Today's practice is to continue working at all the things I need/want to do... 15 minutes at a time... without trying to force it, or myself, to be or mean or connect or anything.
A friend of mine, my partner on my current path of trying to figure out our futures, is a great one for finding motivational beings - teachers, speakers, writers, self Improvement gurus of various forms and walks of life. She shares tidbits with me, condenses her exercises and experiences, and we adopt phrases and concepts as we create our own toolset for Happiness. (Yeah, we are Do It Your Self Improvement Advanced Practitioners. And I hope I eventually expand on that concept for anyone who wishes me to.) And one of those tidbits is "Don't muscle through."
I hope to attribute that concept to the person we learned it from, but I don't want to credit the wrong person, so I finally asked my friend who touted this wonderful tool. She said, she did. Sheri Salay created her own tool! She trains in Martial Arts.
So. Muscling through means, to me, forcing yourself to push through something because you - I think it's what I'm supposed to be doing to achieve some lofty goal.
And frankly, that's just painful. There is no reason to muscle through. At least not when it comes to life stuff and trying to figure things out. If I know why I am sweating and straining to do that last push up, or to get through the pile of snow, or to finish writing the post, then that is one thing. A thing of exertion, of striving. But when I am just blinding doing stuff because it's what I think I want and I don't have a clear impetus behind it, that's - well, that's dangerous. That's when I pull heart muscles, and create ulcers and decide I want to stay in bed for a week after. Because I just put my head down and muscled through.
This thing of trying to figure out what to do with my life, what will give me enough joy and happiness and money (or the equivalent lifestyle), that I will no longer wake up wondering if my actions will have purpose today... this thing is not something to muscle through. It is not something to try while my inner coach is standing on the sidelines yelling at me to Woman Up!
Because if I am causing myself pain in any fashion, why would I want to keep doing?
So today, while I work through my fifteen minutes, and allow myself to feel the depth of concern for my future and my happiness, I am not going to "just do it" to be doing it. I am going to be doing each thing and seeing how I feel.
Elizabeth Gilbert has been a big name in the last two days... the curious life, and creativity... (15 mins) Her words have struck deeper than expected. There is much thinking to be done. As I do my 15 minutes.
I hope you have a great day!
-Lila
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