Be loyal to yourself, first!

Loyalty – a strong feeling of support or allegiance.

A client this week shared that one of her greatest traits is loyalty. She’s a stick it through person, even at times to her own detriment. It’s something I relate to alot, in personal relationships and at work. I’ve overstayed at jobs and in relationships because I valued loyalty and commitment and thought it would be a “failure” if I quit or left the situation. I would talk myself out of leaving and justifying why this situation or relationship is fine even though it made my insides crawl with discomfort. I would tell myself stories about why I need to stay to distract myself from my discomfort. But that discomfort is my body saying, DANGER DANGER, something is wrong here!

In our session we talked about turning the loyalty towards ourselves. To shine a light on our own values, boundaries we need, activities we love to engage in, the types of support we crave from friends and fam—and turn our loyalty towards that! When we are loyal to ourselves and our needs as creative humans, we actually serve the world and the people around us much better! We can say with clarity, this is the best type of work for me, this is best way for me to communicate, and therefore we can give to our greatest ability and not stand in conflict with ourselves.