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#124: Beating up on past self is easy, and unhelpful

Learnings from momentum, failure, and recovery
(Read the first two in this series here and here)

When we fail at something we care about, it’s easy to fall into a blame-vortex. We look for someone to cast doubt on. When this accusatory gaze turns inwards, we invariably blame our past self for messing things up. I certainly did when I failed recently; I blamed my past self from a decade ago. I’m noticing that I frequently do this. I am often frustrated with my past self, for not doing this or that thing when she could have. I constantly chide her for not having her shit together. Sometimes this past self is recent, from the month or week prior.

This time I also examined my current self and current life. The present-day self came across as a work-in-progress and the present-day life, a complex web of things. Always evolving, always in the process of becoming the next iteration, and never fully where I’d like it to be. I’d like to try some things out, and I know I will in the future when the time is right. So if life feels messy now and I’m not ready for some things, it was messy in the past too and I wasn’t ready to give certain things a shot because of valid reasons.

When I try something later in life than I or culture imagine, it’s because that is usually the first point in time I feel resourced enough to attempt this thing; given the unique way my life is unfolding. 

Then why does my mind keep harping about this magical past self? Who does it imagine her to be? There was no magical past self with all her ducks in a row.

With this honest realization, I see my psyche start loosening its grip on my throat and self-compassion flows. The focus shifts from blame to learning from this experience of failure. I scan my present to see what I might be holding back from trying right now, and whether this holding back is actually wise or fear based. With this knowledge, I can build capacity and skill to try what I want to try, and learn from what didn’t come to pass.

The longer I live, the more past selves there are to be frustrated at. But there is no pristine past life and no magical past self to blame. 

“Happiness is beneficial for the body, but it is grief that develops the powers of the mind.”— Marcel Proust, French novelist

#123: Moving from habitual internal stories to deliberate metaphors

Learnings from momentum, failure, and recovery
(Read the first one of this series here)

Stories are how we metabolize life situations. When we try to understand why something happened, the first thing that sprouts inside our head is an internal talk track. One internal story layers on top of another and—over time—they crystalize into mental models, or the default lens with which we view the world. Our brains are designed for survival and favor efficiency, so this process of solidifying repetitive thoughts into permanent shorthands is simply what our brains do. That’s how we learn and file away events for future reference.

Sometimes these stories and mental models can be adaptive and make us more resilient, but they can also be maladaptive and create psychological burdens that get in the way of thriving. Either way, all internal stories and mental models are subjective and never the complete picture.

Why habitual internal stories get in the way
It’s hard to know when our mind has become littered with maladaptive stories. We face three big challenges in clear seeing:

  • We don’t realize we have a talk track. Because we’re so used to living with this incessant sound, it camouflages as if it’s a part of our insides.
  • We wholeheartedly believe our stories. They are ever-present inside our head and we mistake this presence as the truth. 
  • Our stories act as psychological balms in our time of loss, so it’s even harder to disassociate from them when we’re in pain.

How metaphors can assist
Metaphors are when we refer to one thing by painting a picture of another. They help us bypass the habitual internal chatter and stories because:

  • Image first, words later. With metaphors, we don’t get lost in words right away. We experience the experience we’re having in that moment and then create a mental image to capture how we feel. Only after we have an image, we use words.
  • Words describe the image and not the event. When we finally use words, we describe the image of our experience and not the potentially charged event we’re dealing with.
  • Nuanced, yet not exhaustive. Metaphors don’t try to slice, dice and explain every little thing. They can help us zoom in or out and extract a key flavor of the situation without getting lost in unhelpful details or spurring rumination. We try to get to the core of “what is” going on inside us. Also, we can be more nuanced with images because sometimes words fail us.
  • The process is deliberate. The metaphorical images we create are deliberate (vs. habitual internal thoughts) and if one metaphor doesn’t resonate, we can adjust it till it does. This process itself offers clarity because we try to accurately see the experience we’re having.

My metaphor during this last round of injury was an ant working at the base of a massive tree, and believing that the world was entirely made of dirt. Through this metaphor I realized that there’s a lot I can’t know and will never know, so my stories and judgments about why I was dealt this blow will always be incomplete. There was comfort in simply letting go of the need to know definitively. Paradoxically, reminding myself of my profound smallness helped me move through this harsh experience faster. 

I know I’ll keep using stories as healing balms to adapt to a new realities. I also know that I’ll keep another eye on the imperfection of those stories, and use deliberate metaphors to hold complexity and nuance, and pierce through my internal chatter.

“Yoga teaches us to cure what need not be endured and endure what cannot be cured.”— B.K.S. Iyengar, Yoga pioneer and teacher

#122: Momentum requires caring, but recovery requires letting go

Learnings from momentum, failure, and recovery

I’ve been away from this space for a bit; I was trying to do something big and intense that I’ve been hesitant to even attempt. I finally faced my fears. I created a stable psychological base and leapt knowing I might fail. And fail I did. The speed of failure was unexpected and the loss has reverberated in unexpected ways. It has also been an unexpected teacher. The observations and learnings are still unfolding and, over the next few weeks, I’ll share a few that are top of mind. May these be helpful to others.

Here’s the first one: Momentum requires caring but recovery requires letting go.

I knew going in that there was a high likelihood of failure so my goal in trying wasn’t to succeed at all costs, it was to minimize regrets and squash future “what-ifs”. I thought I’d give it a shot and move on if I failed. But my path was littered with obstacles and I could only build momentum by admitting to myself that I cared about the outcome and that it wasn’t all nonchalant under the surface. Once I acknowledged this truth though, I became more attached to specific outcomes. I gave my best in the service of a vision but giving it my all melted my internal boundaries. I started dreaming just a bit more even as I tried to be even-keeled.

I looked back at my hard road and I looked ahead at the potentially positive outcome. I thought maybe everything was harder for me for a reason, maybe I was meant to enjoy the richer sweetness of delayed joy. I didn’t even realize I was weaving these ephemeral stories. Although these stories were fleeting, they left enough of a mark that I started becoming a wee bit more attached to outcome. Even when I knew I was facing failure, there was a part of me quietly looking for the silver lining: “maybe the sweet ending will come in a different way…if I just keep going.”

The reality is that I don’t know why I was nudged in this direction by my psyche or the powers that be. I know definitively that this experience has added to my personal history and given me a glimpse of a life experience I didn’t have, and in turn created another flow of empathy. A big personal realization is that the act of letting go needs to be absolute and without caveats.

Abhyasa (practice) and Vairagya (non-attachment), is a core principle of Yoga philosophy that helps me in letting go whenever I get stuck.

  • Abhyasa means having an attitude of persistent effort but it’s a specific flavor of effort; it requires a focus on mental stability and not the outcome. This stance doesn’t just appear out of the blue at our time of need, it’s an everyday practice. It’s recommended we practice this type of effort uninterruptedly for a long period time of time so it becomes a part of our operating philosophy.
  • Vairagya is about learning to let go of the many attachments, cravings, aversions, fears, and false identities that get layered on just by the act of living and engaging in the world. This non-attachment isn’t about abandoning things and not enjoying life, it’s about the relationships we create with everything around us. We attach value, create dogma, feel aversion based on our subjective interpretations and then spend inordinate effort craving or avoiding things and situations. Vairagya is a tool to cut through these erroneous perceptions and projections to reclaim mental and emotional stability.

Abhyasa and vairagya represent two essential aspects of a spiritual life that, when combined, liberate us from everyday injuries. These principles help us create a dynamic balance on the polarity of practicing and caring on one end, and letting go on the other.

Failure is never easy but it’s a pretty regular life-occurrence. Being able to move through loss without letting our sense of self and psyche get too dinged is a helpful skill. It makes us more capable of navigating loss, taking chances, and contributing in life without the fear of getting burned. 

“The boundary to what we can accept is the boundary to our freedom.”— Tara Brach, psychologist and meditation teacher

Photo credit:  thelittlelabs. Click image or here to view animation.

#108: The emotional dust of creation

We don’t create things all at once, fully formed. Whether it’s an organization, a community, a tiny human or ourselves, creation takes time and the build is always unexpected. That’s a big reason why we subconsciously hold back from creating anything new: it feels risky to invest emotion and effort and not even have the guarantee that this thing we want will actually happen, or happen the way we want it to.

If we make a plan before starting (which is always a good idea), it’ll orient us in the right direction and help take suitable steps, but it likely won’t reflect the nuanced terrain we’ll actually walk. That’s because neither the terrain nor our creation remains static. Both respond to our actions and the events in our larger environment. Similarly, we ourselves respond and change; what we thought last week or last month will shift a bit when we engage in the work. Finally, we never build anything alone. Ever. There are others right next to us co-creating and going through the same push and pull of change and creation. So we’re changing, our creation is changing, our co-creators are changing and the environment is changing. This happens simultaneously and repeatedly. This dynamic is called emergence, and it asks for emotional flexibility. 

The work of creating something new is less like driving a self-driving Tesla on a traffic-free highway, and more like walking a dusty backroad full of brambles alongside others. It’s never a cool and collected experience of just sitting back and arriving. We all get scratched, stumble, bump into each other and kick up dust as we walk.

To make matters harder, we regularly pass through invisible gates that change the scenery and the terrain. What we did before needs to be adjusted in unexpected ways. If we were too absorbed in the work of creating, we may not even realize that we passed a gate. That’s when the emotional dust peaks―we all scramble to make sense of the new terrain, run furiously into the brambles and each other, kick up more dust, and make it harder to see things clearly. 

Knowing this, what if:

  • In addition to drawing maps, we prepare for that dusty and brambly trail with unseen gates.
  • Instead of a heroic solo journey, we note others who walk besides us.
  • Our commitment isn’t to one specific outcome but to staying on the dusty path. We develop resilience, integrity, and might I add―joy, so none of us opt-out in favor of the cushy Tesla path.
  • We invest time in creating trust: holding a hand, mending a wound, or offering a sip of water on this twisty path.
  • Most importantly, we create the capacity to be ok with emotional dust as we blind each other with it.

“The mighty oak was once an acorn that stood its ground.”― English Proverb, Author Unknown 

It may not happen.
If it happens, it wont happen the way you imagined.
If it happens, it’ll be its own thing: emergent and separate from you, uncontrollable by anyone.
Bringing it to life will dent you and others in unseen places.

So, why do it?
Because you came with these fertile seeds.
And if you hold back, first the seeds will wither…then you.
― A little ditty, by Suparna

#107: Solid jumping-off points and soft landings

I have a window above my bed that my cat, Fern, likes to sit at. This window is designed for privacy so it sits high; half of it is above my bed and the rest above my nightstand. Fern uses the nightstand to climb up and my bed to come down. If I’m sitting on my bed and in her way, she’ll meow to get me to move over so she can land on the bed. Only recently did I really pay attention to this dynamic where she uses the solid nightstand to jump up several feet and the soft bed to land.

I think all living organisms instinctively prefer this approach, both physically and emotionally. We don’t take risks or make big moves until we have a source of stability to support us. After we’ve taken the leap and done this big or uncomfortable thing we wanted to do―the hard job, the birth, the exam, the race, or something else―we hope to land back in a place of softness, ease, comfort and nurturing.

I’m also just starting to realize that soft landings are what transform into solid jumping off points for subsequent leaps. That ease and stability (known as sukha and sthira in yogic philosophy) are not two separate things but an infinity loop where one transforms into another in an endless cycle. Wisdom traditions also point us to these opposing, interdependent and inseparable qualities that help us create: rest and activity, yin and yang, feminine and masculine, receiving and giving.

Well-being occurs when there is a balance between these opposing forces because we can have too much of one thing. Weirdly, by over indexing on one side we deplete our capacity to do more of it. Too much action and not enough rest means burnout which leads to stunted future action. Too much rest and not enough action means lethargy, and resting more just depletes us further. Our goal is a dynamic balance that we constantly adjust to remain roughly at our center.

Historically, I put a lot of effort on the “jumping off”, or masculine side of this equation; hoping that more action would create stability for my next action. I created very few soft landings and often felt compelled to jump harder, only hurting myself in the process.

“Among the half dozen or so things for which a man of honor should be prepared, if necessary, to die, the right to play, the right to frivolity, is not the least.”― W. H. Auden, British-American Poet