Humility can be a Superpower

On allowing yourself to fail, hit rock bottom, & giving yourself plenty of time to figure things out

Happy Sunday!

And welcome to today's edition of, 'Conscious living with Purnima'. In today's post, I will share with you a lesson I learnt last week. A lesson I intend to consciously apply into my life.

Some of you may have already learnt it, and for you, I hope this post serves as a reminder.

And for those of you who find the lesson alien or obscure, I hope this post provokes you to think deeper.

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Humility can be a Superpower

On allowing yourself to fail, hit rock bottom, & giving yourself plenty of time to figure things out

I had a frustrating experience last week that opened my eyes to how consciously practicing humility could add more ease into my life.

So I have been working on perfecting a particular skill for a while now. Without getting into the specifics, it would suffice for you to know, that I am not making much progress (or that’s what I think). So the other day I was getting frustrated with myself wondering, why I was taking so long? Everybody else seemed to get it. And here I was, ‘stuck’, like seemingly forever. Luckily in these kind of situations, my mindfulness practices help me pause and examine my thoughts. I realised I was overwhelmed & frustrated because I had unconsciously given myself a timeline to learn the skill. I wasn’t giving myself the permission to slow down, to figure things out. As soon as I put a finger on my attitude, I felt a lot less frustrated. And was open to going back to the basics & starting all over.

I decided I would examine my attitude every time I felt overwhelmed with something. I found that my overwhelm was most often a consequence of trying to achieve too much too soon while also experiencing an underlying fear of time running out. I also realised that I may not be alone in feeling this way. That client of mine who wanted to lose weight or achieve some other health or fitness goal was perhaps going through the same feeling of losing time.

In my heart I know this is not true. We are not running out of time and there is no need to give ourselves unreasonable timeframes to accomplish stuff.

Slowing down, being ok with failure, ok with hitting rock bottom, has to be a conscious decision. And once we are in that place of humility, we can see things clearly and focus on the next right step. And by the next right step, I mean the next step that we know we should take, in our heart.

As a new week starts tomorrow, I invite you to examine your own attitudes that lead to overwhelm. Do you think if you gave yourself the permission to fail, allow yourself time to slow down, something would change? How differently would you show up for life?

Leaving you with a poem written by a dear friend, & an author, Aparna Das Sadukhan, who also happens to be one of my readers ❤️. I hope it strikes a chord with you.

{Begin Again}

~

Life for some is about

the next big achievement

for others, it is about little things

small joys, simple pleasures

and for most, about more

more wealth

more status

more companionship

more attention

more sunshine

more peace

more love

more health

more everything -

but for a few

life is about returning back to the beginning

re-starting all over

over n over again

and that takes courage

like nothing else does

for these folks never give up

life for them is seldom about reaching the finish line first

it’s solely about trying

time after time —

to them I say

that the fight may never be over

but may the fight in you never diminish

~

ADS