This is my first blog of the New Year. As I reflect on 2024 and set intentions for 2025, what I am focused on and grateful for is the Be Profoundly You Community. The framework we practice in the Community — being, belonging, believing and becoming is the way that I stay in active creation of my life every single day.
For more than five decades (yes 50+ years) I’ve struggled with “enoughness” — am I doing enough? am I good enough? am I successful enough? am I earning enough? am I pretty enough? am I productive enough? am I smart enough? am I enough to … get into that school, be hired for that job, be friends with that person, date that guy, get that promotion, land that client, marry that man, and on it goes.
Anyone else with me on this?
Not feeling like we are enough sometimes manifests itself as imposter syndrome, or anxiety and depression as we compare ourselves to everyone else we see on social media who seems to be crushing it. We fall into the perfection trap – trying to work our way into believing we are enough, burn out by doing doing doing, and then our inner critic starts shouting at us again — do better, do more…and so the loop continues.
This phenomenon is known as the arrival fallacy. The belief that one day, when that thing happens, we will finally feel like we are enough.
When I find myself in any of these moments, I use the 4Bs framework to reconnect, reset and return to a state of rhythm and renewal. So, here is a bit more about the framework and how we practice it in the Community.
Being is about embodied presence.
What does that mean? It means literally feeling in our bodies — our thoughts, emotions and the experiences we are having. It’s amazing how challenging this is for so many of us, and far too many people I coach are disconnected from their physical bodies. “We are not just a brain on a stick,” says one of my colleagues at Oxford.
There are no shortages of tools for developing greater body awareness, my favorites are meditation and yoga, but something as simple as taking a shower and being truly present to feel the water as it hits your skin can be enough. This is also why so many things like cold plunges and cryotherapy are gaining in popularity. They help you feel alive in your body.
The more we practice being in our bodies, with no expectation of outcome other than to feel the present moment, the more able we are to stay in the present moment and interrupt the cycle of not enoughness.
If I’ve coached you, perhaps I’ve asked you questions after you’ve shared a challenging moment with me like, where do you feel that in your body? What is the shape, color, temperature and texture of the feeling?
If we can feel it in our body, allow it and therefore allow it to move and shift, we shift our thinking and our behavior. It’s the old adage, change the way you look at things and it changes the way things look.
As we bring attention and awareness to the physical sensations of being, we have more agility and more response-ability. In other words, we get better at responding rather than reacting because we are learning to regulate our internal system, which has a radical effect on how we behave.
Belonging is about belonging to self and to others.
I have been asked, “What does it mean to belong to one’s self?”
When I feel a strong sense of belonging with others, it is at its best when we all show up and are really present with one another. We speak our truths without blame or judgment, and we are open and curious about others.
We belong to ourselves when we do the same internally: show up to our lives (stay awake!), ask ourselves the hard questions — what might we be pretending not to know, and be open and curious about our own intuition and imagination. Let that guide us.
One of the best ways I have found to do that is to create a set of clear values or guiding principles for my life. I choose things that really matter — gratitude, generosity, love and health. And I stay in integrity with them.
When you choose values you want to live by, they will keep you on your path, and support you in practicing radical self-compassion. When I’m struggling to believe I am enough, returning to my values reminds me that as long as I am keeping my personal internal commitments to how I want to show up to my own life, that is enough.
When we practice being and belonging, we are better creators of more inclusive environments. If we are grounded and able to practice emotional regulation, we help others to do the same.
It’s a physiological response called co-regulation, and it works. I feel calm, present, centered and aware which makes my response ability (rather than my reaction state) grow. I feel called to create more connection and inclusion in a world plagued by loneliness; it is our responsibility to grow in our response-ability.
Believing is about the divine spark that lives in all of us.
No matter how difficult things got for me; and they’ve been pretty rough, marriages and divorces, having a baby alone, serious money fears, losing a parent, I always felt the light.
No matter what, I just knew it was there.
Before I started working with this framework, though, the light wasn’t enough on its own. I didn’t know what it was other than something that made me feel good or believe more peace, more joy, more calm was possible.
From my earliest memory and from the time I started keeping a journal I have been curious about why we are here and what is the purpose. Believing is a way to explore the light we all carry, the nature of conscientiousness, our connection to a higher source. Some call it spirit, soul, oneness, the universe, God or love. To me, it doesn’t matter what we call it.
What matters is that we believe that light resides in all of us, and if we make space for it, expand it, grow it, feed it, tend to it, and connect to it — we manifest that which we are seeking, a connection to a higher purpose.
Now the light drives me not to run or chase what could be a fleeting feeling of passion, fulfilling a desire, or finding external validation for something I’ve done, but rather to connect more deeply to my soul’s yearning, — love. That never leaves me feeling like I’m not enough, but rather reminds me to practice gratitude for this one moment.
Becoming is the realization that we become who we acknowledge ourselves to be.
We’ve all experienced this but perhaps haven’t named it. In the words of Henry Ford, “whether you think you can or you think you can’t, you’re right.” What we speak, feel, believe and embody is what we become.
In my work as a coach and in the Community, we create I AM statements that are grounded in our vision for our lives, and use the framework to make these things come to life. In order to manifest anything, we must feel it in our bodies (being), enroll others in our vision (belonging), connect it to a sense of higher purpose — or as it has been written “when my way and thy way are aligned” (believing) — then we become what we acknowledge ourselves to be.
This framework has transformed my life. I will be writing about it here all year. If you want to learn more, please consider joining our Community of women who are exploring this in deep conversation and reflection two or three times a month.
