Recall a time when you really wanted to start doing something. Maybe workout a certain number of days a week, learn to ride a bike as an adult, experiment with building a robot, or see friends more consistently. There would have likely been a moment of intense and condensed emotion that helped you imagine and ache for the new normal. Then, if you followed up this imagination with action, you might have encountered initial roadblocks. It’s likely that the imagination was still strong enough to help you summon willpower and bust through a few initial bumps. Hope was still strong and you powered through and did well; maybe for even a few months. Results came but so did more twists and turns on the path. You had a baby, busted your knee, a loved one passed leaving you shattered and scared, and you had little energy to give to this thing you still crave from deep within. Life happened and it feels like you took a few steps back and are now seemingly exactly where you started.
Then you come back to the practice after the break but this time your desire is less acute, more chronic. It’s transitioned from soft youthful hope to a more subtle, less shiny but a deeper-felt hardened goal. Brute willpower won’t cut it anymore because you’ve seen how things out of your control can easily keep interfering. As if imagination and hope held your hand early on in the path but their arms aren’t long enough and as you walk further and further, their fingers slip from your hands. This is when you let go of imaginary perfection and summon adaptation. You ease your clutch on over-monitoring against a set plan and develop a radar for in-moment adjustments. The practice now seems to have a cycle, a going and coming, a breath-like timbre. It’s not actually one foot in front of the other, more like one hop to the side, one step diagonally. Enough of these steps, jumps and hops and you meet another ally called self-compassion, who reminds you to ease your grip on the dream and let joy and ease flow as you get to do this thing you value.
The commitment to begin comes from imagination, the commitment to push through from willpower, but the commitment to stay on the path comes from adaptation and self-compassion.
“The only journey is the one within.”― Rainer Maria Rilke, poet and novelist
