Tag: self-reflection

No Such Thing as Doing My Life Wrong

Even though I missed a few dance days (ok ok more like a week) during the holiday season, I’m still enjoying my daily dance experience. After missing the first day I found myself getting really down and almost punishing myself by saying ‘Oh great. Now you messed it all up. You have to start all over or you aren’t doing the 30 days right.’ Heavy.

In the spirit of self-reflection I took time to ponder my automatic thoughts and feelings and where they came from. The perfectionist in me, which is a remnant of my childhood, thinks that if I do something wrong then I’m in trouble. In physical danger even!

Not a healthy place to be mentally and can really send me into a dark spiral. So I soothed myself with the reminder that a new day will come and there’s something to learn here, plus it’s my daily dance experience so I really can’t do it wrong. This is one of the core things the whole program stresses anyway.

I can’t do it wrong. Music to my perfectionist’s ears and allows her take a step back a bit. So after that thought I felt much better and decided that even thinking about dancing was part of my experience. I can’t do it wrong. The days I missed my physical dance were not in vain. I thought about dancing and noticed how my body felt without it. Priceless.

So here I am, on day 22 of the 30 day challenge and I feel great about it. Yay! There’s something about moving my body freely to music that is indescribable. Meditation, prayer, immersion, love, beauty, joy, wonder, freedom are some words that come close but still don’t reach the true heart of the experience. I’m being drawn to share this experience with others somehow but the details haven’t appeared yet.

I wait patiently. They will show up soon. I can feel it.

Dancing & Deliberating to Define My Own Way of Living

Daily dance December is on! I actually decided to go with an app so I have some structure to my 30 day dance challenge. I could simply turn on some music and dance around but, as the NaNoWriMo challenge showed me, I do best with some external structure and enjoy the accountability.

I know this app will help support my goal in a focused well-rounded way. So instead of me just twirling and jumping around the house randomly, I get to build fitness: balance, strength, endurance, flexibility, coordination, speed, reaction time, power, and agility.

There is a self-reflection component too, which I love. The first question she asked is “Is this as good as it gets?” which came from her own experience of having Bulimia for 16 years. One day she was lying on the floor in her bathroom after throwing up blood and that question popped into her head. Ten years later she has this app and speaks at conferences and no longer suffers with an eating disorder.

Her story is heart-breaking, moving, and inspiring!

Deliberating with Myself

I considered this question for myself and my own life as it is now. At the same time I made a gratitude list to be sure I didn’t start drowning in a hole of life-is-hard-and-dark-and-crappy. Well, because I can do that sometimes.

So as a part of the reflection I wrote a list of things in my life that I feel could be better. Health – specifically increasing endurance and reducing joint pain, improving my patience, building more friendships with people IRL as in where I live now, and a few other things but you get the idea. If you do this reflection exercise too, don’t leave out the gratitude part!!

It’s easy to get overwhelmed with all the stuff we want to improve so it’s super important to look at all the things that are good or working properly. For me, a few of those things are my relationship with Mark and our best girl Tulsi, our home and thriving garden, my overall health – as in my body does it’s job well and I feel pretty good most days, the amazing super comfortable bed we have, my ability to write and create things, all the handy knowledge I have for fixing things. One I got going on the gratitude list it easily grew longer than the improvement list. Yay!

Defining My Own Way

Learning stuff about myself has proven to be one of the best uses of my time. I’ve always been more introspective even as a kid. While growing I gravitated toward things like psychology, philosophy, creative expression, and various wisdom lineages that stress the importance of understanding yourself.

The more I understand my strengths, challenges, likes, dislikes, how I learn, how I best interact with others, etc… the more able I am to live life of my own regardless of what others or the world say I should do/be. I can make my own definitions of happiness, success, joy, love, family, friendship and so on. This also lets me be a better community member since I have a good idea of the part I am best suited to play for betterment of the world and all who dwell here.

Did you reflect? Tell me something you want to improve and something that’s working well for you?