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When I was a kid, I thought I was good at meditating because I could do the pose well. You know the one I'm talking about. Both feet, sunny side up on your knees, middle finger and thumb touching. "THE" pose.
Now, aside from the fact that clearly nine-year-old-me had no idea what meditation was or how it worked, I remembered this the other day while meditating very much not in that pose and thinking about the rules.
Specifically, the rules we create for what success looks like.
My adorable hypermobile little baby self saw the external signs of success - what meditation looked like to everyone else - and decided that was the whole thing. That's all there was to it. You just had to be able to sit like the best of them, and you'd get all the benefits.
Which also meant if you could not sit like that, you could not meditate.
You would not see the benefits.
And I realized, we do this to ourselves all the dang time.
We put all of these rules in place about what we should or are supposed to be doing. We focus on the pose and not the peace.
We create arbitrary external signs of success, and if we don't meet those signs, we don't allow ourselves to see the benefits. Or sometimes even do the thing.
We also create barriers to success this way.
Can't podcast without an intro and a good editor.
Can't do yoga without the right clothes on.
One of my most common false rules is that I have to take the dog with me if I'm going to go for a walk.
Nevermind that the thought of taking my unruly raggamuffin around the block to sniff every conceivable thing to ensure it won't jump scare him (he has anxiety) while he dodges back and forth like the ball in a pro-level table tennis match makes me absolutely not want to go for a walk.
I must take him, or he'll be sad.
Therefore, if I don't want to deal with him, I can't go for a walk.
Guess how much I walk?
You can be pretty sure that you're holding yourself to an artificial rule every time you say a sentence with this general structure:
I can't X until / before / without / instead of Y.
I can't go for a walk without the dog.
I can't eat dinner until I finish work.
I can't stop working before I do this last task.
I can't walk instead of running today.
Yeah. Now you're thinking, I know I've thought those things before but I have no idea when.
Well, I have good news and bad news.
- The bad news is, you've definitely thought those things today. Like, maybe even as you clicked over to this.
- The good news is, there's a way to start resolving this.
The first step, before you start breaking all the rules, is to figure out what the rules are.
So I want you to observe. Throughout the days ahead, work on noticing when you say the words "until", "before", "without", or "instead". No judgment, just noticing. Maybe even write them down. Document the rules.
Step two is to analyze.
Are any of these rules helpful? Are they actually good rules, like "I can't drink an open glass of water until I sit up"? Or are they arbitrary and unhelpful, like "I can't read a book in the living room instead of my reading chair, because that's not where I read books"?
Step THREE is to break the rules.
And be absurd with it, if you can.
I've been riding my Peloton in whatever I'm wearing. I keep a pair of socks with my shoes and just. Hop on, even if I forgot my workout gear, and read while doing an easy ride if I don't feel like getting my clothes sweaty.
I meditated in plank position. Face down on the floor. For funsies.
I ate dessert first.
Whatever rules I had made for myself, I violated them in the most absurd ways possible to show myself that the rules really were arbitrary. To give me PROOF that I could succeed even if it didn't look like the performance of success.
And you know what?
It took away all of my excuses. Now I have my workout gear ready more often because I know I'm just going to get my tee shirt sweaty anyway, because I'm working out no matter what I'm wearing, so I wear it more and work out more.
It sounds simple, and that's because it IS simple, if you just get absurd.
Like, think of how John Cleese would break your rule for an episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus. And do that.
Absurd.
What rules are you giving yourself? Share with me in an email, or in the comments on the video. Doubly so if you broke the rules in an absurd way. I want to hear about all the wacky things you're up to!
- Cheryl
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