lately i have struggled with making some changes. i keep falling back into a bad habit, or not quite forming a new one. i have become more aware of less-than-helpful thought patterns, and grow frustrated because i wish they’d be gone already. they aren’t helping!
then i despair in thinking i haven’t changed.
then i remember that i have changed a great deal. i really have! in many ways, i am not the same person i was a year ago. or two years ago. yet my mind really does think, sometimes, that i am still inhabiting the same self.
as i begin to realize that i am changing, i am becoming more comfortable with the idea that when i’m efforting to do anything - a challenging asana, improving my eating, getting to the gym, managing difficult emotions and thoughts - i will sometimes feel successful and will sometimes feel unsuccessful, but both these are impermanent and rather meaningless, anyway.
can i touch my toes today? perhaps not. it seems crazy that i would think, because i cannot touch my toes today, that there is no way i will ever be able to touch my toes. indeed, it is crazy! so why would i think that because today i ‘fell off the wagon’ or otherwise did not reach some goal, i cannot do this thing tomorrow, or ever?
turn it around: what i am pleased with, the things that are working, these things are impermanent too. it is crazy to think that i will be able to touch my toes forever. if i think i can, this will cause suffering when i cannot. with habits and behaviours, too, it doesn’t matter whether i have been doing something for two days or two years or two decades, i am acting from this moment, and so each day is an opportunity to start new, reinforce, or offer myself kindness.
for cruelty to myself will not help me live as peace.
I love what you wrote,
Lucy
thank you lucy, i mainly just write about what’s going on for me right now. im trying to reframe things for myself, old habits mean that challenges are used to being cast as insurmountable obstacles : )