Oh hey. Remember when you were going to try to write more often because hey, you love writing and it brings you joy and you had all of these good intentions to sit every day and practice each morning and would try to do some at-home yoga at least once a weekend, and you’d break out the juicer and make sure to swig a wholesome and hearty juice to start the day?
Yeah. Good intentions.
Before I would beat myself up over all of these failings and transgressions. After some mega-doses of self love and self compassion and a whole bunch of realizations that have hit, I’m being a lot more gentle on myself. I’m trying. I’m doing my best. That’s good enough. My habitual tendency has always been to DO ALL THE THINGS and then feel defeated when I didn’t succeed.
Each day is a fresh start to get back at it. DO SOME OF THE THINGS! DO ONLY ONE OF THE THINGS!
The phrase “Practice like your hair’s one fire” used to really resonate with me. It was a language that I was most comfortable with. Push yourself. Pressure. DO BETTER. DO ALL THE THINGS. DON”T FAIL.
Now I’m experimenting with the discomfort that comes from letting some of the things slip. Sitting with the not-sitting. Knowing that this isn’t a race. Doing what I can and letting that be enough. With all of the chaos in the political space, I’m hearing many people feel like they aren’t doing enough. If you’re like me and tend to feel this way – do one thing. Just one thing is enough.
‘So our practice is one of being as conscientious, clear, and honest as we can. We can of course create incredible standards of goodness, but knowing ‘good enough’ means that you check: am I doing what I feel I can do within my capacity to do good? Am I doing something that’s deliberately nasty, stupid, and poisonous or not? Is my energy going into violating others or not, trashing other people or not? Trashing myself or not? This is not appropriate behaviour. What is it that wants to do that? That wants to criticize and continually castigate ourselves and hang on to guilty perceptions of things we did fifteen years ago? What is it that wants to do that? That’s harming us, that’s never going to lead to ‘good enough.’
via Ajahn Sucitto
Relax. You’re likely doing much better than you think.
Hmm, helpful links! I struggle with being impatient with myself about inconsistency and inflexible all-or-nothing thinking. I’m thankful you’re talking about this and sharing your experience.
It’s a real battle for me – that all or nothing thinking. I now see it, see when it appears and look to examine what’s really going on.
Picking at the origin story of all of my all or nothing thinking has been a big part of the self-examination I’ve done in the past little while.