New Year, New Motto

Footprints in the snow

Lots of bloggers are writing about the words they have chosen to work with this new year, words to live their lives by.  I have a slogan.  Mine is:

'Putting myself first'

Now, when you read this, the word selfish probably comes into your head.  It did mine.  But thats not what its about.  Selfish is a word that has dogged me all my life.  It was the worst, absolutely the WORST thing you could be in our house when I was growing up.  No one could say anything worse to you than to call you selfish.  But then my guru, R, made me put selfish on a plinth and walk round it, examine it as a word, as an idea, find out why it was so negative for me, and whether I could salvage anything from it.

If I think about it differently, I can.  Put a hyphen in.  SELF-ish.  If you think about the SELF as being everything you are contained inside a big perspex bubble, then being SELF-ish is a way of seeing oneself holistically, emotions, body, mind, spirit.  So to be SELF-ish means to look after yourself, and consider and care for everything that is in that bubble.  Its not about excluding other people from your thinking.  Its about  getting what you need to nurture yourself and thrive.

I have a lot of 'shoulds' and 'oughts' and 'musts' in my life, probably because of this whole selfish paranoia.  So this year's journey is to break out of 'Shouldland'.  Do what I need to thrive.  Practise saying no to things that damage me.  Make a few dreams come true.  Ask for what I need.  Support myself, and in doing so, support those I love.  Because you can't do that if you are in a threadbare state yourself.  That is why I am setting out on this new journey of 'putting myself first'.  Lets see what happens....