PEBBLE
Learning to love your strange, flawed, gorgeously stubborn, radiantly silly self might turn out to be a whole new adventure. It will require great patience and determination, but you are so worth it.
~Nanea Hoffman, originally seen on Sweatpants & Coffee
BOULDER
What if simple was sufficient?
What if good was good enough?
What if faster was not expected?
What if imperfect was acceptable?
What if new and improved were not necessary?
What if the Joneses didn’t care if you kept up with them and you didn’t care either?
What if winning wasn’t the goal?
What if acquiring, achieving, having, being more wasn’t what informed how we spent our time?
What if who you are, as you are, were enough?
~Karen Jandorf, originally spotted at Peace on the Inside
PONDER
There’s a great quote from E.B. White about the difficulty that lies in planning your day when you wake up torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to simply enjoy it. In addition to grappling with this delimma quite often, there is a related choice that seems like a daily conundrum for me. Should I tend to the work of embracing myself just as I am? Or, do I focus instead on improving myself and my capabilities? I feel like this is extra tricky since a core part of me wants to grow, grow, grow.
I suspect that these aren’t totally mutually exclusive, and they are probably most at odds with each other when I’m doing way too much of one and not nearly enough of the other.
All I know is that I’ve lately sensed a lot of internal pressure to keep going and growing…and I finally noticed that I’ve been ignoring some internal signals that I need to slow down a bit. As usual, my body and my brain have steadily increased their volume until they had my full attention, which they now do. This allows me to pause and take stock of things…and I’m grinning as I write this out, because, oh yeah, I definitely need to chillax for a bit, and practice accepting things (and myself) just as they are.
And of course, my inner grad student wants to get all judgy and scoldy that it took so long to figure this important piece out. He’s just trying to help, of course, so I try not to deflect his harsh judgment by harshly judging him right back…my goal is to imagine giving him a big ole hug and whispering ever so kindly, “Yeah, you probably have a useful point…for now, how about we put on some super funky tunes and dance it out, and then make a trip to Dairy Queen and see how we feel then?” Responding to my gorgeously stubborn self with my radiantly silly self usually does create all kinds of new and fun adventures.
How about you? Whether your week is supposed to be go, go, go, or chill, chill, chill (or maybe a bit of both), I hope you can embrace yourself and your life just as it is. Yup, you’re worth it.
Peace,
Paul
