The alarm went off before I felt ready to embrace the day. As if on cue, my mind started playing that familiar playlist: “this is optional, you’re dreadfully tired, you’ve had such disturbed sleep recently…sleep in for just 30-minutes”. My half-slumber was the perfect opportunity for my crafty mind to hypnotize me. It offered me a buffet with all possible flavors of mouth watering resistance. But then I got up to join my weekly meditation group.
My mind played the score week after week, and week after week I responded with the same physical movement of bringing my body to standing. I noticed that over time the voice had started sounding weaker and meeker. Less potent. As if I now had more energy to override it and cut it off mid-sentence rather than the other way round. I initially credited the success to my willpower but it was something else. While willpower was important in getting me off the mattress, the follow through for all the subsequent steps was actually being fed by the memory and impact of our last meditation practice.
This was the muscle-memory of showing up and it freed me to do the work instead of staying stuck at the threshold of action.
“The most important thing about art is to work. Nothing else matters except sitting down every day and trying.” ― Steven Pressfield
