Find What Feels Good

What do you need?

Does that feel like a hard question?

For me, many times, it has been.

Want to know another tough one?

Doesn’t it feel ridiculous?? We should know ourselves pretty well after all these years? Shouldn't we? How could those be hard questions?

Well….here’s how. Perhaps you've spent

Or maybe, you've had

There have been two distinct periods of my life when my inability to clearly and simply answer those questions was really getting to me. …….because it felt like I’d gotten lost along the way somewhere. And it felt frustrating that it wasn’t just that I didn’t have what I needed or wanted, but that I didn’t even know what it was exactly.

1. The first time I remember this clearly was a few months after my first kiddo turned 3. For me, that summer felt like the first time I had come up for air in a while. The first time I was rested enough to even ask the question – but I wasn’t sure of the answer.

After several frustrating and failed experiments at “taking some time for me” for “self care” and several disappointing dates and outings — I seriously thought I didn’t know how to have fun anymore.

But in a desperate attempt to keep trying – I made a list.

A late night, couldn’t sleep list of the things I used to love.

Some from childhood - some from my college years - on into my pre-baby, married years. Activities and things and music and shows and friends and places and hobbies and habits.

And over the course of the summer, I re-tried them all.

Some of them, I learned, needed to stay in the past. I had outgrown them or changed and they were no longer my thing.

But others……………..lit me up.

And I felt that familiar joy that was more than nostalgia.

It was flow. Being present. And loving where I was in that very moment without a thought for anything else.

And I learned how the impact of those moments reverberated through the following days and weeks in a way that “rest and recovery” didn’t . Because I wasn’t just rested. I was refreshed, re energized, and renewed.

2. The next time I faced this struggle, it felt more severe. I was in the midst of a career transition and as I looked at options for my future it felt like there were 100 equally good options and exactly none that felt like a home run.

I believed in trusting my gut and my intuition. I believed that my soul knew which way to go – but I couldn’t hear it through the noise. I started working with my therapist because there were so many voices in my head that I couldn’t tell which one was the truth!

After so many years of honoring the other voices –

I couldn’t hear what I really wanted or needed.

So for about six months, my marching orders from my therapist included a lot of “noticing”. She asked me to just pause (ALOT) and notice how certain ideas felt in my body.

Did an idea or activity or interaction make me excited or feel free or open or warm or did it make me feel tight, pressured, constricted, and cold?

It took a while. But I did indeed start noticing patterns and truth and where I was in the mix.

I learned so much and I found my real voice again. But it wasn’t in my head at all, after all.

It was in my body.

Bodies tell the truth.

So, I thought I might propose a

February Find What Feels Good Experiment.

If you're up for it - here's the deal.

For the month of February - make a commitment to yourself for 15 minutes a day to work on finding what feels good. Choose a fun or recharging activity each day (ideally some old favorites and some new ideas) and really notice how it makes you feel.

I suspect you’ll find some new favorites and as you hone your skill of noticing how you feel, you may even find that some of things you sometimes think you want or need don’t feel as good as you thought.

To help you, I’ve designed a 25 day calendar of activities that I hope will be easy for almost anyone to make happen. You can follow along, mix and match, or do your own thing. But, I’ll hop on Instagram @childhoodsmatter each day to report on my own experiments in trying them all and offer some resources that might help. I hope you’ll join me there to let me know what you're trying and learning.

Your body won’t lie.

Take time to listen to it. And you won’t just find what feels good, you’ll also get better at steering your ship on issues big and small.

If you’d like to download and print my 25 day calendar as well as a blank template if you want to create your own, just let me know by clicking here!

Have fun!