What Are You Devoted To?

Image: Background image of candle Noor Hossain

I had this come up a couple of times last week and it had me thinking.

Thoughts that popped into my head were like:

Are you devoted to what is right or what is wrong in your world or the world?

Are you devoted to the stories that you tell yourself about what you can or can’t do?

Are you devoted to the possibilities you have in front of you or the struggles that you might have going on?

Are you devoted to the drama in your life?

Devotion can hold a lot of tension as many probably instantly think of religion, whereas I am using it as turning that sense of devotion to an outside source to being devoted to yourself and your needs. The interesting thing is that when I went looking for images to add to this blog post, they were either of the bible or being devoted to another person a child or a partner, none were about self-devotion. I personally think this needs to change I feel that devotion to self, first and foremost is where your greatest changes are going to happen. I feel like whenever we place our focus outside of ourselves, we are more easily manipulated to fall off our desired path and follow what others want and not what we want.

“Devotion can hold a lot of tension as many probably instantly think of religion, whereas I am using it as turning that sense of devotion to an outside source to being devoted to yourself and your needs.”

Sarah Yeoman

Image: Alex Shute

I also had concepts such as what are you loyal to and can you be loyal to yourself appear over the last week and in addition also had what are you committed to. Now commitment and devotion might sound like the same, but I believe they have very different energy around them. But to have them all show up within mere weeks of each other tells me that this is something to take notice of.

When asking myself those questions above I can see where I am moving off track on those things that are important to me, because if I am devoted to the stories that I tell myself that say I can’t do something then clearly that is the result that I am going to get. However, if I shift that devotion to taking actions towards something that is valuable to me that will produce different results.

So, using those questions as simple guides:

What am I devoted to today?

What am I committed to today?

Am I being loyal to myself today?

I know that if I am falling off track they will bring me back on track or they can keep me on track as well. I could also start my day by asking the first two questions as a way to place a focus on what I work towards and again during the day I ask myself the third one as a check in.

The thing I see about the first two question are that they are open, the answers behind them may change from day to day, week to week and month to month or they may not if you’ve got something big that you're working towards. They don’t need to be static they just help to create focus and direction particularly if you find you get distracted easily. The third as I said is simply a check in to make sure that you are not placing your loyalty into the hands of someone who may take you off course.

I am choosing to use them as check in moments as they feel much soften than am I wasting time or am I distracted doing something that isn’t moving the needle in the direction I desire. I am all about softer approaches as I feel like we can be our own harsh critic and that is what I am working to move away from. Self-compassion is about honouring our needs in a way that creates positive change rather than being hard on ourselves which just tend to reinforce negative feedback loops and resistance to taking action. This is a practice that will be refined and fine-tuned the more I use it and gather data from what shows up, I remain curious to see what shifts and changes comes from this focus of what am I committed and devoted to and can I remain loyal to myself through the process.