I just had a major epiphany and I wanted to put it into practice immediately in a very real way (for me).
For the past few months, I’ve be unwittingly (and dangerously) experimenting with my lifestyle, ultimately uncovering a huge flaw in how I function in the world. Because of this flaw, my experimenting with my lifestyle has led to major anxiety, stress, and pressure. I’ve come to feel like I used to as a teen and young adult, on the brink of losing control of my emotions and mind.
How did this come about? Well, ostensibly, by not eating properly, not meditating regularly, not sleeping properly, not reflecting daily, not praying daily, not doing anything that for years has helped me go from feeling mentally fragile (to say the least) to a real life super hero.
Underlying this drastic change was a belief: I don’t have time for it. This, combined with the belief that helped me be a nearly-straight-A student during high school, “Don’t half-ass* anything”, meant that I quit these things altogether.
If I couldn’t do it properly, why do it at all? That would give me incentive to purposefully carve time in my schedule to give it its due time, right? But that incentive never came, it never spurred me on enough.
Instead, I became overwhelmed and unmotivated. I could feel the density in my body, the disconnect in my mind. I had no idea where it was coming from, until just now.
This week, for the first time in about 2 years, I gave myself a whole day to meditate, rest, reflect, and pray. It’s my own spiritual retreat, but I do it from home (and it’s free!). I gave it to myself because… well, I don’t quite know, yet. But it was the first step.
The next step was in being inspired by my love and seeing him religiously sticking to the routines that I had completely abandoned. Believe it or not, the one thing he told me that finally kicked me into high gear was, “and then I got up in the middle of the night to brush my teeth, because I realized I had forgotten to, or rather, that I hadn’t made the time to”. That’s paraphrasing what he said, but it’s all I needed. I hadn’t been brushing my teeth every night (gross, I know) because of my belief that I just didn’t have time… and I couldn’t bring myself to half-ass my self-care routines.
When he said that, something in me shifted. Since then, I’ve meditated every day, I’ve been cleaning properly (which is another “practice” for me that helps clear my mind), and have started to feel better and better! Just now, in the middle of washing my dishes, I could feel the lightness and clarity within me, again. Where did it come from, I wondered.
Then I realized what had happened!!! I was so happy! The answer flooded me and I had this huge moment of realization of just how beautiful and powerful half-assing can be…if it’s done properly. 😉
What do I mean by that? Well, it’s part of the larger change occurring within me where I am beginning to see the inherent perfection of everything, of the greater role that everything (“good” and “bad”) plays in the evolution of people and of life itself. This is one of those things. Give things space to be, just be, without judgement and they will lead you to greater awareness, love, and light. That’s true of anger, of grief, of hatred, of anything. I say this from experience, as well as tons of research.
As I shared with my hermano, there’s a difference between anger and anger with awareness. I’m talking about the latter. Why is this? Well, first because “what you resist persists”. So what’s the alternative? Sit with it, meditate on it, let it be. Let it show you the tool, the gift it can actually be. Let it “vent” and it’ll transform a whole lot quicker into peace. Trust me.
Half-assing is one thing I haven’t given the space to be, because I haven’t reflected on the underlying reasons behind it until now.
I saw it as something inherently negative, indicative of my failure. Now I realize it’s just where I was. Instead of giving up on everything as I did because I couldn’t do it properly, I could have let myself half-ass with increasing awareness, with diminishing judgement, and let that carry me to shore. That’s just what I’m going to do. I have a feeling this is going to unearth a whole lot more gifts for me that I’ve been running away from.
This blog is one of them. “I don’t have time, I can’t do it properly” is one of my main excuses for not writing more often. The act of writing is SO liberating for me, though, that I’ve been depriving myself of something so essential.. like when I would go hungry for hours because I didn’t have time to cook. Yeah, the former never-let-myself-go-hungry-lest-I-faint girl started letting herself go hungry.
On the surface, I was being lazy. But there was a reason behind the reason behind the reason. And I just found it. Score.
I am SO ready to half-ass my way to excellence!!!
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*For those who may not know, half-ass means to complete a task whilst unmotivated, without giving it your 100%. Or, in the words of an Urban Dictionary user, it means ” To not give a shit.” 😛
HappyStarfishes 