“I’ll just add a little yoga or meditation to my to-do list”…and other lies we tell ourselves
The alarm blares at 4:45 a.m. I do not want to get up. Getting up means picking up where I left off yesterday, balancing a million different tasks and checking off items on to-do lists that somehow only ever seem to get longer, not shorter.
Sigh. Here we go again.
I get out of bed, switch the coffee pot on, and step into a hot shower. Already, my head is swirling with the day’s tasks. By the time I’ve stepped out of the shower and am pouring my first (of many) cups of coffee, I have a neatly triaged list of to-dos in my mind: In addition to the many work tasks, I also need to pay down several credit cards (high balances from recent shopping sprees to maintain my professional image), and if I can squeeze it in I’ll add meditating and a brief 20-minute yoga practice to my to-do list as well. I commit the day’s to-do list to a crisp new page in my leather-bound journal, slip on the new blazer I bought last week in a fit of before-bed shopping to ease my mind out of thinking about work, gulp down the rest of my coffee, and sit down at my desk to answer a flurry of work emails.
By mid-day, I’ve written off the idea that there will be sufficient time for meditation or yoga in today’s schedule. By 4pm, I’ve left my desk only a handful of times to grab a granola bar from the kitchen, take a couple bathroom breaks, and pour a glass of wine to ease the growing discomfort in both my mind and my body.
By 10pm, I’m wrapping up the last of the day’s work, scrolling a few different fashion sites for any must-buy items, and drowsing off next to my phone and computer.
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I’ve been doing yoga asana since I was 16 years old when I attended my first yoga class. But I’ve only truly been practicing yoga for the year it’s been since I let go of the version of myself that lived by her to-do list, tried and often failed to squeeze in short visits to the meditation cushion or yoga mat, and frequently fell asleep next to her phone and laptop. That version of life wasn’t really “living”, and that version of yoga wasn’t really “practiced.”
In my old life, I was using coping mechanisms to temporarily escape constantly churning thoughts about my to-do list, and yoga and meditation were just to-dos on the list. I say this with a lot of self-compassion: how crazy was that? It was so unbearable to live in the moment that I had designed an entire life for myself where I was constantly busy and my mind was constantly occupied. That life lasted until it became unbearable and one day I simply walked away from my job. I also found my way to a 12-step program and put myself on a strict plan to stop spending and start saving. Without the manufactured busy-ness of a business career and my favorite coping mechanisms, I had no choice but to be present. My work became sitting with the painful feelings that I had been avoiding.
Today, a year after walking away from my job and completely rearranging my life, I’m just beginning to cultivate what I would truly consider to be a mindfulness practice. Rather than yoga or meditation on a to-do list, my practice now includes listening to my body, (somewhat) regular asana (I’m working on consistency!), and maintaining a dispassionate relationship to shopping, substances, and “success'“ (my former definition, which was very one-dimensional). Fow now, this is how I choose to honor my higher power and how I choose to explore a yogic path: live a life that can be experienced in the present moment, honor my needs (rather than tuning them out with excessive thinking and destructive coping mechanisms), and visit my mat frequently to remind myself the sweetness of living a simpler life.