Growth Lesson #1: The only thing you can change today is tomorrow

aka Learning from the past is okay...living in the past is not.

It may be general human nature, or it may just be the nature of MilkChan-types, to spend too much time focusing on regrets. MilkChan-types tend to be avid learners stuck in their second chakra. A kind of perpetual academic who can strategize, make difficult decisions quickly, cull apparently unrelated information and come up with a workable solution to a problem in every facet of their lives that don’t affect the heart and spirit. In those areas, they tend to over-analyze, fret endlessly, second-guess themselves and you could get Vegas odds on whether they will make a good decision, a timely decision or talk themselves out of the need to make a decision at all.

For me, the Heart and Spirit arena encompasses three things: career, romance and, more recently, physical appearance. Romance and appearance are fairly tied for second place, one rising slightly over the over on any given day depending on what’s going on around me. Career is far and away my principal nemesis.

I have never been one to “follow the crowd”. I am not an extremist in any way, but I do see the world just differently enough that it can make people who follow A to B, B to C, C to D, ad infinitum just a little bit leery of me…unless my path shows marked success. I determined long ago that the best explanation for me is “traditional…with a twist” (unfortunately, I cannot turn this into a personal acronym for reasons which should be readily apparent.)

There is nothing about my appearance that would alarm anyone from any walk of life. I dress fairly conservatively, even for the gym or the beach; I generally maintain an air of approachability and openness; I will not “dumb down” my conversations, as I consider that rude and presumptive, but I have no problem trying to explain my point in a different way that might mean more to my audience. I have far more respect for someone who can admit that they don’t understand what I am saying than I do for someone who pretends to understand, or worse yet, attempts to impress and in the process violently abuses the English language. I’m fairly simple and straightforward to understand if you pay the slightest bit of attention for about an hour. I have the background to behave properly in the most formal of situations, but I prefer to avoid being pretentious. All I really want out of life is to work hard doing a job that brings me personal satisfaction (and hopefully helps others along the way), play hard according to my whims and flights of fancy, and preserve the closeness and sacredness of my personal relationships.

Well, that and a premium ice cream with zero calories.

I’ve spent quite some time in the past few years fretting over the choices I’ve made and where they have landed me vis-à-vis my contemporaries. In my harsh judgment, I come out at the bottom of the scale every time. The reasons for why/how I have failed vary with my mood (“I’m stupid”, “I should have gone to an Ivy League school”, “I didn’t try hard enough”, yadda x3), but the result is always the same…regret and personal recrimination. And I am damn good at blaming myself for pretty much anything.
This is a problem.

I have been working on letting go of my penchant for the Blame Game for a week now, and there has been progress. I have had small successes, such as allowing myself permission to take breaks from obligations to others and do something just for me, having friendly conversations with strangers, not feeling guilty for saying “no” to something I wasn’t prepared to commit to simply because it disappointed someone else, and avoiding situations that would ordinarily make me feel bad (such as overcoming my desire to stay at home and be a lump and going to the gym…I am far less likely to feel bad that I only burned 401 calories on the elliptical instead of the 430 I burned the day before than I am about not going at all, knowing how unhappy I am with the way I look at the moment). I allow myself to acknowledge these small steps as the victories they are without the immediate follow-up of “but…” I am learning to separate myself from the negative internal feedback that rarely has anything to do with the positive action I’ve just completed. While a certain amount of honest criticism is important to stay focused and on-track, beating myself up helps absolutely no one, least of all me.

It’s not easy, but that’s why it’s called a process. It will take more than one step, one day, one month, one year. It will probably be a lifetime effort that I will hone and fine tune along the way. But instead of feeling defeated by this knowledge, I can now embrace it and make it work for me instead of against me.

I’m breathing a little easier these days, and that’s definitely a good thing. It also makes it easier to work on learning the lessons yet to come…