Dear Blossom
What do you do when that sneering little voice in your head tries to drown you with moans and groans and questions to which you have no answers? Sometimes it’s laughing, sometimes it’s whining, all the time it’s trying to undermine your best intentions and to stop you in your tracks towards somewhere positive that your really want to go.
I guess there are many different ways of dealing with it. But they all broadly come under: resistance and acceptance.
.
I slept much better last night. Still woke up earlier than I wanted or needed to, but, I was in a better place than yesterday. I was relaxed; caught up on my games; cleaned the kitchen (long overdue, trust me!) had some breakfast and sat down to work. Altogether a productive morning. And peaceful. Until I left home for my first meeting of the day. That’s when it began with the questions: questioning, taunting, going something along the lines of:
Questioner: You’ll be home late today, won’t you? You won’t be able to write to Blossom
Me: Of course I will – it doesn’t have to take too long
Questioner: Yeah, but you’ll be too tired; when are you going to post it?
Me: Whenever I get home tonight, I’ll get it done before I go to bed
Questioner: What are you going to write about today anyway?
Me: I don’t know yet.
Questioner: What are you going to write about every day for 30 days?
I may have delayed coming back with an answer because frankly I don’t know. I’d already decided that I will know what to write when I sat down to write. And I’m happy with that. But hearing these questionings caused me to falter, just for a little while, and the taunting just increased therefrom.
So, anyway, I eventually responded, “I will know what to say when the time comes.”
Did the ‘taunter’ quieten down? Nope! It went on and on and on … because really it wasn’t looking for an answer. It was looking for a way to distract me…throw me off course… get me to feel discouraged and to give up. Eventually, I said, “whatever!” and went about my business. I also said to myself, “I will do what I can and if I decide not to, that is my prerogative. Even if I sat down and all I could say was, ‘I don’t know what to write to you today’, that is also ok.” And I just stopped engaging with it – that voice, that questioning, doubt-inducing voice, and it eventually went silent: I suddenly noticed it was no longer there!
That’s what acceptance looks like – at least for me, at the moment. (I’m aware there’s always room for more learning and growth).
What does acceptance look like for you? Do you find that if you argue with that niggling voice it gets bigger and louder and eventually wears you out? You do realise, don’t you, that what you resist persists?
So why not practice acceptance today and see how different that feels? And if you do so already, please share: let’s all keep learning… and growing…
(Ps: I came home late as expected. I had done a draft in my breaks during the day. All I needed to do on coming home was proofread and post. Guess what? The Internet decides to go on a buffering mode for like forever! Well, I’m in the mood to wait it out tonight, while I consider firing my provider!)
