Hi love,
I have a feeling if you're receiving this Weekend Letter then you are a self-identified life long learner.
You loooovvveee to learn new things about the world around you, yourself and others.
It lights you up, gives meaning, drives your purpose and its in part what you live for.
Well…I hear you and I'm right.there.with.you.
And today I'm coming into your inbox to talk about the other side to this and how it might not be serving you as fully as it feels like it is.
I recently completed some additional coach training and in order to do it I had to intentionally create space.
Despite my initial apprehension about where that space would come from, its been one of my best decisions.
Now that its finished there's a space and without missing a beat I was knee-deep in the internet researching 'what's next'. An almost insatiable desire to rapidly fill it with a list as long as my arm of courses I want to do and certificates I want to have my adorned name on.
Closing one learning door and scrambling to open the next.
Sound familiar? It's something I see reflected in my clients all.the.time.
Whilst we crave more space and time and they feature high up on the dream list of desires. How intentional are you being about what you fill your space and time with???
This like with everything, is multi-faceted and what exists at the centre is not allowing yourself the space to embody, embrace and enjoy what you have.
The systems and stories that seek to render us as women exhausted and tired are doing a great job. Keeping us ‘on’, ridiculously busy, over-complicating, over-preparing, under-valuing and under-charging are surefire ways to achieve that outcome. Along with engineering for us to tie our worth to our work/knowledge/qualifications *insert or delete as appropriate*.
For the black women in the room I know that for us there is an element of 'having to be the best’ as a protection mechanism to mitigate the undermining, challenging and questioning of our being.
Again exhausting.
And resulting in us seeing space as something to be filled with DOing vs space to BE…human.
It acts as a brilliant distraction from what emerges when we have space.
From creativity and joy right through to the pushed down emotions, feelings and thoughts that feel confronting and easier to not address yet are the portal to so much.
So much what?
Well creativity, joy and living well. 😉
Ultimately, the inability to sit in the space becomes a distraction from what we SAY we desire.
We get it what we want in one hand whilst pushing it away with the other.
So my question for you is, where is there space in your life that you have a knee-jerk reaction fill?
I know there will be some of you eye-rolling me right now. Those of you who have full-on care-giver duties, demanding corporate roles, vibrant businesses and other life circumstances where on a practical level there doesn’t appear to be any space.
This is not a ‘we all have the same hours as Beyonce’ message.
Because that my friend is BS.
But what I am proposing is that we do all have space and it exists to varying degrees.
Space that we then fill with a soul-sucking social media scroll, a guilt induced can’t possibly sit down domestic task or a martyr-fuelled service to another...yes I went there ; ) VS anything that would actually feel spacious, fulfilling and nourishing. And yes, a good old daydream staring into space totally fits in here.
Yet what if the next step is not to fill the space with more stuff and instead use it to let all you have learnt and consumed to percolate like good coffee or fine wine.
To treat yourself like good coffee and fine wine.
To give yourself time.
To be with yourself.
To let it all settle into your roots so that you can rise from that place.
So my love, in the way I was rushing to fill my new-found space with more learning, where are you denying yourself the space ‘you say you want' and how can you reclaim a piece of that this week?
If you feel called, hit reply and share. I'd love to know.
Sending love,
