Keeping Promises to Myself

I’ve taken a bit of time off but now, I‘m back. And ready to show up. For me. Cause the first, possibly the best habit I could have is showing up for myself. Which means keeping my promises to myself. And that may all sound a bit hokey. And what I’m about to say may sound even more so, but in doing all that shadow work, (I’ll put a link to that blog post one I’m done writing it) I got in touch with my inner child. And it occurred to me that if I’m going to work on healing my inner child, then I need to think of her as a separate child. And treat her as I would any other child. So, if I tell myself, I mean my inner child, I’m going to do something, then I better keep my word. Nothing unstabilizes a child more than an adult not doing what they say they’re going to do. And, when I think about it like that, I’ve actually been continuing the trauma in a way. 

For example, I’ve been wanting to get into a walking routine. When I was living in the city, I walked everywhere. It was convenient, and everything was within walking distance, so why not? Once I moved here to the shore, I drive most places, and if I want to get some exercise, I have to make special time to “go for a walk.” I’ve admitted in other posts that exercising isn’t exactly my thing. And it can take a bit of effort on my part to get myself up and moving. I’m always happy once I’ve done so (really happy once I’m done, lol), but if I don’t make sure I get up and go for that walk or do that video, I’ll just as easily sit and binge one more episode on Netflix. And even though I will have told myself the entire day, or even the weekend if I’m trying to get myself going on a Monday, that I’m going to go for a walk, and that I’m just going to stop what I’m doing and pick myself up and get my ass moving. And my inner child, who really doesn’t want to be sitting at a desk all day doing boring stuff, is like, “Yes! Yes! Let’s go!” But there are days, or there were days, where I’ll just sit there. The appointed time will come and go, and I’ll still be sitting there. 

It occurred to me that that’s exactly what an errant parent might do. Make promises. Let the child get all excited and then… nothing. And make excuses when nothing happens. And then more promises about tomorrow. We’ll do it tomorrow. Now, I totally know this is not how I would treat an actual child. If there was a real live little person standing in front of me that I was saying, “yes, we’ll do that thing at that time.” When it was that time, somehow, no matter how much I was telling myself I didn’t want to or didn’t have time to, somehow, I’d make myself get up and do that thing. So shouldn’t I treat my inner child the same way? With the same respect? 

I’ve been creating a self-fulfilling prophesy of sorts. Because another thing I realized in doing my shadow work, is that I do so many things myself because I don’t trust others to do it the way I want it done. And this had turned into everything from washing the dishes (cause no one else seemed to get them as clean as I would), to taking care of Marty (cause he liked things a certain way), even with stuff at my job, I find it’s easier to take time off around the busyness of my schedule cause it’s just too much work (and anxiety) to organize everything “just so” for others to cover for me. So basically, I don’t trust others, in other words I have trust issues. 

When I sat down I realized all of this, things sort of started to click. And when I thought about having trust issues in terms of my inner child, well of course that must be why I procrastinate, and why I keep putting things off. If I can’t trust others, well why should I even trust myself.  Of course seeing this written out I realize how totally off this sounds, and how “Of course not everyone is untrustworthy, and not everyone is going to let you down!” And the easiest person to trust is myself. 

So I’ve decided to start keeping my promises to myself. I’m going to do what I tell myself I’m going to do. If that means going for a walk in the mornings, then by gosh, I’m going to do that! And if it means making time to write my Morning Pages, well that’s something I’ll have to be sure to do. I’m finding that a lot of self-care things are what I tend to put off, maybe because I feel I’m not good enough to warrant taking time for me? Maybe that’s another post actually. But I’m wanting to < planning to, flip the script in my head, be sure to think of myself as someone worthy of my time, and do what I say I’m going to do . 

No one said creating your own Potted Oasis was going to be easy. But they did say it would be so worth it!