Day one
Really enjoyed this. I made a lot of notes! Due to the timing the content was released I have gone through it in the evening, but looking forward to building this into a morning routine from tomorrow.
Something that really stood out to me in the talk and meditation was how easy it is to get lost in thought, to be caught up in anxious reactivity as we race through the day.
How we live today is how we live our life
What really matters? Kindness and compassion require presence, to be able to take a pause and break free from self-centred or fear based responses to the situations we find ourselves in.
The poem by Martha Postelwaite, Clearing, is beautiful and really resonates with me and the path I’ve been trying to take over the last year or so. The reminder that it’s ok to just wait for things to become clearer.
I related to a few things from Maria Shriver’s talk, particularly being so busy going out and doing and later realising that this can only take you so far. The idea of self-compassion is not something I was taught as a child (I imagine it’s the same for a lot of people) and it’s something I’ve come to through the recovery community.
Believing or trusting that ‘I am enough’ is something I struggle with. Feelings of unworthiness have led me to do a big reassessment of my life and commitments. Trying to create my own clearing. Through the process of letting go, giving myself the time and space to just be, I am starting to appreciate the things I have. Both the things I have to be grateful for and what I have to offer.
I find that self-doubt and self-criticism come up most when I think about what I ‘should’ be doing - almost always self-imposed! Something that jumped out at me when listening to the talk was how much of this can be based in comparison to others. It’s an angle I’ve not really considered before.
I am trying to work on letting go of expectations and coming back to what really matters. Does it help cultivate light and laughter in my life? Does it stop me sharing that with others? Bringing it back to the people are here now, not some imagined audience or in some hypothetical future.