At your service, from a place of love

An interesting question arose recently in an internet group that I had just joined. We were asked to introduce ourselves and I had written about the periods when I have some anxiety and that they are usually attached to my people-pleasing patterns raising their head - for e.g. “oh god, did I leave the heater on in the office?! I’m going to burn the office down and they will sue me and everyone will turn against me,” etc etc... In this group chat a lady commented that she couldn’t not people-please because she worked in a customer facing service industry. I thought to myself “how interesting” and mused on this for a while.

Because of course, I have always worked in service to others and subsequently have done a lot of work on whether this comes from a healthy desire, i.e. a place of love for helping others, rather than a place of lack and need for affirmation. I know that I’m now at a point where I can do acts of service from a place of love, generosity and passion for others, but it took some discovery to work out in what areas of my life I needed to reassess what I was doing.

A good line of enquiry for this is to ask yourself some questions around your energy levels - Are you always saying yes and left feeling exhausted and depleted? Are you always saying yes when really you want to say no? Do you feel like you can never do enough? I now assess my energy levels regularly and ask myself the intention behind agreeing to something- both in my work and social life.

Another great tip is that when something is asked of you, you can pause, take a breath and count to 3, consider your response and then give it. Then you can know that it’s from the right place within you. With integrity and heart ❤️ 

20 April 2018