This blog has been in existence since 2020 and a lot has happened since then. A lot has happened for me personally and for all of us as a country and even as global citizens. But then, each person in each time period has faced trials and challenges and scary uncertainties.
What remains unchanged is our ability to control our own minds. What else remains unchanged is how difficult this simple task can be to execute.
This task of controlling my mind has felt especially difficult for me in the past six months. I don’t know why the intensity has kicked up, but it has. I feel more irritable, more frustrated, more angry, and more depressed than usual. I’ve gained weight. I don’t sleep well. I lose my temper a lot.
Every day I tell myself that I am going to be better today, that I am going to finally get a handle on the areas in which my life is tail-spinning. I turn to books as often as I can, reading snippets in between changing diapers and running after toddlers who create chaos everywhere they go. I read Ryan Holiday as he talks about the ancient Stoics and how they spent so much of their energy striving to live a life of simplicity and courage and discipline. I read James Clear as he talk about how to form habits that will improve our lives. I read Mel Robbins as she talks about how to move past the point of simply wanting motivation and actually taking action in the difficult moments. I read Steven Pressfield as he talks about the many ways Resistance takes form in our lives. I read Benjamin Hardy as he talks about imagining our future self and acting in ways that will help us become that person.
And yet.
And yet, some days, many days, I feel no closer to being the person I want to be. I feel no closer to living courageously or forming good habits or acting beyond my own sporadic motivation or fighting the Resistance in my life.
Many days, I lose my temper and I feel drained and I wish for more time to myself. Many days I eat chocolate when I should eat salad. Many evenings I watch Netflix when I should be writing. Many days I express impatience when I should take an extra breath and smile.
Still, the fact remains that I have a choice. And the more I keep that reality in the forefront of my mind, the more I focus on that ability to chose, the more I hope to make the good choices. Even though many days it doesn’t feel like I am making progress, surrounding myself with great thinkers and making the effort to do even a little bit to strive toward my better self is a step. A tiny little step that will move me in the right direction instead of in the wrong one.
One other fact that remains (one that I often wish were not true, and perhaps didn’t used to believe) is that pushing through difficult moments will always be hard. For the rest of my life, for the rest of your life, making the better choice, the right choice, will be harder than making the easy choice. Striving for better will always be hard. It is supposed to be hard. When I was young, I don’t think I understood that concept. I thought you took those three weeks or five weeks to build a new habit and boom, you were done. Easy pease. The thing is, even if you master one habit, one dietary change, one art, there will be others. There will always be another one to work on and get better at and master. There will always be struggle in life and it is meant to be that way.
The key is to remember that our greatest strength is our ability to choose how we will show up to the struggle.
