Hello!
It’s Monday and I’m back in action.
Well, I’m back. There isn’t too much action happening.
If I’m honest, I’m feeling a bit overwhelmed by my to-do list this morning and it’s got me in procrastination mode.
But it’s not the items on the do-to this I find overwhelming; it’s the list itself, I think.
You see, I’m a very go-with-the-flow kind of person – in the moment. But leading up to the moment? I’m often anxious and confused about what to do next. I’m pretty good at planning and executing. But there’s this little instant in between where everything feels like it’s spiraling out of control and I just can’t get a grip.
Take this newsletter for instance. I want to write to you. I plan to do it every Monday. And here I am writing and it feels like it’s going well. But leading up to the action of opening up my laptop and starting to write feels like an impossible feat I can in no way tackle. Even though I’ve done it almost 100 times before.
Baffling, right? Here I am, on my 96th edition of Monday Motivation and I still feel like I can’t do it.
There’s a Chinese proverb that says, “The temptation to quit will be the greatest just before you’re about to succeed.”
I thought about this idea a lot during my little four-week hiatus. It would be so easy just to say I don’t do this anymore. To just go back to my “regular life.” But what does that even mean? This is my life – the path I’ve chosen.
That’s not to say we can never pivot. I’ve made many changes in my life. Some were good. Some great! And still others, I could have lived without. And actually they were ALL ok. It’s how we learn. We take chances. We make changes. We often have to go outside our comfort zones to achieve what we want. Sometimes we fail, but very often we succeed – despite the fact that success almost always feels like the furthest destination until we get there.
That’s where mindfulness comes in. Learning to embrace the present. Acknowledge our feelings of worry and doubt. Of fear and sadness. And also of joy and excitement. Each holding its valuable place on the mountain range of our existence – bringing us up and down through each moment – each peak and valley. Again and again.
I know life can feel exhausting – like your Sisyphus pushing a boulder up a hill. But we are not Sisyphus. The boulder is only our expectations – our ideas about the next moment and what it should or shouldn’t look like. We are always able to set the boulder aside and take the next step untethered – embracing whatever comes up.
Just like the breath that returns again and again. We pause, embrace, and continue. In doing that we see that we are always on the road to success. It just might not look exactly as we expected.
So today I leave you with the encouragement to keep going with whatever it is you’re doing today. Follow what’s truly in your heart and it will lead you down the right path. Just remember to trust the journey.
💖
Before I go, just a couple of announcements, if you’ll humor me for a moment longer and let me share a bit more of my own journey with you.
Starting Tuesday, October 8th, our Mindfulness Meet-up at the Museum returns. Click here to register.
And my acupuncture hours at Pagoda Acupuncture in West Islip are now Mondays 2-8 pm and Thursdays 12 – 6 pm. Click here to book an appointment.
And with that, I’ll leave you to the rest of your day. I hope you have a great one!
Until next week, my love!
Bye for now.