So, I had a "touch" of pneumonia last week that forced me into bed for six days. Six days of no cleaning (my house now closely resembles a scene out of WWIII), no parenting (thank you to my amazing husband who jumped in and did double duty parenting), no work, no SoulCollage®, just nothing.
The only thing I manage to do when I am feeling a little better at the end of the week is to grab my file of "Completed SoulCollage® Workshop Evaluations" to peruse between naps.
And why am I perusing the evaluations completed by folks who have attended my workshops?
Because I am facilitating a number of workshops in the next six weeks and I always like to review the evaluations to remind myself of what I seem to be doing well and what participants feel I can improve upon. Thankfully, I seem to to be doing pretty well, at least according to the evaluations. However, I notice a comment that I somehow missed back in June. One workshop participant writes the following in the "Other comments" section:
It's hard not to have judgement of my own card
Perhaps classes for beginners would be good so
there aren't so many good artists in the room.
I read this comment and am immediately sad.
I feel terrible that anyone would come away from one of my workshops feeling like they aren't good enough, particularly when at the beginning of each workshop I try to impress upon participants the point that - IT IS ALL OKAY - and that the space we are in for the workshop is a JUDGMENT-FREE ZONE. That there is no right way or wrong way to make SoulCollage® cards and that we should all be kind to ourselves about the final product. That we make the cards for meaning and not necessarily for aesthetic beauty (and yet I'm always struck by the fact that all of the SoulCollage® cards I see at every workshop are amazingly beautiful...every single one) and that there IS great beauty in the meaning.
And yet...here is this participant who feels that she isn't good enough to be in the room with so many other "good" artists. Did she not hear me? Did she not read my big "IT'S ALL OKAY...JUDGMENT-FREE ZONE" sign that I put up during the workshop?
And yet...she still can't hold back her own self-judgment. She still doesn't feel good enough.
And then it really hits me...how many times have I felt like I am not "good enough"?
Confession...all of the time.
Even a year after my training, certification and all of the workshops I have facilitated, I often feel like I am not good enough to be doing this work. I feel like a fraud. Like my participants are all going to figure out that I don't have a clue what I am doing.
Not good enough.
How many times have we all felt not good enough?
So I go back to my SoulCollage® deck and I do a reading about the feeling of not being good enough and who can help me get through this feeling. Who in my deck can help me get beyond feeling like I am a fraud? And if I have to guess, I am probably going to have to do these kinds of readings for many years to come. It's so hard to free myself from the internal criticism that I'm not good enough.
Despite my often feeling not good enough, I know that I will continue this doing work of facilitating workshops to help others connect with their inner truth because I love the work and because, in the words of Richard Bach, "We teach best what we most need to learn."
I need to learn that I am OKAY and that I don't have to sit in judgment of myself.
I AM good enough even when I don't feel that I am.
And to the lovely participant out there who left the comment that inspired this blog post, if you are reading this, I hope you'll go back to the SoulCollage® card you made that Thursday evening in late June and really look at it. Appreciate it. Think of all of the work that you put into it. You made a beautiful thing. A beautiful piece of you. Please know that you ARE good enough.
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