“I Deserve It”

Something that came up this weekend in my women's coaching community, Day 1., was the concept of "I deserve it."

I'm no stranger to the "I deserve it" concept.

You might not be thinking about this right now on a Monday. But by Friday, I bet you will be.

How many of you are you going to be excited for your Friday martini? Your Friday wine? Your Friday ice cream? You worked hard all week. You "deserve it."

I used to be a big proponent of the "I deserve it" concept. Every night after a pain-staking shift at my restaurant I would go down a few beers and a few shots. I deserved it.

How many times do you do this? Eat too much? Drink too much? Lie in bed all day? Constantly buy yourself stuff? I mean, you "deserve it," after all.

Except that what we get is absolutely not what we deserve. We don't deserve the way we feel after doing those momentarily pleasurable things. We don't deserve the headaches, the inflammation, the hangovers, the credit card debt, or the excess junk lying all over our houses that we never use.

I read this article in the New Yorker which was very aligned with this concept. Here's an excerpt:

“We have invented a bizarre sadomasochistic dialectic whereby we feel that pain in the workplace is the only possible justification for our furtive consumer pleasures, and, at the same time, the fact that our jobs thus come to eat up more and more of our waking existence means that we do not have the luxury of—as Kathi Weeks has so concisely put it—‘a life,’ ” he writes. His own idea of a life, which includes “sitting around in cafés all day arguing about politics or gossiping about our friends’ complex polyamorous love affairs,” may not be everyone’s. He also may misidentify the degree to which most people fret about the nature of their productive output; for some, work is the least important and defining of life’s commitments. But his point is that the bullshit economy feeds itself. Workers cram in Netflix binges, online purchases, takeout meals, and yoga classes as rewards for yet another day of the demoralizing bullshit work that sustains such lifestyles."

It reminded me very much of Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl
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​It's a personal development must-read.
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If you haven't taken the time, please consider reading it. It's deep, and also may give you insight into your own life, happiness, and purpose.
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Also, if you read it 30 years ago, consider RE-reading it. You are not the same person now, and it may hit differently.
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This aligned very well with the "I deserve it" rhetoric we were exploring in the group.

The feeling that you "deserve" things because you simply lived life signifies, to me, a possible misalignment with one's Higher Self.

It signifies to me that you may be lacking meaning or purpose. And that doesn't mean "go do more."

That means getting back to yourself... Like The Beatles sang so famously- "get back to where you once belonged." 🎵

When we get away from ourselves, just living life can feel torturous. We grasp for pacifiers. We want anything to make us feel happiness again and again. We aren't content. We aren't at peace right now.

Every day shouldn't be arduous.

If you live in the Western paradigm of "just make it through until the weekend," you're not living right now.

Right now is the only time. And if you've been living in that Western paradigm, you might feel like you don't know where the last 40 years went.

And maybe that's something to look at... on this Monday, as you check out of your life until Friday when you'll once again reward yourself for enduring.

Be here now, and stay beautiful.

-Andee