I Got Tired of My Own Shit

I got tired of my own shit a few months ago.  

There is a quote about owning your shit or getting tired of your shit or something along those lines that I like to attribute to Brene Brown or sometimes Shonda Rhimes, but I’m pretty sure neither of them are the original source. Regardless of who said it, it goes something like this: 

“Real growth happens when you get tired of your own shit.” 

And I was so so so tired of mine. 

I would like to blame the pandemic or my kidney stone or the ulcer that came after it (12/10 don’t recommend stomach ulcers) and they certainly contributed, but I can’t let those things take the fall – they were merely the metaphorical straw that broke the camel’s back. 

I do a lot of mindset work with my clients. We identify mental roadblocks, set intentions, reframe negative thought patterns. I found myself in a place where I had a pretty good idea as to what my mental roadblocks were, but I just couldn’t work through them. 

Self-worth. 

Trouble receiving. 

 Crippling imposter syndrome. 

No matter how much journaling I did or how many minutes I meditated or often I prayed or how many affirmations I said, I just couldn’t get past my own shit. 

My anxiety turned me to therapy and my saint of a therapist. 

My mindset roadblocks turned me to Rachel, a mindset coach. 

I met Rachel through a business coaching program we both enrolled in. It’s not often I meet someone that is empathic, believes in Spirit, and isn’t afraid to get a little “woo woo.” When she started talking about angel numbers on Instagram, I knew I had found a kindred spirit. 

Investing in yourself is terrifying. I spent a lot of time thinking about other things I could do with that money. I was already paying for therapy almost weekly. Did I really need a mindset coach? 

Yes. 

Yes I did. 

Rachel saw my blindspots. She asked the right questions, helped me dig deep, and equipped me to do the work. We did meditations, imagery, journaling. She is also gifted at pulling cards that always seemed to be bang on. She understood that when I say “Spirit,” I mean God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, but that I also believe we have spirit guides and a universe that is there, helping us along to our higher good. She didn’t judge. It was a safe space where I could say what I needed to say and process what I needed to process. 

When I started working with Rachel, I felt pretty low. I had a hard time believing I was worthy of success, of relationships, of the things I desire. I had a hard time receiving those things – I waited for “the other foot to fall” or something to come along and wreck things. I started a whole second Instagram account for my coaching business because I was so afraid of what someone who “knows me in real life” might think of me, that they might think “she knows nothing” or find me “annoying.”  

By the end of my time with Rachel, I feel differently. 

I deserve good things. 

I am worthy of those good things. 

I am not an imposter. 

I am me. 

I know my shit. 

I owned my shit. 

I’m working through my shit.

This hasn’t been easy work. I have bawled in more therapy sessions than not. I don’t think I full on cried with Rachel, but I certainly got emotional. There was an especially memorable night when I decided to finally do the exercise my therapist had been recommending for weeks. It felt a bit odd to talk out loud to my dead mother while I was in the shower, but I felt ten pounds lighter after I told her everything I’d ever wanted to tell her, the great, the good, the bad, and the ugly. Rachel’s journal prompts have left me with a few tearstained entries. There have been days where I’m so exhausted by the work that the only thing I can do is go to bed. 

It is hard work. 

Picking off the scabs and exploring the wounds beneath them – often wounds that are quite deep and rather old and sometimes seemingly innocent – is painful, hard work.  

But then the healing happens. 

It doesn’t happen all at once. 

I’m not sure it ever happens completely. 

Yet you wake up one day and things feel a little more okay. 

You realize you set a boundary with someone and held firm to it, that a couple of months ago that wasn’t something you could do. 

You realize that it’s okay to love someone, but also love them from a distance. 

You realize that the time you got teased for wearing pink jeans to school when you were in sixth grade did more damage to your self-worth than you realized. There is a reason you remember those “harmless teasing” moments in great detail. 

You start to recognize when you’ are not living your life in alignment with what you need, what you want. 

You find yourself far more courageous when it comes to trimming away those things that don’t make you feel good or when asking for what you need. 

You realize you don’t need to “sell” how great you are when you are on a date or meeting up with a new friend. 

You realize there is no need for a second Instagram account with next to no followers to talk about your coaching business because you are worthy of sharing your knowledge and beliefs on your own damned Instagram account.  

It is a really incredible thing to realize you invested in yourself and it is paying off in spades. 

It is true that growth doesn’t start until you own your own shit. That growth is painful and nonlinear and ongoing. It’s also beautiful. It reminds me in some ways of my dad’s tulips. 

Every year around this time, he and his crew plant hundreds, maybe even thousands, of tulip bulbs. They arrive in yellow crates. Stacks and stacks of them. Every year, there is a different plan for how they are planted. Sometimes it is a color scheme they are going for, other times a pattern. For a week or so, just before winter settles in, nearly all they do is plant ugly bulb after ugly bulb in bare flower beds. 

Months go by. 

The ground freezes. It snows. It thaws. It snows again. It thaws again. That bulb just hangs out under the ground, hiding, waiting. Then, slowly but surely, the green stems begin to sprout and seemingly overnight, the long stalks of the tulips shoot up and the bulb begins to form. Somehow, someway, my dad always times it so the tulips unfold at exactly the right moment, that they peak during their annual Garden Week when the grounds open to the public for a day or two. 

That’s what this work feels like – being an ugly bulb buried in the ground, left to fester and sprout and push against the dirt and finally – finally – burst through to the surface and bloom a beautiful bloom. 

Hiring a mindset coach was worth it. 

Going to therapy is worth it. 

Getting tired of my own shit – and then doing something about it – is the best thing that’s ever happened to me. 

Here’s to continued growth. To blooming at just the right moment. 

To living life aligned.