Being comfortable in your own skin

Pressing Pause ep 120 Being comfortable in your own skin

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Welcome to Pressing Pause, I’m your host, Gabrielle Treanor, a coach, writer, introvert and sensitive soul with an inclination to ponder over the stuff of life. Join me as I explore how we can create, find and feel more calm, ease and joy in our daily lives.

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I wanted to give you a heads up that the, frankly amazing, introductory offer to my new service – Coach in Your Pocket – is only available for a few more days, until Sunday 13 November.

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Now you can send me a text or voice message whenever it suits you to share what’s on your mind, how you’re feeling and thinking, what’s difficult in your life, ask questions, and I am here to listen and really hear you, to help and support you, to have your back and be in your corner.

So that you can let go of the people-pleasing and the perfectionism that’s holding you back. So you can feel confident in holding your boundaries and saying no without an avalanche of guilt afterwards. So you can trust in yourself to make decisions, to speak up for what you want and need. So that you can take better care of yourself, feel calmer, more at ease, and more joyful.

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And, as I say the incredible introductory offer is ending on Sunday 13 November so go to gabrielletreanor.com/pocket to find out more about how you can have me as your Coach in Your Pocket and get the amazing deal too.

Okay then, on with the episode.

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Welcome to episode 120. Recently I’ve tried a journalling exercise where you imagine your best self in the future, say ten years, and write about it for several days in a row. Each day I focused on a different area of my life and I noticed a thread running throughout my journal entries.

What I kept writing about was how being truly myself, comfortable with who I am and in my own skin, is what I’m doing in ten years’ time and how central it is to my future self’s happiness and fulfilment.

Whether it’s to do with my work, with my relationships, with how I spend my time, with any part of my life, I kept coming back to how being completely and utterly me is what allows me to find fulfilment, to connect wholeheartedly with others, to grow and develop, to be healthy and strong, to feel at ease and joyful.

So why did this keep coming up as I imagined my best future self?

Because it’s hard, right?! To be utterly comfortable being our true selves is incredibly hard.

When I think about my younger self I can see how much I hid who I was, how much I tried to be who I thought I should be. Looking back I don’t think I liked myself very much, which makes me quite sad really. There are still plenty of aspects I want to work on, I never want to stop growing and developing myself, but it’s much more driven by a desire to support and nurture myself than thinking I must fix what’s wrong with me, that I’m broken or deficient.

These days I am far more comfortable being myself than I used to be. Being my natural self, not trying to be anything else, feels lighter, it’s taken the pressure off. Because I’m not using energy and time on checking myself, on overthinking what I say and do, on worrying how other people could be judging me, I have more headspace, I’m more relaxed, I’m more at ease with myself. AND it can still feel challenging at times too.

There’s a nagging voice in our heads saying we should be better, funnier, skinnier, cleverer, you name it… We should be more like this person, less like that person. We should say and do what others expect, what others are saying and doing.

When the world is telling you how you should be it’s pretty hard to just be yourself. We need to feel safe to be our true selves.

It’s not like being utterly you means doing whatever the hell you like, with no sense of context. We show different sides of ourselves to different people in different situations. Who we are when we’re with our families is not the same as when we’re at work or with friends.

But those different sides of ourselves are just aspects of us, not completely different roles we’re playing. We can still be coming from a place of honesty and authenticity, we’re simply speaking and acting as ourselves in a way that makes sense in the situation and company.

I say simple but it’s not really. Because too often we act like we think we should, how we’re supposed to, how we think (or know) others want or expect us too. We follow what other people do, what they say, how they look, even though it doesn’t feel right in our bones, because we trust that they know better than we do.

So you shapeshift and contort yourself into a version that you think will be more acceptable, more liked, more approved of. And yes, maybe that persona you’re putting out will get those things which reinforces your belief that this version is who you need to be.

But what if being you, the real you, could be the key to the joy, the calm, the energy, the peace, the fulfilment, the life that you want? What would you do, how would you be, what would you say that you aren’t now?

And what if being truly yourself brought you the acceptance, the approval, the love from the people you actually want it from?

What if your words and your deeds came naturally from you and led you to opportunities, to people, to experiences that you didn’t even know were out there or possible for you?

What if being truly you allowed you to have the relationships, to do the work, to live in the way that you’ve always dreamed of?

It’s a big question, right?!

And not one that’s quickly or easily answered, not least because I know there will be some of you reading this thinking, ‘I don’t know who the real me is’. When you’ve shape shifted for most of your life that makes sense.

Just because you aren’t sure what being truly yourself means right now it doesn’t mean that will always be the case. There are ways that you can start to get in touch with who is the real you.

For now, who you are is an interesting question to ponder…

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Thank you for listening to Pressing Pause, you can find details of what I shared in this episode in the show notes at gabrielletreanor.com/podcast. I’d love to hear what you take from the episode so do email me at [email protected]. You can leave a rating or review on iTunes too, and that helps other people to find the podcast.

As I said at the start, the very special introductory offer to my new offering – Coach in Your Pocket – is only available for a few more days, until Sunday 13 November. Coach in Your Pocket is a new way for you to get the support you want to bring down your stress and overwhelm, let go of people-pleasing and perfectionism, and live with more calm, peace and joy, by having me as your coach in your pocket.

Find out how you can get coaching any time you like, without having to schedule a specific hour in your day or do video calls, by going to gabrielletreanor.com/pocket. The super special offer ends on Sunday 13 November.

Thanks again for listening, until next time.