Man, so many revelations in my therapy appointment this morning! I wanted to come straight home and write it all down, but Olivia was awake when I got back and needed to eat. Then I suddenly felt so drained and had to lie down and nap. Maybe I needed to go to sleep and integrate it all. I literally felt like I couldn't keep my eyes open any longer. Thankfully, David is here and could take Olivia to the kids' club at the gym with him. I just got up, and I'm still a little drowsy, but this may be my only time to write today so here goes...
I've always known that it's hard for me to listen. I love to talk, and I'm often the first to speak. Come to realize through a lot of banter in my appointment, this is all coming from a place of fear that if I wait to speak and listen, I won't get a chance to speak. People talk over each other and interrupt all the time. In our fast paced society, I feel as if I won't ever get to say my piece if I step back and listen intently to what someone is saying. Fully listen, not just hold in my mind what I want to say and wait for my chance to blurt it out.
In the Celestine Prophecy, there is an insight that talks about getting to the point where we don't have to be in this place because everyone will naturally know where the conversation is flowing. Your time will come. When it's time for a person to speak up in the conversation because they have something important and essential to contribute, the energy naturally moves to this person, and there is space available for them to speak.
I often don't even give my husband space to speak which makes me really sad that I bulldoze over him every time he tries to open his mouth because I just want to blurt out whatever is in the forefront of my mind, assuming it's so freaking important, more important that what he's about to say. That's so rude! I realized too in my session that my identity has always been the smart one. I never even thought of myself as very pretty. My worth in my mind always came from my intelligence.
So how do I get to express this intelligence? Through conversation! I can flaunt my knowledge by throwing information at people. And as a projector (my human design), it's common for me to not wait for the invitation. I just tell people exactly what I'm thinking, and maybe they're not ready or don't want the information.
David and I always laugh because we have a neighbor that always shows off his new "toys" every time we come over. When we stop by, we always expect to be shown something new he's bought, new patio furniture, a TV, a camper, whatever. It feels like being dragged around by a little kid in a 30-year-old body. Check out this new material good I bought, and give me the validation I want, the confirmation I need that I'm doing well in life to feel good about myself. It hit me at this point in the session that I'm doing the same thing in a different way! I'm rattling off facts or even just applying spiritual/psychological knowledge to someone else's life in a conversation to make myself feel good for having all this knowledge.
My therapist suggests to ask myself before I speak if it's the ego talking or if my comment actually adds value, basically instead of saying everything I'm thinking, how can this serve the collective? How can I help other's rather than just making myself feel good for being "the smartest person in the room?" I realized too that I have a family member who has been driving me nuts, and I have no idea why. She has been acting as a mirror for me in some way, and this is it! She does the exact same thing, and it drives me crazy!
Early on in our appointment, after I realized I have not been listening, I am only waiting for my next chance to speak (I've heard this expression before but never realized I was so guilty of it), I started to tell myself to listen and man, was it hard. I felt like I was going to explode at times, but I sat there and glued my lips shut. Robert Greene, who wrote the Laws of Human Nature, calls it "increasing your response time." We have it on our fridge on our white board because it's such a huge problem for me.
And it was amplified when I was pregnant. I would never let David talk. I would answer for him. Sometimes, I would realize I was doing it and get so mad at myself. I thought, it can't be that bad because David is letting me do it, so he must not mind. After I had Olivia, he told me I really needed to stop doing that. He just didn't want to tell me and make me upset while I was pregnant. I felt awful. I think the world of David, but I'm not making him feel like he's the world to me because I'm not even giving him a chance to tell me (or others, at that time) what he's thinking. I still often interrupt him in conversations at home. That needs to change.
This is going to be my main focal point, maybe for the rest of my life, but I need to work on waiting for the invitation. I'll wait for people's questions, so I can share my ideas. Or I'll wait for the space in conversation. And instead of having a preformulated answer, I'll wait for it to come to me from the cosmos and truly begin channeling Spirit to help others, adding value to the conversation rather than speaking from ego.
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