In my coaching practice I frequently encounter women who hire me because they feel half dead and they want to find their other half--their passionate half--which is often deeply buried under myriad obligations.
Everything goes along swimmingly in the beginning of our work. These women embark upon their “soul excavation” with all the eagerness of a pirate in search of buried treasure. I call it buried treasure because passion is often to be found deeply buried within our souls. The excitement comes in finding shiny little treasures- clues to what we are passionate about begin to emerge.
The pirate part is a bit more disturbing. Most women feel like they are, in fact, illegally in search of their buried treasure. They whisper their desires to me under the breath, so softly that often I only hear the soft breathy voice of desire but not the real words.
When I ask, “Why you are whispering?” women often say, I feel guilty and selfish for saying it out loud. What if my husband, kids, grandkids, friends, family, or co-workers hear me saying what I want. Women say I can’t take a walk, read a book, paint, meditate, because I feel guilty and selfish “stealing” (that’s the pirate talk) from others to take care of myself.
One of the questions I then ask women, “How often do you take the car out without any gas?” The response is typically something like, “Well, I let it get as low as it can go and then when the tank is down to one quarter tank or less and the indicator light goes on, I pull over and fill up. But I rarely run dry any more because running out of gas is too expensive and may not even be safe, as in what if I run out of gas on a dark road at night all alone?”
Unfortunately, as women, we often ignore our “soul” tank altogether and don’t have a quarter tank indicator. We often only know something is really wrong when we have allowed our tanks to completely run dry. At this point, exhausted and perhaps ill, we have to be “towed and a major over hall is in order”. .
So let’s not make like pirates, we don’t have to steal a thing. Taking care of ourselves is not self-ish it is self-full. For us to have compassion for others we have to have passion for ourselves. We can’t give meaningfully to others when we haven’t given to ourselves first. Author Kelly Bryson of “Don’t Be Nice, Be Real,” says that he thinks it is no accident that the word passion is part of com-passion.
So, remember just like we need to fill our gas tanks before we can drive down the road, we need to fill our soul tanks or we will be running on just the fumes! Since my personal tank has no quarter tank indicator, I find I must top my tank off each morning before I start work I don’t have to take a lot of extra time I just incorporate it into my day. When I wait until the end of the day to do something for myself, I am already on empty: cranky, and exhausted and have no energy or patience left for myself, family and friends.
So topping off my tank each morning becomes a must!
Some of my favorite tank toppers:
- Spend time in nature every morning with a short 15 minute walk after breakfast
- Sitting in a favorite café at my mid- morning break
- Reading travel/food biographies over breakfast .and/or lunch
- Eating breakfast or lunch outside on the deck in warm weather
- Meeting a good friend for tea/coffee
Gotta sign off now. It is time for my lunch break and to be transported to the Mediterranean via a chapter or two of a fabulous book I am reading, Mediterranean Summer: A Season on France's Cote d'Azur and Italy's Costa Bella
What small daily ideas do you have for refueling/ taking care of yourself? Please share your favorite tank toppers.
