So in Year One of my 365 Day Blogging Project, I wrote a lot on topics pertaining to the Law of Attraction. One of these topics you might call the Art of Satisfaction, or the ability to keep your focus (and therefore your thoughts, feelings, and actions) on things that satisfy you, rather than those that don’t.
My “satisfaction” blog posts helped me explore this topic for myself, so that I can better master my own mind. I’m happy to see progress in this area: these days I’m much more skillful at detecting which way my thoughts are pointed. This is helping me quickly get my head focused on what feels good.
I was recently reminded of a time not too long ago when I wasn’t nearly so clear. Back when you could have said “Struggle” was my middle name 😉
Just yesterday I was eyeing some older blog posts, when I happened upon my post entitled “Confessions of a Reluctant Self-Marketer.” This post was from over three years ago, during the first phase of my blog. At the time, I was still rather high-strung, even anxious about posting. Although I probably thought I was going for a comical or expressive effective, the fact was, part of me was afraid to express myself on here. Posting was a big deal.
Looking it over last night, I was reminded of my mind state at the time. Back then I wasn’t nearly so clear on the themes of vibrational alignment , a mainstay of this blog for the past year. In “Confessions of a Reluctant Self-Marketer,” there’s a large dose of self-judgment throughout the post regarding my marketing efforts. Notice the prevalence of stressful or judgment words such as:
- “At times I have struggled with marketing like a motherfucker!”
- “…the very act of putting the word out has often seemed to be anathema to my being”
- “…trying to get myself to market has often been…. really…. hard…. to… do”
- “I don’t know what it is, but Dammit!“
- “…this condition is definitely frustrating”
- “Here I get to suffer publicly and then point the finger squarely back on myself”
You get the idea. To my credit, at the end of the post I wrote a couple days later that I didn’t feel quite so upset anymore but still wanted to keep the post up. This has always been my policy with this blog: Leave As Is, Eyes Looking Forward. I’m glad for this… because it lets me see clearly where my head was!
These days, I highly doubt I would indulge in such negative, “should”-oriented thinking. I was clearly putting a ton of pressure on myself, and it was no fun. I mean, c’mon, if you are trying so hard and something is not working, maybe you need to change your plan, instead of beating yourself up for not liking the current one!
The bottom line is, my thinking was totally misaligned. It seems that I was just trying to force myself to get with the program or something. But who’s program? How did I know it was the right program for me? Trying to force things was just making me stressed out, confused, and upset 🙁
In fact, it explains a lot about how stressed out I tended to get over managing my music career (as well as other things in life). I was constantly making things harder by judging myself and telling myself I was supposed to be better, bigger, faster, (whatev-er!)without looking at the root cause of the difficulty: trying to force myself to do things that didn’t feel right.
If “Struggle” was my middle name back then, well now I think I found the source: constantly badgering, belittling, and judging myself.
No fun, man!
Signed,
Chris “Alignment” Goslow