This Friday, I did something vulnerable.
I participated in an interview led by my beautiful aunt Nadia in my mother tongue and it was scary!
I didn’t feel butterflies in my stomach, but my mind worried that I wouldn’t find the right words.. Bulgarian is a language that I absolutely love and speak every day casually with family, but not in a professional context.
Essentially, by agreeing to this conversation..
I made the conscious decision to take on a high risk of ‘failure’.
I played at the edges of my comfort zone..
Did I stumble? YES!
Did I feel limited in my fullest expression? Uh huh..
Would the old version of Katrin been upset at herself and felt utterly ‘not good enough’? Absolutely.
The good news is that old Katrin is dead, and current day Katrin is proud that she lay her to rest! (Using love as her weapon of choice. 😁)
You see..
I believe that the most personal growth is accessible at the edges of our comfort zone. With the deep emotional healing that we can choose to lead ourselves in, we can expand our capacity for radical acceptance – of ourselves AND others!
We can understand the self-criticizing behaviours actually served the younger versions of ourselves..
And we can adopt a new way of being at a higher payoff.
Today, I value the payoff of making an impact more than that of protecting myself from embarrassment. I feel moreso the pleasure of showing the ‘imperfect’ parts of myself rather than the pain of that.
At its core, this means that..
I feel SAFE being vulnerable in a wider variety of contexts.
I get excited by the unknown and can therefore surrender to it.. Whereas younger Katrin simply didn’t feel safe enough to live this way. She shamed the parts of herself that feel so loved today.
And that’s what the evolution looks like!!
That’s why..
My deepest wish for all of us is to continue finding beauty in the parts of us that the old version of ourselves rejected. ❤️🩹
So go ahead and play at the edges of your comfort zone! And show ALL parts of yourself the love that you’ve deserved all along.
– Katrin, with Love
