Sunday Journaling Prompt: What's something you would outsource to your therapist? 📔🖋️✨
Ah, Succession Sundays... pithy banter, sibling bloodsport, Macbeth'ing it to the end! Nothing ever really happens, but what can it teach us about our ambition monsters?
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Fellow Empresses, a little Sunday night thought exercise…
I often wish that I could pick out a pattern in my life—a problematic one that tends to create unnecessary drama or conflict—and remove it like a malfunctioning car part and have it worked on and then reinstalled.
For example, most recently, my “value chip “definitely needs an upgrade. It may sound trite. I have so much trouble asking for what I’m worth in negotiations or ever feeling like I’ve done enough or am enough. I’ve always had this issue. So, I wish my therapist could implant a new chip that is the “Alisa is worthy” chip. The one that says I am worthy of X deal, and total financial security so that I can stop worrying for once in my silly life and just enjoy sh*t—instead of always sweating every damn outcome. And that would suddenly be my new worldview. I wouldn’t even think twice.
Huzzah… If only :)
I don’t think I’m entirely alone in this. I was raised amongst a generation of “strivers” —of GenX women who were taught that if we just worked hard enough and were smart enough (cue the Ambition Monster)… We could have it “ALL!”
Little did we know that “ALL!” kind of sucked. And that there was so much systemic BS involved with “ALL!” We ultimately ended up feeling like these burned-out A-student people-pleasers, who never had the sense that we were “enough”—when actually… We were plenty. We ARE plenty.
But people have all kinds of patterns or issues (or people) they wish they could outsource to their therapist… What’s yours? Is there one thing you can identify? A certain thread that cuts? A chip? How would you fix it? Is there some Kool-Aid you would need to un-drink?
It dovetails a bit with last week’s question where I was asking about interfering in the lives of others—now we’re simply turning inward. Invaginating. And though it rarely it works that way, what if, for a brief moment, it did?
Yours in Grandeur and heavy sh*t,
Great chip idea. I would want an on/off chip. At night, I'd like to be able to turn off my brain so I can sleep.
I totally get the "Alisa is worthy" chip thing. For the past two years, that's what I've been working on myself. Understanding and KNOWING I am worthy. Not having to try to convince myself with daily mantras, but an inner knowing that is there. With the intensive therapy work I did this summer, I can actually say, it's embedded in there. The worthy chip is in! Wahooo.
Next up. I want to work on the kindness and generosity chip. And I don't mean the one that us Type A's do with work--ie giving everything we've got until we drop kind of striving to prove type giving, but the generosity and kindness of doing so with no agenda for anything in return. I'm writing about this at the moment as I experienced this from someone over a year ago. It made me realize I had NEVER experienced this kindness of generosity. I didn't really understand it. I want to unlearn my idea that it has to be transactional in some way and just learn to be with it. Both receiving and sending.