Everything I do, I do for me
Understanding, Unlearning, Becoming – Galina Singer Weekly Journal #5
This week really invited me to hold the full variety of experiences.
There was so much to be grateful for.
Some news that felt like blessings.
And at the same time – there was news that was difficult, old tired pain points were pressed that had me feel despair and looking to blame someone…
That’s life.
Not the Hallmark life, real life.
We just attach to the idea of how things should be…
We associate pain with punishment. And that hurts even more.
But the pain just shows where there are still unhealed wounds, so we can attend to them.
None of it is personal.
Everything I do, I do for me.
Somewhere down the line of family life we lose the “we” and become me vs you.
We become two warring camps, vigilantly keeping track of who does what, always feeling like we are doing too much, and they not enough.
Through the endless duties and overwhelm of family life, we lose track of why we decided to do this in the first place.
Losing the sense that we are a team is the source of so much of our resentment, frustration and sadness.
Awakening toward self-responsibility has helped me remember why I do what I do.
I call it enlightened self-interest: I cook for my family because I want to. I try to learn to communicate non-violently with my husband, because it increases my level of wellbeing when we understand each other. I clean up after my children have cleaned up, because I like a clean kitchen in the morning.
I can do that because when I feel tired I let myself rest. And when I don’t feel like cooking or cleaning, I don’t.
I do not hold anyone responsible for giving me permission nor do I need them to notice my sacrifice.
Everything I do, I do for me. I do, because I love. I do, because I choose to.
This has proven disruptive in the best way for my life in and outside of my family.
I free myself from obligations (have to’s) and focus on my desires (want to’s).
The relationship we all need to master is our relationship with ourselves.
When we go through life expecting that people owe us something, we’ll be in a constant state of resentment.
When we have no skill or habit to self-care and expect that someone should come and save us and share our burdens and notice and praise us for our sacrifice and reward us for our martyrdom, we’ll be sorely disappointed.
When I understood that as an adult I am responsible for fulfilling my own needs, I was able to shift my attitude, then life shifted around me in response.
In our polarized society and cancel culture, it’s become normal to run away and block people whenever things get unpleasant.
And I wanted to run away on numerous occasions over the last eight years of my awakening.
I blamed my husband for all the ways my life was not fitting into the figment of my imagination.
Seems so crazy now—the way we assign responsibility for how we feel to other people.
Our patterns repeat until we learn the lesson.
Wherever we go—there we are.
The relationship we all need to master is our relationship with ourselves.
There is no running away from that one.
Every relationship is a mirror of our inner topography.
As such, they exist to help us learn about who we are.
As we bump up against our triggers and reactivity, we become aware of and understand our own unconscious patterns of behavior.
Contrary to popular belief, it is not the other who hurts us or causes us pain.
It is our own wounds that come to our awareness, so we can attend to them and heal.
Until we become conscious of our unconscious patterns, we cannot change them and will continue to repeat them in each consecutive relationship.
From what I observe in my work, very few of us actually know who we are underneath our conditioned responses.
Most of us go through life on autopilot, at the whim of our unconscious urges and culturally prescribed expectations.
Yet, we expect the other to be the deliverer of that unknown ingredient—the secret to our happiness—becoming not only upset but outright aggressive when they “fail.”
Anything that we want to create in our lives starts with knowing what it is that we desire.
Meanwhile, most of us go through life-fighting our desires and trying to fake belong by wearing masks that have nothing to do with our true nature.
That is why so many of us go through life longing for something that we cannot quite get, numbing the pain in addictions.
Embodied presence in relationships prevents overthinking
When we are not embodied, we live and relate from our minds.
Our minds are fixated on “should’s” and are attached to a specific image of how life should look, or to a time frame of when things should happen. Anything that does not fit the mental picture causes us suffering and is often discarded as not good enough.
When we remain in embodied presence, we are less in the calculation of the mind and allow life to happen, relationships to develop in the way that gives us maximum experience.
You are the main character in your life story.
Everyone else—partners, children, bosses, siblings, and friends—is the supporting cast.
I will show you how to make decisions from this new vision of your reality.
You will learn that when we love and take care of ourselves so well that our inner light starts to shine brightly, all the people in our life story get to bask in it.
Meet me for a 30-minute introductory conversation >>
Your relationships begin with you.