Kate's Nuggets

Getting Curious About Ourselves
Episode 6

Podcast Opening over Theme Music:
Hello and welcome. This is Kate's Nuggets, the podcast where I share bite-size nuggets of wisdom about self-leadership. I am your host, Kate Arms. I invite you to listen lightly, let these ideas wash over you. Take what you take and let the rest go. You can always come back and listen again.

Kate Arms:
Today I want to talk about what it is about getting curious about ourselves, with ourselves, that is super powerful and why it can be so hard.

And then, of course, a tip about how to gently start a practice of becoming more curious about ourselves.

The thing about becoming curious about ourselves is that so many of the things that get in our way in our lives are actually about the assumptions that we make about how the world works and about who we are and what we're capable of and what we're not capable of.

When we get curious about ourselves, we discover what of that is real limitation and what of that is not.

Sometimes we think that we are more skilled than we are at things, and getting curious about ourselves shows us gaps between where we want to be and where we are. And then that gives us something we can do because then we can work on improving the skill.

And sometimes we think that we are unskilled at something that it turns out we used to be unskilled at, and now we're pretty good at, or we're okay at.

Or we think of ourselves as having behavior challenges that we had when we were a kid that we don't have anymore.

Or we have habitual responses to situations that don't serve us the way that they used to, because they were the best we could do at the time, and now we're older.

When we get curious about ourselves, we just ask questions like, why did I do that? Why does that feel important to me? What is going on with me right now? What is really important to me? What do I want to make from this situation?

All of these questions open up possibilities for self-awareness.

We can also get really specific. What's going on in my body right now? What am I feeling?

For those of us who are a little emotionally numb or not really in touch with our emotions, who want to get access to more self emotional intelligence, a powerful practice is to get curious about what is going on in my body right now?

What do I notice about my physical experience right now?

Because emotions live in our body.

If we are not really attuned to our emotions, then just noticing, oh, I've got a little knot on my stomach. Oh, I'm a little tight in my chest. Oh, my shoulders are a little tight. My jaw feels relaxed for the first time, in I don't know how long.

These are kinds of noticings that then you can go, what's that about? What is the emotional content of that? Is there emotional content of that?

Sometimes what's going on in our body is, oh, I had a really tough abs workout yesterday and I'm tight and sore. And there may be no emotional content to that whatsoever.

If we're in the habit of shaming ourselves, then it gets scary to look at ourselves. Because if we look at ourselves, we might see the things that we shame ourselves for, and then we have a vicious cycle.

Particularly if we shame ourselves for shaming ourselves.

So how do we counter that?

We counter that by cultivating self-compassion, by saying, this is what it is. You are who you are. I wish for myself ease, and I wish for myself safety and health and wellbeing. And I know that getting a little bit more self-aware will help me open some more possibilities in my life, and maybe get a little more control over things where I've felt out of control in the past. So I'm going to be gentle and tender with myself, and then be curious. What's going on right now? And if what's going on right now is that I'm shaming myself, the next step is to be like, yeah, that's what's going on.

And just notice it and be compassionate about that because those of us who have been shamed and developed habits of self-shaming have some undoing to do.

It's perfectly normal for us to be uncomfortable turning to look at ourselves gently and compassionately. Because what I know is that even the challenges that are posed by intensity are gifts because they ask us to be compassionate with ourselves and to hold ourselves more valuable than the shoulds that get put on us by the culture.

Most of us are living in cultures that have a lot of shoulds, and when they push us to say, you know what? No. What matters is how do I thrive? Not what you think I should do, not who you think I should be and what you think I should be. And when we can embrace that for ourselves and model that for other people, we make the world a better place.

It all starts by being gentle with ourselves and being willing to look at ourselves with curiosity and compassion. So for this week, that's what I wish for you, the courage to look at yourself with curiosity and compassion.

Catch you next week.

End Theme and Credits:
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Here's to Thriving! Catch you next time.
Kate's Nuggets is a Signal Fire Coaching production. The music is adapted under license from Heroic Age by Kevin McLeod.