The ability to freely make mistakes, messes, or accidents without being punished for them can be a beautiful thing.
No, this isn’t going to be a post about how to turn mistakes into success, or how mistakes are really just a precursor to success. This isn’t about learning from mistakes, and it’s not about how mistakes aren’t really as bad as you think they might be. This is about the gift of giving yourself the freedom to make outrageous mistakes and accept yourself anyway. Continue reading
Our intellects tend to demand a lot out of our natural selves. But we can listen to our natural selves more, too, as well as question the reasoning behind our intellect’s actions.
As we’ve seen before, there’s a difference between the way you actually are and the way you want to be. One of the most common ways that this affects our everyday lives is in the difference between our natural self and our intellect.
The natural self is like a big blob of feelings. It doesn’t speak to us in words (thoughts), but in a flow of feelings. When we’re operating purely from this side our selves, this is usually called “the flow”.
Our intellect on the other hand has many ideas about what we should or need to do, regardless of what our feelings say. It treats our natural selves kind of like a pet, who sometimes “needs its leash pulled”. Continue reading
The ego can be quite an unreasonable perfectionist.
Recently, I met with my ego. This side of myself is familiar enough that it didn’t feel like a meeting, but it was the first extended meeting on paper in a long time.
I have been wrestling since this encounter to put into words just what the ego is all about and what you can do about it, but nothing seemed right. However, I will share the few thoughts I do have about this side of one’s self, and you can decide if it’s valuable or not.
Like a Dark King, Dissatisfaction looks upon your life with disdain, each imperfection adding to his pain.
There is a part of one’s self who is dissatisfied with life not being completely blissful and peaceful all the time. Whenever you’re happy, it’s that little voice that pops up and says, “Yeah, but…”
Imagine this dissatisfied side of you as a distinct individual. What are they like? Having this individual in your head can be why it’s so hard to be thankful for anything, because this side of one’s self speaks up and adds in why we shouldn’t be thankful. To Dissatisfaction, nothing is ever good enough, except the goal.
It can be all too easy to make the mistake that, just because something is inside of you, you can do whatever you want to it. “It’s just a feeling, I can push past it” we might think. “I shouldn’t be afraid, I’m not a coward.” “I’m going to stick to my plan, no matter what!”
…”My feelings aren’t right”, we think, all too easily.
When you step all over yourself no matter how you feel, you might end up achieving a lot. You might make a lot of money. You might win a world record in pie eating. You might also end up with a stomach ache.
Sometimes, the judgement of the mind can go a little too far.
Your feelings have their own reason for being– sometimes your mind doesn’t have it all figured out. You may think you have it all figured out, but just remember, the same voice that says “This doesn’t feel right” can also say “I’m unhappy”. And the less you listen to it, the less happy you’ll be.
Nevermind the brainwashing you can do to yourself. If you’re a logical kind of person, you can end up thinking your way into doing whatever your logical side wants to do all the time. But maybe it doesn’t feel right. If you just stick with logic, you’ll get disconnected from life. You’ll trick yourself into thinking it’s right to live exactly as you are. But slowly the feeling of really being alive and free will trickle out of you. Maybe it already has.
“Avoid the signs.”
Oftentimes in life, the way we find our goals is by criticizing every wrong move we make. We think, “well, if I can avoid doing it wrong, if I PUNISH myself for doing it wrong, then I’ll end up doing it right, eventually.” Yeah but, how does it feel?