Team, you are the boss of you, we all know that.
But we also know that despite being in charge of ourselves, we sometimes feel a need for a kind of ‘permission’ on things.
You know the kind of thing I mean.
You’re an adult and on the one hand you obviously get to make your own decisions and choices but, on the other hand, that evil word ‘should’ lurks around and makes you feel like you have even more obligations and responsibilities than you do.
And sometimes when we get caught up in ‘should’ it helps to get an outside perspective, to get ‘permission’ to go against the feeling of ‘should’.
We both know that you are actually giving yourself permission at that point but it usually feels like the permission came from the other person.
So, Team, today I am offering you permission to change your mind.
You’ve been working toward your goals, your habits, your plans for about three weeks now.
You have a lot of information about what you like, what you dislike, what’s easy, what’s hard, and about things you’d like to change.
And you know that you don’t have to be super-excited about your practice every single time and that finding it challenging doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it. And that it’s ok to do things the easiest way possible – especially when you are just starting to build your habit.
But right now, 21 days into the new year, taking everything into account, you might be realizing that the goal you set*, the habit you are trying to build, is just not all that interesting to you after all.
Maybe you have been puttering away at your habit-building, doing what you can, trying to build momentum, and maybe even finding some success but you are discovering that you don’t actually care about doing the things that will lead to that goal.
If this is happening for you, let me remind you:
YOU CAN CHANGE YOUR MIND.
No matter how thoroughly you broadcast your plans.
No matter how much this goal seemed like a good idea at first.
No matter how much work you have put into it so far.
You can change your mind about the specifics of your goal, about how you will work toward that goal, when you will work toward it, about any aspect of your plan, up to and including abandoning the goal entirely.
You know the difference between ‘bored with this right now’ and ‘this is not interesting or useful to me after all.’
You don’t have to keep going with this goal or with these specific tasks just because you started them.
So, Team, if you are feeling overall irritated or uninspired or indifferent about the goal or tasks that seemed so interesting or important a few weeks ago, feel free to change your mind, change your goal, change your tasks.
Your goals are about what you want, about expanding your life, they aren’t about proving you can do this specific thing.
And here’s your gold star for your efforts today, no matter what those efforts include.
Be kind you yourself, Team!
*This post is mostly about goals that we have chosen for ourselves, not about practices that our bodies or our doctors have described for us. With prescribed practices, we are invested in the outcome even if we aren’t interested in the tasks involved.