More info on self-improvement ok? who agrees?

By Leo Babauta

Some days, you’re just not feeling it. It’s not that you’re exhausted, it’s that you’re not in the mood to do the important task that’s in front of you.

You want to just go to distractions all day long, do anything but this thing you’re resisting.

I get it. I have these days too. And sometimes, the answer is just rest.

Other times, it’s useful to find a way to do the work anyway, because if we only do our important work when we feel like it, we might not ever get it done.

It’s useful to learn to do it even when we’re not feeling it.

But how do we do that?

The Mistaken Belief

Most of us have an expectation that we should feel in the mood to do something. We should be excited, rested, focused. And when we do it, it should be easy, comfortable, fun, pleasurable. Something like that.

That results, predictably, in running from the things that feel hard, overwhelming, uncomfortable. It means that when we’re not feeling it, we are going to run to distractions and comforts. Nothing wrong with this, but it usually creates a life we’re not happy with.

When we do the thing we don’t want to do, it is often uncomfortable or difficult. We feel like we’re forcing ourselves to do something we really don’t want to do, which can feel coercive.

No wonder we avoid it! Who wants to feel coerced?

But that comes from our belief that we should only do things when we’re feeling in the mood, and that things should be easy, comfortable and fun. That means we can never do anything hard.

What if we could open to doing hard things, and maybe even loving them?

Doing Hard Things When I’m Not Feeling It

So for me, I try to notice when I have an expectation that I be in the mood, or that the thing be easy, fun, or comfortable. Just noticing the expectation allows me to choose.

Once I’m in a place where I can choose … I can decide that actually, it’s not just “fine” that I do things that are uncomfortable when I’m not in the mood … in fact, it’s an experience I choose to practice with.

I choose to open myself to this work.

I choose to move into something challenging, difficult, uncertain, uncomfortable. Just like I choose to do a workout or go for a run, even when they’re hard.

And further … I can actually love the experience. Sure, it might not seem like it … but can you love a child when they’re being difficult? You might not love the way they’re being, but you can love them. You can love any of your friends or family when they’re difficult — the way their being might not be your favorite, but you love them anyway.

I can love writing this article, even if I’m not quite in the mood for it. I can change my experience, by being grateful that I get to write it. That I’m even alive right now! That I have so much love in my life that people want to read this.

And I can see that some tasks are a brick in the larger building that I’m putting together. One brick at a time, I’m creating a meaningful future. I can wait to be happy when the building is done … or I can love every single freaking brick. I choose to love the brick, and the laying of that brick.

Many of our most meaningful experiences are difficult. Running a marathon, giving birth to a child, creating anything important or meaningful. These are not easy experiences, and yet, they’re more meaningful because they’re not easy. Would we rob ourselves of these meaningful experiences by shying away from their difficulty?

So the training is to 1) notice the expectation that has me shying away from the work, and 2) open myself up to the meaningful experience of that work, despite its difficulty, despite my not feeling it.

There’s something beautiful that happens when you do something even when you’re not feeling it.

I <3 self-improvement ?

The Opportunity in Adversity

By Eckhart Tolle

Life unfolds between the polarities of order and chaos. It is important at this time to recognize these two fundamental opposites, without which the world could not even be. Another word for disorder is “adversity.” When it becomes more extreme, we might call it “chaos.”

We would prefer, of course, to have order in our lives, which means to have things going well. We would like relative harmony in our lives. Yet, that very often is marred by the eruption of some form of disorder. And, usually, we resent that—we get angry, or despondent, or sad.

Disorder comes in many, many forms, big and small. When disorder comes it usually creates a kind of havoc in our lives, accompanied by strong underlying beliefs. “There’s something very wrong, this should not be happening, maybe God is against me,” and so on. Again, we need to understand that disorder, or adversity, is inevitable and is an essential part of a higher order.

 From a higher perspective, a higher level, the existence of order and disorder, or order and chaos, is a necessary part of the evolution of life.

 Many people have found that they experience a deepening, or a deeper sense of self or beingness, immediately after and as a result of having endured a period of disorder or chaos. This is sometimes called “the dark night of the soul,” a term from medieval Christianity used to describe the mental breakdown that many mystics experienced prior to awakening spiritually. There was an eruption of disorder, of destruction. Then, out of that, a deeper realization arose.

 And although that can be very painful, the strange thing is, it’s precisely there that many humans experience a transcendence. A strange fact is that it almost never happens that people awaken spiritually while they’re in their comfort zone. Or that they become deeper as human beings, which would be a partial awakening. It almost never happens. The place where the evolutionary shift happens, or the evolutionary leap, is usually the experience of disorder in a person’s life.

And so your life then moves between order and disorder. You have both, and they’re both necessary. There’s no guarantee that when disorder erupts this will bring about an awakening or a deepening, but there’s always the possibility. It is an opportunity, but often, it is missed.

 So here we are at this time, and our mission is the same: to align with the present moment, with whatever is happening here and now. The upheaval that we’re experiencing at the present time probably will not be the last upheaval that’s going to come on a collective level. However, it is an opportunity—because although this is a time for upheavals, it is also a time for awakening. The two go together. Just as in an individual life, you need adversity to awaken. It’s an opportunity but not a guarantee. And so what looks tragic and unpleasant on a conventional level is actually perfectly fine and as it should be on a higher level; it would not be happening otherwise. It’s all part of the awakening of human beings and of planetary awakening.

To learn more about Eckhart’s teachings on Conscious Manifestation, click here.

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