I’ve been low on ideas for blog posts lately, and I just pin-pointed why: the Inner Critic hasn’t been around. For days.
So I figured I’d write my own little success story of what daily life feels like without General Zod around.
You have So. Much. Time.
You’re doing more than you’ve ever done, but you never feel rushed. If you schedule a task and then real time doesn’t allow it to happen, you can immediately see another chunk of time when you can get it done.
If something doesn’t happen today, you rest, knowing that it’ll happen tomorrow or next week. You never feel like you’re sacrificing anything you love.
You are supremely adaptable.
Whether you’re alone or with friends or with strangers, or flowing between all three, you have no worries or anxiety, no matter what your old fears used to be. You never feel like you need to escape.
Your digestive system works better.
You may still have a “big” problem or two, but they aren’t scary anymore.
In fact, they hardly feel like problems, because you see so many options for taking action to solve them. All those options fall into an easy line of baby steps. You know what to do and when to do it, and if now isn’t the right time for it, you don’t think about it. I just had to give up sugar, which scared the hell out of me: but now all the necessary adjustments feel like a game of strategy. It really, in all honesty, feels fun.
You still have moods, but you can always identify what caused the moods: something you ate, or not stretching out in the morning, or just an old mental habit. Usually I get in a bad mood when I’m people-pleasing.
You don’t feel fundamentally guilty about anything.
You’ve lived with doubting yourself for so long, you now trust that you are not a jerk, which means you don’t have to be such a people pleaser anymore. You allow other people to be more flexible instead of you bending over backward all the time.
If you slip up, you apologize. If the other person is still upset, you give them time and space, and you don’t worry about it in the meantime.
And if you slip up with yourself, if you have ice cream on a no-sugar diet, for example, you don’t worry about it. You live through the sugar hangover the next day, and the next day you don’t cheat. It never even occurs to you to beat yourself up, because it’s so obvious that you’re human and that’s what we do.
Superlatives are GONE.
There is no such thing as “He is the best man I have ever met or will ever meet.” There is no such thing as “best” anything, which relieves the pressure (for everybody) to live up to impossible standards or hold on to things and people.
Jealousy is GONE.
Somebody’s got something you want? Then you’re thrilled to know that you can learn how to be that way or have that, too.
And you’re thrilled to be a beginner.
In fact, you’re so happy to be a beginner, you seek it out, even within disciplines you’ve been mastering for years. Being a beginner keeps every minute of the day fresh and beckoning. If your brain ever starts to spiral, you have a zillion other, better things to think about: the little baby step problems you need to solve to play a harmonica, maybe, or to cook four meals in less than five hours.
***
I caught myself thinking of this phase as a state of grace, but it isn’t. I earned this through years of effort and struggle with the Inner Critic. Instead of assuming that this phase will eventually end, I’m assuming that it won’t. I might temporarily forget, but this is my new ground state, to which I will always return, whenever I want. WAHOOOOO!!!
