The Subtleties of Shifts

(Originally published in December of last year, this post still makes more sense than not. Shift is perpetual and always in need of being actually seen.)

Life’s best asset and worst downfall is that it takes its sweet time. That it is relentless in its expansive pardoning of our mistakes. Every day is a new day to start over seems like too much wiggle room for screw ups. But it also means that the daily monotony can lead to imperceptible shifts. Stuff that would pass you by unless you were wise enough to go looking for it. Or someone else pointed it out to you.

Developing your mindfulness is a way of gaining another eye on your life and yourself. Being able to hold on for a beat more and instead of launching into reaction, to take a look at yourself and what you are about to do and perhaps choose something else. This is shift.

And then there’s just the blindness we end up with when we’ve got our eye so hard on a prize that we truly want but don’t believe we will ever have. And we totally disregard all the progress that we have made because winning means a goal met and not the stuff in between. All or nothing thinking plagues me still.

Of recent, my computer had a behavior problem after its operating system got updated. And for a week now, I just assumed it ate my sticky notes, the little pretend post it notes on my desktop that hold some of the profound thoughts and understandings I have come across of recent. And now that they’ve been suddenly returned to my computer, I clearly see a shift that happened for me in the past six months.

And that shift was about valuing myself.

Here’s most of the quotes on my sticky notes.

I love and accept myself

I respect and honor myself

I can achieve anything I desire

I believe in myself

I deserve to be loved and respected by those around me

Even knowing that

you have the power

to change things

changes things. -Me-

Your task is not to seek for love,

but merely to seek and find

all the barriers within yourself

that you have built against it.

~ Rumi

“You will be your own destiny and your own reason why.” -Me-

“There are days I drop words of comfort on myself like falling leaves and remember that it is enough to be taken care of by myself.” ~ Brian Andreas

“Fear is the cheapest room in the house. I would like to see you living in better conditions.” — Hafez–

I am struck by this shift in the value of myself. Was this what I was working on for all this time? Yes. Did I recognize how much I had begun to truly own that shift? No. The daily doing and expectations that we all subject ourselves to can truly bury the important stuff. If we aren’t giving ourselves the credit for the work we’re doing, it’ll feel like we’re standing still. If we keep raising the bar, we never see how much we’ve risen to meet it.

We are all moving, maybe at a slug’s pace, but moving all the same if we are doing the work we need to do to make this happen. The change in perceptions and the feelings we experience will take as long as they take to deliver us there. But in the end, we will arrive and, if our eyes are open, we’ll see we have endured the most amazing slow ride to get there.

Want to read more about Shifts?

Craving the Shift

The Shift : My Decision to Not Be Sucky

Awaiting the Shift from If to When

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