Leaning Into Ease
The Big Lebowski
It is so hard to convince people to take it easy on themselves. You tell someone they’re being too hard on themselves and their first reaction is usually “WHY WOULDN’T I BE?!?! I DESERVE IT!!!”
We have been conditioned to believe that life should be hard. But the “hard” we come to expect isn’t the kind of “hard” that’s good for us.
The most glaring example of this is “relationships take work.” Yes they do. To maintain a healthy, intimate relationship, you need to constantly make yourself vulnerable. You need to tell the truth. You need to put yourself into the uncomfortable and (for many people) unfamiliar territory of truly being seen. That is good work. That is soft work. Trusting is soft. Communicating Mindfully is soft. It is difficult, but it is the kind of difficult which helps you grow. It smooths you over. It makes you better. It opens your heart infinitely more and more each time you put in the practice. But that’s not what people mean when they say “relationships take work.” They mean forgiving (with infinite patience) any mistreatment your partner should put you through. They mean sticking with who you choose to commit to regardless of how far apart you might grow, or how incompatible you find yourselves to be. They mean to stifle and sacrifice your own well- being for the maintenance of this choice you made that may or may not be right for you, but By God, You Better Keep Doing It!!!
LEST YE BE A FAILURE!!
Part of the soft work that relationships (including the one with yourself) require is knowing when it is the most loving choice to walk away. The white-supremacist-capitalist-cis-hetero-patriarchal relationship program doesn’t allow for this choice. That’s because under that operating system, we have entitlement. We have owning each other. We have every day isn’t a fucking holiday!!! Or what makes you think you deserve to be happy?!?! NOBODY is happy!!!
I have learned/am learning this lesson the hardest in regard to my art. While I have made and done more than I ever thought I could, I also simultaneously perceive myself as late, incapable of manifesting the life I want where art is my job, and berate myself for not being a hard enough worker. In this self-flagellating state, I cannot take into account very real influences and limitations like time, rest, chronic illness, mental illness, trauma, capitalism and the resources that working a day job take from me just so that i can meet my material needs, I can only see the ways in which I am failing to meet my own (albeit unreasonable) expectations.
Sometimes I will have grand plans for the work I’m going to get done in a day, week, month, year. I will set an arbitrary deadline (usually it isn’t all that arbitrary and has been decided based on the luckiest astrology of the moment lol) but it won’t be reasonable. It won’t factor in my humanness. Sometimes I don’t feel good, sometimes I’m not inspired, sometimes my batteries are dead and all I can do is lay in bed and power through several seasons of the Real Housewives. Because I didn’t take that into account when making my plans, I miss my self-imposed deadlines and begin bullying myself like the boss of my nightmares, meaner than anyone outside my own head has ever been.
I’ve been trying to redirect myself to a place of compassion and also just, like, lighten the fuck up, because ultimately, who cares but me? When I can click into the flow state, into ease, when I can trust myself to explode with productivity when I am in the headspace to do so, and remember that those moments of rest are what prepare me to do that kind of work, it just pours out.
Discipline is a life long process, but finding discipline within the parameters of respecting and honoring your fallible humanity is the key. Workaholism kills, man. Missing out on the gorgeous multifaceted experience of life is an insult to our souls’ incarnation. For what? To GRiNd?! To impress your followers? To never be satisfied with what you have accomplished, always looking ahead to the next thing?!
I’m gonna keep saying it. Rest. Is. Revolutionary. Optimizing your own ability to function by deprogramming your inner tyrant and allowing yourself to flow is the way to bring your best self, your best work, your truest self-expression into the world. And right now, with so many asleep, being lead astray by false prophets and snake oil salesman, with late-stage-capitalism ruining art and music and film and literature and tv and nothing being sacred any more? So many people are talking SO much, but so few are saying anything.
The inner journey. The self-love. The flow. We need it. We need truth and justice and REAL Work from your heart. An exhausted activist is one who’s out of the game, who can’t engage their integrity, who loses hope. Take that day off, come back when you’re rested. You’ll watch yourself thrive in ways you never though possible. You’ll pour from a cup that is not only full, but overflowing.
Listen Here
#blog #Blogger #mentalhealthblog #activismblog #healingblog #adviceblog #personalgrowth #healing #selfhealers #selflove #selfhelp #selfhelpblog #selfcompassion #selfcare #rest #restisrevolutionary #ease #flow #bewater #faith #trust #hope #art #artist #creativity #howtobehappy #howtofeelbetter #howtoloveyourself #boundaries #soul #soulgrowth #love #unconditionallove #radicalselfacceptance #anticapitalist #theflowstate #Burnout #takeabreak #podcast #podcaster #selfhelppodcast #healingpodcast #advicepodcast #spiritualpodcast
