I have to admit, I’m experiencing a little bit of an emotional hangover.

Between the 30 days of #JuicyJourney and the launch of the #RadicalResponsibility course (gee, that was a lot of hashtags in a sentence!), mama is feeling a little drained.

If you missed some of my more vulnerable shares (eek!) you can find them here and here.

Sometimes I feel the scary impact of sharing my life on the internet—I worry about how things are going to be perceived and received. But at the end of the day, I believe that sharing is a service, and I feel lucky to be able to connect with so many amazing women over shared experiences and overcoming challenges.

And as much as I’d like to be next to you at your computer when this email comes in to make sure you understand me correctly and still like me (ha!), I have to trust that at the end of the day our messages attract the right reader and repel the ones that don’t line up. And both outcomes are actually perfect—internet business is just like dating: if they don’t want me, I don’t want them. Lol.

Vulnerability and transparency are scary, but as I’ve seen over the last 7 years, the service it provides—relatedness, connection, depth—completely outweighs any negative.

Okay so today I want to share an insight I’ve been thinking about for the last couple weeks, and it’s a bit juicy (obv).

I have found myself caught up in the trap of self-righteousness several times over the last few years, and I want to share why sometimes:

To begin, there are no shortage of ways to feel justified.

Every single one of us has been hurt, betrayed, done wrong, not considered, offended and taken for granted at one point or another. And those feelings are always valid. We’re always justified in the way we feel. If you go around and tell 100 people what happened, chances are you will get 100 people telling you your pain and hurt and anger and sadness is totally justified. No one would disagree with you.

But within all of that justification and validation, how are you feeling? Are you happy? Or are you angry all the time? Are you constantly looking for ways to justify your hurt? Are you sitting in pain rethinking and re-accessing all the ways in which you were done wrong?

I get it. Self-righteousness feels good. It feels like armor. And I did all that for a long time.

I sat in self-righteousness and anger for a long while. If I’d asked anyone if I was justified in the way I felt, they’d agree hands-down. According to society, I was “betrayed” and was right to be angry.

But after about 18 months of feeling that way, defending the fact that I was “right” and positioning someone else as wrong, I was exhausted. Keeping up the anger and defending the pain became exhausting. I was sick of myself. I was sick of the nonstop validation I’d continue to garner from my friends to maintain the self-righteousness.

But the alternative—being okay with things, being happy, cultivating a great friendship with my ex, moving forward—all felt like giving up, or even betraying MYSELF because my hurts and wounds had started defining me. Without the armor of hurt, I’d be forced to move on and I was scared to do that.

Ugh. This is the first time I’ve written this out and I am literally sighing at how true it really is.

But I can tell you this—people are still “angry for me” and don’t know how I could be on good terms with my ex and “think I deserve more,” but honestly, once I made the decision to move the eff on from my pain and stop trying to defend it constantly, life got so much easier and I am so much happier. And the joy I can now derive from my relationship with my ex is awesome. He’s amazing and I might have missed out on it!

So, the question to ask is … are you happy, or are you just justified?

I’ll never tell you your hurt isn’t justified. It’s always valid. You can always feel whatever you want and maintain whatever emotions you want. No issues and no judgment. Obviously I get it. Been there, done that.

But I’d also challenge you to ask what the tradeoff is.

Making a different decision doesn’t happen overnight, but with introspection and practice, it’s possible to get over yourself and move on enough to see that anger and pain and hurt can be optional.

In this post, I shared the moment I decided to move on from my own hurts.

Anyway, quick share today. I hope you are having a lovely week and I’ll talk to you soon!

Xo,

Jill

P.S. If you missed it, I’m going to be in NYC holding a 1-day fitness + mindset workshop on August 5^th, along with some of the JillFit Mastermind women. If you are in the NY/Boston/New England area, I’d love to see you. You can find all the info here. We only have a handful of spots left so grab yours ASAP.