Being on My Own Side

On Bread and Berating Myself

Yesterday, I was stewing about all the things I wanted or needed to do but hadn't done. I was lamenting the unanswered emails in my inbox, the dyeing supplies sitting in the basement, the books on my shelf with bookmarks a tenth of the way in. I was feeling upset, thinking, Man, I just never get around to doing anything!

That's when I brought my attention to what I was, in fact, currently doing: kneading homemade sourdough bread. In the repetitive movements, my mind had wandered. 

My brain glitched, trying to convince me that this definitely didn't count as doing something: It's routine! It doesn't even take that long! It's nothing new! You've done this a thousand times!

And yet here I was, shaping the dough in my hands. Our sourdough pet had fallen ill (started smelling off) and so I'd been tending it a couple days, feeding and re-feeding it until the correct mix of yeast and bacteria flourished again, leaving it with a sweet yeasty smell. Under my care, the sourdough had rebalanced and I had used some of it to make the bread. Why did I not believe that it "counted"?

A book I'm currently reading (Resilient by Rick Hanson) talks a lot about "being on your own side." It's tempting to always stand in opposition to ourselves, as an accuser or even a Chris-Farley-style motivational coach, telling ourselves that we'd better shape up or we're going to end up in a van down by the river! But that way of living feels exhausting to me, and I'm trying to experiment with what it feels like to be consistently on my side.

Part of that is being proud of what I actually do instead of obsessing over what I don't. It's congratulating myself when I bake delicious bread (it didn't rise well, but it tasted good!). It's noticing when I have a success, even if that success is "swept the floor for the first time in a week." It's drawing pictures that make me smile, and being happy for spending time on the piano even when progress feels slow. It's rereading my writing and allowing myself to simply enjoy it instead of nitpicking.

Fear tells me that being on my own side will make me lazy and unmotivated. But I've found it to be the opposite: it's much easier to do things, even hard things, when I'm not expending extra energy being tough on myself. 

My emails are still unanswered, but life will go on. Today, I eat the bread I baked and I tell myself it's all going to be okay.

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