Have you ever been unable to make a simple decision?  Did you feel blocked and frozen at the time? This is the moment to explore yourself through self-empathy.

Recently I was in the position of having to choose the colour of a new car, my new car.  My first ever new car.  But I was simply unable to decide.  Why was this so hard? And to make it more difficult, I had to make the decision quickly to get the car order submitted in time.  I was under pressure.

I decided to explore my feelings and needs. 

First of all, I like the colour, red.  It is rich, lush and beautiful.  But that seemed to be the problem.  While I liked it, I didn’t feel like I could or should have it.  I felt anxious. Irrationally, it brought up anxiety.

I explored this a bit more and realised that red represented,

standing out,

being brazen,

sticking my head above the parapet,

having tickets on myself,

being a tall poppy….

All these feelings of being above my station percolated to the surface and popped out as anxiety.  Good heavens! I was imprisoned by a set of ‘rules’ around how or what I am allowed to do or be.  Whose rules were they?  Mine?

The next thing I did was ask myself what needs were being met by saying, No to red.

Modesty and unpretentious-ness surfaced.  And this seemed like a set of brakes I was willingly placing on myself.  Like, I wasn’t worthy.  I wasn’t good enough.  I was willingly taking a glass half empty attitude to my own life … a can’t have state of mind.

What a revelation.

Exploring more deeply, I started to see this as my early socialisation playing out in a simple decision I was trying to make as an adult. 

Messages like,

Good girls are modest

Good girls are unpretentious,

Good girls know their place,

                        Good girls don’t draw attention to themselves

haunted me.

No wonder I couldn’t choose red!

Witnessing my sadness and confusion, my partner suggested an alternative way of looking at this.  His view was that the safest colour on the road, the easiest to see is Red.  Wow.  This changed everything because safety matters to me.  By taking a different perspective, red became the natural choice. 

I chose red because it is safe, and I stepped out of my socialised pattern of being seen but not heard.

This process of exploring my own feelings and needs was a liberation. 

It is a simple process of self-empathy, of self discovery.  It is life changing.

If this resonates for you and you’d like more information on courses and practice groups offered by Coaching to Clarity, click below. I’d love to welcome you in one of our offerings.