Overcoming the fatigue of being oneself
Well hello!
Here’s this week’s Friday Feels! Snippets from my world of coaching, meditation and breathwork – with the intention to share information that brings joy, wonder and self-reflection.
1. Song of the week
Shall we Ooga-Chaka Ooga-Ooga into the weekend? This 1974 banger by Blue Swede – Hooked On A Feeling – was a fun one to play at the end of breathwork this week! Listen on Spotify or YouTube (some solid furry waistcoats and platform shoes on display 🤩)
2. Quote of the week
“The fatigue of being oneself.
We all get a little tired of being ourselves sometimes.
The answer is to reinvent yourself, but how do you do that and what is the cost?”
— Leos Carax (Source: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2012/sep/27/holy-motors-weird-world-leos-carrax)
Recently I felt a bit tired of myself. Have you ever experienced that? 🤔 Not with any disrespect, or loathing. Just a sense of “phew, it’s kind of exhausting being me sometimes!” I guess we can’t really get a break from being ourselves, other than numbing out or losing ourselves in hobbies, food or blotting ourselves out altogether with booze and other substances 😵💫
I guess that’s why I love meditation so much – because I have that sense of falling away from myself and feeling that expansiveness in the present moment. A break from all that thinking! It’s the same with other embodied activities like breathwork, hiking, yoga or playing guitar – I am getting good enough now that I don’t have to think so much and I can lose myself in the playing.
A lot of self-awareness and personal development can be cognitively demanding and emotionally draining! I share more in this frank chat on Instagram.
But I do love this quote by Leos Carax – I have already done quite a bit of reinventing of myself! And it’s healthy to have a break here and there. But The Work does not end. It’s the privilege of a lifetime to keep evolving 😍
3. Practice of the week
Self-Care! I see self-care as an essential way of topping up your tank. Maintaining your energy levels! It’s really easy to fall into a pattern of self-neglect and to prioritise other things or people above ourselves. When we don’t take care of our basic needs, the body has to work harder and we also diminish our ability to self-regulate and maintain a balanced emotional state.
I use a self-care menu (see mine below!) which features a list of simple, free and easy to access actions that I know top up my energy. And, just like eating food, we don’t feel like eating the same thing every day, do we? And I don’t want to put pressure on myself to have a big checklist of things I must do every day (setting myself up for stress and a sense of failure!)
So my only rule is: 1 thing a day. I need to do 1 thing a day from the self-care menu 🙏
If I want to do more, great! If not, no worries. This is how you maintain a high level of performance and continue to take care of your physical, emotional and mental health. I love helping my coaching clients create their own self-care menu. What would be on yours??
Check out my 25-minute class about how to create your own self-care menu here!
4. Teaching of the week
“We become what we think about.”
I’ve been reconnecting to the essential lesson about the power of our thoughts and how they shape our reality. To take control of your life you must take control of your thoughts.
Hence, the old adage:
If you think you can’t—you can’t.
If you think you can—you can.
So what are you thinking about often? Most of the time, we have so little awareness of our thoughts. And we rarely question where they come from or how useful they may be (“just because you have a thought doesn’t mean it’s true” is something I remind myself of often when my mind throws up something sticky or challenging). We do have a negativity bias and for many people, we are trained to be hesitant, expect the worst in life, play small to be safe etc. And this is mirrored in the emotional tone of our thoughts.
The cards can be stacked against us! When I first heard someone suggest that you could CHOOSE your thoughts, I thought it was a bit ridiculous! Like saying you could pick and choose what clouds would appear in the sky. I realised it’s more a case of what thoughts you want to continue to feed with your attention.
I have found the empowering truth that we CAN choose our own thoughts to be one of the trickiest and also most powerful tools for shifting my results. Sometimes, however, it can be so damn easy! Because you tap into a bigger picture and a deeper truth.
Where is your attention?
What are your beliefs?
Why do you believe what you believe?
Are those thoughts 100% true?
These aren’t anything new – we’ve been asking questions like this for thousands of years…! And it’s through this type of self-enquiry that we get unstuck and remember our power!
5. Client win of the week
She bit into the side of her lip as she glanced down at her sums, “er…. all of that adds up to £3,500“.
A coaching client had been feeling anxious about her income. Her business had slowed right down during the pandemic and she was feeling the pinch of finances getting tight. The stress of this was starting to keep her up at night and distracting her from doing her work. So we sat down with a big cup of tea, took a deep breath, put some relaxing music on and dug through everything. I wanted to get a sense of where she was at, because it all felt a bit up in the air and overwhelming. Running a business on your own, it’s easy to lose sight of where you’re at sometimes.
After an hour of digging through her revenue and sales data, we totted up incoming revenue for the next couple of weeks. It was actually a very pleasant surprise, at £3,500 PROFIT.
Imagine that! Just £3,500 lurking around in your biz! Not bad eh? The pinch and pressure had all been in her mind. Heavy thoughts of being overwhelmed and underperforming had been building in the background like dark clouds. She had lost sight of sales and what was already here, and ironically was starting to create what she feared.
This is the power of our thoughts!
She left our coaching session shining bright, feeling super elated and clear on her business priorities for the coming month to keep growing that income 🙌 everything really can shift quickly sometimes.
Join my weekend retreat
“Create Your Own Reality” Retreat – North Wales, Friday 24th – Monday 27th June 2022 [IN-PERSON] – contact me for more information. Come and experience breathwork, meditation, kundalini yoga, cold water immersion, hikes in nature and so much more!
That’s it for this week’s Friday Feels!
Remember: Take care of your beautiful self. There is only ONE of you! Which makes you very precious indeed.
Big love,
Briony x
P.S. What is this Friday Feels post about? In case you’re reading this for the first time (hello!), I post a weekly blog with snippets from my world of coaching, meditation and breathwork. My intention is to share useful, joyful or interesting tidbits, which may serve you in some way 🙏 I am grateful we’re connected – thank you for your time + presence x
