Day 295: The Generosity I Withheld From Myself
I just read two sentences that made me immediately grab my laptop and start writing.
"To give a generous gift, we must be generous with ourselves. And to give generously, we must become very good at receiving generously."
Those two sentences were in the middle of a story Rob Bell was telling about a meeting he had with an Irish priest.
He had flown to Dublin for lunch with him to get his advice because life was cracking him open and he wasn't sure which way to go.
He was getting a lot of pushback at his church from people who wanted to put him in a box of what kind of church it should be and what he needed to do to grow it.
That wasn't what felt right to him.
His first book got a lot of negative reviews and that ate at him as well.
His heart and soul were leading him in one direction and everything in the world was telling him he should do just about the opposite of it.
That's my analysis of his situation from what I've read.
So he poured out his heart and his anxiety about all this to this priest who gave him some wonderful advice.
And he concluded that it meant he would give the gift and surrender the rest.
Because really, once we give our gift, we can't control what others think about it or do with it.
And, just as importantly, enjoy giving the gift.
He said it's not about pushing himself harder, which is what most of us tend to do, or being more convincing.
And then he said something that made me wonder if that had a lot to do with my dark night of the soul.
"If the only answer ever to anything is, you really need to do more and try harder, your heart will eventually wear out. Along with your body. And your soul."
This is what I now believe happened to me, and maybe at some point, something similar happened to you.
All of the pressure of trying to fit our uniqueness into the package others are telling us it needs to go into because of the level of success we have attained and where they think we should go next. It's just too much, especially when it goes against everything you know to be true, but are too afraid to say out loud.
The heaviness of the energy of other people in my inner circle and my mentors telling me the path I had to take. It wasn't the path I wanted to be on. It wasn't the lifestyle I wanted. I didn't want to have to dress the part or look the part. Really I was acting the part, and I tried my best to convince myself that's who I was.
It wasn't enough that the work was real, I had to look a certain way to complete the picture.
But my heart and soul had other plans.
So when a huge life-changing part of my personal and business life fell through in the crash of 2008-2009, that was the beginning of the end.
I remember the moment I heard the news. I literally slid down the wall in my bedroom with my phone in my hand and fell to the floor, in tears.
And then, the next minute I had to pull myself together and go into my office to interview someone on a teleseminar I was doing.
All these years I wondered why I took that event so hard. Yes, I put everything I was into it. It was a big life change, moving to Maui and turning the house I was buying into a retreat center. It was my dream.
And then with the changes in mortgages that were happening so rapidly at that time, I got the call that my mortgage was no longer available and it needed to be switched to another type that would require an additional $100,000 by the end of the week to close.
The next morning I started calling all my friends I thought might have that much money liquid that could loan it to me short-term. I had people calling me back from airports, connecting me with other people, and in the end, it didn't happen.
My entire house was already packed in boxes waiting for the movers to put it in a container to go to Hawaii.
My life plan after the divorce was now blown into a million pieces, the house I loved so much would not be mine, or the retreat center. And I couldn't bear the thought of moving to Maui and not living in that house.
Instead of bouncing back like most other people who suffered financial losses during that time, I started to pull back.
I blamed myself. I see people's futures and help them build them for a living. How did I let this happen?
I turned a worldwide financial disaster into something I personally took responsibility for in my life. But, for everyone else, I understood it wasn't their fault, it was the market.
But for me, I should have seen this coming.
Talk about heavy energy.
And I had to physically sit in it, in a house that at the end of the week would no longer be mine to live in. At least everything was already packed, but where would I move now that I wasn't going to Hawaii.
And I lost all the money I had already put into the house. It was a mess.
It was all my heart and soul needed as a sign to burn it all down.
I kept working. I kept showing up. I pushed harder, until I couldn't push anymore.
It was like my soul took a seat and said, I'm not doing this anymore.
So, in the fall of 2011 I moved back to Cabo, mid-dark night of the soul. And about 6 months later I closed down my business. An email list of over 20,000 people left confused.
I had no words to explain at the time. I just said I was retiring.
This is the first time I've ever told this story, and telling it on the record, in print, is not something I knew if I could ever do.
Because I made it about me, my responsibility, I felt shame and guilt. Two emotions that aren't normally part of my life.
So I swore myself to secrecy that this story would be my private shame. Because I couldn't see everything coming down the pike. I couldn't fix it when it did happen. How arrogant of me to think that.
And this morning, reading those words about being generous with ourselves and becoming good at receiving generosity, I finally recognized something.
I had spent so many years giving other people compassion, encouragement, understanding, and permission to begin again, while refusing to offer those same things to myself.
I could help someone else recognize that an unexpected loss didn't define her. I could see possibilities for her future that she couldn't see yet.
But when it came to my own life, I had decided that, in this instance, I should have known better.
I had made myself the one person who wasn't allowed to be human.
From the outside, it should have been so simple. Things happen. People bounce back.
Regroup, move somewhere else. Find another house in an amazing location that will make a great spiritual retreat center. Get on with it.
But my soul saw an opening to say, wait one minute. We're not going down this path any further. We'll wait until you find the courage to forge your own path with nobody telling you what that needs to look like.
My business would have carried on. Everything I taught was sound and my clients were happy. And yet, just like Rob Bell with his very popular, fast-growing church, there was still something about the way it was being built that wasn't a true fit for him.
And I was beginning to recognize the same thing in my own life.
That's why my soul was asking me to close it, even though I had no idea what would come next.
So, here I am.
Getting ready to fully engage, finally. To put myself out there in a much more public way, which I haven't done in 15 years.
I've continued working, creating, learning, and helping people over these years, but I've kept myself at a much smaller level of visibility than I once had.
I've shared my work and my gifts with people who came to me, but I've been reluctant to step back into the bigger public role I once occupied.
For a long time, I told myself that I simply preferred it that way. And there was truth in that. I love the quieter, simpler life I've created.
But now I can see that part of me was also protecting myself from ever experiencing that kind of unraveling again.
That's been difficult to admit because it doesn't feel like the woman I know myself to be.
And yet, it's part of my story, part of my past.
So it's ironic the way this all showed up for me today.
Because now I'm getting ready to step back into a much more visible role, doing the work I love and creating ways to reach more women than I can serve individually.
But this time I'm doing it differently.
I'm building the work around the life I want to live, the way I used to, but this time I'm also making sure I protect the simplicity, freedom, and space that matter so much to me now.
That experience taught me a lot about what happens when we allow other people's expectations to determine what success is supposed to look like.
And I have no desire to repeat that experience.
Which brings me back to what I read this morning.
"To give a generous gift, we must be generous with ourselves. And to give generously, we must become very good at receiving generously."
I've been generous with my gifts over the years, but there was one part of my life where I withheld that generosity from myself.
I couldn't forgive myself for something that happened during a worldwide financial crisis, even though I had no trouble understanding and having compassion for everyone else who had been affected.
And I carried that judgment around for years.
This morning I can finally see how much that judgment influenced what I allowed myself to do next.
After starting Ageless Lifestyle after 50 in 2014, I wrote several hundred articles there to help women be healthy, vibrant, and ageless.
I've written nearly 300 emails this year about becoming more conscious of our beliefs, trusting our inner guidance, and choosing the lives we want to create. And here I am, recognizing another belief I've been living with that I hadn't fully brought into the light.
Well, this certainly isn't where I thought today's email was going.
And I have to admit, I'm nervous about hitting send.
Because I've never told this story publicly before, part of me would still like to delete this whole section and go back to talking about what Rob Bell learned from the Irish priest.
But I know why these words stopped me this morning.
It's time to extend the same generosity to myself that I've spent so much of my life extending to others.
I can acknowledge what happened without making it a verdict on who I am or what I'm capable of creating now.
And I can allow myself to be seen again, without putting on the costume of who anyone else thinks I need to be.
That's the gift I'm giving myself today.
Today's Gentle Practice
Think about something in your past that you've forgiven or understood in other people but still hold against yourself.
Ask yourself:
What would it look like to extend that same generosity and understanding to myself?
Notice whether you've been holding yourself to a standard you would never expect another person to meet.
Consider what you've learned, how you've grown, and who you've become since then.
You can carry the wisdom forward without continuing to carry the judgment.
With you,
Lynn
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