DAY 607

relapses and reminders

Since I started this journey, every August I go through the same process.  Before the beginning  of holiday, I prepare a list of how to use well my free days in order to achieve all the goals that I have set aside the rest of the year. These lists are more intrincate every passing year and include goals that have to do with personal projects which cannot be developed while teaching at university, not only because my work is complex  (or I can be prone to procrastinate), but because they demand a state of mind that is not compatible with preparing classes, attending meeting, checking papers and so on. But as soon as I try to do it, I feel just exhausted.  

This  month hasn’t been a exception.  I have been the last ten days (in particular, since Monday)  struggling against this, trying to overcome it  by allowing myself to rest and feeling guilty at  the same  time.  Finally, I realized that I’ve been playing this same role at least during the last three or four years maybe because every single time, I  have forgot to include in my list things that have to do with making a pause. And  also that every single year my wiser self forces me to make such pause  some way or another.

Retrospectively I see that I could have been happier those days just by accepting my situation  and by acting accordingly.  This would have happened if  I would have been able to stop making (or trying to make),  and mainly if I would have been able to stop expecting, longing or  rejecting. Obviously, there is nothing I can do regarding the past days, but I am determined  (once again) to approach the following weeks more consciously… just because I know I can do it.

Yesterday, while  I was thinking of  writing this post, I came across this photo of a page of my journal. While looking at it, I became aware of  all the strategies I have developed  along my  life in order to keep that conscious approach,  and wondered why it becomes so difficult sometimes, and in particular every August. I came to the conclusion that the end of academic course  (and any other  stressing  situation) seems to be a good moment   for the perfectionist inside me to arise and generate all sort of expectations without taking into account my needs. Once I realized that everything fits into place.  

Today,  I am  feeling  how my energy is returning and I am sure that soon I will feel ready to do  what I had planned.  And even when I am  also sure that I still have to deal with this biased perspective which was developed as a response to  circumstances of my early life, there  is hope in my heart. 

Probably, because now  I don’t try to mend my actions (or reactions), I just accept them and keep going, trusting that I will manage to reach my destiny. 

I hope you are having an easy summer, dear friends.

Much Love

Z. 

DAY 568

in {and out} Week 7: Carnival

After doing tons of inner work and trying this and that. After going through many tools and techniques created in order to improve the healing process and giving them all a try. After coming across new wounds that I didn´t even know and understood new layers and layers of my own story. After restoring a sense of self and letting go many old habits and creating new ones... In short, after feeling –once and again- that I was almost “there”, I used to have the sense that I still had something to do, something to mend, something that needed to be purified, a new aspect of my existence that I wanted to make clean. And I started again.

But a day came and I felt that I didn´t want to analyze once more time what was incorrect or misplaced, what could be better, what should be enhanced. That day came and I felt that the only thing I wanted to do was blessing, embracing, celebrating my life as it was, that the only thing I could do was validating myself as I was. And suddenly I realized that I didn´t want to be anyone else, I was not willing to live my life as if it were a perpetual carnival.

It was a shocking, miraculous, day when I woke up and felt that what I had, what I had achieved, the person who I had become, the life that I had constructed from ashes should be enough. Please, don´t get me wrong, I was not closing the door to new levels of understanding or learning, I was just stopping my endless chase for something that made me valuable, I was just reckoning my efforts as fully adequate, I was just validating my path and rejecting the fact that I had to keep trying to fit in a preconceived idea about spiritual elightenment or pretending it.

That day I decided to go back to the basis, regardless of my need to explore new ideas and to figure out the puzzle of consciousness. That day I abandoned an old mask that was related to perfectionism and competitiveness, to the importance that I gave to exactness and to demonstrate that I was right. I started to bow down to my reality and to stay true to the essential practice that had always supported my process: meditation, attention and presence, emotional awareness, connection and appreciation of guidance, acceptance and gratitude.

The fall of this concrete mask, has made me more oriented to simplicity, more humble and also more generous, open and authentic. I have discovered that just focusing on staying here in this right present moment is more than sufficient, that I don´t need to prove who I was, who I will be or who I want to be, either.  

I only had to be by ceasing my fight.


This entry is part of a project I am developing with my friend Montse Gallardo. We´ll share a photo every week during 2015. Her photos will be always taken outside and my photos will be indoor shots only. We have created a Facebook page: In and Out. 52 weeks where you can see all the photos of the project. 

DAY 561

in {and out} Week 1: The start

As a person oriented to achievement I love (and fear) starting new projects. Even if it´s a project aimed at having fun, even if it´s a project shared with a good and loved friend, even if it´s a project that has been expected for a long time… regardless of its importance or transcendence I long for its beginning and I feel frightened of it anyway.

I have come to understand that it happens because I feel every new project (the biggest and the tinniest) as an aptitude test that I had to pass thanks to the perfectionist inside me. And although when this hasn´t prevented me from starting new projects once and again, it has caused me lots of suffering.

However, since I recognized my cognitive biases all this has become much easier. Likewise, my neuron are prone to try old connections and to make me feel overly concerned about ridiculous things but I am learning to ignored them and I am becoming much more benevolent to myself.

I still am an achiever (to be honest, I still am a perfectionist also) but now I don´t let this issues to rule my life despotically. Life is too short to be always in the search for approval or feeling miserable. Life is too short to give up serenity, peace and joy. Life is too short to let the wounds of the past or the expectations about our future define our present. I am too precious to let preconceived ideas and conditionings ruin this day.

So here I am, a bit late, feeling thrilled and a bit unsettled. Here I am the first day of this new project where I will share a photo every week along with my very best friend, Montse Gallardo. Her photos will be always taken outside and my photos will be indoor shots only. We are planning to share them on our respective blogs. we have created also a Facebook page that you can see following this link and where I will be publushing only in Spanish so far.  I am sure we´ll introduce improvements gradually here and there, but something won´t change: Every Sunday we´ll share a photo of our view of 52 themes that have been previously decided.

So here I am. I can´t wait to see how this project will evolve and now that finally, I have opened my heart to this possibility I can´t wait to start the next chapter.

DAY 529

itinerary

You know pretty well nobody´s perfect . So what?, you can´t help trying it. You know pretty well life is not perfect. So what?, you can´t help expecting a flawless existence.

You claim and defend that world would go better if many persons be oriented to perfection, because this world (and its valuable content) shouldn´t be neglected and this life should be marvelous.

And you make huge efforts to prove that you are right. And maybe world and life become a little better thanks to them.

But one day you wake up and realize that a safe world is not only your matter, that a wonderful life is not your only responsibility. You acknowledge that the old unease (the bitter anger) comes from the need to control what indeed can´t be controlled.

You say to yourself: maybe perfectionism is a deception!

Suddenly, you want to change and feel carefree, you desperately want to accept, but you don´t know how, you don´t know even how to start.

And you read and read (you are a perfectionist, you know). And you demand yourself to stop being so demanding. And you want to be perfect while giving up perfectionism. And you have several relapses.

But then you recognize your stunning cognitive biases: you always use the verb should, and generalize, and compare yourself to others. You always want others approval, want to please anyone (even those that don´t even know you). You use labels, and exaggerate.

You feel guilty and find yourself so defective that you want to die.

And then, little by little, you start to embrace your flawed self (with all its old wounds). And you bow down to the imperfection that means being a perfectionist.

Here your practice of acceptance starts.

And you accept, accept and accept without a bit of laziness. And you stay with your shameful patterns. And you sit down with your anger. And you stand beside your fear of not being enough (knowing that maybe they are not you).

But a new day comes. It seems you are not able to see anymore the problems and disadvantages (neither big nor little) of world or life... or of being yourself.

You seem to enjoy having the life you have and feel madly adventurous.

You want to explore uncertainty.

And you seem to adore crooked lines, unexpected paths, asymmetries and the shabby charm of everydayness. And you see miracles everywhere, even in a drop of water.

You look for your old bitter anger inside you, it has left no trace. You feel blissfully blessed, amazingly serene.

You dwell in the light of what is.

Cross-posted at Vision and Verb on Friday. Many other women share their passion for creativity and words there, please visit us, it is a wonderful site 

There you will find also a Card Shoppe. For every greeting card sold, the profit will accrue in allotments of $25 each to be given as loans to men and women around the world who are starting their own businesses. We have chosen the non-profit organization KIVA as the conduit for our giving back 

You can send a love note to a friend and make a difference in the world

DAY 502

"The thing that is really hard, and really amazing, 
is giving up on being perfect and beginning the work of becoming yourself."

Anna Quindlen

DAY 365+119

emptiness

Often I yearn for vacuity and I would like to feel a sense of nothingness. 

I feel filled with thoughts, emotions, sensations. I look at my house and see all the stuff that I have been collected along the years and I feel disgusted. I look at myself and I wish an even more austere image. 

I dream of living in bare spaces, with clear lines and only a few objects. I dream of having a bare mind, focused on only one thing at a time, free of conditionings. 

I dream of living with a bare heart, without any fear, open. I dream of having a bare style, wear only black and banish all the accessories. 

Oh... how simple life could be this way!

 But I am thinking  that maybe this could be another preconceived idea about how life should be. I have  gone deep inside me and I´ve realized that maybe this is another (and brand-new) way to punish myself now that I am developing this journey aimed at acceptance. Now that I have accepted so much and healed so much, I feel odd being happy with myself (yes, I know...) and I have to look for new things to mend. 

First I was not so beautiful, maybe not so stylish, not so refined and not so charming; not so generous or not so worthy of love (you name it)... and now that I am barely starting to accept that this was not true, I am telling myself that maybe I am not spiritual enough. Somehow, I keep on craving for being perfect or accepted or loved and I am sure that reaching that level of simplicity or any other thing won´t give me any peace. 

In fact, this is not about being this or that, it´s about letting go the yearnings, about stop wishing that things could be any other way and forgetTing others approval. It´s about cultivating inner detachment that is related to prejudices and expectations and a vast acceptance whose true dimension I am only starting to see. It´s about being fully aware of what is happening outside and inside me every single moment of the day and going through it without fighting it, acknowledging what it means. 

According to this, emptiness itself it´s not good or bad (obviously, it can be a way for some persons -including myself- to feel closer to the inner self) but if I use it in a given moment to reproduce the old (and insane) patterns it´s telling me something about my own process and challenges me to go deep into it. 

I am starting to understand we only can go over our own soul´s path (which is unique and is not described in any recipe or protocol) by listening what life is trying to tell us and by being true to ourselves. There are as many ways of enlightenment as persons in this world.

DAY 365+112

the day after

And suddenly everything changed once again. Perhaps the rest, or the prayers, or the tears cleared my mind up, but while I am walking, the sun that is shining through the trees seems to be winking at me, greeting me.

I follow its traces, the scattered patches of light and they lead me to the nicest places in the park.  Places where the green leaves, the natural shades and the singing birds seem to be awaiting me.

I breathe deeply and look up and discover the loveliest berries ever.

I feel my heart lighten, and I remember that I don´t need to search for perfection to be happy. Indeed, everything is perfect just as it is.... maybe because everything is (exists) and this should be enough.

I awaken to the day´s unique charm and want to say thanks but a little voice inside me says:

the nicest form of gratitude is to accept the gifts that have been given to you,
to walk through the time that is at your disposal the best you can,
letting go remorses.

Come on, dare to fully live your life now,
dare to embrace the wonder outside you (and inside you) now!,
dare to open your arms and welcome this simple day...

dwell in endless possibilities

PS: This post is related to the previous one. After a few bad days, my sunday morning´s walk with my camera brings me much peace. Why does it take us  so long to do the things that are good to us?

DAY 365+97

I am not going to search for your ideal perfection anymore. It´s a deception

From now on, I am only going to see miracles around me 

and inside me

I am going to experience amazement

I am going to let go preconceived ideas about beauty,

about life, about myself

I am determined to cultivate gratitude

I am going to accept what is, not to regret or reject

I am going to live

I am going to celebrate my gifts and talents

I don´t want to fight anymore against myself

I want to play and laugh and love

I want to trust my life

I want to improve myself by embracing the power of what I really am

If you can help me to do this with much love, stay,

if not, set me free

I am sorry, it´s not you, it´s me

Kind Regards

Z.

DAY 365+96

there is a happy medium 
between 

Pleasing others and selfishness

Extreme need of excellence and inefficiency

Rigidness about one´s beliefs and lack of opinion

Focusing on achievement and giving up one´s dreams and goals

Endless self-criticism and blindness

Constancy and lack of willpower

Tolerance to frustration and indolence

Impatience and apathy

Obsessive concerns and carelessness

Need of approval and arrogance

Improvement of oneself through self-knowledge and looking always outside

Self-demanding attitude and self-indulgence

Motivation and the loss of hope

...A happy medium where I can feel simply at ease

Indeed I have found it between the past and the future, between my mind and my heart, between earth and heaven

It is a place where nothing has to be repaired because nothing is defective, where one can take ownership of one´s own life without fear

DAY 365+95

Why don´t dream of it all? (playing with reveries)

I have started a self-portrait journey again  and I am taking an on-line class. At the same time I am trying to reinforce my daily practice and to reconnect with my old passion for drawing and to practice self-love and self-respect. Past week I thought that this was too much, and saw August as a big desert filled with self-demands

After a few breathes (and some reflections), this morning I realized that this thoughts were a sort of self-sabotage because deep inside I think I don´t deserve so much attention, I shouldn´t devote so much time to myself, I shouldn´t dream big...

But after debating between all those ideas, I said to myself, "Wait. Why I can´t dream of having it all, of being whoever I want to be... who is preventing me from being free?. I took my camera and faced up a self-portrait challenge that I was postponing (be playful, something that I think I am not). I took my pencils and drew. I came here and wrote the following list inspired by this amazing post. Please follow the link, you´ll enjoy it.

I want to be serious and responsible
I want to be playful and have not a care in this world

I want to be a Zen monk and master the art of meditation
I want to walk by the red carpet (at least once)

I want to travel abroad and be part of an humanitarian project
I want to stay at home and read all day long

I want to have a garden and make grow my own vegetables
I want to live in a city and to plant herbs in pots

I want to fly to the Antarctic and get lost there
I want to fly to the isle where I was born and living with my mom forever

I want to teach every day of my life
I want to own a little library or a tea shop

I want to go to Tahiti
I want to live in Italy for a year (or more)

I want to study and learn more
I want to be peaceful and know that I am enough

I want to be romantic, careless, passionate, bohemian
I want to be predictable, analytic, logic, sensible

I want to sleep outside and count the stars
I want to go to bed at home and kiss my cats goodnight

I want to have a balanced diet
I want to eat sandwiches, drink tea and don´t have a meal timetable

I want to go around the world with my husband and have a nomad existence
I want to be with my mother during her last day

I want to have my dark hair forever
I want to let my gray hair grow and don´t tint it anymore

I want to have a minimalist house
I want to have shabby furniture and mementos everywhere

I want to visit Auschwitz
I want to forget all the suffering

I want to believe that my story counts
I want not to be defined by my story

I want to be extravert and sociable and be the soul of the parties
I want to keep being introvert and reflective

I want to run a marathon
I want to stay at home and write my journals and draw

I want to have time to do all these things
I want to be happy being where I am

I want to be myself
I want to be every tiny “me” that I know still live inside me

DAY 365+65

the yearning for balance

I´ve started to take a fitness class a few months ago. It´s not the typical class because the teacher uses strategies from different disciplines. She always says that our power comes from within, from our ability to feel our body and adjust every part of it in order to achieve the right posture. She has taught us that posture gained without consciousness is not posture, is imposture

This is so near to my own approach to my practice that I sensed -since the first day- that this could be the class I was looking for. And I was not wrong. Now my corporal work is closer to the inner one, and this pleases me very much. Indeed, I have realized that it´s the same work, but this is another story

Yesterday morning, while I was training, I could feel for a moment the proper coordination of all my components. I was developing an equilibrium exercise (I was on tiptoes and I had lifted my arms and hands) when I felt that my thoughts, my emotions and my whole soul were contained between these two opposite sides of my body. Oh friends, it was such a wonderful sensation!, I was almost touching heaven

Back home, I became aware of how much I have changed my concept about balance throughout the latest years. As a perfectionist, I´ve been always concerned about do the right thing (in accordance to social parameters), so the pursuit of what I would define as correctness has been underneath most of my actions and decision making. I used to think that this would lead me to conquer some kind of emotional stability, calmness of mind or at least, certain harmony

I couldn´t be more mistaken: the more I looked for steadiness this way, the more unbalanced I felt inside. As a result, at some point of my way, I felt like if I was about to break down from moment to moment . My posture was indeed, imposture because I hadn´t awakened to the true nature of my life (of myself) and I was influenced by a false standard of excellence. The acknowledgement of this true undermined my belief in perfection and redrew my concept of balance

According to this reconsideration, balance wouldn´t come from a preconceived faultlessness which generates prejudices, labels, unattainable ideals and suffering. Balance only could come from cultivating authenticity and mindfulness. Therefore, it is something that must be created -once and again- depending on circumstances, something that demands flexibility, movement, change and must be based on the evidence of mutability

It is, in short, the art of creating healthy responses that can cancel out the influence of my fear of transience… of being defective and not deserving of approval or love

It is taking me time to accept this perspective. My residual perfectionism often insists on considering that I am living in a precarious equilibrium (because my behavior is not imperturbable and fixed, because I am not adapting myself to others expectations, because I look for my contradictions deliberately and enjoy uncertainty), but something inside me is starting to accept that this precariousness is better than previous rigidity and endless discontent

Something inside me is accepting that life is made of pure impermanence: this is its grace and its challenge


Cross-posted at Vision and Verb on Sunday. Many other women share their passion for creativity and words there, please visit us, it is a wonderful site

There you will find also a Card Shoppe. For every greeting card sold, the profit will accrue in allotments of $25 each to be given as loans to men and women around the world who are starting their own businesses. We have chosen the non-profit organization KIVA as the conduit for our giving back

You can send a love note to a friend and make a difference in the world

DAY 365+43

unexpected ally

This is my contribution to Photo-Heart Connection this month 

My husband gave me a few macro lenses as a birthday present past December. One day, after all the Christmas celebrations, I went out with my camera, thinking of trying them. I was imagining all the wonderful photos I would take. I have always admired the botanical macros and flowers close-ups so I was ready to capture some fabulous images. However, as I walked by the park next to my home, I lost my inspiration. I wasn´t able to find nothing that fitted with what I had in mind and I felt  that my camera was driving me crazy, but I walked and walked and made several attempts

When I was back at home, I couldn´t be more disappointed. And that feeling increased when I edited my photos. Most of them were blurry, others were out of focus and the few that were not too bad (technically speaking) were simply awful. The flowers seemed strange creatures that frightened me and  some tiny details -as stamens or sepals- looked threatening remainders of an unknown world, though I´d  usually considered them to be enchanting 

Even so, I went out with my macro lenses one more time, and another one but I didn´t obtain better results. I started to hate them because I couldn´t find myself in my photos and they were making me lose the pleasure I usually find while shooting and editing

Oh... I was so annoyed. I kept wondering why I could not take a great macro. One day the answer came to me from a little place inside me and was clear: you can´t take better macros because this is the very first time you use those lenses and maybe you need time, maybe you can need even more time than others and this is not a crime. And suddenly,  I became aware of the foolishness of this question

To be honest, once I acknowledge this, the whole thing made me feel stupid and arrogant. Once again, I was forcing (and punishing) myself because I was too far from my expectations

I have lived that way part of my life: always making the effort to be better, always discontented, always wanting more, always judging myself harshly. Nonetheless, I have learned to let go my perfectionism, to accept that I can get things wrong and also, that I can´t be good at every single thing. But those macro lenses made the perfectionist that still live in me to wake up and scream: I was so concerned by taking the perfect macro that I was forgetting to enjoy the process 

So I decided to relax and enjoy. I went out with my camera and my lenses again without any preconceived idea in mind about what I should achieve. I walked, breathed and had fun and when I was coming out of  the park I saw this little creature (only one centimeter length). It was taking delight in the warmth of the morning light and was also, absolutely still

As I was looking at it, I perceived the texture of the leaf where it was resting, the delicacy of its colors, the shadows and its velvety wings that were so precious. I simply focused the image I was seeing through my view finder and shot. When I heard the click, I knew that I had taken my first acceptable macro. Now looking  at it, I see  the moment when I trust my own eye

I still don´t feel very comfy with those lenses, but I know that I will improve over the weeks and I will find my own style 

... And if this doesn´t happen, I´ll  feel well anyway

DAY 281

good morning summer holiday (hello uncertainty)

I am getting ready for my vacations. I will stay at home along august, except for a visit to my mother and some daytrips to the countryside if the weather gets better and temperatures drop. I am so looking forward to having these lazy days...

I have no plans but I have tons of lists of to do things. This can sounds paradoxical and  maybe this is the reason why I have contradictory feelings about how to enjoy my vacation: I want to make the most of my time but at the same time I want to stop and rest

When I talk about this with other persons, they don´t understand me. These days are supposed to be a period of leisure, to spend in an unhurried manner but when I try to think of them I always start to conceive ways of spending my time productively and, in my case, this means catching up with my personal projects. I can hardly allow myself to be inactive, even when I know that I need to regain strength

I try to excuse myself, saying that this is the only free month I have along the year to tackle some things, and it´s partly true but of course, this has also to do with my need to be always doing something (the more I do, the better I feel) and to my need to take on too much. Most of the time my goals are overly ambitious and regardless this I manage to achieve them and even to find them pleasant, but this makes me have the feeling that I am always behind, that I am not doing enough... I know this is not good but I can´t keep at bay this tendency (even when I have improved a lot)

I have only a few options: I can keep it or I can rearrange my goals in order to be more tranquil and consider my need of resting to be a goal. I can be more realistic, and by reducing my need to be perfect create room to be more organized and relaxed. I can decide to be a bit more benevolent with myself, and accept that I´m not doing too bad, whatever choice I may make. And don´t start to think that this is not a good way to start my vacation

 It´s up to me