The best thing you can do is to get out of your own way. Simply step aside and, like opening the sluices of a dam, let the current of each day flow through you. Ha! but easier said than done. Truly getting out of your own way could be the most difficult thing you ever do. Many of us go to extremes and spend thousands of dollars trying to better ourselves. We try diets, mindfulness, paradigm shifting, and compassion training. Take up a new hobby! Learn to be authentic! And the self help industry only makes it all worse. Like an ongoing home improvement project, you might spend years trying to straighten yourself out by tinkering, tweaking, aligning, and fixing.
Some of us become Master Tinkerers, calculating every step, managing every move. But this only causes inflammation in your subtle body. It shows up in dreams by being chased, fretting over an exam, or running through traffic to catch a plane. Your Self Improvement Project can aggravate your intestines and choke off your thyroid. This all becomes apparent in meditation. With your buttock bones in park on the cushion, any attempt to embetter yourself becomes an obstacle. What you are left with is a version of you that is never satisfied, that always feels it needs to be put right. So the best thing you can do is get out of your own way. When you step out of our own way, your body’s internal capacity for healing kicks in. One of my somatic instructors used to say, “your own biology is the smartest one in the room.”
When you get out of your own way, you suddenly find yourself with breadth and width and latitude and space. Anything becomes possible. When you finally get off the island of you, you realize a whole ocean of possibility awaits you.
