Ingredients Matter

After a few years serenity prayer-ing everything and everyone, it’s about time to — yup, re-examine — my own self-acceptance levels, my own willingness to perhaps once more apply a bit more pressure on the actual gas pedal of my life. Specifically, my writing, but also, of course, everything else.

And holy effing crap before I wrote that gas pedal line just now I did not connect my sudden desire to push just a teensie weensie bit more to be — dun dun dun! (suspenseful music) — EVIE!!!

Evie my evil inner critic has become so charming and downright pleasant, reasonable-sounding even, it’s tougher to notice when it’s her rather than authentic enthusiasm.

However mild the dialogue, I’m now clear that it’s dangerous, yes dangerous, for me to embark on pleasing Evie, to take direction from her, or to be seduced by her in any way. I’ll get a cold, a flu, an intractable back spasm, phantom pain in my leg, mood and energy jags that can’t be helped by western medicine, eastern medicine, chicken soup, ice, or California woo. If I override and push through the milder bodymind signals they get louder, more disabling.

I’m now willing to believe these internal signals are the direct product of being out of alignment with who I am and what matters, truly matters, to me, and what I’m meant to be doing here. I experience them as  real physical and mental pain and I do pursue the usual treatments for these issues - meds, PT, x-rays, that stuff. But relief, if any, from that stuff is temporary at best.

What gives me longer term relief, sustained energy, is to cultivate my true inner voice, take direction from her, not Evie, on how I manage my day-to-day and longer term ambitions. It’s become so clear that my job is not to identify some other person or idealized self I want to be like or look like and pursue that at all costs, but to pay attention to what works for me — me me, actual me. I’m good enough.

What sparks my spirit? Where am I drawn to making a difference? When have I veered into discomfort beyond the occasional healthy push to try something new, meet a deadline, handle an unusual demand? What ingredients do I need to feel better more of the time and to create a life I’ll feel proud to have lived when I go? These ingredients matter. I matter. I’m gonna keep going.