Small lessons

Just as I wrote in my last entry, the difficulty I have in taking initiative (in combination with being incredible talented at procrastinating), leaves me in desperate need of finding ways to get myself going. Yesterday, for example, I had rolled out my mat to do a 90-minute "flow" practice, yet I found myself, or rather my-ego-self, doing the old put-it-off-two-step: Aren't you too tired today? You don't want to overdo it. You know you're hormonal, and it's already late; you could easily do it tomorrow instead... Wouldn't that be better???

I'm so sick of arguing with myself. So instead I offered a compromise: Why don't you at least TRY doing some yoga and see how it goes? Not even my stubborn ego could argue with that! So I started, and it went spendidly. For once, it felt good the entire time; I felt energized. Before I knew it, 90 minutes had passed. Perhaps someday my intellect will understand that my doing yoga is hardly a chore and that it gives more than it takes.

The fact that I managed to persuade myself so easily to do the right thing has largely in part to do with a blog I just recently started following: The Happiness Project. My sister had told me about it, and immediately I knew that this was what I needed. It gives me practical how-to tips so that I learn how to tackle my demons, thereby helping become the person I want to be.

Take this entry where the message was in fact the point of making it easy to do the right thing. By giving words to not only solutions, but rather to the small patterns that we lock ourselves in like hamster wheels, you know, things that drain of us energy without getting us anywhere, suddenly my eyes are at least a tad bit more opened. I feel as though I'm being offered keys to unlock the door to a mind shift.

As I was driving through the farm landscape of Southern Sweden this week, everywhere I looked there were acres of blooming raps, blossoming fruit trees, and scores of birches with their baby, lightgreen leaves. It was breathtaking. Earlier years, the taking of my breath was more like a tightening of my chest, as I knew that this was only temporary, that winter would eventually take it all away, how could I make this moment last even longer? So basically, I tainted the experience by fretting over the inevitablility of change. This year, I saw the same spectacular beauty and thought to myself, "I'm so happy to be a part of this moment."

And that's exactly what I felt, if only for a brief few seconds: Happiness.