The Struggle is Real

by Cheech

How much struggle is enough to give a person great character and how much is too much? When does going through hard times start to feel like doing the low crawl through your entire life? When does adversity become a pulverizing load that grinds you down to powder so a big wind 💨 can come along and gust you out of existence? At what point does the struggler cave to the demoralizing pressure 🗜 of continuous effort and dread? Is it irrational to ever expect to live a life of ease? I don't know the answers to all these downer questions, but what I am about to suggest is an antidote 🧪. It's is an easy fix borne from my own very recent experience and it only takes thirteen minutes and thirty-three seconds [13:33] to learn.

I figured out through repeated and painful comparisons to the cheerier 😁, less critical people around me that stepping up my self-care game means bolstering up self-love. Self-love is so hard for me! It's the Rubik's cube of personal development practices. The reasons for this are numerous and they all stem from a time preserved in the way back machine by my reptilian brain 🧠. What's unfortunate about it is that it's the past that's robbing me of the potential for joy in my day-to-day right now. That's quite a heist and I want to put a stop to it—mindfully 📿.

I ponder (and write) often about the significance of movement in my life and how it temporarily rights the wrongs for me. It is definitely a form of rescue. It helps, and it's fun, but there may be a time 👵🏽 I can no longer move as easily or as vigorously as I'd like, so I know I need a Plan B.

There is definitely something a bit easier—a bit more foundational. It's mindful breathing, and if we can breathe and pay attention, we can all do it!

Sensei Paul sent me this video of Thich Nhat Hanh talking about self-love, and it is so worth watching!  In it, he says things like:

“How do you love yourself?

First of all, you breathe in...mindfully...and you become aware that you have a body.

Breathing in:  I know I have a body.

The body is a very important part of yourself.

You spend two hours with your computer, you are stressful, and you don't know how to stop and you forget completely that you have a body during these two hours.

You are looking for something in the future  in your work, while your body suffers.

So the first act of love is to breathe in and to go home to your body in your mind.”

Go home to my body—in my mind!  WOW! 🤯 It seems right for me. Maybe it can be right for you, too?  Try it and see. See if it takes you to The Happy.

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