Being truly you requires choosing what you actually want, rather than the most sensible option.
A few weeks ago I was out shopping for school shoes with my daughter. We were at Bicester Village in Oxfordshire and just for fun we peeked into this shoe shop to look at the shoes together. They are shoes fit for a princess, even though I usually try to avoid the ‘little girl as princess’ societal pressure. Put that aside, the shoes were GORGEOUS.
So then after seeing these beautiful shoes we went to the sensible school shoe shop to buy sensible school shoes, not glitter enhanced drool-worthy shoes.
You get to have a choice.
We knew the shoes needed to be black and flat and fit and be…..sensible. I started searching through the ones that were my daughter’s size and managed to pick out THE most sensible. My husband found a black pair with a strap across, some leather detailing and a small metal heart.
The searching isn’t what matters, it’s the choosing.
My inner sensible shoe goddess was choosing the most boring and sensible shoes that she could find as she felt that was her job. She was encouraging me to ‘sell’ the sensible and boring shoes as the best option.
The sensible option isn’t always the best.
Then I realised what I was doing. The part of me that loved the Gina shoes said, ‘look what you’re doing, you’re choosing the really boring ones when you have a choice about this. You are the grown up now and you get to choose how much creativity and fun and self-expression there can be….or not.’
So then I said out loud to my daughter ‘Do you want to try the ones with the heart or these really boring looking ones that I’ve picked out?’
My husband smiled at me, he knew I’d figured out what I was doing and had recognised I had got caught up in old voices about needing to be as sensible as possible.
I explained to my daughter what had made me pick out the most sensible boring ones but that the ones with the heart still met the school’s criteria.
The ones with the heart can fill your heart.
The ones with the heart fitted best and my daughter loved them.
Choosing what you want does not need to be irresponsible.
The new shoes still met the school requirements. They are black and flat and fit well. They were not more expensive than the very plain ones. Choosing the ones that had more personality and individual style wasn’t an irresponsible choice.
Let go of old patterns and voices.
Letting go of my old patterns of choosing the most sensible option could only happen when I realised what I was doing and owned up to it.
Recognise what you are allowing yourself and what you’re not.
There are probably lots of other ways that I find myself choosing the most sensible option and it’s part of my journey to recognise when these happen and call myself on them.
Question that.
Then I can ask myself ‘Is this what I really want or is it what I think I should want?’
Make new choices.
Where are you choosing the most sensible option? Is there another option that could work just as well and be a lot more fun?
Notice your discomfort about the new choices.
When you make the new and different choice it’s sometimes not the end of the story. Sometimes we doubt the new choices as they encourage our minds into new territory about what is possible for us. Again we can just notice this and realise it’s part of this journey of change to be more fully who we are, without the Mrs Sensible Shoes tapping us on the shoulder.
Wear the pretty shoes.
You get to choose whether you let yourself wear the pretty shoes or forever choose the sensible option.
Possible sensible options
The sensible shoes.
The sensible job.
The sensible choices of subjects at A level.
The sensible relationship.
The sensible career path.
The sensible things to do in your spare time.
If you’d like help unravelling the things that you are doing that are sensible when they are not in fact working for you, email me at deborah@deborahchalk.com for a free 30 minute discovery call.