The Inadequacy Fallacy (late publish)
I have to say that I am very grateful. Post Grand Canyon run (and following three days of debilitating soreness), I feel that I have recovered extremely well. Running yesterday through section 16 felt really good, as did the 77 deg weather, new mono sandals under my feet, and the warm vanilla scent radiating from the pine trees. It seems that on those longer runs (25+ miles), my feet are the first thing to get tired or worn out but somewhat counterintuitively, they are also the first thing to recover.
Upon my return I have begun a fairly aggressive rental search as I will only be a nanny for another 4-5 weeks or so. Historically finding a decent rental property has been easy because I was given a generous BAH while on active duty. However, considering that I am working on my own business much of the time and not paying myself anything for this work, I have really cut back on spending. With a goal to keep monthly expenses (rent, utilities, internet) below $1,000/mo, it's been very interesting searching for rentals in a lower income bracket. Some of the rental options are quite horrendous, as they would be in any city. Some places have been rentals for so long that the owners refuse to do anything to make the home/apartment/condo more livable. If I would be willing to go $1,000 to $1,200/mo on rent alone as I was in the past, I would immediately get 500+sq ft more of space/rooms, a garage, and a safer neighborhood. But there appears to be a major gap in the middle...affordable, modest, safe housing. I think these places do exist but they are few and they are snatched up quickly in this market.
In my first week of searching, a Craigslist "homeowner" attempted to scam me, I was stood up on multiple rental showings, and a rental management company (Hope Realty) posted false photos of a property. Other places I went by had broken windows and pot heads right outside. Quite entertaining to say the least. Yesterday I did find a promising lead to an apartment inside of an old victorian house in Old North End of Colorado Springs. It's a great location and neighborhood and I talked to the owner over the phone as I viewed the immaculate outdoor space (nice landscaping, new paint on the building, quiet if not for the traffic) and I plan to view the property next week. In any case I am fortunate that I have friends in town whom I can stay with until I find the right place. So I mostly feel a sense of gratitude about the whole process (other than dealing with dishonest people).
[insert photo of some really happy person standing next to their tiny house]
As with what else might be new in my world...all this searching has been very good for me to ponder, once again, my priorities and what it is exactly that I really need. It is quite freeing to ask this question and even more freeing to actually do without things I am used to having. Sometimes I think it takes a little shoving by the universe to really force us to do without for a little while. I think it is easy to view those that have less stuff as being less fortunate than those that have more stuff. But this is merely an assumption and an overly simplistic and superficial view of the world. As many people who take up a very minimalist life will tell you (and I am so far from truly minimalist living I don't want to be a poser), it is a process that opens the mind. As I have slowed down a bit and reduced my belongings and expectations, I have opened the door to questioning all of my former assumptions about what I need to be happy. And of course to experience less stuff and find yourself just as happy, if not more happy, is reassuring on a level that our consumer-driven society detests.
On one hand there is the physical act of giving away tangible objects and realizing you're going to be just fine without them. This is a transformative process all its own and it would be impossible for me to overstate its power. And yet it seems that it is really the mindset leading the action and the action reinforcing the mindset. What I mean is, we can reduce so much in our lives, more than just our possessions and find even more freedom. But to do this it helps to trust the process ahead of time.
Sometimes I believe before I feel like believing.
Very specifically this came to me in a moment today when I was feeling a deep sense of sadness. It doesn't really matter why I was feeling sad but my first thought was that I always hate feeling that way. As I was driving I decided to explore the emotion just a bit but not in the sense of dwelling on my sorrows. I just got to thinking that there is really nothing wrong with feeling sad once in awhile. In other words, one could say, I am depressed, but what does that really mean? It seemed to me that everyone feels sad at some time or another and that this must be an adaptive emotion for the human race. It serves some purpose. Furthermore I've never known anyone who didn't feel sad or depressed at some points in time. So why do we worry about it so much? Why do we feel insecure with it and judge it? I started thinking, why did I ever agree that feeling sad was such a painful thing? It really wasn't that bad, in fact, the sadness only hurt a little and by the time I'd finished my mental gymnastics I actually felt...wait for it...content.
I realized in that moment that if I didn't run from it but instead sat beside it like an old friend, it only had a message for me. The intensity of the emotion was simply a message, sadness only ever encouraged me to reflect on my life and prioritize it. That's a really good thing and I didn't need to fear it or try to control it. I just needed to get the message and move on.
Let me dive deeper into that for a moment. When we let go of physical possessions we essentially free ourselves from a certain burden. It's a tangible burden since we free ourselves of storage and maintenance of mostly things we don't need. But on a deeper level, we learn that we ourselves are more precious and powerful than we have given ourselves credit. This is so important because without self-efficacy nothing else in the world really makes sense. Now it's powerful to live this and know this for yourself. It's not powerful to be told this. You personally have to know at your deepest level of existence.
If you don't believe that you may live in a kind of fear or anxiety the rest of your life.
I think some of these people are on medication when they don't really need it. But if you personally know that you are enough at your very core, you are much more equipped to change the world and you need not be anxious. When you develop and nurture your light with an inner fuel that needs no false stoking, no temporary kindling, and no shallow gimmicks from the rest of the world, you have come to know and accept yourself. It's probably the most powerful thing you can do in this world, accept yourself outside your possessions, your career, your status, your family and friends...outside of everything. Just accept you.
Knowing yourself and appreciating yourself go hand in hand. Inherently this is hard work because the entire purpose of the exercise is to face your fears and discomforts so that you can see for yourself it's not going to kill you. It is the essence of your self-confidence, not arrogance. I always love to say, you don't know what you don't know. In the same way, if you never confront your belief-systems about yourself and the world, you'll never know any different. You can start by questioning what you really need. You can continue by questioning if what you believe is serving you. I found long ago that the idea of a broken human didn't serve me any purpose, so I let that idea go.
You are not inadequate.
You are perfectly adequate and if you ever thought otherwise you must realize that you are the one who made that agreement. You can start to reverse that decision at any moment. Want to hear a great podcast about conquering fear? Listen to Dr. Srini Pillay on The Fat Burning Man podcast.
Upon my return I have begun a fairly aggressive rental search as I will only be a nanny for another 4-5 weeks or so. Historically finding a decent rental property has been easy because I was given a generous BAH while on active duty. However, considering that I am working on my own business much of the time and not paying myself anything for this work, I have really cut back on spending. With a goal to keep monthly expenses (rent, utilities, internet) below $1,000/mo, it's been very interesting searching for rentals in a lower income bracket. Some of the rental options are quite horrendous, as they would be in any city. Some places have been rentals for so long that the owners refuse to do anything to make the home/apartment/condo more livable. If I would be willing to go $1,000 to $1,200/mo on rent alone as I was in the past, I would immediately get 500+sq ft more of space/rooms, a garage, and a safer neighborhood. But there appears to be a major gap in the middle...affordable, modest, safe housing. I think these places do exist but they are few and they are snatched up quickly in this market.
In my first week of searching, a Craigslist "homeowner" attempted to scam me, I was stood up on multiple rental showings, and a rental management company (Hope Realty) posted false photos of a property. Other places I went by had broken windows and pot heads right outside. Quite entertaining to say the least. Yesterday I did find a promising lead to an apartment inside of an old victorian house in Old North End of Colorado Springs. It's a great location and neighborhood and I talked to the owner over the phone as I viewed the immaculate outdoor space (nice landscaping, new paint on the building, quiet if not for the traffic) and I plan to view the property next week. In any case I am fortunate that I have friends in town whom I can stay with until I find the right place. So I mostly feel a sense of gratitude about the whole process (other than dealing with dishonest people).
[insert photo of some really happy person standing next to their tiny house]
As with what else might be new in my world...all this searching has been very good for me to ponder, once again, my priorities and what it is exactly that I really need. It is quite freeing to ask this question and even more freeing to actually do without things I am used to having. Sometimes I think it takes a little shoving by the universe to really force us to do without for a little while. I think it is easy to view those that have less stuff as being less fortunate than those that have more stuff. But this is merely an assumption and an overly simplistic and superficial view of the world. As many people who take up a very minimalist life will tell you (and I am so far from truly minimalist living I don't want to be a poser), it is a process that opens the mind. As I have slowed down a bit and reduced my belongings and expectations, I have opened the door to questioning all of my former assumptions about what I need to be happy. And of course to experience less stuff and find yourself just as happy, if not more happy, is reassuring on a level that our consumer-driven society detests.
On one hand there is the physical act of giving away tangible objects and realizing you're going to be just fine without them. This is a transformative process all its own and it would be impossible for me to overstate its power. And yet it seems that it is really the mindset leading the action and the action reinforcing the mindset. What I mean is, we can reduce so much in our lives, more than just our possessions and find even more freedom. But to do this it helps to trust the process ahead of time.
Sometimes I believe before I feel like believing.
Very specifically this came to me in a moment today when I was feeling a deep sense of sadness. It doesn't really matter why I was feeling sad but my first thought was that I always hate feeling that way. As I was driving I decided to explore the emotion just a bit but not in the sense of dwelling on my sorrows. I just got to thinking that there is really nothing wrong with feeling sad once in awhile. In other words, one could say, I am depressed, but what does that really mean? It seemed to me that everyone feels sad at some time or another and that this must be an adaptive emotion for the human race. It serves some purpose. Furthermore I've never known anyone who didn't feel sad or depressed at some points in time. So why do we worry about it so much? Why do we feel insecure with it and judge it? I started thinking, why did I ever agree that feeling sad was such a painful thing? It really wasn't that bad, in fact, the sadness only hurt a little and by the time I'd finished my mental gymnastics I actually felt...wait for it...content.
I realized in that moment that if I didn't run from it but instead sat beside it like an old friend, it only had a message for me. The intensity of the emotion was simply a message, sadness only ever encouraged me to reflect on my life and prioritize it. That's a really good thing and I didn't need to fear it or try to control it. I just needed to get the message and move on.
Let me dive deeper into that for a moment. When we let go of physical possessions we essentially free ourselves from a certain burden. It's a tangible burden since we free ourselves of storage and maintenance of mostly things we don't need. But on a deeper level, we learn that we ourselves are more precious and powerful than we have given ourselves credit. This is so important because without self-efficacy nothing else in the world really makes sense. Now it's powerful to live this and know this for yourself. It's not powerful to be told this. You personally have to know at your deepest level of existence.
If you don't believe that you may live in a kind of fear or anxiety the rest of your life.
I think some of these people are on medication when they don't really need it. But if you personally know that you are enough at your very core, you are much more equipped to change the world and you need not be anxious. When you develop and nurture your light with an inner fuel that needs no false stoking, no temporary kindling, and no shallow gimmicks from the rest of the world, you have come to know and accept yourself. It's probably the most powerful thing you can do in this world, accept yourself outside your possessions, your career, your status, your family and friends...outside of everything. Just accept you.
Knowing yourself and appreciating yourself go hand in hand. Inherently this is hard work because the entire purpose of the exercise is to face your fears and discomforts so that you can see for yourself it's not going to kill you. It is the essence of your self-confidence, not arrogance. I always love to say, you don't know what you don't know. In the same way, if you never confront your belief-systems about yourself and the world, you'll never know any different. You can start by questioning what you really need. You can continue by questioning if what you believe is serving you. I found long ago that the idea of a broken human didn't serve me any purpose, so I let that idea go.
You are not inadequate.
You are perfectly adequate and if you ever thought otherwise you must realize that you are the one who made that agreement. You can start to reverse that decision at any moment. Want to hear a great podcast about conquering fear? Listen to Dr. Srini Pillay on The Fat Burning Man podcast.
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