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Welcome to the creative music podcast. I'm Tracy Loring. I'm a coach, an artist and an instructor. And in this podcast we explore ideas and premises to help you create the life that you would love and live it more joyfully. Today's mini musing is on turning self harm into curiosity. What do I mean by that? Well, today I'm tired. And tired because I was up all morning, beating myself up.
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One of the patterns that I've experienced in the past, patterns of behavior, dysfunctional behavior, if you will, is I have a tendency in the past to beat myself up over things that have happened. Things that have already come to pass that I have no control over, and it sucks. And it feels terrible. It sucks my energy. It drains me. And the reason why I call it self harm, is that it actually hurts me and my body to go through that activity. So a lot of times we talk about self care. All the things we can be doing to take care of ourselves, but we don't always talk about the things that we do that can hurt us. And as I was going through this pattern of revisiting the situation and beating myself up for all the things I could have done differently, and should have done differently, and all the stories I was telling myself. What was happening in my body was the messages I was sending to my subconscious that were being read by my body was that I was under attack. And my husband, even mentioned to me. He's like, I can tell when you're in your shit. Because your feet start kicking and your legs start kicking. And I was like, Well, yeah, my body thinks I'm literally being attacked and that I need to defend myself, or run away. So sometimes we think about self harm in the context of the physical things that we do to ourselves that are visible externally, and we forget about the harm that we can do to ourselves by the stories that we say to ourselves in our head.
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So how did I get out of it?
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One of the things, again because I know in the past this has been a pattern that shows up for me, is I know when I'm in it to stop. To stop myself. And as I was going through this this morning,
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I just got to a point where I was like, okay, Tracy just stop. Just stop. You're in your shit. You're spiraling downward. You know where this is going to lead. It's not gonna lead anywhere good. It's just gonna lead to hours and hours of being awake and stressing out, and that pit that ends up in my stomach, and the nausea that comes with that, and elevated heart rate, and all of those things that just don't serve me.
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And so I said, okay stop.
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Just stop. And I took a breath. I engaged my body. Took a few nice deep breaths.
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Let them out. Let that exhale last a little bit longer than that inhale. Sort of relaxed the muscles around my face. Around my core. And just felt my body in my space. Felt all the places where my body was connecting to the bed and noticed what that felt like. To just bring me back into my body.
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Once I did
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that, I asked myself a question that helped me snap out of it. And that question was, what am I learning right now? Such a powerful question! And it reminded me of an exercise that I love doing and that I do regularly, and that I teach my clients. It's called a completion. One of my absolute favorite things to do, for a couple of different reasons. Super powerful. One, it's a way to send the message to your subconscious that you are creating things in your life, whether it's something you meant to create or not. It's sending that message to your subconscious. You are the one creating things. Super powerful. The second thing it does is it gives you an opportunity to take a step back and really look at what you're learning, what doesn't serve you anymore, and where you want to put your focus on creating next. Really, really powerful exercise. I know I keep saying that but obviously it's something that really resonates with me!
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So this exercise is a series of questions that you can ask yourself. The first question is, What have I created?
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And it could be things you meant to create, it could be things that you didn't mean to create, it could be "I created drama," "I created pain," "I created something amazing," or all of the above.
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It can be a mixture of any of it. Capture that down. What is it that I've created?
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And then, What have I learned? So through this experience what, what did I learn?
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And then, What no longer serves me that I can let go of now?
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Beating myself up for taking things too seriously. Whatever it is.
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The last question is, What's true for me to create next? Where is it true for me to put my energy in service of the things that I would love in my life? And that's where I got the insight to do this mini musing for you today. Language is so powerful. And there are going to be plenty of opportunities, we're gonna be able to talk about language to really dig into that on this channel, Rebecca Berciunas and I talked about it in my podcast with her, and it will come up over and over and over again because it is so incredibly powerful. The language we use with ourselves, and how we use that language. Again, going back to Don Miguel Ruiz, and the Four Agreements. Being impeccable with your word. Being impeccable with your word to yourself. What you say to yourself, and the damage that that can cause. So taking that self harm, that self flagellation if you will, the beating yourself up, and turning it into curiosity. "What am I learning?" really shifted for me. That helped me shift out of that situation to stop that spiral. And that's my invitation to you today. To take a moment when you catch yourself in that spiral going down that path of harming yourself through those stories, and just take a timeout. Take a breath. Take a few breaths. Come back into your body if that feels comfortable for you, in whatever way that feels comfortable for you, and ask those simple questions from a place of curiosity, what did I create?
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What did I learn?
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What's true for me to let go of? And what's true for me to create next? Knowing there's no right or wrong answer to any of these questions. You're just doing a check in to see where you are. Align your efforts, your energy, and your focus back towards what it is that you would love in your life. Putting your power out of the circumstances, out of the stories and back into what you want to create. Turning that self harm into curiosity. Once I did that, I fell fast asleep. At least until my daughter woke up. Thank you for listening. As always if you'd like to connect with me, you can reach out to me at TracyLoring.com. You can subscribe to my newsletter to be notified of new content and workshops that might be interesting to you. And then of course if you're watching this on YouTube, please leave a comment. Subscribe if you find it interesting. And if you are listening on a podcast directory that you love, I'd love for you to leave a review. Let me know what you love, and who you think might be a great fit for this podcast in the future. Thanks so much.
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