Hey Team,
Yesterday, in Getting to the Heart of Things (Part 1), I was reminding you that you don’t always need to know all of your whys in order to proceed with practices that will expand and enhance your life.
Today, let’s consider the other side of Getting to the Heart of things, for those of us who find it helpful to look at our whys.
Figuring out what is at the heart of a practice is very useful for many of us and can help create focus, create flexibility, and can motivate us to return to our practices even when we are facing challenges.
As I mentioned yesterday, as a coach I often advise writers who feel stuck to look for ‘the heart’ of their stories – the most important idea they want to share – and help them to use that heart to make decisions about the piece they are working on.
And I think this can be a valuable concept in wellness practices, too.
While you don’t have to know the heart of your practice in order to proceed, some people find it helpful to figure it out, to keep it in mind, and to use it for planning and decision-making.*
Sometimes the heart of your practice is obvious – you want to train for a specific event, you want to rest to meditate for 10 minutes a day, you want to reflect on your life, you want to be able to do a specific yoga pose.
Other times, though, you start with one of those kinds of statements as your why, your heart, and you discover that there is something else underneath.
Perhaps under your desire to train for a race, you want to feel fast.
Maybe your plan to meditate for 10 minutes a day is actually about wanting to feel calmer overall.
Perhaps your idea to reflect on your life is part of a need to identify and change patterns in your thinking.
Maybe your yoga-related goal is part of a bigger desire to move with more ease and the pose is a symbol of that rather than an end point.
Why does this all matter?
Because if you need your why in order to motivate yourself to continue through challenges then knowing the heart of your practice will give you more fuel for the process AND it will let you be kinder to yourself while you forge ahead.
To carry on with one of the examples above, imagine that you started the year with a plan to meditate for 10 minutes a day because you heard meditation is good for you.
So, you do that for a while, motivated by the fact that you want to try something that is good for you – this is your initial why carrying you along.
But you find yourself wavering a bit on a hectic day, wondering if it actually be better for you to finish that email instead of sitting in meditation but remembering that you generally feel calmer after your practice, you do the practice anyway. That’s your deeper why, the heart of your practice, motivating you to continue.
And that’s all well and good but what about a day (or a week) when finding that 10 minutes to yourself to meditate is virtually impossible? You know it helps you to feel calmer but even thinking about the effort to find those 10 minutes is exhausting.
That’s when the heart of your practice can bring you some flexibility.
Because 10 minutes of meditation isn’t the goal of your ‘find calm’ practice, it’s just one method of seeking that feeling.
With ‘find calm’ as your why, you can spend time doing anything that makes you feel mindful – colouring or drawing, drinking a cup of tea, taking a walk, watching a candle flame, listening to music, or doing a puzzle – and still be maintaining your practice.
(Yes, I know all of those things probably take the same amount of time as meditating would but I also know time may not be the issue, that switching to one of those activities may FEEL different than switching to meditation and that those activities may be easier to do when you can’t get time to yourself.)
Getting to the heart of things like this can get us away from the all-or-nothing thinking that can plague us when we are working on something new. It can make it easier for us to accept a wider definition of success and give us more room to choose our own paths for getting where we want to go.
And, sure, not everyone needs to unpack their goals this way.
If you find that you can come up with an appealing idea and just follow it until it is done, then more power to you.
But if you are like me (ADHD or not!) and some of my coaching clients, it can be helpful to consciously choose whether you need to seek your why, how much you want to explore what that why means to you, and what that exploration means for your practices.
Whether you are forging along with your plan, revising your plan, or just developing your plan for expanding, enhancing, or adding new things to your life, I wish you ease and self-kindness in the process.
Here are a few gold stars for your efforts today, no matter how large or small, and no matter how they compare to anyone else’s efforts.
We are all just doing the best we can with the resources we have at the moment.
Go Team Us!
*Really, the key here is to proceed in the way that works best for you – figuring out your why at first, letting your why unfold as you go, or just carrying on without getting caught up in the question of why at all. Take the route that is kindest to yourself, pretty please.
