My Greatest Accomplishment

The last few days I've been trying to build confidence by reviewing my small accomplishments throughout the day.
  One of the challenges of getting through mid life is that much of what I accomplish is routinized.  Because it's daily one has the illusion that nothing is being accomplished.  In fact it's the small actions taken consistently over time that are the accomplishments.  These are the things that are going to tide us through.  My morning routines. My flylady routines. Whether I do them or not, they are there, and that in itself is an accomplishment.  My habit of making bread, rice, beans, yogourt.  These keep my overhead low, keep me healthy, keep us eating wholesome food.
  I don't need new things all the time.  Because if I maintain these energy and vitality building routines, new things will happen.  Change is inevitable.  The expectation that life will be dull, and uneventful if we keep to routines is almost always a false one.  Things always happen.  New things will always be learnt.
  My challenge now is not to find new things, but to see the old things in a new way.
  For example, this morning I was standing, thinking oh yes, another standing routine, not much here.  But there was so much.  There was the energy that was building, there was a memory that snaked up that made me angry, and that I tamed easily, because my habit when I stand is to maintain not just physical, but emotional balance.
  Standing is one of my greatest accomplishments, as is writing, and my guess is that coding will be too.  Running, wholesome frugal cooking, maybe teaching.  All these things together are the little accomplishments that will lead to other accomplishments.  Maybe great ones.  Maybe small ones.  Who knows.  And for the moment, I'm not sure I really care.
 

Decisions, Decisions

Yesterday I read an article, Obama's Way.  Something that the president said has been stuck in my mind ever since.  Research shows that the simple action of making decisions degrades the ability to make further decisions.  "You need to focus your decision-making energy.  You need to routinize yourself.  You can't be going through the day distracted by trivia."
  I'm distracted, but I'm not sure it's about trivia.  Everyday I make about a hundred different decisions about what I'm going to do or be in my life.  I keep forgetting that the decision has been made.  I'm a writer. That's what I decided to become.
  I'm a stander.  I'm a cooker of non-packaged products. I'm a minimalist housekeeper.  I clean best  by throwing out.
  In the mornings I stand. I write. I tidy the kitchen, make beds, swipe bathrooms.  In the afternoons I read, I run, I get stuff ready for dinner.
  In the evenings I watch TV, socialize, and maybe soon I'll be teaching. Maybe soon I'll be speaking.
  That's my life.
  That's it, that's all.
  The decisions have been made.  My job is now just to carry them out.

Equanimity

Part of the challenge of my new practice is that at a certain point I stopped aiming for the peak experiences that lured me into this.

I am content with equanimity.  More than that, I believe equanimity is the secret door to all kinds of amazing experiences.  But this can make it challenging to stay motivated.

Maybe the trick is to develop the habit of staying motivated by keeping what I have.  And keeping the memory of what I've accomplished with Zhang Zhuan fresh in my mind.

Not losing is a more powerful driving force than gaining. Conserving is a more powerful force than gaining.  The will to keep things as they are will always be more powerful in us than the will to change things.

But we can change things by keeping them as they are. Sometimes things can change back, to a better way, to a more interesting way.  We can move into the future by looking into the past.  By keeping the things to us that are truly valuable.

And anyways change is inevitable.

Listen

Lately the wise, smart, advising voice in my head has been shouting:

LISTEN

I listen, and nothing is said.

It's taken me a while to realize that what it wants me to listen to is the silence.  I am having gaps in between thoughts.  This scared me at first, but this morning I realized that this is an amazing process.  Gaps are moment of awareness, rests between notes.  Gaps are where the magic happens and one's truest sense of self is born.

Gaps are a place for me to place my hands over my navel and ground my energy.  They are a place for me to restore my energy.  They are my brain unhooking from the stress, the past, the conditioning.

Gaps are power.

Gaps get bigger if you let them.