The battle towards change

🤺 I used to think everything was a battle.

I knew instantly that I needed to fight if I wanted a say 💭 in the outcome, and when I felt unable to persist 😩, I’d give in and submit🙇🏽‍♀️ to the will of others. In my mind's eye 🪬, there were two results, win ✅ or lose 😡. This internal struggle caused me to appear defensive 🥷 to others, or I would shriek 🏃from the hard conversations.

I would leave situations appearing „easy for others to handle ⛓️“ as they’d get things their way, or I would frustrate 😖 them because I was unwilling to listen.

Regardless of the result, two emotions were growing inside me: resentment 😠 and shame 😶. These are quite unhealthy 🤢 emotions if you want to move towards a more fulfilling life.

🕵🏼 Then, one day, I discovered a new way.

📚 At first, I thought I just needed to take communication courses, persuasion courses, presentation courses, or standing up for yourself courses.

👎🏽 These didn’t help as much as I thought they would. One thing that I didn’t realize is that the reason I was unable to gain traction in these conversations was that, to begin with, I didn’t have the correct arguments. Focusing too much on proving my point 💬 or why the other one's point is not valid 🚫 is 100% not the way to move forward toward a situation where I could thrive 🌱.

Little did I know the journey I needed to travel on involved me making a much more significant change 🍃. One that started with getting to know who I was 🐲 and then learning to love who I was 💚. Not so easy when you have been dismissing yourself most of your life 🫥. I needed to understand 🧐 what I needed to thrive and what I stood for. Who am I? What are my values 🫶? Only then did I finally have a toolset 🔥 to move forward courageously toward having powerful conversations 👩🏻‍🤝‍👩🏾.

❓Want to know why knowing my values set me up with the right conditions I needed to thrive? I’ll be posting that tomorrow ;-)

🐉 From being unable to communicate what I need to being able to have courageous conversations ❤️‍🔥