But I want to focus a little bit on the longing to belong because that is the emotion behind this. How do you manage a time when you don't feel like you belong? Where you feel no validation, where you don't particularly trust where you are in your life and you're looking to grab hold of the sides of the pool because you're in the middle and you're not feeling buoyant and you're scared
Becky Butler
@bc75 · 4:32
It's going to be complex because the cataract is not just over my outside lens, it's behind my pupil and blocking my retina can see nothing behind so they have to not just scrape off the regular cataract, put in slice to the side of my eye and dig out the mess the rest of the cataract and put a new lens in there. And my second surgery three weeks after that, April 11 is for the left eye. Left eye isn't bad
Mental Wellness Stories
@hope · 0:37
Becky, first of all, wishing you only ease and success in your operation and also thanking you for sharing this just moment in your life. I'm so happy you have a partner who understands you, accepts you, you feel a sense of belonging with him and that you feel sort of this compassion for others because of your experience. And that's why I think we share is just make sure other people know that they're not alone and that comes through as well
And this shift, this one word I personally have experienced in a profound way in the last week. And I'm really starting to explore the darker, the shadowier corners of my mind to understand where I have been longing to belong or really hardcore meditating on something that I want in my life. But in my meditation, I have been separate from it. I've had that longing. And the breakthrough for me has been to dissolve the separateness, to experience that thing that I want with belonging already intact
We all, I think, want close friends, intimate partners, to see us in full. And we should see them in full as well. And when somebody doesn't, it hurts, because either they only want to see parts of you that are good for them, or they just don't want to see you at all. And there was that longing. There was that desire for close, intimate friends, partner, to see the fullness and the wholeness of ourselves
Mental Wellness Stories
@hope · 1:16
It's really I think it's just part of manifesting the experience of feeling like you're part of something beautiful where people love you. That first step is to truly embrace yourself. It's part of that journey and I'd love to be reminded of that. So thank you both for kind of taking a moment to think about yourselves in the context of this journey to help others as well. It's a big circle. It's really good stuff to think about
Pritha Lal
@lifecoachPritha · 4:52
And this concept of belonging or that longing to belong can be very crippling because it won't always happen. You can be in the thick of things and feel needed and wanted, because that's what every human being wants right at the end of the day. But there will be moments where you will be on the fringes, on the edges. And I have seen this in multiple ways through my life when I was younger. I see it sometimes happening with my daughter now
Deborah Pardes
@DBPardes · 1:58
Prith, I wanted to thank you for bringing in your own story. Know, coaches, therapists, there's always that thin membrane between their own life experience and where they're trying to kind of be there for the people they work with. And I think it's so powerful when people in your position are able to dig into your own reserves and help us understand what it feels. Know, all the examples you give are so helpful for people because we are othered all the time
Pritha Lal
@lifecoachPritha · 0:51
And there is no reason, I cannot find the reason or purpose to get up and go for a walk. And I know it'll bring me joy. But there is a mindset. Sometimes it's clinical. Sometimes it's just in our heads. And I would love that conversation to hear your insights and everybody else who writes in. So, thank you so much. I just enjoy beginning my day with your thoughts. I appreciate it. Bye
And, yeah, it's a lot of sort of, for me, chosen family and being in a little moment or community with friends and just kind of feeling myself step out of it and go, oh, this is belonging. And so trying to just get my body used to that feeling, to know what it is and helping myself figure out how to recreate that feeling. In that sense, if I do notice that I'm getting anxious or feeling fearful about some situation
Deborah Pardes
@DBPardes · 1:11
Andrea, it's so in line with who you are as a problem solver to provide some tactical mechanisms that you have deployed in your life, like the things that have held you and you've experienced, because I do think it could be really devastating to identify a sense of not belonging. And I think conversations like this offer so much of that to drop into that. And that's what I invited, for sure
And I remember feeling that longing, that outsiderness. If I'm being honest, if I flip back through the slideshow of my life, there's a lot of times where I felt uninvited. And what I'm aware of now is that I'm in charge of how I feel. And that's not a feeling I'd like to carry around anymore. And a shift that has been presented to me requires two archetypes to explain. And I want to be clear before I talk about these archetypes
But belong to yourself first. And I'm smiling here because this has been such a great little moment with all of you. Belong to yourself first, and you will absolutely steer yourself to the lover connections with people. That's just fantastic. Thank you for sharing that Simon Sinek quote and for just pointing that out. Lori. That's really helpful
And I really do believe that we have to cultivate that love, safety and belonging in ourselves so that if one of those is taken away, we're not totally adrift and left at sea. And it really, I think, looking through things and life in general through the principal prism of what people are doing and what they're looking for is love, safety and belonging. I think that opens some doorways and it opens some windows to see what people's real motivations are