My Simultaneous Highs and Lows of May
This beautiful month of May started really well for me and ended with me feeling like I am a bit a failure. Luckily I am no longer bothered by feeling like a failure. Recognising my failure patterns is an important part of my growth and not beating myself up about it, but instead supporting myself through it, is one of my favourite new practises of self love.
High Nr. 1: Putting Myself Out There
Podcasts and Blog-casts
I have started to feel more comfortable being a little bit more visible and started to use my voice. You may have noticed, I recorded some audio versions of my blogs and posted them on this blog site. Kathy's Blog-casts/Podcasts.
I was invited to talk on a German podcast “Manager im Burnout” with Wibke Regenberg and Ulf Kepper about my experience with burnout, sick leave and leaving my job. I was extremely grateful for the opportunity and the experience, it was great fun and it kick-started my desire to record my own voice reading my own blog.
I sent the podcast with Wibke and Ulf to my husband. He listened to it, made notes on what he thought was important and SENT THEM TO ME! I was delighted by his response and realised that some people respond more to listening rather than reading. So I decided to record my own voice. I watched a YouTube video on how to use Garage Band to edit recordings and I was off!
It reminded me of the delight I used to take in recording on cassette tapes with my friend as a child, playing at “radio shows.” We used to have phone-ins, quizzes and play music. I LOVED IT. I have now posted three blog-casts of my first blogs in English and finally the first one in German. I hope to include interesting conversations to the collection soon.
If you got in touch to tell me how great you found them then I THANK YOU with all my heart and just know that thanks to you I am encouraged to do more!
High Nr. 2 Finding Some Great Support
More Self-Love with Carina Reeves (you can check her out on Facebook here and you are invited to join her Facebook Group Goddesses In Jeans. Let her know I sent you!)
I got to know Carina Reeves through Susan Kerby's (The Speakers’ Mentor) Speak-A-Thon I was invited to (thanks to my friend Caroline for the invite!). Carina is a Love and Life coach and her talk was about Self Love. Well, that is one of my passions! So I got in touch and she coached me through my next steps. It worked wonders!
“What a month! We got to the nitty gritty really fast and removed so many blocks within such a short time. I experienced a huge amount of growth within that short time thanks to her finely tuned ear and sense of energy.
"I have gone from feeling heavy, worried, resistant and moving with trepidation to flowing courageously with ease and grace. I have so much more energy and more ideas, I get out of bed much easier each day, wondering what will make that day wonderful, rather than wondering what I „should“ do next.”
You see, dear reader, what I really want to do is set up my own coaching business. I want to be a Self-Love Coach and teach and guide others through the skills I have learned and use to look after myself. I have this dream that when we are all kinder and more loving towards ourselves, the world becomes a better place. We start to be kinder and more loving to everyone and everything else around us. More self-acceptance leads to more acceptance of others. Less self-judgement leads to less judgement of others.
My vision is that through more self love, we can help reduce the amount of resentment and cruelty in the world. On a more local scale, I really want people to be kinder to themselves! I see in others how restricting and painful self-criticism and judgement can be and of course I experienced a lot of it myself and felt its affects first hand. I suppose that is why it pains me to see it in others. My hope is that it will also help prevent exhaustion, burnout and depression.
Low Nr. 1 My Blog Fail (and little win)
I took part in a Judith Peter's Challenge Blog Your Purpose and although I wasn't able to create a whole post out of it (which made me feel like a failure!) I was able to learn a lot and try some things out, like this blog post! My thanks to Judith for the nudge towards thinking about what I actually want to achieve with my work and of course for her great tips on blogging!
Low Nr. 2: My Big Holiday Fail (and little win)
I ended up cancelling and returning early after just a three days of my holiday. I felt like a complete failure. Like I can’t even go on holiday, I don’t know how to "do holiday" properly, there must be something wrong with me. Ugh!
Even before I left I started to have a very strong feeling that this wasn’t right for me. After the first night I was already feeling exhausted and tearful. By the second day all I could do was cry and I had strong feelings of sadness and loneliness and all I wanted to do was go home.
My body was sending me some really strong signals, similar to those described in my blog “When My Body Said No.” It was hard to admit, but 1. the whole holiday plan was probably a mistake and 2. I had spent loads of money on things I was just going to drop. I cut my losses and gave up. Although it still feels like a big fail, at the same time I am pretty proud of the way I handled things. And I am so glad to be home.
This time I was able to ask for help in the middle (or quite near the beginning in fact) of my crisis (huge thanks my friend to spoke to me through my loud sobbing!). I was able to express to those around me what I was feeling and that the best thing for me was to cancel all my plans and go home. It was not easy and I did feel guilty but I was able to do what was right for me, despite those judgements of myself.
Acknowledgement
A big thank you to my whole support team for being there for me! 🩷🩵💛
Hope you all had a great month of May! Sending you all so much love and self love!
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