Soulfish Candies or what happens after burn-out

Weekly Special

Hi my dear beloved customers,

What can I get you today? What about our Weekly Special : Our sweet Soul Fish Candies?

What is a soul fish will you ask me? I remember that in “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”, the book from which I stole Café 42’s theme, the heroes had translating tiny fish the hitchhikers would slip into their ear to be able to understand every galactic languages, but that has nothing to do with what soul fish are…

Actually, “soulfish” is a concept I created - but I’m sure lots of others have thought of it before me - while talking on Lee Harris’s forum community. Very interestingly, in our individualistic societies, “selfish”, though elevated in some form of art, is still a very pejorative word. Indeed, when we were kids, our parents would lecture us about being self-centered and never paying attention to others, to our parents’ striving to keep us happy or at least to the well-being of our sibblings, who, let’s face it, were not more altruist than we were. When growing up, we were told and shown that being a good person implies to be in service to others, to the more needy, the eldest, our neighbours… What happens when our reptilian brain merges these two concepts is this: forget about yourself for the sole benefit of others.

We’ve all tried that and ended feeling exhausted and very lonely at the end of the day. How would it be otherwise since it is impossible to take care of anyone if we don’t know how to take care of ourselves first? How can we give something we don’t possess? For the only thing we can give is our unique self and if the love we share is endless, our physical and psychical capacity to give it is not. As the old saying goes: "God helps those that help themselves.”

So I was having that discussion on the forum when someone stated how bad it felt to be selfish, meaning to be able to take time alone when we need it or to do something that brings joy only to us, or to get a massage, a 30 minutes meditation or the simple act of saying “no” to an invitation we don’t feel like to honor… And I thought to myself that setting healthy boundaries and enjoying activities on our own wasn’t being selfish for selfish is a concept related to endulging our ego’s whims without taking in account our immediate surroundings for the sole purpose of experiencing an immediate often toxic pleasure. Selfcare is not that, it is an act of love, of self-love.

So I came up with the concept of being “soulfish”, the act of giving love and care to our inner self. We are all entitled to spend time on our own, to reflect on our lives or simply chill out, do nothing… My soulfish time, in addition to my morning meditation and journaling, is walking. Everyday, I walk 1,5 miles with my headphones on my head, listening to music. When I walk, I feel so free, as though my soul wasn’t attached to my body anymore. Sometimes I also dance and sing, depending on my mood. Soulfish is an act of self-receiving, accepting to receive love, even from ourselves. When I come back home from my walk, I’m always in a good mood, available to work or spend some quality time with the people I love.

I wish I were that slim still but the freedom gist is there! - Image created with Midjourney AI

After my burnout, I decided I wanted to start living in a way that brought me joy and freedom. I had been a very willing people pleaser all my life: I had immature parents whom I took care of from a very early age, so I didn’t know how to do differently with my adult relationships; I thought this was the way you gave love and deserved love in return. What I noticed is that a people pleaser can be very smothering, so willing to please the loved one that they even anticipate, not always rightously, the other’s needs even before they appeared. That’s how I lived through the first decade of my marriage, it didn’t end well for me, exhausted, frustrated and utterly unhappy, and it took a lot of love on both parts for my marriage to survive. During those early years, I put on my sole shoulders the weight of financially supporting my family, thinking that my husband wasn’t fit to do it - which was not a very loving way to look at him on my part - and wanting to protect him from being hurt by a job he wouldn’t like or he would be to “delicate” to do.

With this in mind, and the fact that I wasn’t either made for a 9/5 job, I built a business with my husband in which we worked 24/7 together, helping musicians to develop and promote their projects, pursuiing my husband’s ideal idea of an occupation. I handled all the constraints and pressure, taking care of the financial viability of the company, and leaving him with only the tasks he loved to do - though he never asked for me to handle everything, he never complained about it either. Fifteen years and a daughter later, I burned out, feeling imprisoned and very much alone in a cell I realized I had built myself, never complaining of being unhappy or doing a job I disliked, hated in the end.

Image created with Midjourney AI

Sitting on my bed, barely able to get up, a couple we had encountered a few years ago came back into my mind: the wife didn’t work because she had never felt fit to work and I told myself that day that was what I wanted, I didn’t want to be forced to do a job I didn’t like and I wanted to be taken care of. If there was a way for that woman, there had to be a way for me. Of course, the burnout exhaustion was talking as well for I still wanted to work but not any work and not day-in day-out. I wanted freedom to do whatever I wanted whenever I wanted; I wanted to do something I could enjoy and that served a purpose other than earning money, to be useful as a human being.

And that’s what I did. It took me a few months to walk that path and I am still grandly working on the financial freedom part but, that day, I decided to become soulfish: I started to do things on my own - which was very disturbing for my husband who had been used to do everything with me for the past fifteen years - such as meditating every morning, taking a 45 minutes walk daily, taking time to watch videos and read books on spirituality and self-development topics and, later, writing most of the day willing to earn a living with it.

I am still there for my family, more than before actually because I work less, more joyful and caring because I can be my true self and not the stiff person I thought I was supposed to be to keep things together. I past from “what can I do for you?” to “Follow me if you love me” and I am such a better person for it, more kind and joyful and fun. I am soulfish.

I would very much love to read in the comments about what you think about the soulfish concept and how you apply it to your own lives…

Lots of love,

Geay

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And if you need a hand to become a soulfish human being, I am a Life Coach so feel free to contact me to see if we can go deeper on that personal transformation together.