I went for a walk in the woods today in a little village in Western Quebec called Fort Coulonge. It's a tiny hamlet with a meandering river which I followed into the forest (keeping alert so I didn't get lost). Twice I stopped and tried to meditate and both times my monkey mind would not stop chattering about nothing. I was actually afraid that if I stopped 'thinking' I would miss out on some important thought. What the $%^& !!! What kind of world am I living in where I can't spare ten minutes to quiet my mind? There is so much going on with the completion of the house, the emptying of our furniture, the office work, the new business ideas I have brewing and such. In reality, there is always something important going on because I choose to live my life with lots of change and am always transitioning. It's a choice I make on a daily basis.
When I relax or read or play the keyboard, there is a voice in my head that chastises me for doing nothing. It's a voice I hear but have learned to laugh at because of the ridiculousness of it. When the phone rings in the evening I ask myself if it is really necessary to take every call that comes in. These calls are from my kids, my brothers and sisters and close friends. My cell phone is my ball and chain. I feel I can be found no matter what I'm doing or where I am. I just want to be left alone.
When I sit at the computer where I work, I am pulled to click on facebook, pinterest, email, blogs, websites and especially my computer scrabble game where I am scoring points in the 400's. My work suffers and I feel scattered and unfulfilled. Mindless activity derails me every time.
If I could ask for anything from the universe it would be self-discipline. When I meditate (or try to) my inbreath is accompanied by the word 'discipline' and my out breath is pushed out with the word 'love'. I want to take in discipline and send my love to the universe.
Being a champion procrastinator I promise myself that when my home is furnished and I am living in it rather than camping in it, things will change. But I've promised myself to work on self-discipline for many years with no real success to speak of.
I want to stay away from those self-improvement lists I've decided are useless and soul-destroying but how else do I pull myself together and do what is necessary to not fall behind, keep the business side of things going and to make time to enjoy the hobbies I love?
I have books on fixing procrastination but I procrastinate on reading them. How do I go from being labelled on a personality test as a 'squiggly' (others were rectangles, squares, circles, etc.) to being a person with self-discipline and, therefore calmness of spirit? I wish I knew. Sobriety helps but so far, being sober is not enough.
Accepting myself for who I am works for a while but when I see all that I am not accomplishing that I truly want to accomplish, it gets discouraging. So, we shall see what happens in the next few weeks but as of now, I have to try to meditate, to still this racing mind of mine. Shhh .... I need quiet!
I think maybe if you're not doing something it's because, although you will be proud of the accomplishment when it's done, you do not expect to enjoy the process of achieving it. Since life is actually a long line of processes, that really matters. You're going to spend a lot of your life on the doing in order to occasionally reflect, whilst presumably still thinking you ought in fact to be toiling on some other project that comes next. That sounds like a pretty unsatisfactory state of affairs to me.
ReplyDeleteI say that as someone who recently decided to stop wasting time, simply by viewing the things I am choosing to spend my time on as productive. Scrabble, for example, is very likely to be an excellent mind stimulant for staving off dementia. It is therefore very worthy indeed. I still do stuff I don't like much, but because I know I will *really* get something out of it. Like redecorating, because I will get to relax in my new surroundings in comfort. In order to truly appreciate my efforts, I make sure that I do!
Indiana here.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.lionsroar.com/sunlight-awareness/
This is a wonderful article on meditation.
I love this teaching:
“You are perfect just as you are, and you could use a little improvement.” —Shunryu Suzuki