Do you often think you should be able to do better?

To do everything everyone else is doing: The ones who always have a perfectly clean home, are never late, never drop any balls plus always bake to meetings and gatherings, remember all birthdays and never get annoyed.

Of course nobody really lives up to these standards, but the expectations of how you should be can be really strong. And whenever you don’t fill the expectations, you blame yourself and feel guilty. You might even think you should  just be different – someone who deserves to be respected and accepted.

At the same time I’m sure you believe that all people are equally worthy, and there’s no contradiction about that. Of course everyone else is valuable just the way they are, it’s just you yourself who should be different.

For years I had a mysterious pain under my shoulder blade. At its worst the pain was so bad my whole back was tense and cramping. I frequently went to different doctors and my osteopath for help, and also took muscle relaxants, but none of that really helped. Eventually the problem faded away on its own, only to return at a later date.

During that worst time I was looking for causes on the physical side only, not realizing that at the same time I was emotionally and mentally in a really difficult place.

The body is wiser than we realize. Our emotions and thoughts always manifest in the body one way or another.

If your life is like it is for most of us, you’ve had to face disappointments over summer vacations. The vacation of your dreams was all planned, but the reality wasn’t gracious enough to match it.

How is it that the weather always gets worse when it’s your vacation time? Or you catch a cold and spend your long-awaited trip caring for sick children. Maybe what happened was that the children didn’t want to go anywhere in the first place and the precious family time was mostly spent on listening to the quarreling from the back seat, and when you got to your destination, the kids kept whining about when you’re going to go back home.

You might have ended up counting days to when you can get back to work and rest. And still the next summer you end up loading your vacation full of expectations, imagining that next year will be different. But how do you actually get there?