Welcome to another beautiful mastery Monday, this is the Monday before election day.  Please go vote.  Regardless of what your political views are, be a part of the conversation, vote. 

Our 4 year old, Felicity came to me and said “My belly is saying food, I listened and I  can hear it talking inside my body.  It says it wants pasta or a sandwich”

·      When felicity said this my mind immediately turned to how applicable this story is to all the different behaviors we use to feel something different. And how when we are buffering we are not allowing ourselves to connect with what we really want and need. Felicity in that moment was so in tune with her body and what it was she truly needed and that was food to fill her hungry belly.

·      If I take this idea one step further and ask myself what is it that my husband truly wants when he looks at pornography. I can without a doubt say that he is not looking at pornography to hurt me, make me feel betrayed or cheated on, make me feel not good enough, to ruin my girl time…You name it I can keep going of all the things I would make my husband looking at pornography mean to me and about me. The truth is the reason he was looking at pornography was because he didn’t love himself, he hated who he was, and that he wanted to feel good in the moment. 

When felicity came to darcy asking for dinner, she was listening to her tummy tell her what she really wanted. 

For many of us when we have urges to view pornography we are actually not listening to our true needs. Partly because we are adults and we have learned to set our needs aside.  

Most of the people I work with are avoiding feeling lonely, sad, frustrated, angry or stressed. 

The question we want to talk about today is, are you listening to what you really want, rather than trying to avoid what’s going on for us really, in an effort to feel good now at the expense of feeling good long term. 

I recall a particularly difficult summer when darcy and the kids went to Wisconsin for three weeks and left me in California to work at my ladder climbing job at a large insurance company. 

In my mind it was two months and darcy had to remind me that it was only three weeks long.  So, that might tell you how big this was to me.  It holds a big place in my mind.

Because she was leaving and I wanted to stay away from pornography, we had put in place some really good, quality measures to keep the internet from creeping into my loneliest times, late nights at home. 

We locked down my phone so it wouldn’t be a temptation.  My company computer was going to be left in the car at the end of the day.  And the only way I could get on the internet would be to go to the MacDonald’s half a block away. 

With all the precautions in place, Darcy set off on the 33 hour drive to Wisconsin from Thousand Oaks CA. 

We were ready. 

We thought. 

Darcy, what were your thoughts as you left?

·      In that moment I was hopeful that he would be about to stay away from pornography while I was away. In my mind I was thinking about how this would be a great opportunity to prove to me how I could trust him and that he could “behave” while I was gone. I remember being anxious about what might happen while I was not home but, I wasn’t willing at that point to not go visit all my family for a few weeks.

For me this was my moment to show that I could do it. 

I could spend the 3 weeks alone,  and show Darcy that I wasn’t going to be viewing pornography forever and that I had grown. 

So, I was setting myself up to go it alone, make my mark and show how good I could be. 

What I really wanted was connection with my wife, self confidence and the ability to say that I could do this. 

It all started well.  

I don’t recall exactly how long I was good for.

What I remember is that I stayed late at work one night, because, what else was I to do.  And that’s when it happened.  

I was alone, sad and tired of fighting.  

This moment that I had set as a point to prove my worth became yet another mark in the loss column and another disappointment that my wife would have to suffer. 

This became one of the moments that I had ruined her vacation, or girls night, or whatever event where I had lapsed while she wasn’t looking. 

Looking back, long ago and far away, I can see what, as my little felicity put it, my belly was telling me.  

It was telling me that I wanted to feel loved. 

It was telling me that I wanted to feel connected.

It was telling me that I wanted to succeed.  

It was also telling me that I felt lonely 

It was telling me that I felt tired 

It was telling me that I felt stressed. 

So let me just take two of these and talk about them and what I would do differently now as opposed to then and how I succeed now as opposed to then. 

The desire to feel connected and the reality of feeling lonely are the two that come up the most for me. 

I think they come up the most for my clients as well. 

When I feel lonely, my natural tendency is to hide away, keep to myself and stay away from people.  

While Darcy was gone I didn’t do anything to get out and be with other people.  I was afraid that they would see how lonely I was.

It becomes this self-perpetuating cycle of me feeling then fighting my loneliness. 

As I look back at that period, something that I recognize is that I rarely, if ever, did anything just for me because I wanted to. 

It created a feeling of being alone, all the time. Even when my family was there.  It was just more acute while they were gone.  And when they were gone, it was even more powerful because I didn’t have a belief that I could connect with others. 

The way I feel love is also a self-perpetuating cycle.  But the kind that lifts me up. 

Recently, I went on a trip with 12 other men because it was something I wanted for me. 

I didn’t wait for Darcy to give me permission. I chose it.  It was something that I felt I wanted and would build me up and connect me with others outside of my family.  Also, I chose it because I believe that I am worth it.  

A big difference between the me of then and the me of now is that I do things because I feel like I am worth the expense, the time and the energy.  

This is living my life on purpose.  

This is listening to my belly and creating the person I want to be and not waiting for some magical moment in the future where I will be worthy of it. 

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