Journaling and goalsetting.
You may be surprised to learn that I feel about these two things the same way I feel about, I don’t know, bungee jumping and cold plunging. Good self-improvement suggestions. Works well for some. Not happening here.
In both instances, there is something too contrived about the process. Expectations and rigidity that leave me feeling failed at the outset. Either a gross under or over estimation of what I can or want to do and too much dirty laundry to sift through to get to the good stuff.
Author Tama Kieves says “expectations of scarcity suggest we are not enough the way that we are and that when we achieve more our value will increase. It is a set up for failure. Because an inspired life does not come from self-improvement. It comes from self-acceptance and expansion.”
Yet here is the deal, I have made self-improvement through a scarcity mind-set my go-to. So potent a habit that I’m not even willing to sit with a blank page in a blank book that no one else will ever read and write down who and what I am or want to be. I just plain need it to be more…a full-blown self-improvement model. How my value will increase.
Is this really the correct prescription to create self-confidence? That push to do more and be more? The belief that you can achieve and become anything you want to be if you just put your mind to it? The endless gap between here and there, a way to incentivize and drive a titillating outcome just beyond the brush of your fingertips? Push, pretend. Never mind the process. Keep that to yourself. Just hoist the trophy high and move it along.
But these days I have begun to imagine the notion of self-acceptance as the courageous cure-all for this aching world. A required paradox to selfishness. That, in fact, if we are able to self-accept, we have less to defend. And when we have less to defend, protect, or otherwise fake ‘til we make, we, actually, have more to give.
I suppose this could run me right out of business. Afterall, ego and keeping up with the Jones’ are both nuanced incentives for many a remodel and we wouldn’t want to cut off the hand that feeds us. Except that it feels a soiled and tarnished strategy to rely on a scarcity mindset caught in the tireless paradigm of not enough.
I’d much rather pivot to the broader idea of beauty and craft. A stewardship against the pitiful overabundance of our throw-away sensibilities. Patronage at its best. Serving the greater good, the betterment of the world through the care of detail and attention to the potency of a studied craftsperson doing what they are supposed to do.
I’m not saying it should be dollars on a windy day. Rather appropriate allocation—what you want is worth what you pay for it. Not a dollar more or less. Harmony. Acceptance. Willing participation. No one punished for wanting more nor for the what-ever-it-takes to deliver it.
Is it a certain level of sophistication to accept what is, so we don’t focus on what isn’t? The difference between starting a project by saying “when I build this beautiful home, I too will be beautiful” versus “I am beautiful, and I am going to build a home to reflect my beauty.” One, forcing fleeting expectation, the other an abundant arrival. Guess which scenario works better for us as the builder?
People have asked me if we have ever walked away from a project. We have. Previously based on gut instinct. Scarcity breeds scarcity. Now, I name it opting for the power of the abundance mentality. The enough-ness. Expansion and grace through self-acceptance. The gift of what is.
To find this, we have to be this.
Shoot. Maybe I’ll have to journal about it.
Be well,
Allison
