Sometimes we get so preoccupied with magic tricks, we forget all about the importance of the fundamentals- like downward dog.
The voice of ambition
In many of us, there is a nagging voice that pushes us to be better than we were yesterday. We want to learn more, do better and just generally become more impressive as time goes on.
In theory, this side to human nature is a wonderful thing. It’s what most people call ambition, and we become better when we ride our impulse to be the best version of ourselves that we can be in the moment.
We long to grow and improve to be able to interact with others in a better, more caring way, make more money, become happier and healthier, and a whole host of other reasons.
The downside
That being said, for every rule, there is an exception. We can’t let ourselves get too stressed out about being a badass. When you push yourself past your bending point, you may break, becoming frazzled and exhausted in the process, and even find yourself back-pedaling on skills you know you have!
I’ve always heard it said, you are your own worst enemy. And in this case, it’s definitely true. Your ambition could be a mask for unrealistic expectations, in various forms.
Maybe you’re expecting a change to come that is just not consistent with who you are. Or maybe you’re just expecting yourself to work too hard for too long without rest. Either way, negative repercussions are inevitable.
Purposeful confusion
You want to be the best at something, or do better than the other guy, or maybe just better than you did yesterday. It can be very easy to get lost in the world of possibilities that you could use.
These days, with a wealth of information at our fingertips, you could try a new lifestyle every month and never have to repeat for the rest of your life! There are always new skills to pick up, party tricks to master and new languages to learn.
It seems like an endless scramble of trying to be an informed, well-rounded person who still has pertinent information to write on their resumé, and it can seem like no matter what you learn or do, you will never be able to stand out.
Dig a little deeper, this is all one problem. Self respect and self care are crucial to building a self you admire. You must know your limits and boundaries when it comes to your physical self, your emotional self and your spiritual self. Of course, blind spots are inevitable, but more self-awareness is always better than less.
The silver bullet?
Self care is important for one simple reason, and it’s not what you may think. Many people recommend self care because the self must be cared for, and expecting others to do it will lead to a rocky life experience at best. In my opinion, self care is important for an entirely different reason.
When you take a time-out for self-care, you are giving yourself a little reminder that you are okay, that you accept yourself enough to allow the best of you to shine through for yourself and others, and that you believe in yourself enough to do that.
When you set aside time for yourself to do something that feeds your soul, you find yourself more comfortable in your skin, and you begin to trust yourself and the voice in your head more. You begin to truly exude the best of yourself in more situations, because you give yourself permission for it to be.
Where will flippant effort get you?
Let’s look at the flip side of this. Someone is very concerned with being a good person and doing great things for the world. They’re not sure how to go about it so they begin researching and implementing ideals in rapid-fire succession.
They make commitments to charities and organizations and individuals, leaving no time for themselves and no time for rest. It begins to wear on them, but they ignore their fatigue, in hopes that if they just push past it and transcend all their personhood, then they will truly be successful (or beautiful, perfect, wise, enlightened, or whatever their goal happens to be).
They can only sustain this for so long before something gives. In many people, they will simply throw in the towel and forget about their auspicious goals, concluding that it was too hard so they might as well go back to their regular lives. But the problem is, their regular lives aren’t fulfilling enough to keep them afloat either! So they find a new goal, or sometimes even reinstate the old one.
The deliberate approach
There is a way out of this cycle. If the individual begins to have these big dreams, it can be helpful to ask why. Sometimes, when you get down to it, asking the question of why you want something so badly can yield the answer that you don’t think you are enough on your own. You believe that if you live this dream of yours then you will become a worthwhile human being!
If you find yourself stuck in this belief, achieving your goals-and maintaining them once you have- can be really difficult. The crippling belief of self-inadequacy can keep us from our goals by subconsciously driving ourselves to sabotage our efforts, since we don’t believe we are good enough to live the life we want anyway.
Got what you wanted, still hate yourself?
But once we get there, we still find it hard to keep because we realize that achieving our goal did not make us a more worthy person. We find that we are in many ways the same as before. For some, seeming to have it all when you feel complete hatred towards yourself is unbearable.
At least, when you have nothing from a social standpoint, you have something to hide behind for your shortcomings. People may see that you are a flawed person, but if you are poor or underprivileged you can count on some people giving you sympathy points, but what if your life is beautiful and you have everything you’re supposed to want but you’re still not happy? Well then, people will surely shun you, right?
This fear that some of us live in, it’s quite unjustified. Unfortunately, people are going to judge you no matter what you do or what your life looks like. People judge because they have insecurities about themselves, and there is nothing that we can do for them about that. There is, however, something we can do for ourselves! We may go back to the basics.
Consciously choosing simplicity
When someone is graduating from any sort of mental treatment like therapy, rehab, etc, they are told over and over again to “stick with the treatment plan”, “continue using coping skills” and the like.
We as humans have this tendency to think of life as a staircase we climb. Reach one step, then the next, as we continue to ascend. We think it ought to be this way in terms of recovery, relationships, income, and pretty much every other facet of human existence! But the truth is, life is more like a wheelchair ramp.
If you keep working and trying, you can move up. You can build on your last skills and improve yourself, but if you try to stay still without locking your brakes, you slide back down. Keeping to your “treatment plan” (or coping mechanisms, self care, or whatever you refer to this as) is the equivalent of locking your brakes.
Society’s flashy message
We are a society of sensationalists, and on some level, it’s not our fault. We get fed this message continually from what seems like everywhere! There are many more people who are looking to lose weight fast than are looking to start a new healthy lifestyle, and we all want to hear about how meditating for 30 days cured all of somebody’s problems.
The fact is, doing anything good for a month won’t create lasting change. If it did, you would see that we would all be masters in almost everything. Instead, we have this generation that values “learning one new skill a month”. If you only give yourself a month to practice something you will never become a master.
Are you in this for the long run?
For some skills, a surface level understanding is fine, and in fact, more than you need. But when it comes to knowing yourself, loving yourself, and creating healthy habits, we need to take the long view if we are going to see the benefit from such lifestyles. You need to become an expert in yourself to advocate for yourself, and to make the choices that suit you.
The road to mastery is in the long view. The self-love, self-acceptance journey doesn’t contain “a thousand miles” as the saying may go, yet it still starts with one step. We need to be gentle, yet firm with ourselves. To progress, we need to do what we can to improve each day, and not worry about the magic tricks we can’t do yet. And if you find yourself too tired to do an Instagram-worthy yoga pose today, please, don’t skip out on your downward dog.
What about you? Do you want to be really great? Have you found yourself burned out from your efforts? Or maybe you’re just starting to think about building healthy habits. Either way, leave a comment to document where you are in your journey, and to encourage someone else in theirs. As always, remember to share this message on social media for your friends and loved ones to benefit from, and don’t give up on the slow but steady practice of self-love.
