Are You a Limelight Ducker?

Are You a Limelight Ducker?

Here’s to you and all your amazing accomplishments! Here’s to you and all the kindnesses you do that no one knows about! Here’s to you and your loving heart, the difficult choices you make that are for the best, and all the times you have set your desires aside to help your loved ones with theirs. You are amazing.

How are you these days with enjoying some nice attention? How are you with being acknowledged? Do you let people praise you publicly, or do you duck away? Do you own your accomplishments, or shoo them off with a swish of your hand?

Some of us seem to be attention hungry, applying for awards, demanding attention, always scrabbling for it, never feeling it inside. Or maybe we get a little high off the attention, but never feel the sense of satisfaction, of appreciation, of connection. Poor we.

Some of us do and do and never really get acknowledged. We might feel like “they” don’t appreciate us, or “they” don’t care about what we do, but the truth is that we are really powerful, and have an almost magical control over that sort of thing.

Sometimes, we get resentful, and blame-y and use those feeling to justify all sorts of unsavory behaviors. “They made me. No one cares anyway. It’s their fault.”

Oy.

You can’t acknowledge me unless I allow it.

If I have some ideas that I am not worthy, or don’t deserve celebration; if I have some idea that no one cares about what I do; if I have some idea that attention is bad, or that something bad will happen to me if I get attention; I’m right.

That’s how it works.

Why do I enjoy being celebrated? How do I receive accolades? What makes me enjoy the party in my honor?

We live together; families, neighborhoods, communities, workplaces. One of the many ways we bond together, to support and nurture each other, is to celebrate each other. But that breaks down a bit when I refuse it.

Why do I choose to be celebrated? Why would enjoy acknowledgement? Why am I safe to be honored?

When we are living our natural lives, lives of joy and abundance, of peace and bliss, we feel satisfaction for what we do, and satisfaction for how we help each other. When we deny ourselves celebration, we are denying our community a fundamental tool for bonding. We enjoy more intimacy when we allow ourselves to be celebrated, with our partner, with our friends, with all our people. Intimacy, trust, compassion, gratitude, appreciation.  Oh, yeah.

By choosing to allow myself to be celebrated, I am choosing to strengthen all my relationships.

How have I changed from ducking the limelight to enjoying being celebrated?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2013 all rights reserved 10202013