I want six pack abs now!!! I never seem to grow tired of my ridiculous demands I set for myself. Even though on an intellectual level I fully understand that change takes time and a bit of effort, a part of me still wants to disregard the rules of the universe. Whether we are choosing the direction of that change or it's being chosen for us, there is still a part of me that wants nothing to do with change. Change is hard, sometimes painful, its too fast and sometimes its way too slow. Trust me, I can always find a way that change is the only thing that needs to change in order to suit my fickle fancy. This can be so so exhausting, my puny little "self will" armed with its feeble opinion standing up against the rules of the universe. One would think that with all this resistance to change I would already have those abs I demanded. But noooo, no, I still have to put some physical effort into this creation and I have to coax that puny yet powerful little ego of mine to direct my effort towards a more worthy adversary, like maybe just my gut instead of the entire cosmos and the way things are.
I suppose I should be a little more gentle with myself. We have been conditioned a bit to expect everything worth having to come in a shake and we just have to guzzle our way to perfection. We've also been trained to compare ourselves to the genetically modified totally ripped cyborg on the cover of the muscle magazine. If he could look like that in 6 weeks, why can't I?? This all ends in disappointment, and my ego loves disappointment, it loves the couch even more, and that is exactly where I will end up after a few sit ups and the half a gallon of protein shake failed to produce the body I desired in one afternoon. My ego also loves to set impossible standards, it compares me to where I should be from where I actually am at and disregards where I've actually been, it loves to quit! And why? Because it is doing its job, it protects me, no matter what, it always will protect whatever concepts I have about myself whether or not I consciously want to change or even improve myself for "our" benefit, the ego hates the change.
Recently I came to the conclusion that it is useless to resist a master resister such as my ego. I decided to start practicing gratitude towards my ego, thanking it for doing it's job of protecting "us". Telling it in a gentle sort of way that all though I would love to hear more about its ideas on sitting on the sofa all day watching Oprah and eating bon bons, that we are going to try something new called paddle boarding. Then it will express its concerns about giant squid attacks, and I will quell its fears by telling it that we wont actually go in the water, we will just sit in the paddle board on the sea shore. It's all about baby steps, no kicking and screaming, just a gentle negotiation with an unwilling but very useful partner. Yes useful, you see I realized that if its my egos job to protect me, and it will protect any version of me. I just have to set my intentions on where I would like to be, then start making small efforts in that direction. When the resistant one shows up, I stop, chill out a little with my ego until it's comfortable, then we take another small step. Before you know it, we've forgotten about the giant squid and the bon bons and we are paddling in open oceans towards a new version of ourselves. Little by little there is more trust, little by little the ego starts to accept "I am a paddle boarder!" Not only that, but I'm a bad ass paddle boarder(it loves to brag), and bad ass paddle boarders don't have guts, do they? Of course I give my ego all the credit for this great idea of taking up paddle boarding, and I thank it once again for doing a great job in protecting this new version of me. So no more demands, or resistance, me and my ego will work together as we paddle board, negotiating to flow of the universe, one baby step, or paddle stroke at a time.
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