Tag Archives: perfectionism

The “It’s Been Awhile Newsletter” (Such a Classic): and a new-ish piece about violence

Hello, Dear Reader, Lover of Yoga, Poetry, Writers, and (maybe) Music too(?),

Thank you for opening this post. I love you.

(New-ish piece is below if you wanna just scroll there.)

So, yeah, it’s been a while and this is a classic headline for me — and many other people scattered about the world. I know, because I subscribe. (Little side-smile with eye-twinkle.)

I have made a monumental decision:

Are you ready for it?

I’m going to write Like MySelf.

Yep. That’s it. I’m gonna write like myself.

Years ago, in college, I took a nonfiction writing course. I can’t remember the actual title, but there was a lot of memoir-work. My final portfolio project was a collection of bits and pieces of my life, kinda like a collage-mosaic in a binder. I was born in 1978, so I was taking this class when email had just been released to the general population and websites were experimenting with what it meant “to be a web.” Not kidding: my dear computer-lab-writing-center-director was COMPLETELY JAZZED about the possibilities of the interconnectedness of information. She was GENUINELY THRILLED about something she was calling a “hyper-link.” Her enthusiasm was contagious even if confusing.

Anyway, at the end of this nonfiction writing course, I turned in a binder that held some of the most precious moments of my 20 years. It was received with tenderness, but was returned with notes about how this structure just wasn’t going to work. It just wasn’t right. It just wasn’t what it needed to be. It wasn’t cohesive (or something). I was so struck by this feedback that to this day I can’t even remember what I had titled it. I blocked it out. I think I even threw it out in one of my “fits of cleaning.” I only remember one word: Snippets. I just wanted to share snippets of my life, like some kind of scrapbook that only had words inside. I thought this course was a creative nonfiction writing course. Was it? I can’t remember. And isn’t memoir-writing creative? I mean, come on – we all know that when we write our life experience we live twice. We all know that in the writing we are creating. Why wasn’t I allowed to offer unstructured “snippets” of my life. Who’s keeping these gates?

Well, I’m opening them now.

Okay, so, that’s one announcement: I’m going to write like myself. I’m going to post snippets. I’m going to use all the genres if I want and I might make up new ones and I might opt out of using commas (see this sentence). I’m going to use the word “just” as many times as I feel appropriate (just please see above). I’m going to make references and probably not “hyperlink” them to anything so that you can focus on just one thing. AND, I’m going to use repetitive sentence structure if it’s effective, and I want to.

Thank you for indulging me in this adventure of being myself.

Second announcement: I’m going to try to actively grow my readership on Substack. Please subscribe: @amysecrist on Substack.

Third announcement: I’m going to finish writing my books. Some of them are in a word document; some of them are in my mind; some of them are in the archives; some of them are in my body-mind; some of them are in my heart-mind-body-mind; some of them have working titles: Curiosity & Kindness: The Way We BE Together; Magnolia Meditations: 30 Poem-Prompts for Your Inspiration.

Okay. I think that’s it for this moment.

I started the piece below two years ago. I don’t know what happened. (I have about 84 different drafts in my drafts folder.) I got distracted. I abandoned it. It abandoned me. Or maybe more truthfully, we got separated. Please enjoy.

The Violence of Expectations

Storied, admired, and celebrated Montessori preschool teacher, whom I met in the final two years of her long tenure, gave me advice after a conference for our oldest child, our oldest son:  Be tender.  That stuff about tough love?  Don’t buy it. 

This was after she told us, He’s already got his perfectionism issues. Don’t add to them.  

And this:  Don’t believe what they tell you about being firm and strict and exacting with your discipline.  It’s love, it’s all love. 

She had become a grandmother by this point, and would share stories of her experiences with her young granddaughters, all they were teaching her.

All they were teaching her.

I’m working at that school now, teaching even the youngest students a little bit about neuroscience and the power they have to change how they feel, the freedom that exists in their breath when they choose the way they will exhale: like a lion, an owl, like someone blowing bubbles or cooling off hot chocolate.

I didn’t know much, if anything, about resilience when my boy was in preschool, but the head teacher’s comments changed the way I approached him. I became a little softer, more patient, more observant, and better able to absorb the wisdom emanating from his innocence. He’s now entering his senior year at university, and I’ve taught him everything I knew at every moment the opportunity presented itself throughout his busy and chaotic adolescent years. When I learned it, I shared it. We currently discuss books and songs about spiritual philosophies. We send each other links to interesting teachings and satirical commentaries, and continue to encourage each other to remember our keys, cards, travel mugs, and important papers because we are more likely to be celebrating the effects of some gorgeous solfeggio frequency than checking our “notes app to-do list.”

Needless to say, the two of us help each other and one of his younger sisters navigate balancing our experience of having our heads in the clouds and our feet on the ground. There’s so much to “get done” in this world, in this life, and the three of us are quite enthralled with how we all feel about it rather than what it takes to complete it. We are practicing, and progressing, getting better at checking our lists and gathering our supplies. We are becoming ourselves.

It wasn’t always this way for me, this way of “practicing” and “becoming.” I have spent my entire conscious life navigating around, wrestling with, and understanding my relationship to society’s expectations, specifically Mid-West-American-Christian society’s expectations of me as a middle-class-cisgender-heteronormative-white-woman who was born in 1978, and the way I interpreted them: Do every thing you can for every one else all the time while doing everything for yourself by yourself because “you don’t need anyone and are completely self-sufficient,” while also producing goods and services for the community as efficiently as possible, while at the same time growing human beings in your body, one after another, while always smiling and keeping a pristine home, fulfilling spiritual and corporal works of mercy, volunteering and contributing to any and all manner of activism movements to support people who are oppressed and marginalized, including the environment, while being in peak physical condition, and while meeting all standards of beauty and attractiveness At All Times because “it’s (technically?) possible” to do so. I’m not saying that any one person or any one group taught me these things. I’m acknowledging that this is what I inhaled growing up – it was in the atmosphere, and the atmosphere is layered.

In Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, Thomas Merton writes:

“There is a pervasive form of modern violence to which the idealist…most easily succumbs: activism and over-work. The rush and pressure of modern life are a form, perhaps the most common form, of its innate violence.

To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything is to succumb to violence.

The frenzy of the activist neutralizes [their] work… It destroys the fruitfulness of [their]…work, because it kills the root of inner wisdom which makes work fruitful.”

When I first encountered this understanding of the violence of modernity, my brain immediately processed it and applied it to the torrent of expectations I was experiencing, all day every day, all of society’s and all of the internalized expectations I thought were mine. I finally began to understand that I am able to create expectations for myself. Ones that are in alignment with reality. So that’s what I do now. I get in touch with reality. To the best of my ability. I vet my sources. I make decisions. I create space to choose. As best I can.

My son’s preschool teacher came to the senior violin recital he performed at his highschool graduation party 4 years ago. I told her I loved her. She expressed her happiness for my son, her student. I am no longer exacting in my parenting. I gave that up about 17 years ago, so his three younger siblings have benefitted greatly. And I teach my preschool, elementary, middle, and high school students about the terror of perfectionism and the cruelty of the self-improvement cycle. We play around with compassion and with wisdom, two wings of the bird of peace.

Don’t worry or be too impressed or too hard on yourself – I still wrestle, but gently now, you know, because, my joints. They hurt.

I love you. Thank you for reading.

xoxo,

A.

The “It’s Been Awhile Newsletter” (Such a Classic): and a new-ish piece about violence

Hello, Dear Reader, Lover of Yoga, Poetry, Writers, and (maybe) Music too(?),

Thank you for opening this post. I love you.

(New-ish piece is below if you wanna just scroll there.)

So, yeah, it’s been a while and this is a classic headline for me — and many other people scattered about the world. I know, because I subscribe. (Little side-smile with eye-twinkle.)

I have made a monumental decision:

Are you ready for it?

I’m going to write Like MySelf.

Yep. That’s it. I’m gonna write like myself.

Years ago, in college, I took a nonfiction writing course. I can’t remember the actual title, but there was a lot of memoir-work. My final portfolio project was a collection of bits and pieces of my life, kinda like a collage-mosaic in a binder. I was born in 1978, so I was taking this class when email had just been released to the general population and websites were experimenting with what it meant “to be a web.” Not kidding: my dear computer-lab-writing-center-director was COMPLETELY JAZZED about the possibilities of the interconnectedness of information. She was GENUINELY THRILLED about something she was calling a “hyper-link.” Her enthusiasm was contagious even if confusing.

Anyway, at the end of this nonfiction writing course, I turned in a binder that held some of the most precious moments of my 20 years. It was received with tenderness, but was returned with notes about how this structure just wasn’t going to work. It just wasn’t right. It just wasn’t what it needed to be. It wasn’t cohesive (or something). I was so struck by this feedback that to this day I can’t even remember what I had titled it. I blocked it out. I think I even threw it out in one of my “fits of cleaning.” I only remember one word: Snippets. I just wanted to share snippets of my life, like some kind of scrapbook that only had words inside. I thought this course was a creative nonfiction writing course. Was it? I can’t remember. And isn’t memoir-writing creative? I mean, come on – we all know that when we write our life experience we live twice. We all know that in the writing we are creating. Why wasn’t I allowed to offer unstructured “snippets” of my life. Who’s keeping these gates?

Well, I’m opening them now.

Okay, so, that’s one announcement: I’m going to write like myself. I’m going to post snippets. I’m going to use all the genres if I want and I might make up new ones and I might opt out of using commas (see this sentence). I’m going to use the word “just” as many times as I feel appropriate (just please see above). I’m going to make references and probably not “hyperlink” them to anything so that you can focus on just one thing. AND, I’m going to use repetitive sentence structure if it’s effective, and I want to.

Thank you for indulging me in this adventure of being myself.

Second announcement: I’m going to try to actively grow my readership on Substack. Please subscribe: @amysecrist on Substack.

Third announcement: I’m going to finish writing my books. Some of them are in a word document; some of them are in my mind; some of them are in the archives; some of them are in my body-mind; some of them are in my heart-mind-body-mind; some of them have working titles: Curiosity & Kindness: The Way We BE Together; Magnolia Meditations: 30 Poem-Prompts for Your Inspiration.

Okay. I think that’s it for this moment.

I started the piece below two years ago. I don’t know what happened. (I have about 84 different drafts in my drafts folder.) I got distracted. I abandoned it. It abandoned me. Or maybe more truthfully, we got separated. Please enjoy.

The Violence of Expectations

Storied, admired, and celebrated Montessori preschool teacher, whom I met in the final two years of her long tenure, gave me advice after a conference for our oldest child, our oldest son:  Be tender.  That stuff about tough love?  Don’t buy it. 

This was after she told us, He’s already got his perfectionism issues. Don’t add to them.  

And this:  Don’t believe what they tell you about being firm and strict and exacting with your discipline.  It’s love, it’s all love. 

She had become a grandmother by this point, and would share stories of her experiences with her young granddaughters, all they were teaching her.

All they were teaching her.

I’m working at that school now, teaching even the youngest students a little bit about neuroscience and the power they have to change how they feel, the freedom that exists in their breath when they choose the way they will exhale: like a lion, an owl, like someone blowing bubbles or cooling off hot chocolate.

I didn’t know much, if anything, about resilience when my boy was in preschool, but the head teacher’s comments changed the way I approached him. I became a little softer, more patient, more observant, and better able to absorb the wisdom emanating from his innocence. He’s now entering his senior year at university, and I’ve taught him everything I knew at every moment the opportunity presented itself throughout his busy and chaotic adolescent years. When I learned it, I shared it. We currently discuss books and songs about spiritual philosophies. We send each other links to interesting teachings and satirical commentaries, and continue to encourage each other to remember our keys, cards, travel mugs, and important papers because we are more likely to be celebrating the effects of some gorgeous solfeggio frequency than checking our “notes app to-do list.”

Needless to say, the two of us help each other and one of his younger sisters navigate balancing our experience of having our heads in the clouds and our feet on the ground. There’s so much to “get done” in this world, in this life, and the three of us are quite enthralled with how we all feel about it rather than what it takes to complete it. We are practicing, and progressing, getting better at checking our lists and gathering our supplies. We are becoming ourselves.

It wasn’t always this way for me, this way of “practicing” and “becoming.” I have spent my entire conscious life navigating around, wrestling with, and understanding my relationship to society’s expectations, specifically Mid-West-American-Christian society’s expectations of me as a middle-class-cisgender-heteronormative-white-woman who was born in 1978, and the way I interpreted them: Do every thing you can for every one else all the time while doing everything for yourself by yourself because “you don’t need anyone and are completely self-sufficient,” while also producing goods and services for the community as efficiently as possible, while at the same time growing human beings in your body, one after another, while always smiling and keeping a pristine home, fulfilling spiritual and corporal works of mercy, volunteering and contributing to any and all manner of activism movements to support people who are oppressed and marginalized, including the environment, while being in peak physical condition, and while meeting all standards of beauty and attractiveness At All Times because “it’s (technically?) possible” to do so. I’m not saying that any one person or any one group taught me these things. I’m acknowledging that this is what I inhaled growing up – it was in the atmosphere, and the atmosphere is layered.

In Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, Thomas Merton writes:

“There is a pervasive form of modern violence to which the idealist…most easily succumbs: activism and over-work. The rush and pressure of modern life are a form, perhaps the most common form, of its innate violence.

To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything is to succumb to violence.

The frenzy of the activist neutralizes [their] work… It destroys the fruitfulness of [their]…work, because it kills the root of inner wisdom which makes work fruitful.”

When I first encountered this understanding of the violence of modernity, my brain immediately processed it and applied it to the torrent of expectations I was experiencing, all day every day, all of society’s and all of the internalized expectations I thought were mine. I finally began to understand that I am able to create expectations for myself. Ones that are in alignment with reality. So that’s what I do now. I get in touch with reality. To the best of my ability. I vet my sources. I make decisions. I create space to choose. As best I can.

My son’s preschool teacher came to the senior violin recital he performed at his highschool graduation party 4 years ago. I told her I loved her. She expressed her happiness for my son, her student. I am no longer exacting in my parenting. I gave that up about 17 years ago, so his three younger siblings have benefitted greatly. And I teach my preschool, elementary, middle, and high school students about the terror of perfectionism and the cruelty of the self-improvement cycle. We play around with compassion and with wisdom, two wings of the bird of peace.

Don’t worry or be too impressed or too hard on yourself – I still wrestle, but gently now, you know, because, my joints. They hurt.

I love you. Thank you for reading.

xoxo,

A.

Please subscribe: @amysecrist on Substack.

Curiosity & Honesty:  Entering Into Divine Flow  

Curiosity & Honesty:  Entering Into Divine Flow
Or
Svadhyaya & Satya:  A Path to Connection

This 4 part series is an exploration of themes and concepts related to Yoga practice, spiritual practice, and life practice, a rambling through a tangled, muddy wood of experiences; it is a one-foot-in-front-of-the-other adventure into curiosity.  When we are curious, we learn what it means to suspend judgment and step into Divine Flow, the Loving, Creative Spirit-Energy of Existence that moves through all of us.  What it feels like.   What it looks like, sounds like, smells like, and tastes like to allow unfolding, unfurling, and to feel this happening in the moment.

Part I:  Adaptability

In 2000 when I first enrolled in yoga teacher training, I learned that there were “different kinds” of yoga, and really only two:  Hatha & Ashtanga Vinyasa.  The lead Ashtanga teacher at the studio took one look at me and, with her characteristic smile said, “You’re athletic?  You’re coming with me.”  I didn’t know a chaturanga from a chakrasana; I figured she knew best, so I agreed, and experienced a resonance.  It actually brought my worlds together:  Primary Series in Mansfield, Ohio?   Primary Series in Mysore, India.  Holy Mass in Mansfield, Ohio? Holy Mass in Rome, Italy.  It was a fine fit, and through all the years bore all kinds of good fruit, not the least of which was the little website, blog, and small fundraising site The Catholic Yogi (now The Catholic Yogis).

I loved the physicality of the Ashtanga practice.  I loved the pattern and routine.  I couldn’t perform all the postures perfectly or do every single vinyasa, practice 90 minutes a day, 6 days a week, but I sure tried.  And when I failed, I buried my head in the sand, pretended it was fine, told myself it was okay, and didn’t believe myself one bit when I said it.  I had four babies by c-section over the course of 8 years, did more pilates than primary series, didn’t have a separate meditation practice, didn’t have a separate pranayama practice, told myself it was okay that I wasn’t “doing all the practices exactly as prescribed, super-correctly, most auspiciously,” and I didn’t believe myself for one second when I said it.  

 I didn’t even know to look for 

and uncover my own needs.  

I thought I had to want to try for perfection

in every single thing.  All The Time.  

Throughout those eight years, lots of “other kinds” of yoga started popping up all over the place (thank you collaboration and The Internet):   “Mindful Yoga,” “Vinyasa Yoga,” “Yin Yoga,” “Power Yoga,” “Hot Yoga,” “Restorative Yoga”  – the list is seemingly endless.  But I didn’t really feel I could dip my toe into any other water. It just wasn’t even an option for me. It was all or nothing.   I was stuck in a cycle of “Not good enough; can’t leave.”

Some of the reasons I was not able to practice The Primary “as prescribed by ‘tradition’” was because I was a householder, a person with female bone structure, hip dysplasia, chronic inflammation, subacromial compression in the shoulder, and chronic pain.  Not to mention limited physical access and financial resources.  My beginning was “before the internet” or at least before its current iteration, and offered so much less access than the abundance of online resources we enjoy today.  

It is important to note, too, that I didn’t realize much of this when I was young.  I thought I could do everything, and so I should do everything – with or without access, finances, support, accurate information, knowledge, experience, mentorship – should (lots of moralizing there).  In fact, I didn’t know until just three years ago when I suffered an end-range-of-motion injury in ardha chandra chapasana that my hip sockets are, in fact, not “fully formed.”  (Totally the reason my hips never seemed to “open” beyond my “this is always the way it is” baseline arc, no matter the hours of practice over years of effort, and completely the reason my body always recoiled from kapotasana.  Now I am thankful it always felt dangerous enough for me to shake my head and back away.)

I share all this to say that when I was younger, I didn’t know.  And, unfortunately, we don’t know what we don’t know until we know it.  Or until a wise teacher shares it with us of their own accord.  Because, guess what friends:  I didn’t even know the questions to ask.  I didn’t know it was okay to not try to do “the full thing,” to not try to reach for and achieve some version of “perfection,” to not be hard on myself for not already knowing everything about everything.  “Accessible Yoga” didn’t exist back then the way it does now.  And even if it did, I probably would’ve given it the “side-eye” and been all judgy about it.  I didn’t know it was okay to adapt postures or practices to take care of my needs.  In fact, I didn’t even know to look for and uncover my own needs.  I simply thought I had to want to try for perfection in every single thing All The Time.  “Needs” were irrelevant.  

Yes.  This Was Exhausting.

It’s important to acknowledge here, too, that even if we can do something, our explicit ability to do that thing does not imply that it is a wise thing to do.  That’s right.  I said it.  And now you can, too, in case you felt alone in that.  And now we can say it together.  

The first step in cultivating adaptability is giving ourselves permission to do it. Once we allow ourselves to adapt postures and practices, the next step is to experiment. And a healthy dose of curiosity & honesty helps with that.

Curiosity & Honesty

Sometimes honesty is about clarity.  And sometimes clarity is about truthfulness.  When it comes to practicing adaptability, svadhyaya (self-study & study of sacred texts) and satya (truthfulness) are necessary.  We need self-study, the study of sacred scriptures, and truthfulness to get at the heart of our own beliefs and be honest with ourselves about them:  do I believe I must strive for someone else’s, or a certain lineage, tradition, or institution’s concept of perfect, ideal, or full?  When we look at the specific situations and circumstances, are we seeing clearly?  Are we looking to confirm our own biases, or to uncover the truth that takes all perspectives into account?  We need more than asana to practice Yoga.  We need more than someone else’s practices to walk our own Spirit-Path.   So it’s necessary that we get curious about what serves us.

Before we dive into a study of self, scripture, situation, and circumstance, curiosity must be present or we’ll keep banging our heads against the walls of ignorance, judgment, and condemnation.  Curiosity opens the doors of truth.  The desire to learn and understand opens the gates of sectarianism and leads to a path of connection.

When adapting postures, positions, and perspectives, what are the most important pieces?  

  • Knowing you have the permission (from yourself)
  • Knowing you have the blessing (of Spirit that lives in all)
  • Knowing you have the wisdom (within your heart and body) 
  • Knowing you have the ability (to make it happen)

Then?

  • Gathering the courage
  • Accessing the creativity
  • Collecting the support
  • Receiving & Enjoying the benefits

For Practice & Experience

To begin to practice and experience Divine Flow, consider experimenting with these invitations to contemplative inquiry:

  • What do I already know about Divine Flow?
  • What do I wish to learn or experience about Divine Flow?
  • What am I ready to know or experience about Divine Flow?

Alongside curiosity and compassion, take these inquiries into your meditation or savasana practice, then write or sketch your mind’s, body’s, and heart’s responses and impressions.  Notice what you are ready to be curious about, be honest about, and what you are ready to adapt, modify, change, or allow.  Are there non-negotiables?  Are there non-negotiables that are desperate to negotiate?  

What is true for you?

Entering into Divine Flow is a practice of connection. It is relational and requires effort & effortlessness, offering & receiving, allowing & attentiveness.  Remember your most important pieces:  permission, blessing, wisdom, ability, courage, creativity, support, receiving, & enjoying.  Just because we can keep our heads buried in the sand, doesn’t mean it is wise to do.  And just because we can lift our eyes to the horizon, doesn’t mean it is wise to do.  We must do our own inner work with curiosity and honesty, svadhyaya and satya.  Then we can make our own wise choice.  This is the first step.