Lesson #1 – Don’t Hurt Yourself

There are spiritual lessons everywhere. You may have to look for them. Or, they may come looking for you.

Intuition tapped me on the shoulder this morning and pointed out some lessons that I learned during my previous careers that probably definitely have a broader scope.

The overall lesson for me is that I can learn a valuable lesson from anything and everyone. Every experience offers me the opportunity to learn what I need to know and it doesn’t just apply to the narrow context of that experience. Some of the lessons are small and some are H-U-G-E.

The only question is: “Am I open to learn now?” If yes, school is in session. If no, it’s not. I may not like any particular lesson, but if it shows up, it certainly has something to offer me.

When I retired from my first career as a Professor of Pharmacology at a medical school, I became a Licensed Massage Therapist. It was a great decision in so many ways.

And it was the start of a powerful lesson that has had great value for me in all my relationships then and now. I retired, again, from massage therapy this year and this lesson is still as meaningful as it ever was.

You can never help someone else if you are hurting yourself.

For Bodyworkers

If you are a bodyworker who is using your body in a way that hurts you, you will not really be able to help your clients.

You must take care of yourself first.

If what you are doing is something that they have asked you to work on, go ahead and do it. But if it is hurting your body, or if you believe it will hurt your body, you need to find another way to do that.

And there is ALWAYS another way.

How can you do it from a different position (standing, seated, change your orientation to the table)? How can you use a different part of your hand/arm to do it? How can you do it so your body is in the most neutral position?

If you don’t ask yourself these questions, you won’t get an answer.

For Everyone

If you are a living person on planet Earth, know that this applies fully to you in your daily life. (If you’re not a person currently living on planet Earth, why are you reading this?)

People will try to convince you that you *should* do what they want you to do. Ask yourself how this will make you feel? If you are not sure, imagine yourself after doing that ‘ask’ once, or ten times. How do you feel? If you believe you will feel great about it, go ahead and have fun.

But if you don’t believe that you’ll feel good and you still want to do it, ask yourself why. Do you want to impress the other person or do you feel you owe them something. Maybe you feel you *should* do it? Are those really good reasons?

What will it cost you? How is it hurting you? Is the cost/hurt physical, mental, emotional, energetic, spiritual, or some combination. Write down what this will cost you, how it will hurt you. Is it still something you want to do?

If the answer is still yes, how can you do this in a way that minimizes or eliminates the cost to you? Do you have some weird idea that the value to the other person is proportional to the cost/pain for you? Stop that! The exact opposite is true.

Maybe the best thing that you can do for them is to advise them to seek help from someone else. Especially if you have someone else in mind who might be able to help them without sustaining the hurt/cost it will involve for you.

If it is hurting you to do this, you will not give it your all, your best effort. Some part of you will resent the other person and maybe hold a grudge for their part in your ‘suffering’, even if they are unaware of how hard/costly this is for you. So you will not be able to help them as much as you could if you found a way to support them without hurting yourself.

Finally, if you do something to help someone else fully knowing that it is hurting you, you may be hurting yourself more than you know because you will come to not trust yourself to take care of yourself and you will feed any idea that you have that others are more important than you, or that you are unworthy of your own care and concern. Participating in some self-sacrificing way will feed the belief that others are more valuable, more important to take care of that you have to suffer and sacrifice for the good of others.

That’s a load of crap. Don’t do that to yourself.

Summary

We all have heard the airline attendant say:

Put your oxygen mask on first. Then help a child or elderly person with their mask.

This stresses the importance of taking care of yourself first. You can’t really take care of anyone else until you have taken care of yourself first. And you have to know that you are worth it. But if you keep putting others first, you are telling yourself just the opposite.