August Daily Practice: Let Yourself Off The Hook

During my trip to Tenerife, I had such expectations of myself that I would do loads of work, and loads of yoga, and loads of meditation, and loads of other stuff that I would do if I was perfect. After 3 weeks of trying and failing to live up to my own impossible expectations I decided to just let myself off the hook and just let it be ok that I was not yoga’ing and working and meditating and eating Canarian food every day.

Aaah, what a relief. Ironically, when I took my foot off my throat (so to speak), I began to do more work. I never did get into a routine of yoga and meditation, but I did occasionally do little bits of practices, and more importantly, I enjoyed the trip far more than when I was spending time beating myself up for not doing everything I thought I should be doing.

So I have decided this months’ Practice will be “Let Yourself off the hook”. Just after I made the decision, I listened to The Ignite the Power Within Call with Stacy Nelson called “Permission To Eff It All Up”, which seemed to confirm the decision for me. Then I remembered a line from Anne Of Green Gables that had really stuck with me: “This day’s done and there’s a new one coming tomorrow, with no mistakes in it yet.” Yep, this is definitely the practice for me this month!

Sometimes we eat too much, do too little exercise, don’t do our yoga or meditation or whatever habits we want to drop or pick up. That’s life. If you constantly beat yourself up for whatever it is you’re doing or not doing, you’re always going to be criticising and carping at yourself, and consequently feeling constantly in the wrong, or not good enough, or lazy, or like there is something wrong with you. If this helped you to drop or pick up your habit and practices, I’d say GO FOR IT!

But it doesn’t. It undermines us, makes us less likely to succeed at all, and sets up a pattern of behaviour where whatever we do is not good enough. So, for just this month, let’s just let ourselves off the hook. Let’s stop trying to be perfect. Let’s have a holiday from our expectations. Let’s chill out and allow ourselves to be human. Just for one month. Don’t worry that you will slide inexorably into barbarism, it’s only a month! And you will find one of 3 things happens:

1. You will find yourself ‘just doing’ whatever it was you wanted to do or stop in the first place – releasing the pressure can often allow you to feel more comfortable and just get on with it.
2. You will realise that you NEVER want to eat fruit, or meditate, or do your yoga practice…which will allow you to question why you think you should be doing that practice!
3. You will find yourself noticing how much you want to do yoga or meditate or eat fruit, and build up a reservoir of desire that will help you to start/stop a habit or practice.

So, are you going to join me in sitting back, relaxing and letting yourself off the hook, just for one month? Leave a comment below to let me know, and make sure you’re following the facebook and twitter pages for regular updates. (I usually say “Daily” updates, but they might not be daily this month, I’m going to let myself off the hook!)

Love

Donna.x