Look Up, Dear Friend
Have you heard this lately? You can do it...
Have you said it to yourself lately? Hrm...
No?
Well, if you have been a little critical of yourself lately, let me tell you, it needn't be so.
I know I've been hard on myself quite a bit, and all that negativity certainly didn't help me reach further as I was falling short.
So why do it?
Why push down what so earnestly wants to rise up?
Why quell what wants to grow and embrace the sun?
As creatives, it certainly doesn't make us feel better to miss the mark. It's sometimes the only thing we truly want, is to finish that story because it resonates so deeply within us.
So why work so hard to criticize it? To stall? To talk ourselves out of it?
It might not be that you want to, but that you simply don't know any other way.
Could there be a voice from your past that ingrained itself inside your head? Inside your way of thinking?
A voice telling you it was never going to be good enough?
Those are sometimes the ancient forces that propel us into self-defeating behaviors we're not always consciously aware of.
Yet, snagging onto those moments and being fully objective about what we are doing to ourselves is sometimes the biggest, most important life changing practice we can develop.
Hearing yourself put yourself down and recognizing what you're doing can be a first step in turning an inner Resistance into an inner Reservoir.
Sometimes, we so desperately search outside ourselves for reservoirs to water us and help us over our negativity, while we are inwardly feeding a fire that never lets the seeds inside of us truly grow.
Look up, dear friend.
Feel an inner you looking down and watering you.
Search for a bit of acceptance and gentleness that can come only from yourself.
Even if just to accept your less than perfect nose. Or your less than perfect poem. Or an unfinished project you have been avoiding...
You are a perfect you right now.
And your work in progress is perfect as it is right now.
Not to say it won't continue to get better in time as you refine it and polish it.
It will.
But right now, just for today, it is ok that it is raw.
Unfinished.
It is acceptable that you are still working on it, still searching for the right words, the right colors...truly. It IS okay.