Category Archives: Worthiness

I am enough

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This morning, tired and strung out from unresolved stress and tension and sadness, awash in guilt about not doing enough and doing too much, sagging under the weight of overwhelm, I watched this video. It’s the brilliant Geneen Roth reading a section from her new book, Lost and Found: One Woman’s Story of Losing Her Money and Finding Her Life.

I will admit, at about minute three, I almost stopped the video. It was all about shopping, and as I mentioned the other day, I don’t really like to, so I was losing interest…until Geneen got to the punch line. At that moment, I realized that not only was it the exact message I needed to hear today, but that maybe you might need to hear it as well–even if like me, you’ve already heard it a million times. Below is the video, but for emphasis, because it’s so important, here’s the part that made my heart do a flip and then fall on the floor.

The truth is until we believe we are enough [are doing enough, accomplishing enough, producing enough, helping enough, good enough], we will never believe we have enough. So just for today, break your trance of deprivation, stop the chatter of discontent. Live as if you are already enough. Watch what happens.

So, just for today, I’m going to attempt to live as if I am already enough. My habitual way of being, so old and deep and sticky, is that I need to earn love, that I need to do more, but today I am going to try and take care of myself, to rest, to simply be, because if I’m really honest with myself, I can’t keep going like this…

Three Truths and One Wish

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1. Truth: You can’t do everything. For starters, you have a body that has real limits, edges and absolutes, a soft animal form that needs breaks for rest, nourishment, and maintenance. Your mind cannot insist this frame, this figure, this shape do more than it can do–that only invites illness and collapse. Your mind needs breaks too, to revive it’s creative energy, to day dream and play, to get quiet and still, even though it doesn’t like to admit it. And your heart, bless your heart–it will let you break it over and over again with your bullying and demands, it will forgive you for each and every abandonment, but the unhealed grief that comes from that process will one day knock you flat.

Your time is limited, don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma, which is living the result of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinion drowned your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition, they somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary. ~Steve Jobs

2. Truth: It’s okay to stop, to rest, to say no. In fact, it’s more than okay–it’s essential. The good work you imagine, the love you long to manifest, will never be fully realized unless you take care of yourself, stop smashing yourself to bits. You will shred yourself, turn to ashes if you don’t lie down and let go, calm down, slow down, surrender.

The love and good and the wild and the peace and creation that are you will reveal themselves, but it is harder when they have to catch up to you in roadrunner mode. ~Anne Lamott

3. Truth: Enough. It’s enough. There is enough. You are enough. You are doing the best you can, can’t do or be any more than that. Even if you never do another thing, it’s enough. You are already light, you are already wise and kind, you are already loved. You are. There’s no test, no goal, no should or have to, no destination other than here–there is only breath, and only this moment. You are medicine, magic, love manifested, precious and brilliant.

We begin to find and become ourselves when we notice how we are already found, already truly, entirely, wildly, messily, marvelously who we were born to be. ~Anne Lamott

One wish: That we can all slow down, stop pushing so hard and insisting on so much, and that we, once and for all, finally know that we are enough, already and exactly as we are.

There is a voice inside of you
That whispers all day long,
“I feel this is right for me,
I know that this is wrong.”
No teacher, preacher, parent, friend
Or wise man can decide
What’s right for you–just listen to
The voice that speaks inside.
~Shel Silverstein