How to do what you want to do ?
You want to go running but you don’t. You’ve been wanting to do that laundry for past 2 weeks but just couldn’t get yourself to do it. You want to clean your room but your lazy ass doesn’t want to leave the bed. What’s happening in all these situations ? Why can’t we sometimes do what we want to do ? And most importantly, how to change that ? All we need to do is get a new perspective to change our thinking.
Burden of the past
In all the examples above, we are the ones stopping ourselves by passing judgements on ourselves. The burden of the past puts us down. The fact that I have not gone out to run even once in the last month weighs me down. The fact that I was lazy in past few weeks to clean the room / do the laundry makes me judge myself that “what a piece of shit I am, why am I ‘nowadays’ being so lazy? , etc.. etc..”. — This kind of self-judgement and self-talk in the head does motivate us to do something about it sometimes but it is not a sustainable strategy. If the wording of the self-talk changes, it can be crippling. The word ‘nowadays’ in the self-talk above shows that I have hope to turn the situation around and its not too late but if that word wasn’t there, then it becomes dangerous and hence this is not sustainable.
New perspective
Our liking and disliking something is setting goals for our happiness and sadness. we constantly judge ourselves by these goals and also limit ourselves by them.
Why be unhappy about something at all is what meditation teaches us, after all everything is impermanent, so why are you upset that you haven’t cleaned your room, that you didn’t do laundry for last few weeks, and that you are waking up late for the past month ? All the sadness or unhappiness is because you have a dislike for these things or maybe you have developed a liking towards cleaning, laundry and early risers. Such a liking is most likely also because the society we live in values those very things. So, these might not actually be your likes/dislikes to begin with ! :O
You might say , “Well, its good to do those things right, why not have a liking for them and dislike the lazy and bad habits..”, but here’s the thing, does it matter in the grand scheme of things ? You not doing your laundry and living in a dirty room like a lazy ass, does it matter in any way to this infinite ever changing cosmos where everything is impermanent ? No, Not at all and when you understand this, then there is no need to like or dislike something and from this arises a new freedom.
New Freedom
When you begin to understand the philosophy and being to not like/dislike things.. Now you don’t hate yourself so much, you don’t beat yourself down as much as you did before because whatever things you are doing out of laziness, being unclean and postponing laundry etc.. is also acceptable to you now. With you not beating yourself down anymore, you can set out to do whatever you want, no judgements passed by yourself. You wanna lie down and sleep and watch Netflix ? Go ahead and do it wholeheartedly, you now have your own permission ! You want to go running ? Go for it, you wanna do laundry and clean the house? Do it. Don’t feel like doing it and want to test the limit of how long you can wear dirty clothes and stay in a messy room ? Go for it — Limits have a ceiling and a floor, breaking any of them is freedom, be free and do what you wish and not what societal standards are set for you or what standards you have set for yourself by being influenced by things around you (instagram posts, motivational vids, people doing great things, parents saying this and that etc).
Reverse it !
Reject all standards/benchmarks for they cause a divide and say this is good and this is bad and that in turn causes us to beat ourselves down into sadness and the loop continues, its a vicious cycle, a trap and that is sufferring! So be free by training yourself to be aware of the self-talk and judgements you pass on yourself and actually reverse them , say “Hey its okay to be messy, maybe I want to test the limits of how much of a mess I can live in, haha :D” .
“I wanna see how many movies I can watch in a day ? What’s the limit of my laziness ? Can I go to the extreme of not even getting off the bed to pee ? haha.”
Reverse the talk ! Enjoy not being judged by yourself and then you can finally do whatever you want with ease !
