Length: 3:04
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Transcript
Okay, so in today's talk, I want to discuss a concept that is exceedingly useful for orientating in practice. And it helps to address one of the main barriers that people have around practices, which is getting started. Sometimes what we need is simply the activation of a practice that then facilitates the movement towards completion. We may not have the appetite, but the appetite then comes with the meal, one might say, and that is to allow yourself to begin imperfectly.
Too many times people will get way too caught in their heads about having to have something be ideal or perfect or complete, and that is on a macro level and on a micro level.
So for example, on a micro level, that might mean starting a particular practice on that day, even though as you begin it, you are not really anywhere near your best or your capacity or your reference point for how you can remember the practice going at a different point in the past. So we end up just not starting because it's there, or we fight the process, or we are a little bit too harsh with ourselves to try to get perfect very quickly.
But if we allow ourselves to start imperfectly, then we can slowly move towards deeper and deeper and deeper refinement as the practice progresses so that it's not about where we started, but where we ended.
And the other layer of this, which is more predominant usually, is macro level. In our minds, we have built a framework around a particular orientation or current of practice in life, such as movement practice or magical practice or sexual practices. And in our minds, we have a way that it is supposed to go, we have to have X, Y, and Z in place… or It has to last exactly this long, we have to feel this way, it has to meet this level of performance or metric, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
And we also judge ourselves about how it's gonna look when we first start off.
Example: a person starting to play a guitar.
When you first start off, of course it's not gonna be good, it's not gonna be excellent.
Unless you were born gifted in the guitar at a level that most people are not. Then of course there's gonna be a struggle. At first, it's not gonna look as clean, not gonna look as polished, but over time you refine the skill and you get better at it.
So you are allowing yourself to start imperfectly. You are allowing yourself to basically have a starting point, which is not gonna look like the endpoint, and the point is not to start at the end. So with that said, give yourself permission to start imperfectly, whether that's a micro practice or in the micro context of a singular practice, or the macro context of a broader arc of practice that you are wanting to engage with.