The first time I heard this phrase was during my 200 yoga teacher training. We were talking about the Yamas and Niyamas that morning, when our teacher Natalie said those very words, and they shocked me.
At first, I was skeptical and trying to look for things in my life to prove that the way I do anything can't possibly be the way I do EVERYTHING, right?!?!?! If you dig down enough, I think that, just like me, you will find that it is.
For me, the hardest revelation from this statement was about self-love and loving others. If the way I treat myself is by setting the bar way too high, and thus setting myself up for "failure," scrutinizing my looks, judging who I am based on past actions and mistakes, etc. - I will inevitably treat everyone else like this. Whether I like to admit it or not.
The way we do anything is the way we do everything...
We just ended our 7 Days of Self-Love Challenge, and I think it is an excellent opportunity to look at how we showed up and participated in the challenge as a way to examine how we are showing up and participating in our lives overall. [Insert eye rolls from a few folks] Hear me out…paying attention to the way you participate in the "smaller things" in life can you give tons of insight into how you show up for the big things as well.
For example…
Did you decide to join the challenge but only after contemplating and thinking and stressing and thinking about it some more, only to find yourself enjoying it once you just STARTED? If this was you, think about other situations in your life where you stopped (or almost stopped) yourself from doing something because you allowed your overthinking and excessive worrying to kick in. How can you bring awareness and light to the moment when this is happening and make enough space for you to acknowledge how you are feeling? Maybe even skip or shorten the amount of time spent incessantly torturing yourself and decide - I recognize that I feel scared, but I will do it anyway because I know I am capable, just like I was every other time.
Did you commit to the challenge with every intention to participate fully every day and stopped posting mid-way because it was too overwhelming, you didn't have time, had too many things going on? What are other areas in your life where you might be overextending yourself? How well do you typically manage your time? Where are you saying yes when you should be saying no? What other fun projects or self-love/care practices are you putting on the back burner because you are just "so busy," you can't make the time?
Or did you jump in, regardless of the gazillion things you have going on, stressing yourself out even more, resenting the process, wanting to stop posting but doing it because you felt that you absolutely had to? That you would let someone down? Me down? Are you doing other things in life that are stemming from a place of resentment, rather than love? Where else are you imposing responsibilities on yourself when in reality, you could just stop taking those on and the world would continue, just the same? And more importantly, you would be happier?
Did you find yourself censoring your posts, or writing them in a way that served your audience/followers more than yourself? Did you feel you couldn't possibly explore the prompts and reply to them authentically? Where else are you censoring yourself? Afraid to show up in your truth? Why?
Did you feel called to the prompts but didn't want to use social media as the platform to dive into them? Did you want to post every day but stopped yourself because you didn't want to make your account public? Instead of allowing yourself to follow the challenge in your journal or in your private account? Doing it for your personal growth rather than the prizes? Are there other things you put off because you can't "do them perfectly"? Do you put off meditation because you can't quiet your mind completely (news, 99.99% of us can't), instead of taking a minute every day and just focusing on your breath (ta-dá - you just meditated)? Is that your approach to exercise? Eating healthier? Where else can you start small?
I see myself in every single one of these scenarios, maybe not in this particular challenge, but I am doing or have done all of them. This is not about right or wrong, about judging or shaming ourselves, this is about becoming AWARE. Aware of the real reason why we do what we do. Are we making a conscious decision? Are we allowing fear or old belief patterns to make those decisions for us? Are we avoiding? Either by not doing or doing too much?
Once we become aware, we can slowly start asking ourselves all of these questions and getting to the root cause of our actions and thoughts. It is in that pause, in that space, where we can start to make better decisions. Where we can start doing things we really WANT to do, for ourselves. Things that nurture our hearts, set our very being on fire, those things that make us feel contentment, peace, connected.
This inquiry is self-love <3
Namaste,
Dali
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