Throw Out Your Obligations!

You Do Not Have to Meet All Your Obligations!

What?!? That’s right. The very best thing you do for yourself might just be to let an obligation go. For those of you who are exclaiming, “Are you kidding me, Dr Kyra? I have to meet my obligations - have to - that’s why they’re called obligations!” just stick with me for a little longer on this.

As sensitive souls, we have a tendency to over-obligate ourselves: 
“Hi, friend. Oh, you’re inviting me to your home shopping party? Well, I guess I could fit it in between volunteering at my child’s school and covering my coworker’s yoga class. She’s out of town, and I told her I would teach it for her, but, yes, of course, I’ll be there.”

That’s just one type of example. There are many others way in which we might over-obligate ourselves and then pin ourselves in believing there is no way out of it.

“Sarah,” who read my book, recently sent me an email in which she described her obligation experience: She had coordinated a big work-related event and was overwhelmed with fear about it as the date was approaching. Sarah knew there were aspects of the event she was going to find not only draining and uncomfortable but detrimental to her health, yet she saw no way out of it.

But then she had an epiphany!

I’ll let you in on what she shared with me…

For Sarah, the resistance to letting the obligation go was all about not disappointing others.

“I saw that I didn’t want to let others down in not going. That I was willing to risk my own health in making others happy. In the end, I stepped out of the event, putting myself and my own health/needs first. I faced the fear, and really accepted "me” in the process.“

So the next time you find yourself overwhelmed by the thought of meeting a certain obligation, stop and meditate upon it. We’re often not as stuck as we think we are. In Sarah’s case, another employee was able to step up, and the event went off without a hitch.

Sarah summarized the experience beautifully: "All is as it should be. It’s like I’m free to celebrate me.”

~ by Dr Kyra Mesich, drkyra.com