Lesson 2:
Striving is often unnecessary and can slow my success
I didn’t know how to let it be easy for most of my life.
I’m an achiever and have embraced the idea of working hard for my success. I
have all sorts of imbibed beliefs about hard work and value.
Not to say that you can’t go far with striving to do good work. But we often make
more work than is necessary.
For years, I worked my butt o
to “become a better friend to myself”. I learned a
lot about myself along the way…but I also learned the harder I worked, the more
work I found to do.
At the heart of this was the belief that I wasn’t “enough”. So of course needed to
“work hard” at becoming a better version of myself in order to “become enough”.
This is a trap that many of us fall into. We believe that we aren’t okay as we are
and we need to strive to be better.
AND…
What I’ve found to be true is:
We are enough, just as we are
Striving to be enough blocks us from feeling like we are enough
The
rst time I heard the invitation to let my self-compassion practice be easy…
like slipping into a warm bath, I thought, “What the heck is that like?” and then
allowing the imagery to sink in thought, “ahhhhh”. Easy as exhaling.
What if the soft pleasure of giving yourself some kindness became a subtle but
in
nitely more powerful form of motivation than pushing yourself to “be more”?
What if the paradox of letting things be easy would allow you to work less at
being more? More loving, patient, happy… because you have the resources (that
previously were used to motivate yourself to work hard and power through) to
show up that way?
Life inherently holds hardship. This being human isn’t always easy.
However, by letting go of striving for striving sake we can de
nitely make life
easier!
So here are some examples of where I’m dropping the striving and let it be
easy (or easier 🙂
Allow myself short cuts with cooking.
When I’m bringing a meal to someone in need during a busy week, I
buy some (or all) of the meal premade. For years, I would get totally
stressed out (and miss the gift of giving) by expecting myself to
make everything by scratch.
Doing 15 minutes of exercise and letting it be enough.
When I
rst started my exercise program, it was a struggle to do “up,
up, down, downs” and I feared I’d never improve without hard work.
So I decided to add 10 of these to every workout. Yup…this lasted for
about a week and then totally got dropped. But I did keep up my 15
minutes of daily exercise. Two months later, I realized during a
workout that I no longer dreaded them and had become strong
without the addition practice.
Not over-preparing for presentations.
In my self-compassion teacher training we taught pieces of the
course to each other. However, we wouldn’t know what part of the
class we were going to lead, until the hour before class. I often had
calls before class and wouldn’t see what I needed to teach until 15
minutes before. I learned that even if I hadn’t “practiced enough”, if I
showed up with loving, connected, presence (even imperfectly) it
was more than enough. Presence always outperformed perfectly
practicing.
One way I let my self-compassion practice be easy is by joining a community to
learn.
Being in community accelerates our learning. It is in
nitely easier to show up
when you are accountable to a loving group and have structure to support your
practice.
I would not have grown so much this past year if I hadn’t been enveloped in a
loving, supportive community.
To that end, my fellow coach and self-compassion teacher Sarah Murphy and I
are o
ering the nine week Mindful Self-Compassion course this October. We are
thrilled to take all our training and o
er it out in the world, creating the space for
others to deepen their skills and experience of self-compassion.
I’ll share more about this in the coming weeks but the initial details are below.
This week I invite you to re
ect and imagine where you could let some part of
your life be easier…like slipping into that warm bath.
With Ease,
❤
Jennifer