Anxiety, Self-Direction, and Getting Lost - Day 149

In some ways, I have noticed a marked increase in my experience of anxiety.

Right now I attribute this to increased awareness. Like a hyper-exposure, as compared to ever before, to my environment and who I am within it. And, since I haven't really addressed anxiety specifically, anxiety is a kind of go-to reaction to that hyper-exposure.

ex·pose
ikˈspōz/
verb
1. make (something) visible, typically by uncovering it.

Visibility implies vulnerability. In becoming more visible to myself, I experience myself also as more visible to others. But nothing has actually changed in physical reality. Only my awareness.

The sensation is interesting. It isn't really an anxiety in my gut. It's more in my chest, in my heart rate, and like a very subtle vibration in my upper arms and shoulders, like making me feel compressed from the sides, with my arms at my sides. A kind of pressure to make myself small and narrow, and collapsed.

It's weird because it's also how I felt when I visited Oakland a few weekend ago. In part I was a little anxious because I was meeting someone for the first time, and that is usually an experience that I react to with anxiety.

But I also attribute my experience in Oakland to this feeling of being kind of trapped and exposed, which for some reason I relate to in terms of transportation. I mean I know that my anxiety in the bay area links me to a memory of the only car accident I've ever been in that was my fault, and that occurred in San Francisco.

So for some reason I associate this particular experience of anxiety of visibility and vulnerability -- this experience becoming normative as my experience now as I become more involved at work especially, and come to see myself more and more in process -- with the experience of being in a large city and having to navigate my transportation therein by myself.

So it's a weird association that I don't really understand yet. But the experience is becoming a frequent, maybe even near-constant experience of myself, even now here where I live and at work.

But interesting to note here in particular in relation to this association is that it is associated with having to rely on myself to navigate in a crowded, highly visible, chaotic environment, where the whole city is not going to stop, where no one really can be expected to stop to help me, or to soothe me, or to give me direction, should I crash, or fall, or make a mistake. I have to do it myself. And, at least in the case of driving, I don't believe I can.

And, really, in the case of living, it is the same. I am saturated with self-doubt, and it feels like my speed is picking up. Like here I am now approaching the city, and now driving in the city, and I can't stop it, I am here in the city, and I am scared. What I do at work matters. What I do in my personal life for myself, matters. I matter, I am beginning to see. And with that comes responsibility, ie self-reliance. Self-trust. Whoa.

And I want to hide. I feel hyper-exposed.

But now I see that my speed is not in fact picking up. As I said above, nothing in reality has changed, only my awareness.

So now, I stop, and I support myself with my breath, when I feel anxious like this. I take deep, slow breaths, and I support myself this way until I can release the anxious energy as pressure and compression on my body from the sides of my arms and shoulders and chest, through my breath.

I realize that as I breathe deeply and slowly, the sensation dissipates. Could the sensation itself be indicative that I have been holding my breath, or breathing too shallow? Maybe. So I look at this.

---

I wrote that last night.

Last night I also watched an episode of Lost (Season 2, Episode 18, "Dave") and it was really a very interesting episode in terms of "mental health." Basically within it we find out that one character, who used to be in a mental institution, was there at least in part because he had an imaginary friend who represented negativity and an addiction to food. And in this episode, the character has a mental break, and this imaginary friend re-emerges, and lures him to a cliff where he suggests that jumping off will allow the character to wake up to see actual reality (the imaginary friend convinces him that everything at that point is an illusion).

I got kind of wrapped up in this. I mean I could really relate, given my own experiences with "mental illness" and the dark places I have gone within my mind, hating myself, limiting myself, even wanting to kill myself, or hurt myself. Paranoia about reality vs illusion. Lack of trust of others, and myself. Really dark negative belief systems about myself. And it was interesting to see how that kind of energy can become separated so far to the point of creating an imaginary friend, although I've not done that. Either way the episode serves as an example of the personalities we create for different parts of ourselves, as we divide ourselves from ourselves as life within our minds. Lost is available to stream on Netflix, by the way. It's a great show.

But I was scared, as I was watching. It's so easy! It's so easy to get lost. It's so easy to let that part take control. It's so easy to fuck up. It would be so easy for me to, for example, believe I should just kill myself. So I was scared. Because I didn't want to go there again. And I didn't want to risk it. And I was scared because I wasn't sure how I would even be able to tell. How can I tell illusion from reality? I've lived in illusion for so long, even if it hasn't always been the kind that leads me over a cliff. How can I trust myself?

So for me this relates back to the hyper-exposure / awareness of myself. I am more aware of who I am, who I have been, the consequences of me. And as I try to pick up the pieces of myself and gather myself as one whole, I am pulling into myself the parts of me I pushed farthest away in separation. The darkest parts of me, are still me. So here I am, like in the same room now with my own death, having to face myself, without separation.

And last night I felt actually kind of scared as I was trying to sleep, because I was afraid that this anxiety would be my demise, that I would somehow really fuck something up, like at work.

I'm trying to identify the anxiety more now. I know for one thing that sometimes the food I eat gives me a physical experience that is similar to anxiety. Just like how one of my old students at my old job would sometimes become scared and thus angry after playing sports, because he confused his increased heart rate for anxiety and fear. Similarly I might be confusing these physical sensations, and reacting to them with anxiety.

But I am also facing a big point right now. And I don't really want to face it. That is probably a huge part of it.

I also see how angry I am. I am so angry. And I see that the things that I say in my mind, the angry energy that I am directing at another in my mind... why, it's so familiar. Because I've hated myself before. Because I've hurt myself before. Because I've wanted to hurt myself before. Because I've raged at myself countless times. So when I realized this, when I realized that everything I was ranting about in my mind about another was the exact same shit I believe about myself, it kind of overcame me. It came back at me, as me. And I just want to rage and throw a fit and break something and hit a punching bag until I cry.

I haven't released it yet. I went through today with this anxiety energy consuming me. The anger is consuming me.

I am not sure, but, I think in some ways, it was probably a self-victimization. I am stressed, I am overwhelming myself. So here I made myself the victim of anxiety. Like, wow, I am really going through something "serious" here, so I need attention. But I didn't seek out attention for it. I just went through my day, feeling anxious, feeling worried, feeling distracted and uncomfortable, feeling afraid, and feeling afraid of fucking up. Seeing how easy it would be to fuck up, and feeling afraid of that, and then feeling stuck, like I am going down this path, like I am driving in the city and I am going to crash.

I don't know. There is a lot right now.

What I do know, but have not been practicing, is that I have control over myself. I know that, even if I don't know how, I am creating this experience. I know that I am feeding it, or else it wouldn't still be here. I mean the mere fact that I moved through the entire day holding onto this anxiety -- obviously I am participating. I was "trying it on" so to speak, to see how it felt. Now I need to take it off, and let it go.

So I breathe. And I also move away from the foods that I suspect might be contributing to the physical experience that I am reacting to as anxiety. And I take care of myself, and be patient with myself, and try to figure out how the fuck I can support myself before I self destruct.

And I continue to look at how to let go of energy, and leave it behind me. Actually release it, and then fill myself with my breath, myself as life.

And I reflect on what I have already written, as a way to see myself, rather than resist myself. I embody myself as one whole; I do not abandon myself, and I am not a lost cause.




I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to hold onto anxious energy as a self-definitive experience.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to engage in angry thoughts and hold onto the anger generated by these thoughts so that I am back tracking and creating new energy to hold onto rather than releasing and letting go of energy unconditionally.

I forgive myself for not accepting or allowing myself to truly be forgiving.

I commit myself to embodying forgiveness as me.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to move through my day filled with self-doubt and self-hatred and questioning my value or my worth to anyone or to myself.

I forgive myself therefore for accepting and allowing myself to put it on others to validate me or tell me I am okay.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to create a lack or need within myself and then expecting others to fill it, or hoping others will help me feel better somehow.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to fear that I cannot do this, where this is supporting myself, this is standing in stability, this is continuing forward.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to engage with this extreme experience of anxiety as if it is the new me, who I am, and who I will be, as if I have no ability to direct the energy.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to become this experience of anxiety.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to doubt my ability to direct myself and take responsibility for myself.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to feel exposed and fear being exposed, even though I believe that integrity = transparency.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to believe and fear that others will judge me as harshly as I judge myself, or as harshly as I judge others.

I forgive myself for not accepting or allowing myself to embody forgiveness and realize it as the way of life.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to believe that I am alone, that I do not have the support that other people have, that I do not have the friendships or relationships that other people have, and that because of this I am lost, I am less equipped to get through each day the way that others can. I realize this is self-victimization. I realize my relationships are my own creation. I realize that within this I am denying myself my own ability to support myself. I realize that this does not support me, to entertain these thoughts, and feel sorry for myself. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to feel jealous of the relationships or outside support that I perceive others as having. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to feel jealous of the seeming stability that other people have. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to resent people in my life who I feel do not support me the way I wish they would, or the way it seems like other people are able to garner support from those around them.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to become entranced in a story or theatrical depiction of mental illness and to fear myself having the same experience, or fear my memories of my own dark experiences, to fear that I have no control over myself, that my mind can overtake me and direct me to my death.

It can.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to fear this, and believe that I can't overcome it, that I can't direct myself to life.

I can.

I commit myself to patience with myself. I commit myself to understanding myself. I commit myself to forgiving myself. I commit myself to letting go. I commit myself to steady breathing, steady walking, and steadiness within myself. I commit myself to slowing down to what is here and now. I commit myself to supporting myself and sympathizing with myself and giving myself whatever I wish another would give me at any given moment, giving myself that moment to be here for and as myself, to care for myself, to care about myself, giving myself what I need but am not getting because I am not giving it to myself.

I commit myself to stop fear of moving forward. I commit myself to stop allowing myself to be overcome by energy.

I commit myself to start by allowing myself to believe I can do this, to stop the self-doubt. Then, I will do it.

Routines as "Rules" - Day 94

I have established for myself some kind of "rules" in terms of how to schedule/prioritize my time/activities, and last night I noticed how some of these "rules" are actually not self supportive in any way.

One of the "rules" / habits I have established lately has been to prioritize my writing early on in the day/afternoon so as to free up my evening to "relax" where "relax" usually means do things that aren't very productive, but can also mean to not have to endure the self-imposed pressure of still having my writing ahead of me while doing other things regardless of how productive they are (so, ability to "relax" in these activities in the sense that I am not worrying about still having to write).

So first of all this is really just a manipulation of myself in order to continue to get around / not face myself in my relationship to writing and this process, where it is still like a "chore" and also an "obligation" and obviously there is still resistance (and as I have read as shared by others, this resistance never really goes away, so, what to do?), where if I were to actually face myself within this relationship I would be able to redefine for myself what it means to write and what it means to walk this process daily in such a way that I would not be placing pressure on myself and would not have to manipulate myself into escaping the experience of that pressure, but would simply stop it. So this is an interesting point to continue to notice and figure out.

But the "rule" that really stood out to me yesterday came after multiple hours sitting at my computer diligently writing out self forgiveness and commitments in reflection of just a few hours at a concert. After so many hours, I eventually became hungry. However, I have created for myself a habit / "rule" of waiting to eat until I am ready to "relax," because I have for years and years habitually eaten meals in front of the TV while watching a TV show. This has had multiple consequences in terms of my relationship to food consumption, including a lack of awareness of myself as I am eating, as well as increased incidence of binge eating behavior as, if the TV show is still playing, I still want to eat.

So what happened last night was that I became hungry, but I wasn't yet finished with my writing. And because of my rule/routine about eating as an indulgent/relaxation behavior coupled with the indulgent/relaxation behavior of watching TV, I "could not" simply grab a snack, or take a quick break to eat, or even eat while I continued to write, because then my routine of eating while watching my current TV show would be sabotaged, and also I feared that then, "when" I did finally watch my show, I would want to eat more. ("When" because I expect that I will watch (at least) one episode per day; however, I did not end up watching an episode last night, nor have I today. Nonetheless this is the general expectation that I almost always fit into my schedule, and then find a new TV show when I am finished with one.)

So I was neglecting my body, which became hungry, and I even began to develop a headache. I also became impatient and irritable through my hunger and other physical experiences as consequences of that hunger. I therefore also experienced diminished concentration on what I was writing, so that the quality of my writing suffered. So I was ineffective overall, as a result of following my "rules" as routines / habits.

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to ignore and neglect my physical body as the signals that my stomach was sending to my brain that it needed nourishment and was hungry for food.

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to justify this within my participation in my routine / "rule" of only eating while I watch TV, and only watching TV after I am done with my writing.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to habitually engage in an activity, such as watching TV, which is mindless, sedentary, and allows me to zone out, such that I often become / feel ineffective after engaging in this activity, and as such have established within myself that I should not / will not expect myself to do anything productive once I decide to engage in this activity.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to basically waste time while watching TV and within my belief about myself and my efficacy during and after engaging in this activity, waste all of the time that comes after watching TV.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to develop and continue the routine/habit of sitting in front of the TV while I eat meals -- which began first in my family meal eating experiences -- such that now this is like a "rule" inasmuch as it is something I "follow," like simply "the way it is" or "the way I eat meals," without challenging / directing myself to change this, even within consideration of my realizations about mindless/conscious eating.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to neglect my physical body through delaying eating to such an extent that consequences arose in the form of pain, irritability, and a lack of concentration -- more signals my body was shouting at me to feed it.

I forgive myself therefore that I accepted and allowed myself to exist within and as my mind as my ego and power to control my body, to override my body through my self interest to continue to write and uphold my "rules" / routines, to not exist within and as the physical, within oneness and equality in self support of my body as life as myself, so not support myself when it is clearly communicated to me by myself how and when I should be supporting myself as my body as meeting its physical needs.

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to continue to write even within this energetic possession of irritability and stubbornness, not allowing myself even to partake in a snack but instead to willfully as my ego push through denying my body of its substantial needs.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to be inflexible, stubborn, and obsessive in following my "rules" as my routines as what I am used to doing and have established for myself as "what I do" and "how I behave" and "what my schedule looks like" rather than being one and equal with the physical as whatever needs arise in my physical body.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to disrespect my physical body through negligence and ignorance and denial of needs.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to establish "rules" and routines which I allow to direct me as I follow them rather than directing and following myself in self honesty in the present moment as what needs require to be satisfied.


When and as I see myself neglecting my physical body as ignoring what it is communicating to me through sensations such as hunger, pain, tiredness, etc., I stop and I breathe. I realize that I as my body have specific physical needs to sustain myself, be healthy, and function optimally. I realize that what I neglect in my body has consequences in my mind, such as mood shifts into irritability, just as what I neglect/ignore/suppress in my mind has consequences in my body = I am one. I commit myself to listening to what my body is communicating and to provide for myself that which my body needs for me as a whole living person to function and be healthy.

When and as I see myself engaging in routines as like "rules" to follow, I stop and I breathe. I realize within this I am automated and am giving my self directive principle over to my habitual behaviors. I realize that there is no routine besides breathing in, and then breathing out, that is self supportive to follow absolutely without variance or divergence. I realize that sometimes -- often -- there are demands in reality which require me to diverge from my "rules" as established routines. I realize too that some of my routines keep me locked in to unsupportive behaviors such as becoming "zoned out" or wasting time. I commit myself to challenging myself to break free from these routines, to not prioritize engaging in these behavior patterns on a daily or regular basis.

Writing On and Through Resistance - Part 2 - Day 6

Tonight the words I would use to describe my current (both presently as it is my experience and as an energetic wave) attitude toward this writing process are:

• blocked
• unenthusiastic
• cliche
• fraudulent 

Resistance Pattern:

I notice a pattern emerging wherein I go through my morning intermittently identifying topics I could write about in the evening. I then go through my afternoon not caring as much about identifying a topic and figuring that I will figure something out. I make a to-do list on my phone. I drive home thinking of what I will do first. Usually I intend to write early on, probably after taking my dog out and eating something. But I have a strong long-standing habit of eating while I watch something, so I often get distracted there. Other items on my to-do list, including writing, are neglected in favor of zoning out and/or engaging in a fiction, or other meaningless fruitless tasks. 

Eventually I try to write. And tonight, as I write, and as I see myself typing words that might actually lead somewhere (where am I trying to identify my words as leading? what is my preconceived destination? how am I judging my words? how is this judgment contributing to my resistance? where is this judgment coming from?), I feel an impulse to get up and go take care of something else I've been needing to do. Tonight it is that I feel an impulse to get up and wash my face. Get my face clean, get that out of the way, then I'll be able to focus. 

I justify this impulse as an opportunity to step away from what I have just written, which contains its own current of momentum, which perhaps I find the experience of to be a little jarring, like it's scary to get out what's inside: it's a little scary to open up and let it out honestly. So maybe this is where the impulse to get up comes from just as my momentum is picking up. Like, okay, there's my topic! Now let's delay some more before actually writing on it. So I justify this as an opportunity to step away and "clear my head" while engaging in some other activity, at this stage most often some kind of bodily cleansing activity (at earlier stages before identifying a topic, delay and impulses are frequently more in the realm of consumption: food, media, but not limited to that). 

So momentum picks up and I want to clean myself. At least, that's the pattern so far. This opening up of what's inside perhaps holds a correlative experience to me of being presentable physically. I am about to open up and maybe I don't want what's in there to be seen. Maybe I don't want to show it. Maybe it's not clean. 

Or maybe it's just plain old delay. Maybe I am giving this impulse too much power and meaning. Maybe my face just feels oily and I'm over it. 

The point then is to stop and breathe. And there I notice the anxiety that is strangling my mid-section. The effort involved in taking a full deep slow breath. But I persist, and in persistence of breath I resist the impulse to get up or to click on another tab or in some other way distract myself from what is in front of me. And then I keep writing. And then suddenly I have something written, this time a somewhat specific breakdown of my resistance. Kinda cool. 

Living Words:

Coming back to the words at the start of this post, the identification of which is a strategy I've gleaned from early lessons in DIP Lite of identifying emotions and feelings:

How am I presently living "blocked"?

• I feel blocked because even though there are topics about which I know I could write, I feel limited to some kind of rule about only writing on experiences from my day. This is self-imposed. 
• I also feel blocked because in my consumption of desteni articles and blogs, I find that I relate to much of what I read but am not sure yet how to integrate it within myself and articulate it in my own writing and am more in a stage of marination. I think it is okay and smart to marinate, but it does not mean I have to feel blocked. 
• I also feel blocked physically. The anxiety in my mid-section is a choking feeling; the racing of my heart is as if my blood flow is blocked. 

How am I presently living "unenthusiastic"?

• I feel unenthusiastic because within my resistance I become tired and then apathetic. 
• I feel unenthusiastic because my high energy from the momentum of previous posts has waned. 
• I feel unenthusiastic because without that high energy and without lots of page views or comments or +1s or feedback, I am failing to see the benefit, "what's in it for me," when I write. When really all that's in my writing is in it for me. It's for me. 

How am I presently living "cliche"?

• I feel cliche because writing self forgiveness is monotonous. The thought has even crossed my mind to copy "I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to" to my clipboard so I can just paste it before each line. I do not do this though because in actually typing those words out I am bringing them to life. Nonetheless, it is monotonous and can feel cliche. Really though I think the feeling of cliche is closely tied to the next:

How am I presently living "fraudulent"? 

• I feel fraudulent because here I am participating in an organized systematic form of writing alongside people who have been doing so for 100s of more days than I have, and in a way I feel like I am in too deep or over my head. 
• I feel fraudulent because I know that as I take in desteni articles or other blogs, I begin to feel intimidated by their clarity and focus or their topic depth, and within that intimidation I want to emulate what I read within my own writing, which would be false and not true to wherever I am within my process. Right now I am walking through resistance, not how to practically save the world. 
• I feel fraudulent because I have sort of halfway kinda made a commitment to write every day, but I don't know that I ever really MADE that commitment so much as just decided that it was important and started slapping Day counts in my titles. I have been trying this desteni thing out, and trying it out each day, and then the next. But I don't know for sure what I will do tomorrow, and so I feel fraudulent for implying a commitment to desteni and to blogging through my desire to show up on here every day and write. 
• What is standing in the way of that commitment? What's going on with that desire? 
• I feel fraudulent because I feel contrived. I like to make pretty strings of words. Sometimes the words I write evoke more feelings in me than they do to describe them. I am trying to keep it honest, but sometimes it is tempting to get creative. 

Self Forgiveness:

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing a pattern of resistance to emerge within me and my energy. 

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to justify some of my distractions or ways of zoning out as necessary to "recharge" or deserved because I worked 8 hours today. 

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to not have a firm grasp on how to best schedule my time within my current work schedule so that I often look at the clock and wonder where the time went. 

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to live the word "blocked." I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to limit my writing in any way. Likewise I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to limit my ability to write in any way. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to self-impose both external and internal limitations to my writing, creating a state of paralysis. 

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to energetically feel "blocked" in my body, in my joints, in my stomach, in my chest and accepting and allowing this as a reason to resist writing. 

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to live the word "unenthusiastic." I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to become tired and apathetic when faced with resistance. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to first obtain a high level of energy and then to react to the drop of that energy with a drop in enthusiasm or determination. 

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to identify the end-goal of my writing as anything other than self-intimacy and self-growth. 

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to check my page-views and to feel disappointed when I don't have any. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to expect support from strangers and friends alike when I know that the reason I am here is to develop self-support. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to believe that what I write is great and warrants lots of page views and +1s and attention and glory. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to crave this praise, attention, and glory. 

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to live the word "cliche." I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to see this process as monotonous and boring within and through my resistance. I know it is neither monotonous or boring within and through my experience of it. 

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to live the word "fraudulent." I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to try to adhere to a standard and system of writing that I don't yet completely understand. 

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to want to emulate the content of other blogs, especially when I am on day 6 and they are on day 3xx. 

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to compare myself in opposition to and as separate from anyone, setting up a void between us to be filled with competition within my self-interested need for survival. 

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to pressure myself to have new ideas about and answers to the problems in the world. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to not start with the problems within myself. 

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to sometimes think, "well, what if there's nothing I need to forgive myself for today?" Haha! 

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to play-act the role of a destonian when I am not sure if I am committed to desteni and whatever commitment I have struggles against even the test of my own wavering stance. 

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to dive into something without being clear in my commitment. It reminds me of the last time I went swimming, in my friend's pool. I jumped right into the cold water, water so cold it literally took my breath away. 

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to be attracted to pretty strings of words and to feel positively about my ability to create pretty strings of words. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to create pretty, dramatic strings of words especially throughout all of my previous years of journaling, wherein the pretty strings of words were a way to feed my need for attention and validation and also served as a fuel to build up dramatic emotions within me. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing this propensity toward pretty strings of words to persist even within this writing process. 

Writing On and Through Resistance - Day 5

I have now started 4 different blog posts this evening in an attempt to write today. I have given up for lack of clarity, lack of focus, and feelings of incapability in addressing and facing the various topics effectively and productively. I have allowed myself to be distracted, or to accomplish other tasks first. I have even allowed myself to give up, reasoning that technically I already wrote today since my last blog was written around 3am, and my next DIP Lite lesson isn't even available until technically tomorrow. But this also means that technically I didn't write yesterday. Does this mean that I HAVE to write? No. Does it mean, however, that I am making excuses NOT to write? Yes. And what was one of the first lessons I learned with Desteni? To write, and if facing resistance to writing: write about that. So I will face this resistance now and I will write, and I will publish what I write, not in an effort to make a habit out of forcing something out that is not meaningful, but in an effort to make a habit of pushing through resistance, of not giving up, of not making excuses.

The paramount shitty thing about this is that I want to go to bed soon, and I wanted to finish my TV show and eat a cookie, and now I have more distractions piling up on me from either tasks I forgot I also had to do or people who want to talk to me. And so by delaying on writing, and especially by momentarily giving myself permission not to write, I am stuck here, rushing through writing so as to fit in these other obligations and time-consuming activities.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to excuse myself from pushing through my resistance due to a time-stamp technicality.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to excuse myself from pushing through my resistance just because I've been writing about some pretty heavy shit and I believe I deserve a break.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to doubt the importance of what I write because it does not seem like it will be as important as what I wrote last night. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to believe that any part of my process is less or more important than any other part of my process. Within this I commit myself to realize if and when I am sticking to easy subjects as a way of avoiding more difficult ones, even though both subjects hold equal importance within my process. It's all about self-honesty in the starting point.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to be tentative within my writing and be unsure of what subject about which I want to write. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to get halfway through a blog and then scrap it in frustration for lack of ease.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to let a lack of clarity or focus seem bigger than me when I am the one who creates clarity and creates focus.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to conclude that I am incapable of addressing a topic effectively and productively just because I am facing resistance to writing. Within this I do commit myself to only address a topic when I am able to direct myself to focus effectively and productively, but not to give up on writing altogether if not and instead to write about a topic I can address, such as the resistance itself.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to become distracted by impulsive urges, a need for encouragement, a desire for a cookie, desire for some other activity, or communication from other people.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to give up on writing at all tonight and assuming that tomorrow I will feel more capable.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to not complete every item on my to-do list, even if some of those uncompleted items are purely for my enjoyment. For example, I have had painting on my to-do list for a number of nights recently and I have yet to make any kind of art whatsoever. But I guess even that is not purely enjoyment, just as watching a TV show is not purely enjoyment. One is enriching, one is productive, one is stimulating, one is expressive; whereas the other is a distraction, the other is a way of escaping, a way of zoning out, a way of feeding an addiction, a way of existing in an alternate reality. And yet I have managed to watch plenty of my TV show.

So within this I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to, when creating a to-do list, in my mind imagine two activities such as painting and watching my TV show as being interchangeable as far as level of accomplishment if I get to cross them off.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to waste time watching a TV show when I could exchange that time for something more productive that I also want to do.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to put off and forget to do the favor my mom asked of me. I need to do that next, here.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to delay on this writing process which is important to me to accomplish every day, when I have had the majority of my day to accomplish this task.

It's interesting to me to see how within this writing process I am beginning to struggle with priorities and time management primarily due to the resistance factor. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to let my resistance move me.