Week 16 & Week 17

There are cycles in life when we are on fire, doing all the steps of our morning routines, exercising three times a week, we don’t forget a thing, make delicious dinners for our loved ones and are going to bed on time with a clean face. There are other cycles when no matter what you do, things just don’t turn our way, don’t work out and we “fall off the wagon”, to use an old expression. When we can’t remember when was the last time we ate a nutritious meal, had enough sleep / water / movement, had a good conversation with our best friend without complaining how things are not the way they supposed to be, then it’s the perfect time to show ourselves some compassion for enduring things too long, it’s time to thank ourselves for all the compensation we did just to keep afloat on the hard days and to allow ourselves to let the coping skills (which we, no doubt, are good at) go for a while. Yes, we survived but if we want to thrive moving forward, we need a different set of tools and a beginner's mind. That is the best time to remember why we wanted to exercise, eat more balanced meals, have a more lively social life and to start moving from the place of inspiration of who we are trying to become, instead of rejecting all the undesirable ways we are now. Yes, we need to let some things go in order to welcome some new ones, but we can let them go gracefully, thanking them for all the gifts they’ve brought along, and for helping us in our quest for so long. Even severe addictions are there because they serve a purpose. If we find a way to fulfill that purpose in other ways, then the addictions, the habits, patterns, you name it, can go away. But not in rejection, in a spirit of done serving us in these ways.

In the moments of uncertainty, when we think that we are the furthest from where we want to be it’s the best time to remember our “whys” and all that we’ve already walked through to help us get back on our path from a more internally balanced place. Maybe these setbacks actually provide us with this lesson.

For me personally, the last couple of weeks everything went not the way I was expecting so the weekly ponderings got postponed but in the absence of them I remembered why I started this journey in the first place and how much joy they bring me so even if they’re not entirely perfect, as lengthy and elaborate as I would love them to be, with the best of my ability, I’ll try to keep them up.

Have a good week.