66. Celebrating Milestones and Embracing Achievements as an Introvert

This episode was edited by Aura House Productions

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:02

Welcome to another episode of the Quiet Warrior podcast. As I record this, it's two days to Christmas and I've yet to confirm what's on the menu for our Christmas dinner. I've never been big on celebrations and traditions. Maybe it goes back to growing up in a family where anything fun or festive was seen as hard work, an inconvenience, one more chore rather than a time of enjoyment. In our group coaching call last week inside the Visible Introvert Academy, I asked my clients this question what are you celebrating in 2024?

Speaker 1: 0:36

And it's interesting how most of us are taken by surprise when asked this question and have to take a few minutes to think about it, to journal about it. Maybe it's because we're not used to turning the spotlight on ourselves. Maybe we grew up being told that feeling proud about our own achievements was bad. We should be humble. Maybe it's because our idea of celebration is external Buy the turkey and ham, decorate the Christmas tree, shop for Christmas presents, make sure everything is perfect. Maybe it's because we're just not used to reflecting on ourselves, on what's inside of us, and connecting with a sense of whether we are on the right track for ourselves. As an introvert, I like to look inside myself regularly and ask how have I grown? What new thing did I learn or do? What went well? What went badly? What am I most proud of myself for? I invite you to get your pen and journal out and reflect on these questions. You may surprise yourself with how much you've grown and how much there is to celebrate In 2024, the Quiet Warrior podcast, thanks to your support, made it into the top 10% of podcasts worldwide, and my aspirational goal for 2025 is to get it into the top 5% so that more and more introverts and highly sensitive people and quiet achievers can feel seen and heard. Another thing I'm really proud of is that my younger child finished her VCE successfully and is awaiting her first round of uni offers, and that represents a new phase in life for all of us as a family, and for me in particular. No more school lunches, no more school runs, no more having to check the school app to find out whether reports in assignments have been sent off. Everything has been done correctly what's the latest in the school newsletter, and it's going to be an interesting season, an interesting space, and I'm quite excited for it.

Speaker 1: 3:01

I think something else also happened in 2024 that has changed who I am quite significantly, and that is the amount of inner work and healing I've been doing, not one particular modality, but all of them. So I'll give you an example In November and December I traveled to Singapore and Vietnam. And Singapore was for my mom's 90th birthday celebration. And I don't know if you have Asian friends, if you're Asian yourself and you might understand the weight of expectation that comes with a huge occasion where all the relatives are present, and there are things that you have to do and there are things that are expected of you to do. And I had no clue when I first heard that there was going to be this major celebration. I had no clue how to go about it and what I was expected to do and who to ask for help. But along the way I did ask for help and I think that was one of the best things I could have done for myself.

Speaker 1: 4:13

And I also did a tremendous amount of preparation, inner preparation, to deal with all the unfinished business of the past childhood baggage, childhood trauma. I used every modality that I had access to Reiki, root cause therapy, emotion code, emotion code, essential oils, a remote body scan from a coach in Thailand, everything I tried it all. I read all the books, did all the internal reflective work, the journaling that was needed, faced my feelings, faced my fears. That was needed faced my feelings, faced my fears. And when the day came, I was surprised at how aligned, how intuitive and how much in flow I had become. I was literally a different person from who I was the last time I visited Singapore, seven years ago.

Speaker 1: 5:14

So my encouragement to you is if you have been on this path for a while and you're finding it challenging, or you're not seeing results yet, stay the path, keep doing the work. It all adds up. It's a cumulative process and it takes time to heal decades, to unwind decades of hurt and resentment, misunderstandings, miscommunication, wrong stories, even, and limiting beliefs, whatever they are. I encourage you to stick to the path that you are on, to keep doing the work, to keep healing, to keep peeling back those layers and sitting with all parts of yourself welcoming all of them, making room for all of them, listening to each one of them. It is worth the effort. See you in 2025.