You're Doing Great: The Trick Is Noticing What's Working

Hello my friend.

If you're here in this space,

Then I know something about you,

My fellow human.

I know that you are a miraculous and precious expression of life.

First and foremost,

We all are.

I know that you have a loving nature and that everyone on your path throughout your life's journey is and will be touched by that loving nature in ways that you may not even notice,

That may seem small to you,

But are huge to them.

I know that just like every other human,

You desire and deserve to be well and happy and to have your suffering relieved.

And I know,

If you're here in this space,

That you're doing what we sometimes call the work.

I know that every day you show up and do your best,

And I know it can be hard to be human and to show up sometimes.

We can feel a little lost,

Can't we?

There's no instruction manual or guidebook.

We just have to find our way.

Have you ever felt,

Regarding the work you're doing,

The healing work,

The personal growth,

The spiritual growth,

I'm doing all this transformational work and I'm still not transforming,

Or I'm still not there yet.

I should be there by now.

I actually hear often my precious fellow human saying things like,

I need to get better at this.

I'm a slow learner.

Oh,

I should be more disciplined about practice.

I'm not where I want to be.

It's not working for me.

I'm hopeless.

I keep forgetting to do this work.

Even spiraling into the kind of thoughts that say,

I am hopeless.

I'm not good enough,

Or I am damaged goods.

So this talk and the helpful prompts I'm going to give you are about how to move away from that kind of destructive and self-sabotaging inner process and move into the habit of being a powerful witness of your progress,

A celebrator,

Ultimately a cheerleader.

Noticing what is healing,

What is growing,

What is working,

What is different,

Whatever that is.

This is the step we miss.

This is a vital step because it's how we embed the real wonderful changes,

The real wonderful growth and healing that are actually happening instead of slipping in onto all these false narratives.

Maybe we've learned to say those kind of things to ourselves,

But they don't come from us and they're not a true witness,

Right?

And that's what I want you to remember.

Being a witness to our own goodness requires noticing ourselves through the lens of desiring to see and feel the real and present good.

And if you're going to go into using this discipline word,

Being disciplined when you slip into a self-sabotaging mindset at moving into noticing what's working.

Let me explain a bit more.

You know and I know how easy it is to fall into that habit of looking inside ourselves for what's wrong,

What's not working,

For things that disappoint us,

For reasons to beat ourselves up.

There are reasons for that,

But it's not a necessary way to be.

Sometimes we can imagine there's some judge in the sky,

Someone policing us inside our beings,

Watching us,

Measuring our performance,

How well we manage that problem or perform that task or engaged in that conversation.

This hyper-monitoring micromanager for whom our efforts will never be enough and almost certainly will be wrong.

And you know here on Insight Timer,

This is a healing space and life is a healing space.

Our bodies,

Our minds,

Our spirits want to heal and they are resourced to heal,

Which is amazing.

It's wired into us,

So we don't want to get in the way of that wise,

Intelligent,

Benevolent process.

But here's the thing,

We are getting in healing's way and delaying or halting the energies in us that are thriving every time we neglect to notice them.

We neglect to be a true witness.

We neglect to celebrate them.

And instead we give our attention to imaginary narratives,

Made up damage and voices in our head that were never ours in the first place.

Here's what to do instead.

It's such an overlooked essential part of being human,

Of personal growth,

Of healing and thriving.

We turn toward noticing everything that's going in the right direction.

We notice progress.

We notice what's thriving.

We notice where healthy things are happening and the things we wanted are happening even in the smallest way,

Even if they come and go for a while,

Which they tend to do when we start to notice things in a different way.

We notice everything that's going in the right direction and every piece of progress.

We pause with it.

We celebrate it wildly and profusely.

And we love up every part of us that count the most.

The parts that are showing up for ourselves and doing good things that we will benefit from.

And that's the reason we're in the work at all.

There's no point entering into any practice,

Yoga,

Meditation,

Any kind of inner practice,

If you don't notice and feel how the practice is working for you and when it's working for you.

So every time you go into doubt,

Every time you berate yourself for slipping off the path,

Every time you enter too deeply into the wound or the stuckness or that it's not working,

Unconsciously you're undermining all the good stuff that is working for you.

Don't wait till everything feels perfect.

Celebrate in the here and now what feels good and right and particularly where there's some progress.

And what I'm going to do now is help you with this.

Here are some things to notice and to help you see your progress as you go along.

Notice when you remember to pause and breathe instead of spiraling,

When you begin to feel triggered.

Notice when you catch a trigger a few seconds earlier than before.

Notice when your recovery time,

Your bounce back from something gets a little shorter.

Notice when you can name your reaction instead of being ruled by it.

Notice when you respond in a way you feel proud of.

Notice when you do something for you that makes your day easier,

Like taking something off your to-do list.

Notice when you've given yourself a good thing that maybe in the past you would have denied yourself.

Notice when you choose care over criticism.

Notice when you remember to breathe before you speak.

Notice when something that used to activate you simply doesn't anymore.

These small shifts are then not nothing,

My friend.

They are the transformation in action,

The transformation that you're seeking.

And these are things we can notice in each day of our lives.

Perhaps you can have a check-in point to notice at some point in your day,

Just to ask yourself those sorts of questions.

What am I noticing that's different?

And here are some things that we can notice over time,

Because often we want a quick fix,

And we want just to kind of band-aid everything.

We just feel this urgency to,

I'll do this course,

I'll do a few practices,

I'll meditate with gratitude each day,

And then everything will change.

Everything in my life will change,

Right?

And we put urgency and force and pressure into a journey,

And those things harm rather than help.

So instead we are noticing,

We are witnessing all the changes.

That may seem small,

But there are no small good changes.

It's in the law of little things that lots of little things add up to big things.

And they can be,

And usually are,

Life-changing things.

So think about things that perhaps used to be really hard for you.

Maybe you avoided doing them at all,

Or you felt very activated around them.

So compared to a month ago,

How are you handling these triggers differently now?

What's helping?

And notice that you're doing things that help.

And don't look for the big things.

Even being here in this space,

Right,

Is helping,

I hope.

What situations maybe feel a little less intense than they used to?

You can ask yourself,

Am I bouncing back faster?

Am I speaking to myself more kindly,

More often?

Am I more willing to pause instead of react?

What has softened in me that once felt hard and sharp?

You'll have other ways of noticing,

So also think about good things for you.

Progress in this work is often quiet and gradual.

Healing rarely looks dramatic,

It looks like small,

Steady shifts.

Every pause is a victory.

Every kind response to yourself is amazing and a step forward.

And you don't need to do any of this perfectly.

You only need to keep practicing.

And a final reminder.

In life,

My friends,

The goal is not to fix or improve yourself.

The goal is to love yourself again and again and to love your precious journey on Earth.

Thank you for listening.

You can come back to this whenever you need.

You can use it as a tracker.

If you're tracking progress each day,

Let it be your companion.

And until next time,

Wonderful person,

Bye for now.