Thanks to all who have been reading my blog and leaving comments or sending emails. I truly feel that this blog is a way for me to clarify my own thoughts rather than to write for an audience - but it does give me a little boost to know that there are people out there who appreciate those thoughts. And thanks for bugging me with emails and comments and holding me accountable!
I have to laugh at myself. I wrote here on June 1st that this was it - the time for action had arrived. Now why in the hell would I do that knowing what June is typically like for me? I've only been teaching since 1989, ya think I would have remembered that June is pretty much *the* most hectic time of the school year. Graduation, awards banquets, year-end dinners, committee wrap-up meetings, retirement parties, year-end reports, inventory, report cards, and so on...
Needless to say, I did very little of what I had planned around fitness - particularly getting out on my bike - but then did a very good job of beating myself up for not doing much. In fact I did an even better job than usual knowing that I had announced here on my blog that I was in the action phase. I think I got out on my bike once in all of June. It didn't help that this June was the coldest, wettest and cloudiest June on record for Southern BC - but I'm pretty sure that was my fault, too.
I finally stopped the flogging long enough to step back and see that I was still stuck in willpower country. This is the land where I can do anything as long as I have enough willpower. If I had enough willpower, I would have biked every single day in spite of the busy-ness and time constraints. And if I really had willpower I would have biked in the dark, in the rain, in the cold and for at least 3 hours at a time. And if I really and truly had willpower, I wouldn't be watching the Tour de France - I 'd be the first woman doing it!! What a slack ass I am.
And here’s the really clever bit - when I realize that I’m beating myself up and that’s not productive, I stop beating myself up for the lack of willpower and switch to beating myself up for beating myself up. *le sigh*
What I need to do is stop, breathe, and show myself some compassion. And remind myself of the research that demonstrates that willpower has nothing to do with successful, sustainable change. Tara Brach in Radical Self-Acceptance talks about a breakthrough moment she had when she was asked how she would treat her best friend in her same situation (this is transcribed from an audiobook, so mistakes are all mine):
I remember when I was in college and doing a lot of psychotherapy and working hard on myself and I went on a weekend trip with a friend - an older, wiser friend of 24. And she was kind of describing her process and how she worked with herself and that really what she’s learning now is how to be her own best friend. Now that phrase I’ve heard many, many times, but for some reason in that moment the flood gates opened and I was just hysterical, breaking down sobbing and sobbing because it was so clear to me how I was the furthest thing from my own best friend. I was my worst critic. In realizing that there was a real uprising also of compassion and a wish to really learn how to be kinder. What I’ve really noticed over the years is that intention has been there but there have been repeated cycles of contracting back into the trance where I am just acting out of the sense of something’s wrong with me, I’m not OK. And then I’ll hit a critical threshold of, “Oh, I’m miserable. Oh, I’ve been down on myself again.” And then re-resolve to be kinder and around and around. … This process of befriending and becoming intimate really has a gradualness to it. There is a very habitual body of fear that has us pull back whether we are trying to befriend our inner life or become intimate with another person.
I needed to be reminded of the gradualness of the process - of the continuous interplay of expansion and contraction. I am just coming off another weekend of CTI training and one of my friends in the training summed it up like this:
If you settle for perfection or nothing, you will get nothing. If you settle for progress, you will get that.
It's kind of like driving through the Canadian prairies - sometimes the landscape seems so similar and repetitive that you wonder if you are even getting anywhere, time seems to slow down and ennui sets in and you put yourself on cruise control. But if you learn to pay attention you can notice the subtle shifts in the colour of the dirt or the quality of the sky, and you can become so absorbed in the wind playing in the canola fields that you are suddenly surprised to find yourself at your destination.
Progress may be gradual, almost imperceptible, but trust it is happening.
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