Beginning Again (and Again)…

I know it’s not easy to stay on track and live your truest most creative life, no matter how disciplined you are or if you have practised for those 10,000 hours…

Sometimes, like lately, I have found myself in a hole of my own making. This time the walls were made of self-judgement, shame and self-hatred.

This is a familiar hole and one I have been in many times.

At first, I didn’t want to write about my mostly self-made resistance or stuckness.

I didn’t want to tell you the reminders on my computer reminded me at least 50 times to back up my computer (as I ignored the reminders).

I didn’t want to tell you that when my computer died I hadn’t backed up for 206 days and spent the next 6 weeks trying to recover it.

I didn’t want to tell you about my monkey mind, the shame I felt and how I would never be good enough as I needed to continue to prove my own worth. And how could I do that when so much of my life and my identity was on that computer?

But if I didn’t write about this, I wouldn’t be able to write about beginning again and the gift of a beginner’s mind…

Beginning again is not about starting some big complex program to fix yourself (as you are not broken :)).

Beginning again, is an invitation to give yourself permission to step back in to your life and your own desires in this moment.

A lot of the resistance we feel in life happens because we haven’t given ourselves permission to live our own true life – right here, right now. This resistance comes in many forms – from fear and self-doubt, shame and unworthiness to procrastination and overwhelm.

However life doesn’t have to be this way, there is another way.

That way is to greet reality as it is in this moment and drop the stories (especially the shame stories).

So that is what I chose to do these past 6 weeks – accept the situation and begin again in this moment (and the next).

Begin to accept where I was and take the next step in front of me…

Yes it was challenging. From walking in to the Apple store and hearing they couldn’t do anything. Then hearing that a store may be able to recover the data (however it could cost nearly $1000). And then all of the phone calls to the people who ended up being able to recover about 90% of the data (minus the software programs).

Throughout the whole experience many feelings rose to the surface (that I didn’t want to feel). However, deep within I knew I had to ride the wave of those feelings and stay with them fully until they passed. And they did.

And that is what I want for you…

I want you to have to the courage to begin again in your life, so you can show up wholeheartedly for you in your life and what you really desire.

Yes, what you truly desire.

Not pointless resolutions, not what other people want for you, not your mood or surface desire to numb yourself out, or your monkey mind desire, but your deeper desire.

I came across this story Empty your Cup, which reminded me of these past six weeks and why I will continue to practice beginning again when my own resistance arises –

A university professor went to visit a famous Zen master. While the master quietly served tea, the professor talked about Zen. The master poured the visitor’s cup to the brim, and then kept pouring. The professor watched the overflowing cup until he could no longer restrain himself. “It’s overfull! No more will go in!” the professor blurted. “You are like this cup,” the master replied, “How can I show you Zen unless you first empty your cup.”

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