Look back to move forward.

 

We writers and artists tend to beat ourselves up all the time about procrastination.

I guess everybody does at some point, but when you have a dream you’d like to achieve, it’s an easy trap to get caught in: focusing on everything we should be doing and could be doing, but we’re not doing it, not now.

We’ve all been there: we would really love to write more, or paint more, or dance more, move forward, but somehow we end up being too busy with other things, we have excuses not to do it. At the end of the day we look back at all that we did not do yet, and feel bad about it and beat ourselves up about it.

I know I’m quite good at it, myself, both the procrastinating and the beating myself up.

Then I read an article that opened my eyes to a different approach, and I must say, it works wonders.

It reminded me of my visit to the Grand Canyon with a friend, years ago.

We had been hiking down into the canyon in the morning, and were going back up in the afternoon. The thing with hiking into a canyon is that it’s an inversion of mountain hiking: the relatively easy descent comes first, when we’re fresh and full of energy, and the hardest part comes last: that steep ascent.

My friend was in slightly less good shape than I was at that time, and she started to get a little desperate, looking up all the time how far we still had to go. She was struggling, and I saw how she was getting close to an anxious breakdown. We couldn’t afford to get stuck halfway up: we had no gear, nor enough water or food to stay the night out there. I had to motivate her to keep going.

When we took a break, I pointed out to her where we had been, deep down in the canyon. We could just make out the little house where we had taken our lunch-break. I emphasised that we had  already come up so far, that we’d passed the halfway point more than an hour ago, that we were probably two-thirds of the way up already. I never once made her look up to the rim, which was still intimidatingly far above us.

She calmed down, and felt reassured. If we had made it up already this far, she felt she could do the rest as well. Inside, I heaved a sigh of relief.

When we started walking again, I made a point of stopping frequently to look at the view below us, constantly taking her attention away from the slope looming over our heads.

We made it back up before dark. It had been a challenging day.

When we have a big dream, a future goal we’d like to achieve, the long and steep road towards it seems to be full of daunting obstacles. We focus on all the hard work we still have to do, all the things we need to learn, all the steps we have to take, that will constantly pull us out of our comfort zone. The sheer vastness of our project can be overwhelming and intimidating, and make us want to hide in bouts of severe and prolonged procrastination, right?

Now this is the trick: instead of looking forward and feeling intimidated by all we still need to get through, we can look back every day, and see what we have achieved that contributes towards fulfilling our dream.

We can look at the small steps we made: we’ve connected with someone in our peer group today, or we’ve read and commented on a relevant article, establishing more connection in the field. We collected a couple of contacts that we can add to our database for that newsletter that we are planning to make (sometime soon, but not quite yet). We played with a creative idea for an article, a painting, a new product. We looked up a couple of words or expressions that caught our attention when we were reading and copied down a quote that inspired us. We browsed a book on painting, on composing, looked into a course that could help us with that one skill we think we still need.

We opened our computer, sketchbook, piano and sat down with the intention to write, paint, compose. 

We listened to a podcast that inspired us or taught us a productivity hack. We had a decisive moment in which we put our phone down on purpose to do something more meaningful instead.

When we take a few minutes at the end of each day, to see how we’ve grown and moved, even just the tiniest bit, towards our goal, we reconfirm our motivation with ourselves. This will make it easier tomorrow, to take another few of those little steps, and the next day, and the next.

Whereas the focus on everything we haven’t done yet will paralyse us and grind us down, working at all our mini-achievements can lift us up and push us forward. It is all about the momentum: it is easier to keep things in motion, than to put something in motion from a standstill position.

We can combine this little achievements-assessment with a gratitude practice, and feel grateful for all those things that we did do, that we did achieve, even if it was just writing our morning pages. As long as we are showing up in some minute way for our inner artist every day, (s)he will be more likely to come out and play and work a little harder every time.

Let’s look at how far we’ve already come, and not worry about how long we still have to go.

 

 

 

 

How to start the New Year in a mindful way

 

I never make New Year’s resolutions. I don’t believe in them.

Saying that you want to do something is very easy. Doing it is the hard part, and most of us fail.

Especially when our brain is still fogged with heavy alcohol clouds, the intention we’re trying to set with our resolutions might not register in our brain as a non-negotiable new behaviour.

Many people say that the way we start our day is crucial to how our whole day will evolve. I’ve experimented with it quite a bit and firmly believe it’s true.

For years now I’ve been in the luxury position of having about four hours each day between waking up and starting work. Four hours which I can use exactly as I like. No kids, no partner, no commute either, just me and those 4 hours.

By trial and error I have learned that the way I spend those hours can make or break my day.

The things I do each morning, set the pattern for the whole day and make me do more of it during the rest of the day. If I indulge in rolling over, my whole day seems to be lazy and I don’t find energy for anything. If I first read for an hour, I end up reading all day. If I get active straight out of bed, I run around full of energy doing things all day. If I find my focus and inspiration with meditation and writing early in the morning, my whole day seems to be inspired and focused and flowing with ease.

Last year, around this time, when people started talking about New Year’s resolutions, I realised that I could apply this principle of “setting” my day to the New Year as well. Instead of just setting an intention to do certain things in the New Year, I decided to “set” my year by very consciously filling my first day of the year with doing things I find important for my well-being and growth.

We all know there’s a significant difference between thinking or saying something, and actually doing it.

Gratitude Practice

One day, a yoga student came to me and asked me what I did to be happy.

She was entering a new phase in life: her children were leaving home and her marriage was ending. She was going to be alone for the first time in her life, and wondered how she’d be able to cope with that.

She didn’t ask me what made me happy—her words were well-chosen. She fully understood that our happiness does not come from sources outside of ourselves, like our relationships, career, or money in the bank. At this pivotal point in her life, she realised that she had to fully take charge of her own happiness.

Since I seemed happy to her, living by myself and running my own business without the loving support of a partner or family, she figured I might have some good advice. I felt honoured by her question.

We sat down in my yoga studio (where I always feel happy) and talked. I told her about all the small, mindful practices that I have integrated into my daily life over the years that bring me peace of mind and happiness. For now, I’d like to focus on just one of those practices:

Gratitude.

It’s a big one for me.

 Gratitude  is a much-used word these days. Every third quote on Facebook seems to mention it, and it is being posited as the secret to happiness.

If you just start being grateful, they say, happiness will find you easily.

Is it really that easy? Or is everybody just talking about it without really following their own advice? How many of them actually practice honoring the good things that happen to them on a daily basis? Is gratitude becoming a platitude?

Some people think gratitude as a recipe for happiness is bullsh*t. Not me.

Taking a conscious moment every morning and every evening to acknowledge my abundance is one of my favourite mindfulness practices, and one that I always share with my yoga students at the end of class. It cranks up my levels of happiness without fail.

In the morning, I take stock of all the things I have and can do every day, the constant factors in my life. From the privilege of living where I live to the fresh air I can breathe. From my health to my (relative) wealth to my lovely little yoga and massage studio, and everything that it allows me to do. It offers me so many opportunities for personal and spiritual growth—I get to learn and share, and deeply enjoy the fulfilment it brings me every day.

Throughout my day, I will stop myself for a moment to really appreciate something, whether it’s an intensely pink flower or a cup of jasmine tea, a ripe avocado brought by my landlord or a visit from the little girl next door.

Even though I’m mentioning objects or people here, the real focus of my gratitude practice is the experience that comes with them.

In the evening, when I lay my head on my pillow, I go through my day and highlight the pleasurable things that happened. Then, I fall asleep within five minutes of lying down.

Taking these moments to feel appreciative can help ground us and bring us into the present, take us out of our worrying heads filled with stressful thoughts, and give us short moments of relief and reset.

Some people say that we have to watch that we’re not making our gratitude prayers into a kind of shopping list of all the simple little things in life, but I don’t agree with that.

Giving thanks can go as deep or as stay as superficial as we like.

If our joy wells up over our dog or the oatmeal cookies we had with our tea, there’s nothing wrong with that. Louise Hay expresses gratitude for her bed every morning when she wakes up rested.

Some days there are big and profound things to be intensely grateful for, some days it’s a whole list of tiny, seemingly insignificant things that add up to a giant feeling of wealth and happiness.

We can give recognition for personal things, or for things happening out in the world.

And if we really cannot come up with a single thing to honor about our day, then we can still acknowledge the wealth of having two eyes, two feet, 10 fingers, or a mouth to speak with—or just the simple fact that we woke up this morning (because some people didn’t—just saying). We can always find something to be grateful about.

The act of focusing on what feels good does several things that are beneficial to our emotional and mental well-being.

When we look at all the good things in our day, we don’t dwell on the bad things. Especially at night, before bed, remembering the good stuff can save us hours of sleepless rumination over things that went wrong during the day. When we focus on gratitude, these thoughts just don’t get space in our head.

I’m not saying that we should deny and push away the bad stuff in our lives. But, it makes more sense to address these issues during the day, with a fresh mind and waking hours ahead of us, instead of just before we want to sleep.

Secondly, and this one is big, gratitude sits at the other end of the emotional spectrum of desire, want, need, and lack.

I don’t think anyone will deny that all of those emotions are recipes for unhappiness.

When we focus on our unfulfilled desires (material wealth, a loving partner, success), we find ourselves in a mindset of lack and poverty until we get or achieve all those things, even if we already have plenty to be grateful for.

Constantly generating new needs and desires creates a never-ending cycle that may temporarily connect us with happiness as a need is met, but will always leave us wanting more. A gratitude practice takes us away from that attitude of not-enough, and will make it easier to stand still in contentment for longer periods of time.

Simply put, gratitude implies fulfilment.

I would love to hear from you what you would put in your gratitude prayer. Please share them in the comments below!

“We can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures.” ~ Thornton Wilder

This article was first published on www.elephantjournal.com on August 30, 2017