Today, I woke up early, fully intending to jump into my morning routine + fill my day with creative productivity.
But then I read my book + watched part of a movie, and by the time I made it upstairs to my meditation chair two hours later, I was feeling anxious, restless, and uneasy.
Like I'd done something wrong and needed to rush to make up for the lost time + atone for my unproductive, distracted morning.
As I was sitting there in this familiar pattern, feeling frustrated with this ongoing struggle around productivity + perfectionism, I had an awareness that I was simply feeling unsafe.
I was speaking to myself in a way that was making me feel afraid, activated, and ungrounded.
And in response to that, I was spinning in figure-it-out mode, searching for the answer that would make it all okay.
I was thinking: what went wrong this morning, and how do I fix it?
But there was no way I was going to come up with any useful or insightful response to that question from an activated nervous system.
So instead, I remembered safety.
That it existed + that I could create an experience of it for myself right then.
So I took a breath and sank into my body, into the moment.
And remembered that I create safety on a nervous-system level by feeling, connecting, grounding, and intentionally directing attention.
Rather than looking outside of myself for safety, rather than asking my productivity or a completed list of tasks to make me feel okay, I can find it inside right now.
I can tend to this foundation of inner safety + make that my starting point.
(Which ultimately supports my creativity way more than forced productivity -- because it’s a lot more manageable to take risks, try new things, and bounce back from failure if I have a deeper foundation of safety to lean on -- if I’m not making my action responsible for my okayness.)
I get to love myself and have my own back no matter what.
I get to decide that I’m okay just as I am + enjoy that experience of safety right now.
This is the work:
Returning to awareness + presence, tracking what's happening in my nervous system + attending to what's needed there, and remembering to love myself through it all.
What might it look like to do the same?