Practice Now

Table of Contents

• How this relates to me
• Lapsing back into the abstract

This is the transcribed form of (essentially) a journal entry that I wrote this morning. It seemed good, and publishing it as a blog post seemed like a good step forward as a form of practicing, which this touches on.

How this relates to me #

I would benefit greatly from extending the same amount and degree of care to myself that I readily and proactively extend to others.

I need to push back on the feeling/belief that "until others are taken care of, I can't get my needs and wants met, and I can't/shouldn't focus on myself." That time might never come, and I'm not confident that if the time did come, I'd allow myself to care for myself.¹ I wouldn't know how. I need to practice now.

Lapsing back into the abstract #

You don't need to instantly be at 100% down that road. Even just 5% will do. 5 minutes towards that thing. That's it.

Push back on the voices that say you'll never go do X if you aren't doing it now. [As Buscaglia does in my favorite talk of his.] That message is mostly right, and it's well-intentioned, but I think it freaks people out. It makes them feel like they need to throw everything away and make this big, radical change. But that isn't so.

You know, I'm tempted to say "start small." And yes, in effect, that is what I suggest. But don't even think of it as starting. Think of it as preparing or practicing. (Things which we already recognize we can do all day long and get nothing else done.) Small steps forward, often just tangentially instead of directly.