Ask Others, Trust Yourself by Elisa Balabram

All we do in life takes practice. You may have heard that Malcolm Gladwell explored the fact that it takes at least 10,000 hours practicing a craft; and he gave examples of famous musicians, professionals in IT, sports and others; for someone to really become a master of it. It makes sense, and he presents the research and examples in his book Outliers: The Story of Success. He also talked about it in this video.

I wanted to take it a step further, and share with you two quick examples that came up for me, and got me thinking about how it takes constant and daily practice, and commitment to shift old habits and master new behaviors as well. The two examples are about how I became a person with patience, and how I learned to remember people’s names.

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When I wrote about self-love yesterday, I forgot to mention nurturing self. Yes, I included expressing needs, but it goes even deeper, in actually knowing our needs and then making sure that they are met, by us when possible.

Yesterday, I had one of the best Valentine’s Day ever, and I’m not involved in a romantic relationship. I set the intention early on to have a full Self-Love day. And I realized that I had to add a few things to the mouthful of what I said about self-love yesterday. I will share the highlights of my day, and include the self-love practices:

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How about if as today’s self-love practice, you put emphasis on what’s positive and loving in your life, and less emphasis on what’s not working? How about if you transform any negative feedback you ever got, into positive action to make it happen? This is the choice I’m making today, and here are two episodes that happened to me on the same evening.

I’m taking a 6-week Creative Writing class, as one of my investing in myself self-love practices, and this happened on the third class. Unfortunately, though not surprisingly, I received less than encouraging feedback from our first assignment that was due on the second class. When I first read it, I thought maybe I will never be a creative writer after all, or my brain is just not wired that way. Then I decided to shift my thinking, and have hopes that maybe when the course is over, I will have learned enough to shift my brain, to practice, and to write creatively. Even though I’m not avoiding the feelings that came up from reading her feedback, or from the way I interpreted it, I’m choosing to be grateful for something that happened before the class.

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I have read a lot about the Law of Attraction over the years, and about paying attention to our thoughts and feelings. In my experience, it is a constant practice of shifting the mind, rewiring thoughts, and replacing them with new and healthier ones. It is easy to get caught up in thoughts of drama, of doom and gloom, of failure, of loses. Or maybe it is just me.

If you are still reading this article, it probably means that I’m not alone, and you too have your drama thought moments. Thank you for being there with me as well.

We had a couple of snowstorms and extreme weather conditions, and the subway system in New York suffered a little bit, and I decided to reframe my thoughts when there were subway issues.

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How many times do you have misunderstandings with relationships, with clients, with co-workers, with employees, and in life in general? Sometimes we believe we are as clear as possible, and others still receive our message a different way. I have hanging in my wall a drawing that reminds me that we all see, experience, and feel even the same things in our own unique way. It is a good reminder that not everyone will always get exactly what we mean, and we may need to paint the whole scenario a different way to get our message across.

Here is the story of the drawings on this post:

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I wrote a lot about self-love in the last couple of months. I also practiced every day each suggestion that I posted. Yet, some evenings I just wanted to crawl under the bed and say forget about self-love! I would indulge in not feeling good enough, not being perfect, feeling less than. Then, through a moment of clarity, I would remember that I had tools to deal with those feelings. But I was too far gone to make the moment of clarity last, or to actually use the tools, so I would go back to the familiar – resistance.

I would resist moving forward, and I would be stuck between allowing myself to feel all the feelings that came up, and simply avoiding them altogether. Can you relate? What do you do when you simply want to avoid those feelings that are percolating?  Do you usually try to avoid them or do you allow yourself to feel them fully? The more we resist, the longer they stay around, yet it is hard to take the first step.

Here are a few things that I learned to practice to get beyond the internal self-talk that wants to curse self-love and just feel bad for days:

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