Steady On…it’s the name of a fave song of Shawn Colvin’s.
It’s also of late what I keep reminding myself to do…amidst helping out a relative and feeling at times more than ready to be done or at other times wondering why I always say yes to people when they need help.
Hear the ego? 🙂
Today I’m remembering that moment to moment and thought by thought, there’s value in the steady on…in the remembering why you are doing what you’re doing….in recalling your motive and standing by that in spite of tough circumstances or situations you wish were different.
In the end what matters most is the being present in the moment ….being present means you don’t think about what else you could be doing or what could be more beneficial to you and your life right now. Such thinking leads to second guessing your original decision to help a friend or loved one. Staying in the moment, in the right now, helps you thwart off all pulls to think some place would be better when you’ve committed to supporting a loved one through a tough time and helping him/her transition
So how do you stay ‘steady on?’ How do you thwart off all the pulls that say you should be doing something else or oughta be somewhere else, especially when you are feeling you’ve made a worthwhile commitment?
For me ‘steady on’ is remembering that no matter how tough the human condition, the substance of your initial motive–the unselved love and unconditional support that inspired your initial resolve–grounds and sustains. Nothing–no thought or feeling–can usurp the original intent and cause feelings of second guessing of motives. But when these come, and they seem to flood thought often in the midst of striving to do something unselved, you can trust that these thoughts are simply coming as distractors. Whatever impelled the honest, pure, unconditionally loving initial intent cannot do a 180 and make anyone feel their efforts are a waste of time or somehow postponing one’s own personal growth.
And this is important.
Sometimes we may have the best of intentions but half way amidst the doing good, we start to think that maybe this was a mistake. Or maybe we feel undervalued, insignificant or worse that sense of ‘why bother doing this?”
Try as ever once you’ve committed to helping a loved one or a friend, whether for an hour, a day, a week, a month or a year, to stay grounded in the original intent and motive. Your own life can not be somehow put on hold or stagnated because you’ve opted to give of yourself this way.
In her best selling work about practical spirituality, Science and Health, Mary Baker Eddy writes “The good you do and embody gives you the only power obtainable.” I love this. I appreciate remembering this.
If honest and pure, unconditional and unselved, there’s no way you will somehow be wasting your moments.
Steady on…thought by thought.
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If you wanna chat about any of the ideas above, leave a comment or email me at evolveserenity@gmail.com.
Thanks for reading…be well, Tre ~