Debt-free and The Steel-toed Boot

Someone the other day walked up to me and said: "What is the one word that best describes the benefits someone gains by talking your sessions?"

I thought about it for about 2 seconds and answered: "choice". I knew this without hesitation because I had asked myself the same question a few years ago.
I show people that they have more power, more options than they currently use. This is not rocket science BUT, it is every bit as elusive as science when you don't have a clue on how to shift from being angry, shameful about your debts,and fearful, to being calm, quietly assertive, and feeling in control. Trying to become debt-free is a great exercise in personal empowerment.

I always use the metaphor to my clients of a steel-toed boot; that image pressing down on my neck is how I have felt many times when I was living the life that was prescribed to me by my survival mode. The 'shoulds' ran my life. Mr and Mrs Should moved in and took up residency when I was about 5 years old, and they have made most of the decisions in my life.

Until recently.
When my life imploded 3 years ago, and I scrambled to hold onto something, the only people who extended their hands were friends who had traveled that road already and were wise, grounded and joyful. In everything that I was reading and hearing, CHOICE kept cropping up. Choice is power. Choice is taking control. Healthy choices keep us intact; choices made out of fear put us in peril.

As I struggled to manage the debts my then husband and I had accumulated, paying them off always felt like the boot was on my neck. I was angry and resentful at both myself and him, and some of the people who I allowed to take advantage of my good nature.

But, in the months and years that I have healed, making the choice to pay something early or do something for myself that is joyful, fills me with pleasure; I don't feel the negative metaphor of the boot on my neck; conversely, I feel free and bountiful, and clean that I am making choices to take care of myself in a assertive, calm, loving fashion.

Every time you make a choice to really nurture yourself, you are being loving to yourself. Compassion and patience are always waiting in the wings for you.