At my retreat, we had several evenings of authentic relating exercises. The day after the trip, we were broken into groups of two for one of the exercises. We took turns repeatedly asking the other person, “What is holding you back?”
“Procrastination.”
“What is holding you back?”
“My impossibly high standards for myself.”
“What is holding you back?”
“Fear.”
“What is holding you back?”
“Worry that I’ll disappoint my parents/partner/kids.”
Etc., etc.
The thing about this line of questioning is that if you go deep enough, you start to realize most of the things that are holding you back are in your control.
Like I mentioned in this post, I often work a night shift just before we leave for our yearly Tobago trip. This time around, I scheduled myself off that weekend, so I tried something else instead. Another gong bath. This time, I went by myself.
Why are you telling me about another gong bath? You could rightly ask. After all, I’ve been to two already, and I’ve written about both. I think the reason why I want to write about this one, too, is that they’re all different.
It feels amazing when you have energy and you’re getting a ton of stuff crossed off your to-do list, doesn’t it? If it were easier to keep a balanced perspective, those times would probably keep you going during the times when making even simple decisions felt exhausting and you were staring down your third day of laying on the sofa all afternoon because you just couldn’t get up.
Maybe that’s just me.
My mom taught me a way of thinking about purchases when I was a kid. I think it was part of my Real Life Math homeschool learning. She said that when you buy something, you can divide the price by the number of times you use it to figure out how much it costs per use.
Of course, more expensive items or seasonal items that only get pulled out at certain times of the year take longer to bring the per-use cost down.
In 2014, I climbed Mt. Hood in Oregon with my dad and my sibs. It was in celebration of my dad’s 60th birthday.
It was the most terrifying thing I’ve ever done. Despite it being June, an icy wind was blowing when we started the climb in the middle of the night. The tiny crystals were flying in our faces, and I felt like an ant clinging to the surface of the impossibly huge face of the mountain. Our crampons kept us from slipping off the slick surface of the icy snow, but it felt like we could fly off the slope with next gust of wind.
The fancy hiking boots and ski-grade mittens I’d purchased for the climb kept me warm and dry. When I came back to New York, I didn’t need them anymore. While it was winter up on the mountain, it was spring back home.
When I was a between 11 and 13, I had a few black t-shirts and a pair of black jeans.
Around that time, there was someone in my community who was too old to be attracted to me. It was someone who went to my church, who I saw regularly and couldn’t get away from. He would stand near me at during youth group or at the back of church after the service, and quietly say things to me. One day, he told me I looked good in black.
So I stopped wearing it.
