I want you to imagine this. You’re standing there, anywhere, and you have one job: build a wall around you.
Let’s say it’s made of dirt for now – and let’s say you have endless amounts of dirt available to you right this second, all you have to do is start building.
This wall is your self-confidence. You don’t have experience building walls, but you start trying – and you think that in order to build your wall, you need to start eating perfectly, maybe eliminating a whole food group because you’ve heard that helps you build your wall faster. You start building, and you start making a little headway – “hey, maybe I can do this”, keep building, keeping adding onto the wall.
Then you quickly start learning the things that make your wall crumble and fall a little bit. For one, the thoughts and opinions of others – you hear them, maybe for example someone sees you and tells you ‘man, you’ve really let yourself go’, or you go to a social event and you THINK you can hear everyone thinking about how much weight you’ve gained since the last time you saw them -and you LET THEM break part of your wall that you’ve been working so hard to build.
You get discouraged, you let yourself fall off track and more of your wall falls. Then you look around and you see other people building their walls, and maybe you see them making more headway than you – comparison – your wall falls more. You beat yourself up and don’t stay perfectly on track with your eating perfectly plan, your wall falls more. ⠀
You’re standing there with a partially crumbled wall – but this time, instead of focusing on the things that make your wall fall, you start to try to figure out the things that will help you wall get stronger. You start moving your body everyday, you read personal development books to help you form stronger thoughts of yourself – your wall grows taller. You start to make sure you drink enough water to be hydrated (aka enough water to not be dehydrated like most of us are), hey – a little wild flower grew on your wall! Cool, what else can make this thing grow…healthy food in balanced amounts? Maybe listening to your body giving you cues – instead of ignoring them and letting them secretly crumble your wall.
Your wall starts to build and get stronger – and then suddenly, your wall is at eye level. You can’t see out above it – some people might get nervous here. What if it’s lonely? Maybe some of your ‘friends’ are getting anxious about you building this wall and growing away from them, they try to kick your wall down a little, but you’re at eye level now, remember? You can’t even see that anymore.
At this place, when you reach eye level – you get to work. You don’t even feel the need to compare your wall to other walls because you’re getting the hang of it. You can fully TRUST that the process you’ve been shown (or figured out) is working, and you find that inner warrior – disciplined, determined, moving full force ahead and no one can stop you now.
You have built your wall so strong and tall that you can’t reach the top anymore, but you don’t stop – you keep reading, you keep moving, you keep feeding yourself the things that make you feel amazing, you keep drinking water, you learn a new trick that makes your wall INDESTRUCTIBLE…self-love. ⠀
Holy shit, this thing is building so fast I can’t even keep up with it. You add dirt under your feet now, you need to get to the top of the wall so you can keep building – everyday, you keep going with your process, you are focused, you are happy, you are proud.
Then, one day – when you’ve been building and putting more dirt under your feet, you look up. You are standing ontop of a beautiful, lush, flourishing mountain of the most beautiful flowers you’ve ever seen. You can’t see any dirt anymore, it’s completely covered in beauty – but you know that underneath is a strong ass mountain that NOBODY can take from you. ⠀
Now, you see those old thoughts, those people who once had the power to tear down your wall, you see them at the bottom and they stand there in awe of what you’ve built. They don’t even think about saying anything negative, they want to know how you did it – because they know they need to do it too. ⠀
And you learn now, that the thing that makes your mountain continue to grow, and be lush and beautiful, is you guiding others to build their mountain. ⠀
Suddenly, you look around and are sitting in a mountain range of the most unbelievable, unique, gorgeous mountains and you see the Goddess of each one sitting right there on top. Proud of what she’s built, full of self-confidence, self-love, happiness, and the tools she needs to stay there forever. What a sight to see. Now, go get to work Goddess – it’s your turn on top. ⠀
Irene Markulik 