomfort. To sit with pain. Last week I wrote about touching your scars. And while I can’t speak for you, I not only have some scars - but I have some open wounds on the inside that I need to work on healing.
The thing is, it can be easy to avoid that work by focusing on the external stuff. We chase success with our careers, working longer hours and starting more projects and doing more, more, more. We put in 14 hour days so that we never have down time to feel the pain we feel inside.
It is hard….it is so, so, so very hard to stop and take a long look at ourselves. But do it. Stop right now and look at your goals, look at what you’re chasing, look at how you’re spending your time. Look at your goals.
Don’t just look at where you’re trying to go - maybe take a few minutes to see if there is anything you’re avoiding in the process.
And let me remind you that right now, in this moment, you are enough.