Life Lessons
Working on Yourself? No Use Feeling Selfish and Guilty in the Process
The river gave me a different perspective
Working on yourself is a gift. A very important gift to yourself and others. In my life, this gift did not come early. I was already far in my 40s, it was 2013 when I realized that I missed out on something. So I started finding out what it was.
As with most people, it was a crisis that started my journey. I won’t bore you with the details but it had to do with death, divorce and me questioning everything that had seemed so normal before.
The journey had started. I moved to a little cabin in the woods. Yes, that’s sounds romantic. But often it was harsh and confronting instead. One of my questions was often: “What on earth am I doing with my life…?”
One year later I quit my well-paid job and became a freelancer. I was already approaching 50 and many people thought I’d gone crazy. “You’ll never find another job when this doesn’t work out,” they warned me. But I felt freedom. It took me well out of my comfort zone, but I always get the best access to the wisdom of life outside of my boundaries…
“You’ll never find another job when this doesn’t work out,” they warned me. But I felt freedom.
It felt like heaven in one sense. I finally felt free to do only the jobs that I wanted and I had plenty of time to look deeply into myself.
It felt like hell sometimes, too. I felt the uncertainty of not having a steady income. And I needed to go out and connect to people for new projects when all I wanted to do was hide in my woods and walk…
Fast forward… Seven years later, my life has — kind of — sorted itself out. It took me blood, sweat, and laughter… They were years of hard work and surrendering to the process. The deep black pits are gone now. My joy is vibrant again and I live the best life ever!
Seven years later, my life has — kind of — sorted itself out. It took me blood, sweat, and laughter…
So, with hindsight, it was well worth the journey! I learned to love myself, love others and I joined the changemakers of the world. My inspiration started to flow and my freelance projects sorted themselves out. Nowadays, they provide me with a good living.
Well, so far the introduction. What about this feeling selfish and guilty? When I was deep into my personal journey, I felt selfish very often. I’m a person who does not share her emotions very easily. I do have close friends, but in those years I had nothing to offer them. My friends offered me a lot though.
My friends cooked for me when they thought I was not taking care of myself. They did not crowd me but hugged me when I asked them to. They made me laugh whenever I was taking myself too seriously. I’m still mighty grateful to them for all of that!
My friends made me laugh whenever I was taking myself too seriously.
And please take these tips to heart whenever you have a friend who needs your loving care. The small things matter! Practical things matter! Hugs matter! Don’t crowd, don’t offer advice, and most of all don’t expect too much in return for a while… They’ll come out of it and be your friend forever, remembering exactly how you made them feel!
But although my friends assured me they had no expectations, I did feel selfish at times. They must have needed me as well sometimes. And I just didn’t have the energy. All the energy I had was going into my journey of healing, learning new ways of being and daily survival. No extras left…
And I had the luxury of being able to hide. Sleep a lot, meditate, reflect, walk long walks in nature… No obligation for me to care for little children or elderly parents in those years.
So I see others on this journey who feel even more selfish and guilty than me. They might have the same support around. But they also have to care for young or old folks relying on them. And they just don’t have the energy for caring…
Well, I found out there is a time for everything. Ebb and flood.
This might be the key to it all. While you are busy finding your feet again, it’s okay to use the autopilot for the caring bit. Not everything has to be 100% giving all the time. You can do 50% for a while and still be a good enough parent, child or relative. Be kind to yourself.
Make sure you make some radical choices. What is really important to do now and what can wait? Make sure the working on yourself is at the top of your list in this period of time. Later, priorities can shift again.
Of course, everybody has a different path to walk, so it varies how long the ebb will take. The ocean can be tricky. But one thing is sure. Feeling selfish is not helping. And feeling guilty is not helping either. Both will only drain your energy.
So maybe it is okay to just dive deep. Go on autopilot for a bit. And after a while, you will surface on the other side…
During one of my walks, I met a river. And she became a metaphor for me. I had stopped flowing. I was dammed. So my journey was ‘the undamming’. The ‘rewilding’ as you wish. I had to stop pleasing others and make sure the water in the river was me, my own authentic water.
Everything is connected. The river touches other beings. The soil on the banks is another being. The stones on the bottom are other beings. The fish, algae, and crabs are other beings.
So maybe all we have to do is not pollute each other with our waste. We have to keep our own waters flowing healthily. And make sure we will not be polluted by other beings’ waste either.
Only give each other food, not waste…
We touch. And we can only feed each other when we have an abundance of food (read love, care, compassion, etc…) for ourselves first. I learned. I experimented. I grew. And I became my own authentic, undammed river.
During my journey, the river metaphor came to me in different forms. Here is a chant I sometimes sing by the river. Or in the woods walking our dog. Or in the car. Alone!
“The river is flowing, flowing and growing
The river is flowing, back to the sea
Mother Earth carry me, a child I will always be
Mother Earth carry me, back to the sea”
— chant, written by Sun Bear
There are many versions of this song performed. Personally, I love this version. It’s part of the film ‘I won’t go quietly’ by Anne Sono, in remembrance of the Norway massacre in 2011.
The river also helped me transform my way of creating things in my life. I discovered that there are two ways to create things: masculine and feminine. Always having worked in male environments, it was so very normal for me to create things from the outside in, only by rational thinking and force.
The river taught me to create from the inside out. By feeling and flow. This feels like such an effortless, natural way for me and my head is clearer than ever. It’s magical. Connection to nature and intuition help me a lot in my rational work now. Here is something I already wrote about this process and I might write more about effortless ways of creating another time…
River wisdom is part of the teachings of Tree Sisters: ‘Embodying Rivers, Sky, and Earth’. Tree Sisters is a foundation dedicated to personal growth and giving back to nature by reforestation of the tropics.
It’s this reciprocity, giving back to nature, I write about often.
It’s the change in business models we so badly need if we are going to learn how to live within the boundaries of our planet. Imagine, if we all start giving back to nature, there will be enough abundance for us all…
The Women’s Wisdom School taught me the river-way of dealing with overwhelming emotions. You know, the kind of emotions that make you howl like a wolf in labor.
It’s called ‘feel- kiss- flow’.
We can feel the emotions physically in our bodies and then let go. Good riddance... We might also call it ‘transforming them into awareness’. And resume our authentic, abundant, downstream-river flow again.
As soon as you have such a strong emotion, you:
- Feel where the emotion is in our body. Every emotion has a very physical place. Often we don’t notice, because we are already in our head telling ourselves stories about this emotion. Drama stories… The lesson is to not pay attention to these stories. Just let them be and feel the emotion physically in our body
- Kiss the emotion. Touch it with our minds. Playing tag. Your turn… Smile at it. Recognize it’s there. Let is be. It is not good or bad, it just IS
- Flow again. The emotion will dilute in the wild river and balance will be restored on a more manageable level
It helps me. You can try it. Perhaps it’ll help you too…
The rivers are also part of the teachings of Mary Reynolds Thompson. A Wild Soul Woman is a program that takes you through five landscapes of the soul. They are mesmerizing! They are powerful! They are wild!
- The deserts are the landscapes of contemplation. In the wild sands, there is space for new things to emerge. I love this poem-part by Terry Tempest Williams:
“ Perhaps that is why every pilgrimage to the desert is a pilgrimage to the self. There is no place to hide and so we are found.” — from “Red: Passion and Patience in the Desert”
- The forests give us “mystery, magic and wisdom in the shadow and the light in us”
- The oceans and rivers teach us about “water in steam, cloud, ice, rain, snow, and flow. We learn how to use our shape-shifting abilities.” This shape-shifting thing triggers my imagination. I love to play with it…
- The mountains help us to stand strong. To be visible. It was really empowering for me to go through the mountain bit. I’m getting better at daring to stand tall and speak my truths now. And it even helped me face my vertigo on a real-life mountain…
- The grasslands are the last part. Here we can integrate all the landscapes and use the wisdom in our communities. It is so much easier to be aware when you are on a mountain somewhere alone. It’s much harder to stay aware when you are facing everyday life. That’s where it counts…
And if you ever become inspired by a river, consider joining our river families of Drinkable Rivers. Li An Phoa is a woman who inspired me big time on reciprocity, on giving back to nature.
Li An is a river woman transforming communities and economies.
As a river-person, you can care for your own river nearby. How great would it be if the veins of our world would become drinkable again…
Well, I really hope you’ll find the time and focus to keep working on yourself. And maybe you’ll meet the river as I met her. Who knows, the feeling selfish and guilty might effortlessly flow downstream...
I’m always open for comments… And if you want to connect, you can find me on LinkedIn, Facebook or somewhere beside a river. My feet in the water, feeling the flow…
Thank you, Mike, for adding your wise energy to my river journey.
