Listen now | How feeling sorry for yourself takes us away from living our lives fully, with a poem from DH Lawrence
Hello and good morning. Happy Thursday friends! Coach Kate here with another episode of Minute Explorations. I have this space daily to dive into an idea, a concept, almost always a quote or a quick passage and together we explore the possibilities of words and how they impact us so we can grow. If that sounds like a space you'd like to be a part of, give me a follow so we can explore these things together.
Today's exploration is on Self Pity and feeling sorry for ourselves. So often in life things can hit us in big ways-- from hardships to change, to loss to grief, to also never having that feeling of getting a win. Oftentimes when we are hit with all of these, some of these, or sometimes just one challenge -- it's enough to derail our thinking, invert in towards ourselves and shut down in the form of self-pity. Self Pity is an interesting emotion because it takes that outward sense of value we want for ourselves, and forces it inside, where we protect, nurture, and heal it. The truth is, we are valuable just by existing. Being alive is our superpower in this world-- and when we self pity, we rob ourselves of our own light and life force.
Self Pity then can often be an indulgent life experience where we don't take responsibility for ourselves and our future. It leans on the idea that we are not a part of this life, that life instead happens to us. Much of this life is what we put into it,and there are so many things we cannot control that are unfair, that do hurt, and that do need time to heal and process. Feeling sorry for ourselves is a way to indulge in the negativities that surround us, instead of taking action to love ourselves instead. There are ways we can take hardships on empathetically without adopting this idea of self pity. Self Pity is just a way for you to validate the pain and hurt you feel, which is a necessary step towards healing-- so once you validate it, how do you grow from it? Today's quote is from none other than the exquisite English Poet and Author, DH Lawrence. D.H. Lawrence was well known and even infamous in some circles for talking about isolation, hurt, love, unconventional people and relationships and he really pushed the boundaries of written text at the time-- and that carries over even into today. He spent much of his life actually in something he called "savage isolation" writing all around the world, immersing himself in cultures and people, and much of his work mirrors this lifelong longing to connect and see the world and people for who they are. His sidestepping of the provincial life he had for what was waiting for him instead out in the world is a great reminder that we can choose ourselves on this great journey of life too. Here is his Poem Titled " Self Pity" that can be found in the book The Complete Poems of D.H.Lawrence:
“I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself. A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough without ever having felt sorry for itself.”
― D.H. Lawrence
The idea of a wild thing, thriving, and pushing striving towards it's life is a great visual in what it means to be alive. A wild thing has no choice but to press on and its goal is to live. As simple as it sounds, when we ask ourselves what we're doing to live, really live, we leave no room for self pity. When we indulge in the feeling of self-pity we rob ourselves in putting action in place instead. Our thoughts are not facts, our feelings are not facts, us being alive is a fact. Sometimes just acknowledging our feelings as visitors or messengers, is a great way to also acknowledge that these feelings aren't here to stay, feelings are here to tell us something about ourselves, then pass. Sometimes the hardship is the gift, when we learn to confront hardships with curiosity and lean into a growth mindset from them, we can actually be better off because of the how much we can grow through adversity. Self pity robs us of the growth, and instead indulges in the stagnation of hurt. When we look at what is driving us towards self pity and acknowledge it as a temporary obstacle that helps us grow, we then assign action to the feeling instead of embracing it like a part of ourselves that will never go away.
Next time you start to get that familiar self-pity feeling creeping in, I want you to envision yourself as a beautiful, wild, thriving version of you, and know that version has no room for feeling sorry for itself because it's so busy living for itself instead.
I'm Coach Kate. Thanks for listening today. If you liked what you heard and want to follow along our daily minute Explorations in the mornings here, give me a follow. Tomorrow I'll be back for a longer version of our show where I open it up to you on to chime in with explorations of your own.
