If you have been feeling crabby, cranky, controlling, overwhelmed, over it or like you want to tell everyone to buzz off lately I have something important to share with you.
These symptoms do not mean you are not a bad or mean person… they are an indication that your soul is just starving and trying to get your attention.
I remember the first day that I realized my soul was starving. Even though I was living my passion, doing great work in the world, meeting a lot of my goals, and making enough money to get by…
I found myself at the tail end of a three-week “busy binge” with little room for pleasure and play, leaving me, in one word, CRABBY.
It had gotten to the point where my assistant would come in and ask me first thing, “Christine, how are you feeling today?” just to gauge how best to navigate the day (and me) and how close she was going to stick by (or not). And I couldn’t blame her. I felt that way about me too. Problem was, I couldn’t get away from myself!
So I held an honesty hearing with myself. My first question was simply “Christine, what is going on with you?” And instantly I realized that I was unhappy, really unhappy, and had been for weeks. My reply was “What? I am one of the happiest people I know. How could this be?” My Inner Wisdom shot back:
“Because your soul is starving.
You have been so busy giving, so busy working,
so consumed with being a joy for others
that you’ve forgotten to experience joy for yourself.”
In that moment it was as if I could feel a hole inside me. I was empty, starving for nourishment — but not the green drink kind. I needed soul food. And the food of the soul is joy.
The problem was that I couldn’t even remember what actually brought me joy. And that is when I knew I needed a radical intervention… a self-love intervention.
And I am guessing I am not alone in my experience in getting crabby and cranky because I’m not getting what I need (maybe you can relate?)
Are you so busy doing, giving and trying to keep it all together or achieve your dreams that you are pursuing happiness instead of experiencing it?
I’m getting the sense that a lot of us have work-play equations that get out of balance – where you don’t spend time and energy on activities that deliver only pleasure… instead of profit or productivity. As a result, your joy quotient plummets and your crabbiness increases. And so you joy-binge in unhealthy ways for a quick fix, but your soul never feels full.
So how joy-full or joy-starved are you?
Take this self-love pulse check which measures the joy levels of the self-pleasure branch of your self-love tree. Your self-love tree has 10 branches, self-pleasure is the one that makes sure your SOUL is nourished. Answer yes or no to these questions:
Do you:
- Feel unhappy and you don’t know why.
- Play or give yourself pleasurable things only after you have worked hard or finished your to do list? You have to feel like you’ve earned playing and doing pleasurable things.
- Try to get pleasure in quick spurts or by bingeing on it. You wait until you are starving for fun and then you overindulge – eat, drink or spend too much.
- Have a hard time remembering what you actually like to do for fun and pleasure because it’s been so long? You can’t name more than a few things you like to do just for fun.
- Feel too busy to enjoy the simple pleasures? You are so consumed by your to do list or workload you don’t take time to slow down and notice beauty, connect with nature or spend the day in bed reading a book?
If you answered yes to any of these, your soul is starving for joy and you need to get some soul food asap.
Luckily I have some right here. The first step is remembering what does bring you joy. Grab a piece of paper and right the word JOY in the middle of it. Then going through your life from the time you were little to now, write down all the things that bring you joy – things that make you smile, are just fun, make you feel warm inside, fill you up. Keep going until the page is full. This is called a “JOY PORTRAIT”
Then commit to saying YES to one of these per day for the rest of your life – or just start with a month!
To do a more indepth pulse check or to get the full exercise, read Chapter 12 in Madly in Love with ME, the Daring Adventure to Becoming Your Own Best Friend.
And for starters, today, state 3 joy-generators, three things that bring you joy. Me: Chanting in the morning, dancing in the kitchen or anywhere with my guy Noah, and deep conversations over food with my best friends.
Written by Christine Arylo
Christine is an inspirational catalyst for women and girls everywhere, daring, inspiring and guiding them to be, love and live their REAL MEs… instead of the images they often find themselves trying to live into.
