plateauing.
Yikes. When did December arrive? I feel sheepish for not writing much lately, but every time I sat down to write a blog post, nothing would come. Even when I tried to write in my journal, I could hardly string together a few words at a time. I was consumed with a writer’s block of epic proportions. I felt like I had reached a plateau - I was at a point in my life where things were going so smoothly…almost too smoothly. To tell the truth, for the most part, I’ve just been really, truly happy and grateful for all of the circumstances that have led me to where I am today. I feel so blessed to have wonderful people in my life and the opportunity to make a living doing something that I love. And sometimes I feel like, who wants to hear about how happy someone is all the time? Where’s the lesson? What’s the moral? What’s to be gained?
My “happiness plateau” reminds me of something Kino McGregor said in an Intro to Second Series workshop I attended back in November. She spoke about the importance of making room for plateau periods in your practice - for instance, between learning primary series and second series in Ashtanga yoga - in order to fully integrate all of the lessons that your practice has to offer. So often, we’re so eager to learn and grow that we automatically want to push forward and move on, thus cheating ourselves of all that can be gained from the work that we did before. But sometimes, we need a period to stop and just let ourselves plateau - without the guilt, without the inner struggle, without constantly striving for more. Working with what we already know can sometimes offer the greatest revelations.
I feel like my entire life, up to this point, has been my primary series. I have worked so hard to get to where I am today, and I know that the future holds so much more hard work and struggle. But with patience and persistence, I have laid a foundation that I feel proud to build upon. And with my birthday coming up in just a few days, I feel okay with being at a plateau right now - celebrating another year around the sun by creating some space to grow in to. So here’s the lesson that I’ve learned: plateauing does not equate to being stuck. In fact, they’re on opposing ends of the spectrum; a plateau is actually a high point, not a low! So for now, I’m just coasting along my plateau and stopping to soak it all in.
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