You are the whale.
Not the barnacle.
You are an amazing creature.
Wild, wondrous, wise and immense with possibilities.
Yet sometimes, maybe for a moment
- or even for a decade or two - you might get confused.
What’s really me?
What’s just barnacles?
You might forget you are a mythic miracle
swimming through the vast sea
and think you are the crusty habits
and limited beliefs that have attached to
your great body along your journey.
Every week I hear clients or friends
(or Yikes! I catch myself!)
saying things like,
Well, that’s just who I am.
I’m a worrier. Have been all my life.
or
I get angry easily and yell at the people I love.
or
I’m a perfectionist.
or
I…
…can’t ever say no.
… feel guilty when I take care of myself.
… never feel satisfied.
…always feel anxious
….overeat, over drink, overspend, over-control, over plan.
….push myself until I am exhausted.
… am afraid to assert myself.
That’s just how I am
I am a worrier, perfectionist, people-pleaser, workaholic or ______or______…
I don’t like it but that’s who I am.
No.
That is not who you are.
All of these are just barnacles
you’ve accumulated around your real self.
Just barnacles you can shed.
Like the whale you have mobility and freedom
to choose direction and change course.
You have a brilliant body, ancestral wisdom,
a complex brain with extraordinary capacities
for resilience, compassion and connection.
You have an inner compass that can
guide you where you long to go.
Remember who you really are.
You are not the brittle parasites
pf self-limiting habits and patterns
you have been carrying around.
You are the whale, my friend.
Swim free and play big.
The oceans eagerly await you.