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Showing posts from February, 2011

Parting a Sea of Shoulds

I've always been obsessed with self-improvement.  From the time I was small, I've been making these lists that divide my life into categories--health, money, talents, etc--and writing out ambitious and nearly-absurd goals for myself.  Examples: I will create five new recipes a week. I will exercise for 2 hours on our rebounder trampoline every day.  I will read a book every day.  (Mind you, I was 11 years old.) Maybe this sort of system works for other people, but for me this was a recipe for discouragement.  Fast forward to my life now, and my goals have gotten more elaborate, no less plentiful, and no more doable.  And basically, for all that I hope to change, and for all of the ways I want to change, I had grown to completely mistrust my ability to do so.  Sort of like: why bother? I'll just fail anyway.  That sort of thing. Last year, in another effort to change my life completely, I tried this system of inspriring creativity from Julia Cameron called The Artist'