As 2013 turns into 2014 my mind finds its way to thinking about caring for the self. I hear a lot of people talking about their New Year Resolutions, and I’ve noticed a couple of things.
The first thing I notice is that nobody seems to be very excited or happy about their resolutions. It sounds like they’re discussing a dreaded chore or a hated job. No wonder everybody’s so certain it won’t last past the first couple of weeks of January. Second, most of the resolutions don’t seem to come from a place of true self-care, or from a place within the whole self at all. But rather from a small and constricted, but loud and persuasive, judgmental part of ourselves. Some call it the ego, or monkey mind, or the inner critic. My favorite name for it is “Mr. Judgy”.
It can seem so hard to be truly good to ourselves as we become flooded with talk of resolutions and thoughts of needing to change ourselves. Oh sure, that resolution to eat better, to exercise more, to get back to that yoga practice can be in the name of self care and better health, which is a great thing. But so often these resolutions also come from a place of shame, shame that we aren’t ‘perfect’ and we can’t possibly accept ourselves as we are until we reach some arbitrary goal set by our ego, our inner critic, or by the culture we live in.
The problem lies in that last bit – not accepting ourselves until we reach the endpoint. What about the process? What about the part that we live in all day, every day? What about the part that makes up our entire life? Reaching a goal is great, especially for the ego, but it’s only a moment and after that moment, the ego is dissatisfied again and we’re back in the land of not accepting ourselves until some other arbitrary goal is reached. Are you beginning to see the problem? We aren’t truly living our lives. What we’re doing is waiting in a gray zone for little sparks of color and in the meantime, our life is flowing by full of vibrant, living color!
So, we give ourselves permission to exercise in the name of self-care, but view it as a chore. We allow ourselves to try to eat better or try to stop smoking as self-care, but see it as a punishment. In other words, we tend to allow only the self-care that we feel can be justified by an externally approved end result.
But what about truly impeccable self-care – care of your inner self, your spirit, even your soul? What about self-care that truly cares about how you experience your entire life, not just a few moments of it? What about the self-care of practicing truly being in the process? What about those practices that simply put a smile on our face, or give us a renewed sense of peace and acceptance of all of who we are?
Even though we all want to enjoy our lives more, it can seem so hard to get out of these habitual ways of thinking, to create new paths in our minds and our lives.
As I practice and teach intuitive process painting, I’ve found that it helps create these new paths in my mind, and in the minds of my students. The practice BLAZES new pathways into enjoying all aspects of the journey more, and appreciating and accepting all aspects of the self more, even the parts that don’t feel so perfect. And it’s even fun, too!
I think there’s more I’d like to say about this, but it’s not clear to me yet what to say so I’ll save that for another day. And I’m not sure how well I’m communicating what I’m thinking here, but I sure am enjoying the process of trying!