Rejoice Igwebueze
Letting go of control isn’t easy for me. And the idea of “surrendering” and “trusting” in some all-knowing being – forget about it.
But, I’ve learned a way that works for me, my traumatized nervous system, and my highly sensitive nature.
If I can learn how to let go of control and surrender, I know you can too.
We just have to start in the right place.
Willpower – the inner strength to overcome obstacles and achieve goals. I am so grateful for our backyard. We have so many different areas – including a firepit with a built in bench that wraps around it.
I’ve been feeling a lot of moral distress lately with the state of the world, politically, environmentally, humanitarianly, conflict, war, genocide. It’s feeling very overwhelming for me as a highly sensitive person. I think it’s feeling like too much for most of us, really
Meditation is tough, especially when you’re a high achiever. Stay with me while we talk about meditation for high achievers
There, I said it.
I’ve been practicing meditation for almost 20 years and it’s still wickedly hard for me to do.
Objectivity is a core value of mine. So maybe that’s also a reason why I don’t resonate with the typical daily gratitude practice. To me gratitude practice just seems too forced. Too focused on finding a silver lining – which often discounts the struggles we may be facing.
By now, you’ll know that I’m a highly sensitive person and a crier. I quickly burst into tears, especially when frustration gets the better of me. One of my core values is persistence, so I don’t know how to give up. I think I struggle with dealing with frustration because it feels like I’m failing. Like letting something else win. Not that I’m an overly competitive person. But if something stops me from achieving something I want to do – it’s now my enemy. And I need to defeat it.
When I first learned about burnout I heard it was a stress management problem. Essentially it was too much stress and not enough coping strategies to deal with all that stress. But after my own epic burnout experience, I realized that way of perceiving burnout was wrong. The truth is, burnout is not a stress management problem. It’s an energy management problem. And that completely changes the way we look at burnout recovery strategies.
I wish I could meet the person who first said that you need 30 minutes per day of self-care so that I could shake them and ask “why????”.
Finding a solid 30 minutes to dedicate to yourself is pretty difficult, especially in the lives of highly sensitive high achievers, am I right? Plus, not all self-care is made equal, and there are some things we think are self-care, but are actually not.
Let’s talk about it.
I’ve come to the conclusion that the typical discussion around vulnerability isn’t actually trauma informed or inclusive, and I think that needs to change.
When you think of meditation, you likely think about someone sitting down on the floor, legs crossed, eyes closed, hands resting on their knees, breathing deeply and looking calm and relaxed.
But what if meditation didn’t have to look that way? What if all of the typical self-care practices could be adapted to what works for you, not what everybody else seems to be doing?