The Right Choice...

Remember last month when I was starting the Road to Recovery Part 3 and I was trying to figure out what problem I should focus on? I did finally settle on not doing that, not having one issue to try and work through and just seeing what I was thinking about that day.

Turns out that was brilliant. 

Thank you.

Okay, maybe not brilliant but definitely the right choice for me. It's been a good series. He's talked more about his recovery and all of the steps he's had to do to just get moving again, let alone trying to run. And it's been about more than that. It's been about ideas we have when we are younger that the world disabuses us of pretty quickly. Or sometimes slowly. It's been about listening to yourself when you are in pain, physically and mentally, and treating issues when they are small before they blow up. 

He was talking about that today in relation to physical pain, and working out through pain, and when and what type is growth pain and what type is you are hurt pain. He used a phrase that I really liked, "Pain whispers before it screams." Oh my gosh that's so good. (and yes sometimes it doesn't, sometimes it just comes at you unexpectedly, but let's stick with the areas where it builds)

I liked it because it fits so much with aging and the differences in dealing with pain that I have now vs when I was in my 20s. Now when I get a little niggling pain someplace I have to really pay attention, what is this? Is this getting better? Do I need to rest this for a bit? Brace it? Ice it? Heat it? What do I need to do to soothe it? When I was younger it was just a WORK THROUGH IT and move on. That is not an option now. Now if I try and work through something it lets me know pretty quickly that was a bad idea. Probably from years of working through it instead of taking care of it the right way.

I liked it because it fits with emotional issues as well. A lot of times we know there is something wrong. In a relationship, in a job, in just what you are doing in your day to day. It's just that feeling of something being off. Then the blow up happens. The fight or the break up. The firing. The breakdown. And you look back and see how you knew something was off but you were just ignoring it. 

Pain whispers before it screams. So good.

Another thing he talked about was being a perfectionist when he was younger. And how that tied into his religious belief that the world was a meritocracy. That if you are good, good things happen to you. And how you always had to strive to be the best at things. You needed to do the best all of the time to achieve greatness. He talked about how weird it was that he thought those things because his parents didn't. They exposed him to a lot of the world's religions and most of them talked about doing your best. Not being the best. And how things happen to all of us. And his mother used to tell him that you didn't need to do great things. What you needed to work toward was doing a lot of little good things that would add up. That by focusing on being great at one thing you would miss the opportunities the world would present you for a multitude of good ones. 

Oh I like that too. Fits in with The Four Agreements for me. Always do your best. Whatever it is you are doing, whatever it is you are presented with, do your best. A lot of little good things add up to a good life. And a good balanced life is better than a limited one where you are great at one thing and lousy at a lot of others. 

It matches up with my belief that perfect is the enemy of the good. (you've probably heard that a lot, it's such a good reminder) That if you are always worried about something being perfect you often won't even try things. You don't notice good things. You keep trying to hone and polish something that is already good enough. Wasting your time that you could be putting toward other things you enjoy. It also holds you back from trying new things. If you have to be perfect at everything you cannot fail. And it's incredibly rare to not fail when you are trying something new. 

And when he talked about believing the world was a meritocracy, that good things happen to good people. Oh my...that's one that I think a lot of us struggle with. The idea that there should be some sort of karmic justice out there. If you are good person you should have good things. If you are a bad person there is some sort of bad thing waiting to happen to you. But that's not the way it goes. A lot of really awful people have great lives. And part of why they are able to have those great lives is because of how awful they are. They don't hesitate for a second to take more, have more, shut out anything that doesn't serve them. And we wait thinking, SURELY something will happen to them. And it doesn't. Not always. 

Sometimes life bites them in the ass and we all feel a little better about it. But often it doesn't. And you have to be able to live with that idea. That bad things happen to good people. That good things happen to bad people. That even the idea of good and bad people shifts depending on who you are talking to. What their ideas of good and bad are. I mean...it's complicated. 

So I'm really glad I didn't have some sort of issue I was trying to work through. Something that I would be trying to shoehorn into the past 20 workouts with his chats. Because I was able to just listen each day and let what he was saying kind of wash over me and settle in where it needed to. 

Which, of course, made me think about daily life. How so often we are focused on our own issues and what we want or even need to be working on that we miss some really good stuff going on with others. 

It's been a good series. I guess the thing I needed to work on was that part of my yearly list of goals. Be the ocean. Let his words and messages flow with me. Find that space to just float along with him. 

It works.