Show up, or disappear down the road
I was pretty close to skipping an email this week but I know if I do, I would probably throw in the towel by the coming week. Something’s up with me for the past week, I feel like there are a ton of words bottled up in me, but I somehow lost the ability to string them together nicely.
This letter has more backspaces than you could imagine.
Anyway, I’m trying to shed some old beliefs and adopt new ones, like this one — showing up is more important than being a perfectionist. I hope that by showing up this week I encouraged you to think about showing up in other areas of your life too. Maybe something or someone really needs your attention right now. Maybe it’s you.
Just remember that by showing up that you’ve already made the first step. Who knows what’s going to happen, but you’ve made the declaration to everyone (including yourself) that you’re commited, and you want to keep a good thing going. So just keep at it, sad girl! ✨
I have been thinking about my progression at therapy. I had to put therapy on pause for a couple weeks, since my therapist is away on conference. While she’s away, I’ve decided to create an accountability system and I need your help.
Over the past few weeks I’ve created this weekly ritual of showing up at my therapist’s workplace, i.e. her home. She lives in a lush and leafy villa surrounded by rice fields, and her housemates are a rabbit and three adorable cats. There’s always some sort of new-age music playing softly in the background, and the villa always smells like lemongrass (we drink lemongrass tea during our sessions).
I’m a visual person and I’m stimulated by beautiful surroundings, so I think the environment she has created brings out the best in me. I think it’s because of her surroundings that I’m able to show up authentically and speak my mind without fear of censorship.
Even if I’ve had a super bad week, I re-package all my rants into challenges and obstacles, then talk through each item with her while she offers me her perspective. Fortunately, she’s really good at being optimistic so I’m able to realign my beliefs through her help.
So now I’m thinking about crafting a new kind of environment for this ritual. I’d like to invite you to show up with me on a weekly ritual. Maybe something like this:
Every Monday afternoon we will meet, and we will have a 30-60 minute conversation about our goals and whatever it is that we’re currently obsessed/thinking about. We will keep each other accountable by reporting our progress and keep each other sane by cheering on for each other.
The conversations can be supplemented with tarot card readings, astrology input, or even a basic journal prompt. We will ponder about a common theme for the week and share each other’s analogies.
Each person will have 15-30 minutes to talk about what happened in the past week, then a brief discussion on the overarching theme of that week, then on to goals achieved and goals waiting to be achieved.
It’s a pair activity, but I’m not pressuring you to do this with me. I think it would be beneficial for you to take this away and do it with someone else if you wish. If there is a familiar face that came to your mind, then that person is absolutely the best partner you need. Regardless, I hope you think about it and get back to me if you want to try it out.
Thanks for showing up, and have a good week ahead.
Since we’re on the topic of showing up and maintaining momentum, here’s a quote I picked up from Ryu Murakami’s essay, Se fué:
Male-female relationships are always in transition. If there’s no forward progress, things tend to slip backwards
I think it also applies to a lot of other parts in our lives.