dear friends,
It’s been nearly four years since my face-plant epiphany, and approaching that anniversary has inspired quite a bit of thinking about why I’m continuing to explore gentleness. The obvious answer is that living gently makes my life better. Whether it’s how I engage with myself, with others, or with how I do the things that I do on this planet, approaching life with gentleness has helped me in ways other life approaches have not. In large part, I think that’s because gentleness is both simple and expansive. It’s like binary code, all zeroes and ones: in any given moment and in any situation you can make a choice to either be gentle or harsh.
So, as I share the last four reminders for living gently, I’m very conscious of the fact that, in essence, all of them are about choosing gentleness over harshness in our thoughts, words, or actions.
Picking up where we left off last week…
(5) Don’t Get Stuck in Your Head. Like most of these reminders, this one is obvious. We all know what’s it’s like to get caught up in a thought loop—we go from thinking to overthinking, from analyzing to overanalyzing. We keep replaying an unpleasant conversation in our head, coming up with all the reasons the other person was wrong and we were right. Don’t beat yourself up for being human — we all do it! — but the sooner you can exit that particular spiral, the better. This is where gentleness is particularly helpful. In my experience, the simple act of remembering to be gentle is a quick and foolproof way to unhook from a spiraling mind. Gentleness is sensory, to know it you need to return to your body. When you ask yourself how you can be gentle, you create the space to see that the thought loop has a harsh edge to it. That little bit of space opens up freedom between you and the thought. You’re able to step away from the negative narrative and give the constant replay a rest. It may be basic, but it works.
(6) Align Goals with Habits and Habits with Goals. Many of us internalized a paradigm that force and harsh self discipline was the best way to achieve our goals; if you can’t blast your way to accomplishment you’ll never get where you want to go. Sure, it’s possible to force yourself to do all sorts of things, but if force is your constant companion, so too is misery and burnout. Instead of push, think flow. Instead of dynamite, think water. Setting a goal gently takes some upfront planning because you’ll want to take advantage of currents that already exist in your life and avoid unnecessary resistance. You want to brush up on a foreign language before a big trip? Think about the currents that already exist in your life that would make the process super easy: Can you do your online workout in that language? I’m a Peloton girl and regularly do both yoga and cycling in German. If you want to up your flossing game, but you’re bone tired when you crawl into bed at night, remove that nighttime resistance and floss in the morning. (My dental hygienist told me that doing it every day is far more important than when you do it.) You get the idea.
(7) Ask for Help When You Need It. Really. If you’re in doubt, think about how nice it is when you’re able to help someone who has asked you for help. Enough said.
(8) The Practice Is the Destination and the Journey. This reminder is the antithesis of the maxim that the end justifies the means. Living is not a series of static moments that can be kept separate from each other. Life is constant fluid change. There isn’t any single perfect end any more than there is any single perfect breath. Think about it. None of us wants to achieve a perfect breath as an end in itself, what we want is to breathe. When we talk about breathing, it’s evident how ridiculous it is to distinguish between the exhale and the process of exhaling, and yet we accept such distinctions in the rest of life. How you reach your goal matters as much as the goal. Believing that how you behave in pursuit of your goals doesn’t matter is like thinking it doesn’t matter if you build your dream home near a coal-fired power plant. Yes, you may be successful in creating a beautifully-appointed living room, but it’ll be full of smoke.
Okay, that’s it for this week! Wishing you many moments of laughter, peace, and connection.
warmly,
alison
