New Years Resolutions and such...

Not everyone must reach for potential. Some can let it be, without needing to fill its space with “more.” Some people just bask in it like an afternoon nap in the sun when they “could’ve been” mowing the lawn.

Potential isn't a thing to be measured at the beginning and end of a year. It’s an always present, ordinary reality. For each of us. Always.

Recovered martyr here, who lived a life in a paradigm that because I knew I “could,”(reach some dream land potential) that I “should,” I believed if I didn’t “do” all of the things, I was a waste of something. A something that wasn’t really even a “thing” yet but only had potential to be a real something. Contingent upon my perfection.

I shamed myself; called it self sabotage, belittled myself for staying “small." To be fair, whenever I put the brakes on on anything in my life, I still feel the shame, blaming me for not “being” more.

I “should” be able to do it all. But these days, I won’t just because I can and that doesn’t mean I suck.

I’ve learned that it doesn’t make us lazy to quit what’s killing us. It makes us healthy.

It doesn’t make us a bad person to not show up at every social arrangement. It makes us a discerning person. And that’s not bad.

It doesn’t make us unworthy to choose and live by a value more important to us, than the values others think we “should” live by. It makes us authentic.
And authentic doesn’t mean it’ll always feel good.

It doesn’t make us unsuccessful if we haven’t jumped on the first steps of the project we’ve been brewing. It makes us self expressed, in a quieter kind of way, and that’s ok!

It doesn’t make us an asshole to change our minds or our plans, into a lesser version of what we once dreamed for ourselves. In some cases, it makes us grounded. And the ground is where we came to know ourselves while we’re here.

A primary component of my work is with people just like me; who’ve set themselves up for extraordinary standards, not because they even wanted that sense of perfection but because someone imposed that sense of perfection on them, and knowing they can never meet those standards in all areas, shame themselves into oppressed submission.

We were raised, or rather shaped, by critics, and then, we embody our own worst critic before anyone else can beat us to the punch. The shame spirals, spiral in us, even when we no longer spiral in them.

The truth is, we’ve been screaming our whole lives on the inside, begging for someone, anyone, everyone to please; just receive us in our humanness (without requiring the image of perfection to give us permission to be worthy of existing). The other truth is; at this point, we’re uncomfortable with being ordinary.

We don’t know how to be regular. We despise regular. Regular, somehow, feels like the very thing that did us in, whilst also being the very thing we were told to undo about ourselves.

We know two ways of being; perfect or shame ridden; and my kind of people tend to hang out in shame staring googley eyed in curiosity while also in rebellious anger, at our own ideal of perfection. Now, we’re the ones who go to battle with our own humanness.

We hated the people that expected our perfection, we hated ourselves for not being perfect, but we never questioned whether or not we should accept this ideal of perfection. We adopted it, and when they stopped spoon feeding us our worship of it, we picked up the spoon ourselves.

We didn’t come to be extraordinary. We came to humble ourselves to “seeing" the extraordinary by allowing ourselves to "be" ordinary. We’re allowed to be a regular person.

We’re allowed to live a quiet life, an inconsequential life according to the outer world, a mediocre life even. We don’t have to strive, to push, to be something, or anything, just because the world entices us to be a lawn mower, in a chapter where all we’ve got in us is to be a sun basker. We’re allowed to be exactly where we are, and to accept ourselves here before all of our attempts to take life by the horns in 2020. Of course, taking life by the horns, is an option too! Maybe even the best option, but before everyone presses upon you with new you, new year talk, I hope your new year makes room for a new layer of humanness, with a layer less of perfectionism. I’m not saying don’t go big, or go home, I’m saying wherever you go, go from a sense of home, rather than on a search for it.

I’ve learned this year that just because we can, doesn’t mean that we have to.

And I just saw a little ditty to sum it all up that I’d like to pass along to you as you embark on a endings new beginning. "You’re allowed to quit. You don’t have to be fearless. You can live a small life.”

These days, I’m ok with basking in the sun while I “could” be mowing the lawn. It doesn’t make me lazy; or set back (though my analytical mind would argue this notion any waking night of my life); it makes me, nothing more than a regular human with standards less than perfect, and it makes my moments, all the more sunny, with far less sweat. My grass might grow beyond other people’s standards, but guess what else does; my heart. And to me, that’s perfect.

A small life, is an extraordinary feat, for someone who once went to war with perfection. And if this is where you are, a small life, is huge. Welcome to “enough.”

And, enough is enough, in the very best of ways.

Cheers to 2019. Cheers to 2020. Cheers to You. 💝🌎