Stop micromanaging your life
Bask in the process
Friends! Come hang ::
👉🏽 June writing workshop is coming up! Join me on June 27th, from 12pm - 2pm PST. This month’s theme is “Beginner’s Mind.” Register here.
👉🏽 Next Sober from Bullshit Recovery Club is June 21st. It’s our club’s *3 year* anniversary! And the day after solstice! Register here.
Questions? Just ask. I’m here and I’d love to hear from you.
Give me the commitment of a Sunday morning sidewalk evangelist calling out La Gloria de Dios whether the nearby neighbors—one of whom may have carved out these exact hours to write—appreciate it or not. Grant me faith that has me show up in my best suit trailing a mini amp and a microphone through which I broadcast The Truth with so much urgency that I sound like an auctioneer. Allow me the humility that has me cede the street corner stage to other disciples who might be just as full of spirit but far less charismatic so that I might catch my breath. Fill me with the type of purpose and meaning that energizes my voice all day and allows me to sleep like the dead every night. Let me wake up every morning knowing exactly what I am here to do; let me go out and do it.
Contort me into whatever shape is required for me to view the world through a lens that will reveal to me what I long for most of all: certainty.
*
The thing that happens when you micromanage your life is that you start to miss your actual life. Your vision narrows, your body clenches, and anything outside of The Plan™ activates your whole nervous system. You miss signs, symbols, signals, serendipity, spontaneity. You gather evidence to reinforce everything you already know. Your beliefs calcify and what becomes available is the opposite of possibility.
You recede further and further into your brain. You replay past mistakes, obsessing over specific do-over scenarios that if granted—if only!—might finally redeem you. You fantasize about all the things you’re missing—people, jobs, ideas, careers, clothes, account balances, accolades—that you’re certain if you had would let you finally be happy. You grind over every possible outcome, behaving as if future tripping will protect you from the present moment.
One morning (ok, many mornings, over and over, over a long period of time) in the shower you are scrubbing your face a little too vigorously and the lightbulb goes off in your brain, illuminating everything: What is the point of doing all this self work, you wonder, if my lizard brain still has me by the tail?
Then comes the weird part: the part where you have to figure out how to change your brain. The part where you have to figure out how to cede control of your life, so that you might receive it instead.
*
Except, no, that’s not quite right. “Figuring out” is the brain again. I’m so good at “figuring out.” I’m so tired of “figuring out.”
My energy healer (yep) tells me I need more time in quiet contemplation. She tells me I need to fortify myself from the inside. She tells me to slow down and listen. She tells me that how I practice caring for my animal body is the way I show myself and the world that I matter.
Our minds get us far. But they also keep us stuck. The mindfuck is that in order to change, we often have to do the opposite of what every nerve, impulse, tendency, instinct, pattern, habit would have us do. This requires a level of slowness and attention that takes so much time to develop. It requires discomfort. But aren’t we already uncomfortable?
I am practicing caring for my animal body. Despite over a decade teaching yoga, a lifetime of dance and years of lifting weights, as I wade into the deeper blue I am waking up to a lizard brain that is so much more stubborn than I thought. Because why else is it so hard to do the simple things that I know will make *the* difference?
I’m practicing a different approach, that doesn’t include pushing, or forcing, or punishing. What this requires is listening.
*
When I am able to listen through the noise, it’s clear that my prayer was misdirected. If I desire a thing I can never have, it makes sense that satisfaction and contentment will be ever out of reach.
There is nothing wrong with my longing for certainty; indeed, this longing is part of my DNA, is part of what makes me human, is part of what has enabled me to exist. And. Certainty is a myth (*2020 enters the chat*). I know this. I know you know this. I know you too are longing to tend to your animal body, to shut down the screens and rest your eyes, to spend time focusing on your breath, to eat and drink without rushing, to get sufficient rest, to fortify yourself so that you can stand, rooted in life, no matter how, uh, life-y it gets.
I still want the commitment, faith, and humility, the sense of purpose and the life of meaning, all those qualities that I project onto the sidewalk evangelist. But let me fortify these qualities not so I can hurry up and know, but so that I might bask in the process. Let me be free from my obsession with figuring out. Let me loosen my jaw, smooth out my forehead, relax my shoulders. Let me unspool from the contortions of my past. Let me imagine into what it might be like on the other side of control, that place where we are forgiven, where joy and delight are just as present as everything else—what a spectacle, so unexpected—and we are radiant and at ease, more wild than ever, spines straight, skin soft, and oh, so this is it, this is what it looks like, this is everything we ever wanted.
SELF MADE is a newsletter for creative types with a focus on recovery, creativity and community. It's written by me, Dani, a writer, facilitator, and recovery advocate in San Francisco, CA.
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