At breakfast, I was listening to new uploads from Katrina Ruth on YouTube. I curate a playlist THE KATRINA RUTH FREE TRAINING LIST ON YOUTUBE and to keep it under a hundred videos, I “need to” (as if that is not sheer pleasure in itself) select which new Katrina Ruth videos will go on it.
But this morning I not just heard a training that will make it to the list; it also blew me away.
And it will therefor stay on the list until the end of time.
Now technically, the message of the live stream is identical to a blog she wrote the night before the live stream;
I’M SENSITIVE AND ANXIOUS, EASILY AGITATED, AND I KIND OF REALLY HATE PEOPLE, A LOT OF THE TIME … She also refers to this blog in her live stream. Two weeks ago I read and used that blog for a project where I select one quote a day, #DailyKat.
But this is the live stream she created the next day, while she was playing hooky on a ClickFunnel event she had been very verbal about (in a negative way) before attending. She only went to get her team up to speed or introduced on how to use funnels.
Not because she had chosen it for herself.
So here she was, sitting on a sunny rock at a Disney Resort where the event was, live streaming at exactly the same moment everybody would walk through the park on their break. So they could not talk to her.
That whole setting was the message right there. It told exactly what kind of person she is. And that I am.
And that to this day, I have always assumed other people are too! But that they either do a better job hiding it.
OR they are actually more evolved species than me. Less spoiled, more mature, more APPRECIATIVE of other people’s knowledge, and presence and not so (Katrina Ruth’s capitals coming up again) GODDAMN FUCKING PICKY ABOUT WHO THEY HANG OUT WITH AND COUNTING EVERY TORTUROUS MINUTE OF IT.
I want to tell you a story about my late father.
Whose anti-social character traits have started to speak to me in a number of ways. I ve come to realize that I have them too. It’s just that I still feel uneasy owning them the way he did. As if being female means I should be social, and pleasing. Which my father was absolutely incapable of, unless he felt like it. Or unless he thought the stakes were high. Which usually had to do with career-like situations.
But whenever there was company at our house which were not my father’s friends, relatives, nor his business contacts? My father would read the newspaper. If he had for some unknown reason agreed to “attend” a birthday on my mother’s side of the family? Where attend means to physically be in the same room, f.e. because they had another appointment in that same area later that day. He would read a newspaper until that one aunt would come in (also a notorious no-shower) who everybody found difficult and overbearing; and he’d welcome her to the room as if it was his party that he had organized especially for her.
Imagine the stir that gave.
But also as sort of a side note: People who think smartphones are the reason we are having less social conversation, and are less “present” nowadays, have obviously never met my father. They’ve been studying a bunch of amateurs. The real pros have been butting out of conversations and social etiquette since the beginning of time. And by the way? That is EXACTLY why I think most people are like my father, and like me, and maybe like you;
the smartphone is just a tool that can be used to create some much needed me-time, to disconnect from the outer world in favor of the inner.
To reconnect with what’s inside, even if it’s just for five seconds.
Now HOLD YOUR HORSES
I m not talking about actually RESPONDING to messages. Or being in any way reactive on your smart phone out of fear of missing out. I mean that for a lot of people their smart phone is a sanctuary where they can retreat, much like my father retreated in the newspaper.
Somebody should write about that;
how staying online in a responsive way is actually misusing a medium that has the potential to be as sacred and introspective as a church.
So my father knew exactly when he wanted to show up, and when he didn’t. And although I personally would have benefited from him showing up for his family, instead of just starting to get involved when we were teens and he could focus on education and career –
I have to hand it to him;
He was teaching by example like a mofo.
To stay true to yourself. To choose your battles. To not waste your precious time, energy and your LIFE, – another Kat quote coming up –
“Dancing to the beat of somebody else’s drum.”
Lessons that seem to have been tailored to his oldest daughter in particular. That was my education, right there!
No wonder that I walked out on every job, every training, every education OR decided to do exactly what was required to get the diploma or whatever it was I needed out of it. No wonder I live alone, work alone, beg my friends to never invite me to parties, and celebrate my birthday with all my friends individually.
No wonder I only have people I have a real connection with in my yoga classes. And some of my classes are not even on the public page anymore; they’re so intimate we just call it a friends group.
But as a result, I AM always present. I speak highly of my students, I love to them bits, I would love to go on a date for my birthday with each and every on of them. And I know I teach my best and most inspired classes in my entire 15 year old career.
And most of the times even without reading a newspaper. ;)
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Video below. People like you and me starts 16’20”
About
– needing lots of me-time
– walking out of personal development seminars and Landmark on her first day before 11 am
– creating from what’s within
– her and her clients: mornings always to yourself
– her and her clients: events also w time off from 4-7.30 pm because they (introvert people) get depleted more easily
– your job is to tune into your soul and listen to what it’s telling you in every area of your life. Down to the tiniest thing: does this decision/ desire/ action taking come from within?
Or from something outside that you trust and put your faith in more than in yourself?