on making progress
last week I wrote about learning to trust yourself, something i’m really working hard on and have been for a while. it’s a daily practice and one that I am not always consistent with. This terrifies the perfectionist procrastinator that lives within me, for the fear of history repeating itself and the possibility of finding out that all this new-found trust in myself is in fact misplaced. I worry that not showing up for one mere day will have the consequences of completely derailing all this progress i’m making and send me back to square one. this is the kind of fear that both limits and pushes one too far. it leads to overcompensation for your unstable trust in yourself and the setting of goals that are currently out of your reach and unrealistic for you to achieve right now.
for me personally, this fear manifests itself like this.
I acknowledge an area of my life or myself that I am dissatisfied with.
I vow to make a change, to start showing up more consistently and commit myself to becoming the kind of person that gets sh*t done.
I decide on what it is that I eventually want to achieve and come up with a roadmap to get myself there. to be truly committed and consistent I must make progress every single day. Missing a day is dangerous and creates an opportunity to lose momentum, something I cannot allow.
I start ploughing full steam ahead towards these goals and it feels good to finally be showing up for myself. I feel I can do anything I set my mind to.
Eventually I run out of steam, and exhausted I crash and burn and ultimately end up sat on the train wreck of my failed journey towards my goals.
The disappointment and loss of all trust in myself to get anything done paralyses me and I collapse in a heap of self pity and self deprecation.
A pretty unhealthy cycle.
The issue here is not that i’m incapable or inconsistent or untrustworthy however. No. It’s that i’ve set my sights too high, too soon. You don’t just decide to run a marathon one day without intending to train and build up your stamina. You also don’t make a plan to train every single day without accounting for days of rest and recuperation. As futile as it may seem, when setting goals and learning to trust yourself again you must start with baby steps, as if you’re learning to walk for the very first time.
If you want to be a writer, you don’t just sit down one day and write a book in one go.
if you want to be more mindful, you don’t just sit down and try and clear your mind of thoughts to meditate for hours upon end. It’s impossible to go from 0 to 100 like that.
if you want to become stronger, you don’t just turn up at the gym and pick up the heaviest weights you can find. you’d hurt yourself.
this trust is a muscle that needs to be built up over time, starting small and adding little by little as you get stronger. it needs to be balanced between showing up for yourself consistently while also giving yourself space when you need it. Full trust and consistency cannot be achieved with an all or nothing attitude.
now, I do not claim to be an expert in this art of trusting yourself and actually achieving your goals. in fact I would say i’m still a rookie at the whole thing. Yet this week I want to take a minute to reflect on how far i’ve come already. by setting myself smaller, more achievable goals each week i’ve witnessed miracles occurring. things I have been trying and failing to make happen for a very long time. for the first time ever I have been sharing a weekly blog post on this site (that i’ve had for 2 years) more or less consistently for the least 8 weeks. I'm journalling almost every day, allowing myself to write badly for the first time in my life to give space to the tangle of thoughts and feelings I usually keep locked up inside. i’m creating a space to hold myself unfiltered and free from judgement. (although the latter is still a work in progress.) I’ve done a yoga flow almost every day for a year. Although this one came very close to becoming a goal fuelled by this fear of failure and inconsistency, I began over compensating, too attached to this fear of becoming inconsistent and letting myself down like I used to. I made myself show up every day, no exceptions. And I did, but barely and half heartedly, not taking the practice seriously and failing to align with the intention to connect with my body each day. I had to force myself to allow some much needed breathing room back into this practice, to remind myself that one day off wasn’t the end of the world. Sometimes taking a break and allowing yourself to come back to a habit with a fresh mind and clear intentions is far more productive than forcing yourself to do it for the sake of ticking it off the to do list for the day. Giving myself that space was such a hard thing to do, it felt as though I was blindly placing trust in myself that had led to failure in the past. It induced the panic over losing momentum and having to deal with letting myself down once again. And yet in doing so something magic happened. I came back to the practice more committed, fresh energy and a determination to do it properly. I found that on the days that I do show up, I show up more fiercely than I did when I was forcing myself to do it for the sake of ‘not losing the streak’, so to speak. It’s taught me that although there is merit in being able to show up even when it’s the last thing you want to do, there is also merit in listening to yourself, in allowing yourself to be heard and surrendering to the urge for rest when you need it most. It’s scary to let go like that, to place trust in yourself that you will come back to whatever you’ve committed yourself to doing. Yet it is also what I’ve experienced to be the biggest boost to my levels of self trust. The feeling of pride in myself the next time I do show up after taking a break is what is building the foundations of my trust. It’s a little win in working towards a little goal but it’s effects are monumental. It’s what keeps me going, what I remind myself of in moments of doubt and when I struggle to trust in my trust, when it feels futile and unambitious to be setting such small goals.
This journey towards complete trust in yourself, accountability and consistency is an uphill battle. It’s exhausting and constantly having to check that each step you take is leading to stable footing is repetitive and feels like slow progress. But I’ll hazard a guess that the view at the top is worth it. I’m not there yet, I’m still learning. Sometimes my foot slips and I fall down. What matters most is that I dust myself off and get myself back up on that mountain, trusting that I have the strength that it takes to keep going. I’ll take rests when I need to. I’ll push myself in moments when I’m close to giving up. But give up I will not. Neither should you. We all have what it takes inside of us to achieve these goals, no matter how small or big. We need to be patient with ourselves, take the time to build this trust in ourselves and learn to enjoy the process instead of rushing to the end.
if you want to hear more about my journey towards a more authentic existence, follow me on instagram @the.authenticity.project and on medium . see my photography work on instagram @s.ophiea.lice and connect with me on linkedin.
big love to you all x