Wow. I suck.

This blog started out great. I was posting every day. Then not quite as much but still committed to this project. Big life changes happened that required attention (which I wrote about in literally my last post), but I was still super excited about writing posts…

…And then faceplant. Radio Silence. Nothing. Nada.

Am I out of things to say? No, I have a large list of posts I want to write.

Do I not have time to write? No, I have actually more time than I have had in years.

Did I lose my right arm in some sort of strange farm equipment/wolverine accident?

No.

The truth is, I missed a post deadline I had set for myself, then another one and another, and it stopped me dead in my tracks.  I had just written about how everything in my life was coming up Milhouse and that I had so much more time in my life. How could I be such a hypocrite?

Every time I thought about the blog I felt sick to my stomach. Every time I came up with a new post idea, I knew I really needed to get back writing (Next week for sure!) but I didn’t. It just got worse and worse. It is disheartening to be super excited about a project and completely appalled by your lack of any form of progress on said project.

Why was this so painful? It shouldn’t be, they are just words on the page after all. I am not even sure anyone is reading them. For me personally, there are a ton of reasons, perfectionism, fear of looking foolish, issues with completionism, my aforementioned anxiety about being a hypocrite, imposter syndrome, and so on and so on; but that’s not the worst.

The worst thing is, I knew what needed to be done the whole time, and I could not make myself do it.

The solution? I needed to restart. And for extra bonus points, write a post about restarting (Do you see what I did there? ~ So Meta!).

I thought/worked my way through this problem by doing two things.

1. Instead of thinking of restarting as reflecting a failure to keep going, I focused on the fact that restarting is what we do every time we repeat something more than one time and more importantly, that restarting is core to building up your internal strength and skills (more on this in a moment).
2. I put my butt in a chair and did the work. (More on this in an upcoming post).

A few years ago (8 to be exact) I had the opportunity to attend Wisdom 2.0 and participate in a meditation session led by Sharon Salzberg. I was super new to meditation at the time and felt like I was screwing it up all the time (I still do most of the time). I couldn’t stop thinking or daydreaming or concentrating on trying to meditate correctly. This caused me to avoid doing it at all. Several things that Sharon related in that session changed the way I looked at my practice.

“We say the most important moment of the process is the moment you realize you’ve been gone, you’ve already been distracted, you’ve already been lost, you’ve already been gone; because that’s the transformative moment. That’s the moment we have the chance to be really different. So instead of judging yourself or blaming yourself or feeling like a failure, that’s when we practice letting go and practive beginning again. ” – Sharon Salzberg

The failing is the point! We are going to fail. But the key is, we (I) have to let it go and start again. We don’t get stronger unless we fail, just like building a muscle, we don’t grow unless we are pushed to fail and recover; to restart.

“We say that the healing is in the return, not in never having wondered to begin with. As we let go gently, and with great kindness to ourselves, we begin again.” – Sharon Salzberg

When I thought about writing this post as something that would help make me stronger and would help me overcome this issue in the future, it became infinitely easier to sit down and write. It helped get rid of all the negative things I was telling myself.

We all have things we have to overcome to do the work we are meant to do. Don’t let failing to complete something keep you from doing yours. Be kind to yourself and restart!

Epilogue:
Through the wonders of the internet, Sharon Salzberg’s session at the 2011 Wisdom 2.0 conference is available on YouTube (as are just about all of the Wisdom 2.0 sessions). The takeaways I mentioned above are between the 5:39 and 9:39 mark.

Feature Image: Brown and white track field by Pixabay