What if just for today,
You could allow yourself to be okay with not being okay?
What would it look like for you to move one small step closer to embracing the sensation of anxiety,
Self-doubt,
Self-criticism,
As opposed to adding a layer of judgment or frustration or anguish on top of it?
What might it look like to approach your sensation of anxiety or anger or resentment with kindness,
Welcoming it as if it were an old friend?
And this idea doesn't come naturally or easy to us,
Particularly if we have spent the majority of our lives feeding into the cycle of anxiety or anger or frustration or feeling the sense of lack or not measuring up.
As human beings,
We tend to stick with what's familiar.
And sometimes what's familiar is not always what's best for us in that moment.
And so the process of unlearning our familiar patterns can seem daunting.
It's not uncommon to think,
Yeah,
I've tried that already,
Nothing works,
Or this is how it's always going to be.
And I'm not going to lie,
I've been there myself,
And I often find myself back in that space of it's never going to get better.
And all I can really offer when that feeling of this is how it is or nothing's going to change emerges is to remember that progress is not always giant leaps and a straight line forward,
That the path to healing can look like a tiny fraction of a millimeter forward,
Two steps back,
And three steps forward the next day.
And so just for today,
Or even let me break it down a little more,
Just for this moment,
Can you sit with your familiar pattern with acceptance?
Can you see with kind eyes your pattern without attaching judgment or criticism or,
Yeah,
But I shouldn't feel this?
And we can practice softening the familiar narrative that judges how we actually are and instead replace it with just leaning into it,
Breathing into it,
Trusting that we can handle whatever arises.
We start to subtly shift the familiar pattern.
We disrupt it so that we can create space for a new way of being to emerge.
And so just for today,
Just for this moment,
What does it look like to embrace what's there?
Maybe it's the fourth day in a row you've had a headache or you've been sobbing your eyes out for the last two hours or you feel on the verge of tears at any moment today.
Can you sit with that sensation exactly as it is,
Breathing into it,
Examining it with curiosity as if it were the first time this experience had ever happened?
When we start to be curious instead of judgmental,
We loosen the critical lens that we've attached for so long to our familiar pattern.
And so just for today,
Can you breathe in and hold space for what's there exactly as it is?
