Look at the Excitement

Glimmering Butterfly Project – Day 05

I just got done with about 45 minutes of meditation this morning. Most of it was spent watching the fireworks go off from all the thoughts bouncing around in my mind from tangent to tangent.

This past week, one of the biggest stresses I’ve been facing is realizing that I didn’t do anything for Christmas. I didn’t get anyone in my family gifts. And it’s not that I didn’t want to – I did. But through a combination of not being awake at ideal hours and by going inward these past 1-2 weeks, I just haven’t set the time aside to go out and actually shop for gifts.

Honestly, I feel like an asshole because of it. It feels selfish that I didn’t get gifts in time, that I was so focused on staying with my heart that I didn’t carve out enough time in the weeks leading up to Christmas to go shopping. It’s painful to realize that.

But in light of the Glimmering Butterfly Project and this new ethos, I had to stay with the heart and not feel an excess amount of guilt for what I do or don’t do. My meditation gave me a chance to at least come to terms with or reconcile the simple fact that I hadn’t bought gifts.

The reality of the situation is very much just that. I hadn’t bought gifts for 1 day out of 365 this year.

Now– yes, I still plan on getting gifts for my family, but it obviously won’t be today. All the stores are closed.

It’ll just have to be late Christmas Presents, or New Years presents … something other than today.

Whether or not other people that it’s a selfish thing or that I should feel guilty for it … is outside of my control.

I have my personal mission right now and in that mission, I can’t waste my time feeling guilty for hours or days at a time over what’s already happened.

Accept the reality of the situation and move on.

Because really … I have 364 other days to give a gift. Why should ONE specific day hold “more value” over others? Sure, there’s some significance to the day for many people. But can’t I give a gift in other ways on this one day?

I could just give my time more than I normally would or help out in other ways.

And really — if someone’s going to get salty about not GETTING a gift on this ONE day, then maybe it really isn’t worth getting that stressed over it.

(And I am by no means saying that my family is going to think that way, because my family often tells me not to worry about getting anything for them. But this is what is happening in my mind.)

Through today’s meditation and by listening to my heart, it became apparent to me that whatever awkwardness I face when family wakes up and I have to admit, “Yeah, so I didn’t get anything, so those will be late…”, that awkwardness might last a minute. A minute.

Why the hell am I spending hours thinking about this over and over again?

It’s not an effective way to spend my time. It’s not worthwhile to focus on that, let alone this many times, and it sure as hell doesn’t feel good.

And once my mind/heart/whatever paid more attention to that possible truth … the easier it was to “let go.”

So it’s still there for the time being, but it’s no longer taking up 99% of my focus.

And when there’s less attention paid to that, now I can see everything else that’s going on.

New ideas and opportunities start to show up.

My mind has essentially gone, “Oh, wait a minute. That’s only 1 minute of the day. There’s nearly a thousand minutes left in the day that we’ll be awake. What about the time you’ll spend hanging out with family? Watching them open up their other presents? Having lunch or dinner or whatever else? Or maybe we can help prepare for the get-together. Or maybe I could spend part of today being productive and getting some of our other projects done?”

… Huh. Just like that, a hundred things start popping up that I COULD do, that would be MORE productive or effective.

Honestly, it was hard to stay in my meditation much longer, because this new sensation and all these ideas pulled me to get up and do something.

And for years, I’ve been trying to force myself to be productive. And while I’m not perfect at it now, I’m making more progres in the past week by taking this approach.

By not giving so much attention to everything going wrong, that I’m doing wrong … and instead allowing myself to accept that “reality” and begin looking at the excitement happening around me.

All I had to do was turn my head and look at something different. That doesn’t mean that what’s “wrong” or what I “should have done” doesn’t exist. I still have to deal with that, sure. But looking at one thing (and getting stressed as fuck) versus looking at another (which gets me excited and pulls me to actually DO SOMETHING) is what I’m getting at.

So I’ll continue to look at whatever is exciting to my heart. Because that’s what’s pulling me into ACTION.