It Matters

Last Saturday I was driving home from the gym, down the freeway, music playing and tumbling thoughts in my head. I had listened to a podcast earlier in the day that was speaking to men’s empowerment and that podcast was talking about how college educated women don’t date men without a college education. That question started to tumble in my brain, “would I?” and then I just had the sense that for me that was missing an important point entirely.

These ping pong thoughts going through my head began the poem that ended up spilling out when I got home. This poem defines some of what I don’t care about in relationships and what does very much matter to me.

Today, as I shared this draft with my shaman sister, I got to the end of reading it and she simply said to me “Beautiful! What are you going to do with it?” I told her that I wanted to hold it close for a bit and test out some of the statements, were they true?

Then she said to me, “Can you say that these statements all apply to you?” She asked me to read it again, as I tested each one it became clear where my truth was and where it really wasn’t.

I edited it. In that process I had to admit caring about some things and truly not caring about others. In that process I owned my own truth, who I am and how I show up.

While I started out writing about an idea of someone else in truth, I ended up writing about myself. In truth, I ended up laying out the path I had taken back to myself.

Blog 60 - It matters 2

It Matters

By Renée Jenais

I don’t care how much education you have
It matters to me that your open to learning and growing

I don’t care if you have hobbies
It matters to me that you have a passion that consumes you from time to time

I don’t care how much money you have
It matters to me that you see the world abundantly

I don’t care if the world calls you successful
It matters to me that you put as much value into the world as you receive

I don’t care what you do for a living
It matters to me that you have a purpose for your life

I don’t care if you have a list of accomplishments
It matters to me that you see value in your being

I don’t care that you have helped others
It matters to me that you see value in another just for their being

I don’t care if you have past loves
It matters to me that you can love unconditionally enough to love them and yourself through a change in the form of your relationship

I don’t care who may have hurt you in the past
It matters to me that you can hold them in unconditional love despite the hurt

I don’t care if your spiritual beliefs have a name that goes back centuries
It matters to me that you feel connected to something greater than yourself and feel called to care for that connectedness

I don’t care if you like to hike or bike or…
It matters to me that you have a curiosity about the world and a desire to explore it

I don’t care if you have been married before or not
It matters to me that you know how to show up in partnership, to commit yourself to something greater than just you

I don’t care if you love yourself and love the life you have today
It matters to me that you have a burning fire in your belly to be a better version of yourself tomorrow

But what matters to me most, is that this is my own truth first

And there it was my truth, my journey. I could really apply this practice to any area of my life that I might want to examine. If I started to contemplate that area of my life and then just Wisdom Write on the prompts “I don’t care ….” And follow it up with “It matters to me that…”

This practice helps me to get to the heart of my truth and when I write something and go back and read it out loud to myself, I know in an instant if it is not really my truth, then I know I must go further.

I love testing myself this way, finding my own truth, my own clarity, and my own growth by questioning myself.

I hope these words and my own questions get you thinking or writing or both. Here is a practice for you to try something for you to ponder in your favorite journal.

  • Think about an area of your life that you want some clarity in and apply these next instructions to that area
  • Finish this statement “It doesn’t matter to me….”
  • Finish this statement “It matters to me that….”
  • Repeat these statement pairings over and over until you get onto paper everything about this area of your life that you are seeking clarity on
  • Re-read these statements and ask yourself, are they really your truth? If not, edit them, find what is true for you

I blog because I love posing questions to myself, I love forcing myself to grow in this way, answering my own hard questions. I love peeling back the layers of this onion that is my life and testing myself to show up more fully every day.

If you want to question yourself, then subscribe to my email list and ensure you have an opportunity to do that. I blog about once a month so you will not receive a ton of emails from me, only what I hope to be the best questions that we can ask ourselves to be better tomorrow than we were today.

In love,

Renee

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