Wanna Fight? Fight For Yourself

Life feels heavy and hard right now – people are in their corners, fighting over politics, vaccines, and everything in between. And while I try to excuse myself from those fights for my own mental health, the one fight I seem to be powerless in avoiding is the daily fighting with myself.

I’ve come to realize that sadly, my biggest battles are those I wage internally.

What if each of us started fighting FOR ourselves versus fighting WITH ourselves?

When I talk about fighting with myself, it manifests in ever present ways, like the internal chatter that’s continually critiquing what we ate, what we said, how we performed. But it also shows up in trickier, less obvious ways, like not trusting ourselves or running away.

Here’s what a typical day looks like in Deb World:

• Wake up and probably start thinking about what I ate last night and how I wish I didn’t eat it.
• Internally debate whether I should go to the fitness class I am signed up for (I always go, but I always struggle)
• Think all day about what I’m going to eat and how much of it I am going to eat and whether or not I’m going to embrace body positivity or health (which are not opposites in the slightest but we are socialized to think this)
• Want to take a nap but also disparage myself for wanting to take a nap because I’m afraid it means I’m lazy
• Battle about eating a dessert after dinner that I feel like I deserve because of all I did today but know I don’t need the calories
• Overanalyze comments I made to a friend wondering if I said the right thing and hoping my relationship is stable
• Stay up later than I should watching something on TV or scrolling my phone

Don’t get me wrong – my day is also filled with so much that energizes me – talks with family and friends, texts from my kids, yoga, work that I feel good about, getting outside, snuggles with my pets, long talks with my husband, and more. But, there is a constant undercurrent of fight. How many of you relate to this? Life is good, but we are always picking at ourselves; death by a thousand paper cuts of our own hand.

This is my fighting with myself.

What does fighting FOR myself look like?

I’m starting to lean into this idea more and more and here’s what I’ve discovered about fighting for myself and the resulting and surprising shift in living it’s giving me:

Awareness

I’m much more aware of my internal dialogue than I ever was before. I now catch myself hurling insults my own way, thinking negative thoughts, and self sabotaging. This awareness empowers me to stop. Just stop in that moment and reframe how I’m thinking about the situation and my place in it. I’m not saying I never have negative thoughts, but now I can take away their power and turn it into something positive.

Curiosity

Awareness leads to curiosity. Curiosity is the opposite of judgement. I now spend less time judging myself and more time trying to understand why I might feel the way I do. I ask myself questions and try to uncover answers. This is harder than just flinging your feelings to the side of the road, but it’s so worth it! Because when we are aware and develop a healthy curiosity about who we are, it develops….

Self Compassion

Fighting for myself has given me more self compassion than I’ve ever had before. I am now willing to embrace all parts of myself – the ones that are easy to love and the ones that take work. We are all continuums – the good and bad are all connected and need to be embraced. This doesn’t mean I no longer try to improve. It actually means I’m more engaged in improving because instead of denying parts of who I am to amplify the good parts, I embrace all the parts and work to bring my whole self to the world. No one can hate or deny themselves into happiness. That can only come from self love and self compassion.

Permission

I don’t know about you, but a lot of my self fighting centers on denying myself permission. Permission to feel, permission to fail, permission to be vulnerable. Fighting for myself has a dimension of permission granting to it. It’s almost like I have an inner voice that now says things like “that’s okay” “you’re alright” “that makes sense” “good thinking”. I give myself permission to acknowledge, feel, explore, and own all sorts of things that once felt taboo or even wrong. Fighting for ourselves is a green light to a road that helps us become whole.

Self Trust

The more time I spend learning about myself and who I authentically am, the more I trust myself. This is a truly self affirming feeling. I trust my instincts, I trust my opinions, and I trust my actions. I also trust that I am bigger than anything that will happen to me. This doesn’t mean I don’t make mistakes; it means that even if I do, I know in the truest parts of myself that the mistake came from a place of trying and my best intentions. So, I apologize, and armed with trust, I know life, my relationships, and I will move forward in peace.

The Power to Stay

Escaping ourselves is everywhere. It’s in food, drinks, drugs, social media, toxic relationships, and more. Anything that gives us that numbing distraction is us running away. I have spent most of my life running from myself (many more blogs on this later) but now I am learning, through trial and error, never giving up, and pushing off from wherever I might be, to STAY. Stay in my happy, stay in my sad, stay in my pain, stay in my embarrassment. Just stay. There’s a song by Brandi Carlile (The Eye) with the lyrics, “you might make it further if you learn to stay” and this rings so true to me in every situation. Staying, no matter how embarrassed or uncomfortable or foreign it may feel, is how we go deeper into ourselves with lasting meaning. Often, it’s not a feeling that makes us feel unsettled; it’s our fighting the feeling that amplifies the emotional discomfort and gives it more weight than it probably deserves. Believe it or not, the latest neurological research states that a feeling lasts 90 seconds. What lasts hours, days, and even lifetimes is our processing, internalizing, and often avoiding that feeling. Does that mean it shouldn’t hurt? No. It means we need to let it hurt so we can move forward.

I don’t have it all figured out. I barely have anything figured out. But what I do know about myself is that I operate and show up for people at my best when I am my own advocate versus my own enemy. I ask all of you to fight. Fight FOR you. Fight for authenticity. Fight for curiosity. Fight for staying.

If we all could do this even a little bit, I believe we’d fight less with each other. That same compassion and curiosity we learn to apply to our own hearts and minds could be applied to humanity. Things wouldn’t be personal or painful – we’d all just be a sea of self-aware people striving and staying. We’d all be fighting FOR us.

If you need someone to stay with you, side by side, and fight the good fight, I’m here. Let’s go further together.