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James Bailey's avatar

"Being fully transparent, I have no clue how to put less pressure on myself. It feels like a term from some new foreign language. I don’t think I’m that hard on myself. I just am."

We have this in common, Tommy. Years ago, at a retreat with my development community, I discovered that the gifts I could give myself were love, self-compassion, and grace—not in an attempt to be less hard on myself or to eliminate that from my way of being, but to complement it. What I discovered over time is that the harness on myself transformed into something like "candor" with myself because the "harshness" was neutralized when accompanied by grace.

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Mikaela Blackler's avatar

re; "Did I ever have a touch to lose?" I haven't been following your work for very long, but I love the words you find. "Staring up at a crystal bath of stars." and "My thoughts branch and weave and twist like roots." So yes, you have a touch to lose, but you haven't lost it. We don't always have all the answers, as you say. I do think it's really about keeping the search alive (just wrote about that here: https://livingtostayawake.substack.com/p/reviving-the-search-of-your-childhood shameless, or perhaps shameful, plug).

I too am hard on myself, always have been. I don't walk around shaming myself but I have a deep fear of "wasting this life" so I'm always pushing. Just yesterday I was researching what's behind that. Lots of theories but nothing rang like an absolute truth to me. Would love to read your thoughts about it sometime if you reflect further on it.

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