Personify
Yesterday when I woke up in the morning, I had a heavy pressure on my chest. It was an overwhelming feeling of frustration. I haven't been able to write and its prompting a visceral response. Over the last few months, I've become less and less tolerant of this feeling inside me. Frustrations with myself or others for that matter. Not a great trait, but for the purpose inside me, it is becoming a valuable tell for personal direction.
I set a goal to write daily for 30 days, then back off and set a regular writing schedule. The fact is, I have a life that still demands my same attention, and rightly so. When I wasn't able to meet the expectation I set for myself (writing) the feeling quickly went from frustration, to anger, to dispar, to grieving another lost dream. That happened over the course of an hour. That’s how quickly the feelings and the peanut gallery of self criticism can derail your potential progress, or at least that's how quickly mine worked.
I've been following a Youtuber "struthless". He is an illustrator and posts a lot about staying the course and the processes he's done to help himself overcome a lot of the negative self-talk and sabotages. One of the exercises he shows is giving each of your negative self-criticisms a persona. He fully illustrated them and made them a tangible visual. And in that way he could acknowledge they're there, but referenced as needed & healthy.
I tried this, but found myself over-complicating it and falling into "this is way too big of a hole for me". I need to make this even more simple. I started writing down a dialogue with each of the feelings that popped up. Frustrations, fears, anxiety, overwhelm, anger, grief, all of these things.
What I discovered is, each of them spoke from a different part of me. Some from my heart, some from my head, and some from my body.
My heart was screaming - I am hurting. My mind was sending out an alert - overwhelm...overwhelm. And my body was sending signals to preserve and protect.
The dialogue went like this: Heart- “I’m dying inside please listen to me” Mind - “ I don’t have time for this, must figure out stuff.” Body - “what can I do to be safe?”
In essence, my mind, body and heart were in a conflict of interest. My heart wanted to be heard. My mind had logged from experience that following your dreams doesn't work. And my body was responding to signals of stress.
So, how do you win your own heart? What happens when you continually break it? How do you convince your brain to have a little faith and patience? And how do you let your body know it’s safe to give its energy?
If you’ve been running a long time in this mode of conflict. It’s hard to see it's even happening. I don’t think there’s any straight-forward answer. For me, I see this as a friendship/relationship, or more accurately - a long-term partnership. I think of It as a council of three. They aren’t always going to agree. The Mind is really good at pointing out all of the holes in the plan and possible down-falls, The Heart knows no limits. And the Body is the under-compensated worker who needs to be provided for.
Of course the concept of “Mind, Body and Heart Connection” is not new. But somehow, visualizing it as a partnership, a council, with each having a voice and equal say, has helped me understand this idea as less of a “concept” and more of a relatable function of my life that I can have a dialogue with.
Having regular “meetings'', where concerns are heard and needs are balanced, is helping me to stay the course, and develop a functional team for producing. I see this as - when it comes to your Mind, Heart & Body, gaining trust and commitment is no different than any other relationship you value. We need to make time for them and listen and value their presence.
I am keeping my practice writing this blog, but the demand to produce daily is going to be balanced with what I can actually accomplish with the rest of my life. This understanding has helped me ease some anxiety, relieve stress in my body and reassure my heart that I haven't given up.