I’ve been looking for the perfect bowl for my palm stones in for months.
Nothing I could find was right. I wasted at least two hours of my life searching for “big glass bowls”…
Today, doing my typical Full Moon deep clean, trying to keep Roman and Rocco out my way (impossible), I found it.
Well. They found it.
A big Robin’s Egg Blue Box. Tiffany Blue. In it was a bowl. The bowl I have been looking for the entire time. Big enough to hold all my palm stones and special enough to feel worthy of them.
I had all along. I just wasn’t looking.
I’ll make a metaphor out of anything; this is no different.
It never crossed my mind to look at what I already had. My instinct was to immediately start searching to buy something, bring something new into my space.
Why is that?
Why is our default to consume more before we take inventory of what we already have?
Each New Year we pile on other people’s tools. Someone else’s knowledge. Seek out wisdom outside ourselves without looking at all the tools and information already in us.
I think we amass knowledge and rarely stop to USE it.
We forget all we already know because it is shoved in unseen and unused corners of ourselves.
If I had a dollar for every time someone told me “I know what to do, I am just not doing it”
I would be loaded. That is a truth for so many of us; we know exactly what we need to do, we just aren’t doing it…
I will call myself out. I probably read 100 self-education (self-help but I hate that term so much)
books before I used the knowledge from one of them.
I had a garage full of tools I didn’t use, yet I kept pilling them up and adding more, like the 20 proverbial hammers I had already collected were not enough.
Always searching for something else instead of using what was already there.
The problem is the more we collect the more confusing things can be.
In my quest to learn and understand everything I was just muddying the water.
You can find a case for ANYTHING. Name a diet and I can find you a study that says it is amazing, and another that says it will basically kill you. Knowledge is power, but when it comes to nutrition, too much can be a distraction.
We know what to do. It is really simple stuff. Eat your veggies, get enough protein, drink your water and sleep 8 hours a night. We just don't do it,
so we purposely complicate things to create an out. That way if we “fail” it is not our fault, rather ‘the Diet” was too hard, when we know we shouldn't have done the diet in the first place.
It is a cycle of bullshit we keep ourselves stuck in.
There is so much to learn we can delude ourselves by thinking the magic is somewhere outside of us, in something new you we haven’t found yet. When really, we already have everything we need. We just aren't using that knowledge.
I wasted YEARS looking for the magic bullet (or the big glass bowl I already had) I forgot to take stock of what I already knew. It took me years to figure that out, and apparently, I still haven’t learned my lesson fully...
The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. That is most of us every January.
We roll in with this go big or go home attitude, grandiose plans of cleaning house and starting fresh, and we crash and burn by February because it is too much. It was too much last year too; we simply haven’t learned.
We accumulate, we do not use.
Setting the same goals over and over without examining what went wrong last time.
Chances are, you have all the tools you need to get yourself there, you simply are not getting clear on how to use them.
Forming new habits is not easy, but when you break down the process, it is pretty damn simple.
The unfortunate part is most of use simply do not take the time to plan out what we need to do to get from point A to B.
Start with the Goal.
Get really clear on what you want to accomplish. Do you want to lose 20 pounds, or do you want to feel better in your skin? There is a HUGE difference.
It is easy to say “I want to lose some weight”. It is not so easy to say, “I haven’t been treating my body well, and I don’t feel comfortable in it anymore, I need to change that”.
The second will get your attention and bring you so much clarity. Unfortunately, the first is where most of us stop.
The first thing that comes to mind is rarely what you really want. You want the FEELING that goal will bring you.
I want to run a marathon = I want to start and finish something that took a lot of work to prove to myself I can do hard things.
I want to deadlift my body weight = I want to show myself how strong I really am.
I want a new job = I want to experience more fulfillment.
On and on. There is always a bigger reason. We are missing out on real path to get there by not looking deeper.
Be careful of surface goals. They are the metaphorical equivalent of just the tip (of the iceberg you perv). If you only pay attention to the tip you are going to miss almost all the good stuff underneath.
Get clear and get honest. Whatever you want, ask yourself WHY and WHAT YOU ARE HOPING TO FEEL by achieving it. There is where you will find your real goal.
Then, do a major brain dump.
What are all the things you are ALREADY doing that will bring you closer to that goal.
Look in your own toolbox first! You will be surprised at all you already do that is in alignment with who you want to be.
Getting clear on behaviors that are already occurring mean you can easily amp them up to make them more effective without much effort.
We fail because we do not have a process, and sometimes even when we have a process, we make it way to hard.
Start with what you are already doing. List out all the things in alignment with your goal. Almost all the time you will see you have SO MANY tools already at your disposal.
Let yourself see how awesome you are!! It is amazing for your self-efficacy and confidence, both of which are needed to accomplish any goals. No one, ever, hated or punished themselves into something they are proud of. Get proud NOW.
As soon as you START you ARE.
Remind yourself of that, embody it, it changes how you do everything.
Then, clear out your bullshit, because like my beautiful bowl, you can have all the tools you need but you will not see them if they are surrounded by crap.
Which is why we also need to list all the things that are holding you back. Clear your metaphorical clutter out.
Write out self-sabotaging behaviors. This is things like late night scrolling. Starving yourself all day only to fall into a vat of ice cream each night. Hitting the snooze ten times instead of getting your ass out of bed.
This isn’t meant to put you in a shame spiral shit storm. It is to help you see where your energy is leaking. It should feel like cleaning out that random closet with all the shit you never use in it. It will hurt to get rid of some of these things, and it will take effort, but you know you will not miss them. They are not adding in any quality into your life.
It is easy to just close the door on these behaviors.
Not acknowledging how harmful they are is allowing us to continue to do them. Open the door on that closet and get them out.
Make room for the good by clearing out the garbage.
Then, and ONLY then, after you have taken full inventory of what you already have, can you add in more. And, almost all the time, exactly what you need is already there, you just can’t see it because it is surrounded by useless shit holding you back.
In our quest to be better we forget to recognize how amazing we already are and all we already know.
We let our bullshit cloud and hide our good shit.
Just like a pile of old comforters surrounded a Tiffany’s glass bowl….
We already have everything we need to do anything we want to do. We just have to call our kindly call ourselves out and start using it.