Accomplished Blessings + Doing the Being
I’m back in New York after a week spent in Michigan.
It flew by. I was busy. There wasn’t much time for writing which means there wasn’t much time for reflection. However, the conversations had proved to be fruitful. They provided me things to think about. These thoughts are typed out in my iPhone Notes under the folder “to write about”. I’ll get to them but I’d like to start with this one.
In recent posts on instagram I’ve written a lot about “getting there”. Most of us are living in a world of goal-setting and execution. Why? Because we believe that if we carve out a clear path to “success”, and if we follow it through to the end by grinding the life out of it and at times forcing it, we will reach a space of happiness and fulfillment. Yes, that very same space that many “successful” people IN THE UNKNOWN are looking to fill as they are in perpetual doubt they’ll ever find “it”. We are a society that is built on doing. If we’re not doing it means we are not living.
This is dangerous because it means that many of us miss out on all the things occurring while we’re looking ahead at the place we call “getting there”. Simply said: we are not present. Presence, in most cases, is considered not doing much of anything, therefore we skip over it because we believe we are meant to be doing more. However, presence is the very thing that we should consider focusing/doing more of if we are hoping to feel some sort of fulfillment. It is the only thing guaranteed because it is currently happening. Perhaps if we trick our minds into thinking that being is doing, then being present becomes an act of doing. You see?
Example.
Right now. You are reading me. Your ability to open up this email on your device by clicking on a rounded-square button, using your thumb to glide across the screen as you use your eyes to slowly scan the words I’ve written, then tucking away your forming thoughts into your brain, is an act of being present. How? Because you have made a choice to do what is occurring in the present moment and then are actively being present with it while you are doing. Make sense? The two are not mutually exclusive. Being can be Doing. Doing can be Being. When we frame things in this way, we can start to accumulate our accomplished blessings. Keep reading.
In last week’s Men In The Unknown Detroit,
we had an interesting conversation about Confidence in Self. Our ability to give advice and provide leadership, mentorship, guidance, and confidence to others is infinitely better than our ability to do all of the same in our own lives. There was conversation about “not being good enough” and “imposter syndrome”. In my mind it is lack of TRUST in self. The lack of trust in self tunnel-visions us into a place where we believe that most of the decisions we make are wrong. If most of the decisions we make are wrong then it means that most of our accomplishments are undeserved, accomplished by happenstance, and/or occurred because of someone else’s suggestion + guidance.
I brought up the question of how do we find Confidence in Self? There was some chatter but we got nowhere. Then I suggested for us to recount some of our accomplishments.
I believe that in writing down the things that we can prove to be true - especially the things that wehave created in our lives - once seen visually on paper, we become more willing to accept the accomplishments as tangible examples vs. make-belief stories that we would otherwise manipulate and re-write, often times giving credit to others vs. us.
(if you still have a hard time seeing you in these accomplishments, unpack them even more by writing down the steps you took to “get there”)
Someone then said, “accomplishment feels really boastful”. Then another said, “what if you just looked at them as blessings for now?”
The switch was immediate. All of a sudden there was a big sigh of relief. Separating the two (i did this vs. i am grateful for this) allowed this person to see the exact same accomplishment from a different point of view. The goal of course is to get to a point where we can humbly say “i did this” but when one is lacking in Confidence there is little opportunity to believe that they can actually do something, let alone be someone. So seeing an accomplishment as a blessing allows us to build on the empty space where Confidence should stand.
I then said, “let’s verbally list out some of our accomplished blessings”. We went around the room.
These are mine:
this week I guided 5 in the unknown workshops. based on my 17 months in recovery, i never, in my wildest dreams, thought I would be able to energetically withstand that much work without getting ill. the fact that i am sitting here unfazed is a miracle. really.
this week I went to see my therapist. i hadn’t seen her in 6 months. upon arriving into her room, I saw for the first time, her face, her body, her chairs, her desk, her books, the walls, the artwork, the colors, CLEARLY. I had no idea that all previous visits my vision had been completely blurry due to my body’s lagging in recovery in comparison to my mind’s decision to step into it. i thought both 1) i am a crazy person for pushing myself to work when i was still ill, and 2) thank god! this recovery thing is working!!
this week, after 4 weeks of Discomfort I FINALLY recognized the message behind it (i will be writing about this later). why do i add this in here? because I’m IMPATIENT AF. I need to know now and not a second later and the lack of clarity was driving me insane which only added fuel to the fire and probably extended the discomfort until the point of Surrender, which as soon as I did, things became remarkably clear, and really, really still. And now i’m making the next step (again, more on this later).
