Take the red pill!
Choose wisely
I am struggling to write today but I have promised myself that I would post every day and so as an homage to change, I will write, maybe not with much purpose but I will write. I am learning how to keep my promises to myself and I am learning how to do the things I don’t want to do in the moment because my future self will appreciate it. A life skill that has been lost on me until the last couple weeks and even in that short time of “doing it anyway”, I have noticed a pretty big shift already and so I continue today in the slow burn of it. The discipline.
It’s taken me forever to reframe discipline into a space that I could accept. When you grow up being constantly disciplined in a certain way, as I am sure most of us have, it becomes incredibly challenging to shift the perspective around it to a “good” thing. I have come to find that discipline is becoming the largest part of my self-love and self-care. I have been chasing instant gratification for so long, I hadn’t known any other way and now I am wise enough and patient enough to know that I am slowly instilling this new value into my regime even if the attention span and old behaviors are screaming for scrolling. When the urge comes for numbing, I have learned now to take a moment to consider how it feels when I do that activity versus the long game activity, the activity that has some return and works for me instead of against me. The red pill choice, if you will…
I am still riding the high of the newness of it, so it’s now a matter of just taking it day by day and not forgetting that I want to be the best version of myself. I am sure there will be moments and slips and I’ll have to get back up but I always get back up. I have seen that in myself and it’s been so affirming for my journey. I am so grateful for my tenacious nature, now it is just time to learn how to work with the flow of that attitude and give myself the permission I have always wanted to experience my version of success while I am here in this human form.
I read an article about procrastination on here the other day and it really rang true for me, (I’m sorry but I can’t recall the author of that post), it basically talked about how there is no such thing as laziness but just a resistance to believe in yourself enough to get the task done (I am oversimplifying here but you get the point). I felt that deeply and I see how I have been choosing the easy ways at the moment because of fear, fear of not being good enough, and even fear of actually being good enough. If I don't even try, then no one can chastise me, no one can judge me, and I am safe. I see how false that narrative is now and I am slowly but surely teaching myself to move away from fear and just do it, anyway.
Every time I choose discipline over instant gratification, I am teaching myself and my inner child how much we value ourselves and that we deserve to give ourselves a beautiful life. After all, life is just a series of choices we make all leading into the next thing, and I am ready for a beautiful life of well-made choices. There has been so much pain and so much running from myself. I see now it’s because I didn’t think I was worth it and then later it was that I had become aware enough to see that I am worth it but I wanted someone else to fix me or save me and now I am here. Here, taking radical responsibility for my own life. It is my job to take the aligning action for the life I want. No one is going to hand it to me and I can’t pay someone else to make it happen.
Patience in this is also key. This shift is slow and grounded, and I recognize that there will be some kickback from all that old conditioning and such. After all, I am consciously going about changing myself into exactly the type of person I want to be. I had no idea you could do that until recently…Identity shift or something I think they call it.
I have come so far from where I was and here I am today…even in the resistance; I am choosing to do it, anyway. I do the thing I didn’t want to do because, in the long run, I will feel better about it, and the sprint through life wasn’t bringing me anywhere but further away from who I really am.
It’s hard to choose differently than you have always chosen, the habits and the programming, the nervous system…all of it. If you are on a path of growth and expansion, know that you aren’t alone. We just have to choose our hard. It’s really hard to fight your higher self every day and to sit in the depression of remaining the same when your potential is infinite if you would only let yourself believe. When parts of you are begging you to let yourself believe. I hope you let yourself believe and then take the small and sometimes uncomfortable actions into greatness. You deserve it and so do I! We got this!!!
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