We live in a world now where we can readily access how to do anything, you can google it, youtube it, find a blog on it, search pinterest, ask in a forum. Finding out how to isn’t difficult.
I googled setting up my washing machine the other day, and off I went, I’ve googled how to for aspects of renovation, I regularly find reciepies online and follow them.
How to for practises that are practical are great.
Its not so great when we search “how to be happy” or “how to heal depression” or other such emotional experinces.
Why?
What happens is that even when we know how to we find ourselves still unable for some reason to do the thing. Why? Because, in my humble opinion, the process of healing, or recovering, or finding out way on our emotional journey isn’t a how to process.
Its a how am I process. Its not a series of steps we can follow robotically.
If it was only about how to we would have done it already, right?
Healing, from whatever pain you have, is a process of personal insight, of meaning making, of aksing the big questions of why, asking where I am at right now, and where I want to be, and importantly, not how to but what is stopping me.
What restrains you from living your best life?
What small and large obstacles are making it hard for you?
And therein lies the magic.
When we try to force ourselves to follow the how to we generally end up with a raft of things to do, which is unlikely to be what we need. You know the things, rise earlier, eat healthier, excercise, journal, be mindful, be assertive, be ambitious, study something, find your zen… all the things. All the things we know already. This list then frustrates us with the why cant i just do it and we find ourselves back in a spiral of shame and frustration.
The magic is why, why cant i just do the things, what is in my way. And in the swamplands of not knowing, we can find some pearls of wisdom.
Maybe there are good reasons your not doing the thing right now, maybe it will have a domino effect on some other part of your life? Maybe it is restrained by your physial health capacity to do it right now? Maybe your finances are making it hard to buy the different things to eat healthy, to exercise?
Try instead of how to, to ask yourself, what is stopping me? What is it that makes this hard for me, what is it that I’d like to do but am finding it hard to implement right now? And then appreciate the answer.
Something like thisI would like to be rising at 5am because then I could *do all the things*, why am I not rising at 5am? Perhaps its because Im tired, because Im tending children into the night, because I prefer to remain awake late at night, because I like waking to sunshine streaming in my window over my bed, because doing all the things will just add to the list of things I have to survive before I get to go back to bed. This speaks to me about exhaustion, about the list being too big, and the cup from whcih youre pouring being to empty. it speaks to me about taking small pleasures where they come and feeling guilty for taking that time.
What if you decided instead to fill the cup that is empty, to restrict the list of jobs to only what you can manage ina day, and celebrate managing that (remembering that action craetes motivation, and achievement creates excitement) what if you were able to fill your cup a little more so that when you pour from it you had something to pour? what if taking the time in the morning to enjoy the sunshine in your bed, makes for a wonderful way to begin the day? so that you begin wiht a mindset of feeling full of gratitude (and vitamin D!) and that starting your day right will have a knock on effect to the rest of it?
Instead of how to rise at 5am, how about, enjoying the sunshine, releasing the gulit about rising the way you want to, enjoying the simple joy of sunshine, and limiting the jobs you have to do.
BUT AMY, I WONT GET ANYTHING DONE i can hear you shouting at your screen.
Yes you will.I wholly believe you will.
Why?
Because when our cup is full, we are automatically better at doing what we need to do, instead of coming from a place of teeth grinding must do, we come from a place of having enough to give.
Becuase when we start from a place of feeling like our needs are met, we have more to give to others
Because when we start from a place of having achieved the thing we set out to do, and celebrate that, we will create the motivation to add in the next thing we want to achieve.
And as we build on those, our cup will fill, and we can add in things we perhaps want to do less, but have more motivation to do because of the building blocks we have laid.
Be gentle with you, fill your cup first, and release the grind.
The rest will come, but first you need to get you right.
Gentle with you
A
Amy Madden 