Who Are You When No One's Looking?

What does the word "integrity" mean to you? In this episode, I share a personal story about what it means to follow through - even when no one is watching. So, the question is, who are YOU when no one is looking?
Please note: This track may include some explicit language.

Transcript

Think meditation is hard?

Do me a favor.

Take a slow,

Deep breath in.

And now breathe out.

Congratulations.

You just meditated.

Hi,

I'm Crystal Joukowsky,

And this is Breathe In,

Breathe Out,

A weekly mindfulness and meditation podcast for anyone ready to own their own shit and find a little peace while doing it.

Welcome back to Breathe In,

Breathe Out.

I'm Crystal Joukowsky,

And you're here.

You're here.

This is a great week.

I'm really excited about this musing this week because I'm going to talk about bees.

I love bees.

Like I don't like them when they sting.

That's not the way it is.

Here on the farm,

We have the gentlest bees.

And if you're ever here to do a session or whatnot,

You'll find that I talk to them because our bees,

They'll fly up to you and you look at them and you say,

Hi,

I see you.

I really don't want you to be around me.

And they will leave.

Like they listen to me and I just love bees.

So they're amazing creatures.

The way that they all work together for the benefit of the whole is it's just inspiring.

I mean,

It fills me with awe the way that they have this united front.

Every bee has their job.

And as long as they all do their job and the hive is pulling together,

They're going to survive and not only survive from season to season,

But thrive from season to season.

They play to their strengths.

They create something so versatile and delicious and yet healing.

If you have seasonal allergies,

I highly encourage you to find local honey and eat just a little bit of it every day because eating that honey will help your body adjust and your allergies will minimize.

It's amazing.

Now we have learned so much about bees as they go through the winter,

They clean out,

They keep the queen warm,

And then they push out all the dead bees and they have all these newbies being born.

And sometimes in the spring you have to split a hive because if you don't split it,

It's too big for its hive and it might swarm and run away.

If you split a hive,

Then you either have to get a new queen or they create a queen.

It's amazing.

You have to wrap the hives in the winter to keep them warm.

We've learned about health ailments.

We've learned about adding supers to make sure that they have space to continue building up.

I mean,

There's so much to this world of these bees that are so important to our world and our ecosystem.

Now,

My husband has liked to play,

Can you find the queen?

And you can find some of these online.

Every now and then you can go in and say,

What's the find the queen?

So the queen is just a little bit bigger than all the other ones.

But when you're taking apart the hive and you're checking on the health of the bees,

You kind of have to pull it out and look around.

And Jay likes to play,

Can you find the queen?

He digs in.

He gets so proud of himself when he actually finds her.

He's like,

Look at that.

And he has to share it with me.

It's adorable.

It's really cute.

So when we're working with the bees,

One of the ways that you keep them calm is that you burn a little bit of burlap.

And this is smoke.

And the bees think that there's an issue.

So they go into the hive and they start to eat the honey to preserve it.

And this is just a way to help keep you safe,

Keep the bees safe,

Make sure that they're in the hive and not getting smashed or you know that nothing is happening because we want them to live.

We want to encourage them.

We want to make sure that the hive is healthy.

So you have to have burlap.

When it came time to cut burlap,

I enthusiastically said,

Heck yeah,

I'm going to do that.

I have no problem.

I'm so excited.

I will do this.

And so we had to cut it into,

We had these huge flower sacks or they were coffee bags,

Coffee bean bags,

And you have to cut it into like two by two or three by three inch little strips.

And I was like,

I am totally going to do that.

I have no problem with doing that.

I had a timeline.

And so I kind of said,

I will do that.

I'm going to do it later.

And about two weeks later,

I came across this project and I was like,

Oh crap,

I didn't do that.

I'm going to be in trouble.

I've got to cut that burlap.

So first thought was it doesn't matter.

Second thought was,

But I told somebody that I would do it.

They don't know yet.

They don't know that I didn't follow through.

They can't really be upset with me.

So it doesn't matter.

It's fine.

I'll just,

I'll put it off a couple more days.

But that niggled at me.

That really bothered me.

So that night as we watched a planet earth film,

I decided that I would cut this burlap because I just had to follow through.

So I don't know if you've ever cut burlap.

It it's a bit of a mess.

All these little fibers as you're cutting it,

All these little fibers fall out of the burlap and they're all over you.

They're all over the floor.

They stick static electricity to the scissors.

It is a mess.

And if you don't have good scissors,

I'm going to tell you,

Your hand will cramp up.

You will have indentations on your fingers from the scissors.

It's a project.

I curled up on the floor.

I had a plastic bag over my lap and on the floor so that it didn't get stuck in the rug that I was cutting on.

That way it would catch all the falling fibers.

My scissors.

They were not good scissors and ah,

It was horrible.

It was absolutely horrible.

But I finished the first chunk.

I had two entire burlap bags to cut up and I finished the first one that evening before calling it a night.

And I put it all on the bench so that I would remember that I needed to deal with it the next day.

And yet,

I also felt good that night that I had followed through on the need to deal with this burlap.

So the next day,

I grabbed the burlap and new scissors and I headed into the sunshine out on the lawn so that I could finish my job.

And these scissors were so much better.

Not still not like cutting paper or normal fabric and yet it was still way better than the night before.

And I got about halfway through the bag and in my mind I thought,

You know what?

I could stop right now.

I don't really have to finish this.

My hands are sore.

My forearms are sore.

My back is sore from hunching over this.

There is so much burlap already in the bag waiting like the bag is almost overflowing at this point.

No one's gonna know that I didn't do this whole entire other bag.

I could totally just,

You know,

Hide it away and save it for the next time.

I don't need,

I don't need to do this.

I can,

Let's just sneak it by.

And then a quote from C.

S.

Lewis came into my mind.

The quote is this,

Integrity is doing the right thing even when no one is watching.

This thought at this exact moment brought a smile to my face and then I took pause.

How ironic that this kind of a quote would come into my mind right here,

Right now.

And then I asked myself,

Who am I when no one is looking,

When the doors are closed,

When I have the opportunity to let my guard down,

Remove the mask,

Stop being on per se.

Who am I in those moments?

What am I like?

Do I treat myself with love and respect when no one's looking?

How do I treat myself?

Do I treat those around me with love and respect when they're not around me?

Do I find myself complaining about my lot in life?

Or do I decide that it's just time to sink into the couch in relief for surviving another day?

Do I brood on something or someone or is there room for nurturing and forgiveness of that person?

In this event,

It was,

Do I follow through even when nobody will know whether or not I did or didn't?

For me,

I would know.

I would know I didn't follow through.

I would know I was a little dishonest and that would eat at me.

And the fact that that would eat at me meant that it was not worth sneaking by and hiding it because that would have just been something that I would carry forward.

Why would I cause myself that challenge?

If you like country music,

There's a song by Blake Shelton and it's,

It is totally this subject.

You know,

He's saying,

Hey,

My,

Oh my,

You are so good looking.

You hold yourself together like a pair of bookends.

I've not tasted all your cooking and who are you when I'm not looking?

The whole song is about who this beautiful woman is that he is watching and he really wants to know more.

I want you to check in with yourself.

Get to know you more.

Who are you?

You have the out in the world,

The person that the world sees,

And then the person that you are in your heart,

In your core.

Where are you at?

Do you love it?

Is there anything you can adjust and change just a little bit to make it even better or are you solidly happy and where you're at?

I finished that burlap.

I finished every last bit.

I could not have that hanging over my head.

I knew that I would feel beyond dishonest if I hadn't.

And when she asked me,

Did you finish that burlap?

Our beekeeper friend that was teaching us.

If she asked me about it and I said yes,

Then I would know that I was lying and then I would just feel even worse.

So that final cut on that burlap,

When I finally did that last three by three corner,

I was so happy I followed through.

The only person Jay wasn't around,

The only person who would have known that I didn't finish was me and my own conscience was enough to carry the day.

The idea of not finishing was truly never really an option.

So who are you when no one's looking?

Is there anything you like to change?

And is there anything that you'd really like to just pat yourself on the back and say,

You know,

That's pretty cool.

I look forward to having you here again next week on Breathe In,

Breathe Out.

I hope this moment of self-care and healing brought you some hope and peace.

I'm Crystal Dikowski on Instagram,

Facebook,

And YouTube,

And I hope you check us out and follow along for more content coming soon.

I look forward to being with you again here on Breathe In,

Breathe Out.

Until next time,

Take care.

Reviews

A great message! And the beautiful energy of your voice is delightful.