Things I have remembered since I’ve started to run

1. If I want different results I need to do things differently

For years I have unsuccessfully used willpower to get myself to run consistently. I like running yet it took me some time to see that I didn’t like running alone.
When I used EFT Emotional Freedom Techniques to look at the resistance to run alone, I discovered that I had a core belief that it’s dangerous. No wonder will power only worked a couple of days every time before I would do anything to avoid running. Don’t be held back by what you assume is holding you back, look deeper.

2. Just because I love something, doesn’t mean I have to own it.

Every morning I see people who walk their dogs. I like to pet them or play with them. Yet I don’t want to own a dog. Just because it brings moments of joy to me doesn’t automatically translate to it providing me an ongoing state of joy if I owned it. We can over gorge on more than just food.

3. I take many of my skills and much of my knowledge for granted.

Most of my life I was sure that others know as much about botany as I do. Since I grew up surrounded by it, it seemed only natural, common sense. I was surprised to learn that most people know very little about it.
We often sell ourselves short assuming that everyone has the same knowledge and skills. Therefore we miss opportunities to stand out and use our expertise.

4.There’s a season for everything

The mornings are getting cooler, the sun rises a bit later every day and sets earlier. Fall is slowly and gently approaching. I won’t be running in the winter, it’s much too cold. Just because we enjoy something it doesn’t make sense to keep doing it constantly.
We forget that when we come back to it that there’s joy and we notice that we missed it.

5. Sometimes I am just not properly prepared

This morning it was quite cool and I was under dressed. As I shivered I considered turning back and changing clothes. I am glad I didn’t, I picked up my pace and soon I was warm. Due to the added incentive of keeping warm, I was able to run at a much faster pace than I would have usually attempted.
Being obsessed with being perfectly prepared adds so much stress to my life and I sometimes waste time, preparing for emergencies that never happen. Therefore robbing me of opportunities to grow and adapt under pressure.

6. Sometimes I forget what makes me happy, even though it’s easy for me to be happy.

There are so many little things that make me happy. The sounds of early birds, the air on my face, the first rays of sun on my skin. The smells and different colours of flowers. The way my body feels when I run.
My heart and soul fill up with joy, love and gratitude when I am in nature. I am happy.

It’s easy to get lost and only focus on big events and achievements that are supposed to make us happy. We forget that the little moments of happiness that are not pursued are the ones that sustain us during the time that passes between big happy moments.

7. Sometimes I need to take a break and sometimes I need to push myself

Some days I feel too lazy or tired to even run for five or ten minutes. Yet when I push myself and leave the house, I end up feeling great because I overcame my inner resistance.
This however does not mean that on the days where I have already run my fair share and my ankles are killing me that I have to force myself to finish no matter the damage it does.

Knowing the difference isn’t always easy. Listening to how my body feels every day is becoming simpler. Being okay with just running for the joy of running takes off the pressure of comparing myself to others or having expectations of distances and times. Some days I push myself to sprint when I am tired, other days I walk home and pick flowers.
Both are necessary.

Karin Goldgruber writes about life as a Highly Sensitive Person HSP, how to reduce feelings of stress and overwhelm and how to find authentic answers to your life questions.
She is a Certified Emotional Freedom Techniques practitioner who specializes in working with Highly Sensitive People who experience problems in their relationship because of this innate trait.
As a Highly Sensitive Person herself she has overcome many challenges and obstacles and encourages and empowers others to do the same.

www.karingoldgruber.com

What you think about yourself matters

Even though I am at a family gathering, I feel alone. I listen in to the conversations. I find them shallow. I hate it when people talk about other people. It’s not even just talking harshly about others. It’s the comparisons, the comments about other’s choices and actions that really annoy and infuriate me. It’s the incomprehension that the other is not the lesser.

My biggest fear is that when I leave, they will talk about me.

What would they say?

“I don’t get it? Why does she do that? It makes no sense to me. She should do it this way.”

As a little girl I figured that since my family talked about everyone else in their absence, they must also talk about me in mine. It worried and scared me. The person who was talked about was singled out. Separated from the rest of the family. Different than the others.
I started to hide and isolate and flee into any other world I could find, within my mind and outside it.

I wrongly concluded that because they talked about me that I didn’t belong. I didn’t see that they talked about everyone. That they talked about them because they cared. That they didn’t talk about people that didn’t matter.

I started to see that conclusion as truth.
Diligently I collected evidence to confirm and validate my truth.
I felt excluded even though I had denied an invitation. I felt cast out when I retreated from family events because I was overwhelmed. I kept finding more and more evidence.

My mind twisted things around. I would read into things that were not even there. I was only looking for evidence that I didn’t belong. I only saw the world through my lenses, I only heard words through my filters. I filtered out anything that didn’t fit the parameters of my worldview.

Most of my life, my thoughts and beliefs about me were dependent on what I thought that my family said or believed about me. If I thought they liked me, I liked myself. If I thought someone didn’t like me I questioned myself. I have since learned that their feelings, thoughts and comments have nothing to do with me, only them.
I stopped talking badly about myself in my head. I began to like myself and feel comfortable with my choices and decisions. I stopped questioning myself. I began to be the only authority in my life.

I din’t need my family’s approval of my life and my choices any longer. I didn’t need to be liked by my family because I like myself.
I wasn’t scared to be talked about, commented on. It doesn’t matter what they say about me.
It matters what I know about myself.

I have decided to express my love and appreciation for my family without expecting anything in return. I know that I can deal with whatever feelings will come up.

Karin Goldgruber is a Certified Emotional Freedom Techniques practitioner who specializes in working with Highly Sensitive People HSP who experience problems in their relationship because of this innate trait.
As a Highly Sensitive Person herself she has overcome many challenges and obstacles and encourages and empowers others to do the same.

www.karingoldgruber.com

I went MiA Missing in Austria for ten weeks

I left Canada in the beginning of May on hiatus and I went missing in action. I had plans to review the course that I had taken, read books for work, get new customers, walk every day, bike every day, write every day, draw every day,eat well, lose weight, write tons of articles, spend time with friends,while being back home, helping my aging parents.

You probably think it’s impossible to do all of it , every single day. It was.
Yet every vacation I have the same intentions and expectations for my time. A large amount of unstructured time always begs me to quickly fill it with work. It’s feels impossible not to fill those void spaces with plans.

I was brought up in a very productive, industrious family with mostly entrepreneurs and workaholics. Parts of me wants to be like everyone else and work, work, work, even during a vacation. I felt pressure to justify spending so much time with my parents.

Things went right already in the first two weeks. I spend a few days with my younger son in Vienna. We had no plans. And it was wonderful. We slept as long as we wanted. We ate when we were hungry. We walked the city streets, watched people. I loved it. We talked about everything and nothing. It was simple, yet it filled my heart and soul to the brim.

I had such ambitious plans for the rest of my stay, after he left.
Luckily those plans didn’t come to fruition. I wasn’t motivated to write, study and work every day, as my busy brain had planned. I slept in,and read, books I enjoyed. I swam in ice cold mountain rivers and lakes. I hiked through a canyon with my sisters. I ate an abundance of wild strawberries.

I felt guilty looking at my books and my laptop sitting lonely on my desk, waiting for me to work, yet I closed the door behind me and did what I really wanted and needed to do. I walked often with my mom. I watched TV with my dad. We played cards. I did seemingly unimportant, insignificant things.

Yet those things helped me to relax and to realize how stressed and worried I had been. It helped me to make my peace with their age and that things will change. But for now we are alive and we will do and say maybe unimportant things. Nothing spectacular, but real. Everyday life together. That’s more that I could have planned for.

Life goes on. With or without you

It’s so much easier to disconnect from a partner in advance, because of fear of rejection. We step back, scared, worried and expect to be hurt. We assume that they will reject us, because sometimes they did say no to spending time with us or making love. Somehow it’s so easy to take one no, or maybe later and see it as a rejection forever.

What was your big rejection that lead you to believe that nobody loves you? For me it was a month long separation from my parents when I was in hospital when I was only 7 months old. This separation was very traumatic for me and still influences my beliefs about myself, my relationship and all areas of my life.

It’s incredibly frustrating to see myself repeating certain behaviours again and again. I am aware of some of them. Using willpower and determination to change them will only bring me to a certain spot. There’s only so much willpower every day. It has been a struggle to stay connected most of my life. At the slightest signs of rejection I step back, afraid to be hurt. I expect to be rejected. Yet, again and again I come back from my emotional hiding place, trying to connect and stay connected.

However, I forget that life doesn’t stop for others, while I am hiding or away in another country or just at work. My life goes on as well. Yet, I expect them to drop everything when I am there, to be with me, like they couldn’t when I was fighting for my life in the hospital. As an adult I still try to fix a connection that broke, that was interrupted when I was little. Your interruption in connections probably looks different then mine. Staying connected to myself through writing, painting and Emotional Freedom Techniques tapping helps me to stay connected with the people I love. One moment at a time.

Life goes on. No matter what happens in our life, life goes on for all the people in our life.
It goes on and we have no choice. Life had to go on for my parents when I was lying in the hospital fighting for my life when I was little. They had no choice, they were not allowed to see me for a whole month. One weekly phone call, if they got through on the busy line, to find out how I was doing. Life went on. They had to take care of my three sisters, go to work and continue living. As long as we live we have no choice but to keep on living, to keep on going.

Life went on for me. Separated from my parents, fighting for my life. I don’t know exactly what happened to me during that time. I can only assume that the fear of hospitals that took me 18 years of conscious work to overcome, stems from that time. I recognized that fear while visiting someone in a hospital. Only after I gave birth to my youngest son, did I overcome that fear. Things that I experienced, lived, heard, saw, witnessed during that time still impact my life. It feels as if the memories formed layers in my personality. This experience shaped and formed me in ways I am mostly unaware off.

I always complain that my family’s lives goes on when I am in Austria to visit from Canada. As does my life most of the time when my family comes to visit me in Canada. Yet, I am always very hurt, when everyone continues to work, take vacations, meet friends and live their lives. Part of me expects them to stop their life when I come and just be here for me.

Like they couldn’t be when I was in the hospital. I am quite certain that I was on my parents mind a lot while I was there. This month of my life still influences how I think, feel and how I live my life now.
I have used EFT tapping to look at many different aspects of that time. I don’t know if I will ever be free of it nor if I want to be. I was all alone fighting for my life in that hospital and because of that I often feel disconnected from the family I love.

I could wish that this had never happened in my life. But it has happened and it brought me to where I am right now in my life. It influenced greatly how I have lived my life until now. I am not sure if I would change it or erase it if I could. I really don’t know. I know that it’s part of my life and that I can’t change that. However what I can do is to step away from feeling like a victim.

Through EFT tapping on different aspects of that time I have seen good things that came out of that time. My whole life it was easy for me to connect with strangers, even though I am a very shy person. I always knew who I could trust. Strangers have come into my life many times to help me when I needed help the most.
I never ever thought that something good would come out of that time.

I would have died if it wasn’t for all those strangers, who became like family, in a strange place that became my home for a short period in time. Since then, wherever I go in the world I feel at home, among strangers I always feel like I am with family.

How can I demand from others to put their lives on hold for me? No matter what’s going on in my life, my life always goes on.
It’s my choice to look at the trauma I have experienced. I choose to wake the sleeping giants, which influence my life. I want to face them head on. I have lived with their subconscious influence for way to long. Is it fun? Is it easy to deal with all the pain? No, but I don’t want to live with this chronic emotional pain and its effects any longer.
Will I be able to change everything? I have no clue. But, I would rather do this, then step back and let it run my life. This is my life and I choose how it goes on.

How our assumptions about ourselves shape our future

Very early in our lives we make assumptions about ourselves. Either on our own or somebody makes a comment about us and we believe what they say.
I learned very early on in my life that strangers are helpful and benevolent. I also was able to feel at home away from home very early. Those experiences were very strong and formed my beliefs. Again and again I had experiences that gave me more evidence that those assumptions were correct.

The more I believed it the more I saw them. I didn’t see any evidence to the contrary. Confirmation bias had a positive affect in those situations.

Yet there were other assumptions that had just the opposite effect. Because I was told that I was slow doing math, I became insecure and nervous about math. This kept slowing me down even more, giving me more evidence that supported that belief.
How many beliefs about ourselves are based on wrong evidence? How many influence our relationship in an unhealthy way? Have you ever questioned them?

Purposefully looking for evidence that supports positive beliefs about ourselves is a way to change the way we view ourselves.
Giving your partner the benefit of doubt can be one way to get positive evidence. Asking them to clarify what they said is another way to understand them better, without assuming the worst.
Whether you look for evidence that has a positive impact or negative impact, you will always find it. It’s up to you which one you look for.

You know you

I might as well give up. What am I doing here? I don’t know what I am doing. Totally shocked I realized that a strong comment of disagreement by a stranger had almost made me quit my business.
My earliest memory of trusting someone’s opinion more than mine is when I was in grade one. My teacher criticized the way I had colored circles. In order to fit in, also out of fear of being publicly shamed again, I started to do things the way authorities wanted me to. Again and again I went against my better judgement to please others. Increasingly, I forgot what made me happy and what I wanted. I bought into the idea that others know me better than I do. I did what was expected of me. When I listened to myself and made decisions that made me happy, my family shook their heads in disbelief.
I stopped asking why. I didn’t question the status quo. I accepted that this is how things were done.
I have ignored my own judgments in order to avoid critique, conflict and confrontation. I am in the process of unlearning this behaviour slowly, very slowly.
However, my business and my place in my familial and personal relationships are built upon my authenticity, if they weren’t they wouldn’t be mine. So, trusting my own decisions and staying true to myself is crucial.
I know me, you know you.