Day 10: Begin
This goes back to yesterday’s post and the community model of truth: I never want you to believe that I have this “all figured out.”
In fact, I know that my capacity to create and teach this material comes from my own embodied wisdom. And embodied just means that it’s a part of the way I move through this world. And wisdom just equals information + lived experience. And lived experience just means — I’ve made a lot of mistakes and had a lot of failed attempts at all this stuff along the way. 😆 And guess what? I probably will again.
I truthfully spent the better part of my 20s trying to figure out how to actually take care of myself in a sustainable and daily way.
It went a lot like this: evenings spent abandoning myself (the wrong guys! drinking too much! disordered eating! overworking! trying to prove to everyone that I was good enough! debilitating stress & burnout!) and mornings filled with the singular combination of shame mixed with hopefulness: “today is the day — I swear it! — where I turn this all around.”
And of course, it was never that day, nor do real shifts & lasting transformation take a day (or even … a year! Sorry, not sorry!)
The truth is we do a thing until we don’t. And things take the time they take.
And also the truth: what we do on the day to day matters most. (Not what we do once in awhile).
It’s Annie Dillard, and I’ll share her words again and again and again and again:
“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.”
It’s the opposite of a sexy promise & I want to keep it real.
So here it is: as we move through this work together —
You may have huge lightbulb moments, you may experience moments of grace & peace & rest & a deep exhale. But mostly, you’ll still be you. If you stick with this work, then one day, a few years from now, you’ll look back and be amazed at how much different things are. But it happens bit by bit (& the bits are so tiny & still worth it!). So just keep showing up & doing the work.
It’s the nature of practice: sacred, solo, single-tasking time that you set aside everyday for yourself to come back to yourself. By definition, you’ve got to practice everyday! None of us is ever “done” with practice.
We never really… arrive. Which is kind of terrifying and liberating at the same time, right?
The potential toolbox of practice is vast: yoga, meditation, breathing exercises, journaling, walking, dancing, drawing, painting, running, you name it.
And there’s a special combo that works for each of us. 40 Early Mornings is just ONE blueprint (my blueprint!).
Another important characteristic of practice is that it’s self-led, self-directed, & self-managed (except in 40 EM, where you now have the bowling lane bumpers of daily instruction, accountability, and inspiration).
In practice, you learn to become your own best guide & teacher. (So I effectively put myself out of a job by the time you’re done with 40 EM! 🤣)
And since I’ve been conditioned to be an “all or nothing” good girl, my first few years at figuring out a daily practice for myself followed the same shame / hopefulness curve I laid out earlier: every night I’d go to bed vowing to get up at 4 or 5am (which I had never been doing previously with any regularity) & do an hourlong self-led yoga practice, 20 minutes of meditation, gratitude journaling, drink only lemon water & green juice, light all the candles on my altar, basically become a totally different person, then dry brush etc etc etc.
Needless to say, I’d be all in for a day or two, then all out after that.
This cycle went on for YEARS.
Then, about 8 years ago, when I was pregnant with my first kid, I finallllly unlocked the secret to a daily practice, which has become what I offer in 40 Early Mornings and, of course, my own daily practice.
Here is the secret:
I use the exact same tools from my practice tool kit everyday. No dabbling in the trendy self-care thing of the moment, just the same thing. Every damn day .. for nearly a decade now. And it’s gotta be 30 minutes or less. And I gotta fit it in at a juncture that makes sense in my morning.
I now call this “short-form” practice. It’s my daily bread & butter. What I need to get myself right & get on with the day. And what I teach you here in 40!
I let the other tools that I love come into the mix when I can make more time, and I call that “long-form practice.” (I realize I have to work on these names 😭)
We’ll talk more about long-form practice over these 40 days but the good news: you’re already doing that too! This whole 40 Early Mornings container IS long-form practice.
So there you have it, the 3 types of practice that make up the tapestry of 40 EM:
daily short-form (these emails + meditation + reflection)
the moment-to-moment-in-the-Real-Life-WILD-of -your-life practice (see Day 7 & more to come on that ;))
and long-form practice, which is where you’ll get to play more and more as the weeks go on.
As long as I’m practicing one of these types of practice each day (and sometimes it’s just the moment-to-moment kind!), I’m still in the flow. It still counts. I’m still doing it! AND SO ARE YOU!
Keeping it real & cheering you & practicing right alongside you,
Cath
Meditation: We’ll keep going with the body-based practice this week. Build this muscle memory for presence in your body, one day, one breath at a time.
For Reflection: What’s your relationship with that “all-or-nothing” approach? Does it ring a bell? Do you beat yourself up if something you do is not hard enough or long enough or perfect enough? What else comes up for you here? Bonus if you leave a comment below, cause trust me: none of us is alone in this ;)