How do you measure up?
How do you determine your value?
Do you let others ways of sizing you up
inform your ideas about who you are?
Who’s holding your measuring stick?
Dear One,
I work with women that means I hear about this craziness called “measuring up.” That is a wild concept we may not be aware that we are even operating inside of – someone elses big ole’ measuring stick.
Measuring starts when we are babies. But let’s look more deeply at the question.
Do you feel free to be yourself, to take up the space that is yours?
Most culture doesn’t support that – nor does it support women in taking up their own space. Perhaps they are afraid if women were free to be who we are, we would take over the world.
If you are you still trying to ‘measure up’?
How, with who and why?
Who is doing the measuring now?
Are you the one with the big stick?
Dear One,
I work with women that means I hear about this craziness called “measuring up.” That is a wild concept we may not be aware that we are even operating inside of – someone elses big ole’ measuring stick.
From the time we are born we are being measured and weighed. It seems normal enough but when you think about it, things get interesting. But let’s look more deeply at the question.
One of the first encounters we have with ‘others’ when we exit the womb is people checking us out, weighing us, measuring us, determining if we are too big or too small or just right based on where we ‘should be’ according to them. This sh*t starts way early.
Being that this is one of our first experiences outside the womb, besides the blood, perhaps yelling, and bright lights, is being evaluated as normal or not. Even if we are quote ‘normal’ our little baby brain and being knows if something is happening that will continue as we grow up. We call this normal: healthy.
So if you are not normal you are considered, ahem, not healthy, or up to standards defined by people who don’t always live from the heart. (because they have to feed the machine the data it asks)
It seems harmless enough, right? To measure and weigh a baby’s arrival on earth. I mean we measure our growth and celebrate, or become concerned based on normative standards (UGH). But perhaps more damage is being done that we think to our vulnerable little psyches. We can misunderstand things easily because this kind of measuring, continues and moves on from not only our bodies and brains – but our performance.
Hint: Sooooooo…now that we are adults, why are we still wondering if we measure up, are good enough and have value. We have the stick now and we are mis-using it.
And. Sure it is true, others are continuing to measure us – and that isn’t going to change. So our paranoia is justified in reality in terms of that others are sizing us up. Ok. So then. Are we actually going to take our value based on others views of who we are and make it our own?
We don’t have to. Today could be your lucky day to get off the measuring stick and scale of value assigned by someone else for most of your life. UCK, it doesn’t feel good and, it is boring anyway.
Inquiry and Journaling Prompts:
First reject the views of others and the culture as your own. You can make up your own from now on. Throw out the friggen stick. If you have been allowing yourself to be measure by others, just admit it.
Choose to be in exploration of your own value as something you can create for yourself over time. (and learn about from your painting). Use your cosmic goggles to see – no one elses.
Notice and write down the places where you feel you have been allowing yourself to be measured by others, and by yourself, often resulting in an incessant need for approval from others. Release them in as much as you can in consciousness.
Agree with your inner guidance system to start paying much closer attention to your beliefs about your own worth. Choose some kind of affirmation that works for you and write it down.
I am worth exploring. I get to choose how I show up.
My experience of myself is created by me, not others outside of me.
What affirmation will you choose?
When one is on a journey to invent one’s self anew – that means letting go of everyone, yes I mean everyone else’s ideas about you.
Do you even exist if no one is looking?
We have to learn to find our own value separate from what others think. This is HARD work and must be done to LIBERATE ourselves.
Inspire by a chat with the inspiring Effy Wild and for the LEGEND Archetype class.
~ ~ ~
Today is the graduation for the Color of Woman class of 2015! We ran out of coffee today, so Jonathan came to the rescue and latte’s are on their way. Even when I am doing my big work, like this class, I have to take time for my own inquiries and my own muse in the Red Thread Cafe – every single day, or my muse gets cranky. And on some of those days I get to share my explorations with you!
Blessings and may you release measuring up, it is so much better to be free of those limiting views – which simply don’t support us in being who we really are.
xo
shiloh sophia
