The Stoic Mom
  • Stoicism, parenting, and modern life
  • About
  • Follow
  • Contact

​​​BECAUSE WE COULD ALL USE
A LITTLE WISDOM

Stop Trying… and Start Living

10/19/2018

0 Comments

 
Picture
​“If you can find anything in human life better than justice, truthfulness, self-control, courage... turn to it with all your heart... but if you find all other things to be trivial and valueless in comparison with virtue, give no room to anything else.”
                                                                                                - Marcus Aurelius, The Meditations

The oddest thing happened when I first met Dominique. She is an experienced instructor in the Alexander Technique—a healthy way of using the body that I had come to her to learn. As she began giving me directions about my movements, she noticed I kept saying “I will try.” 
 
Dominique asked me to “stop trying.” 

Simply trying, she pointed out, wouldn’t enable me to accomplish my goals of learning better body use and gaining a stronger, more flexible spinal column. It wouldn't help me stand, walk, or run. It wouldn't energize my movements.
 
All my life I have said this. “I will try” has kept me going when I had lots of doubts. For that, I'm thankful.
 
But it’s also a crutch, a protective mechanism, in a way. The word “try” is closely allied with “I might fail.” It implies, “perhaps I can’t do this.” It evinces anxiety. And it also suggests that a ton of effort will be needed to force myself to do what’s hard. 
 
These thoughts have gotten me in trouble many times as I scolded myself for being a failure,  not living up to my imagined potential, not being the person I dreamed about becoming. 
 
In the Alexander Technique, we learn to direct our bodies to use involuntary muscles, focusing our thoughts on a few key intentions: freeing the neck, keeping the head forward and up,  lengthening and widening the back, separating shoulders from each other. 

Rather than “trying” to force my body into “good posture” or a straightened, upright position, this technique encourages me to imagine how my body could be if it were always ready to jump, like a spring. It enables me to break old habits of movement and posture, habits of slumping through life. Instead, I am focused on awareness of simple core principles. It's led to a revitalized use of my body. 
 
One of the biggest challenges in re-thinking movement is what F.M. Alexander, the technique's founder, called "end-gaining." That's where we work to obtain a goal no matter the means, losing sight of all else. This attitude results in abuse of our bodies. Just one example: hunched over our computers or phones, we're constantly bending our bodies to our tools rather than using them in the way nature intended. Then we experience spinal compression, muscle overextension, and pain.

"The difficulty for all of us is to take up a new way of life in which we must apply principles, instead of the haphazard end-gaining methods of the past," Alexander said.

I believe this kind of change is possible for our souls—our ruling centers, in the Stoic sense—too. 
 
It is not easy. For years, I “tried” to improve myself. While this project encompassed many activities, from the artistic to the educational to the psychological, much of my effort and "trying" focused on writing. I knew I had skills, but I struggled to put them to use, to reach people, to fulfill my idea of what my writing “should” be if I just tried hard enough.

Each time I attempted to force my pen to write simply in order to succeed in showcasing my talents and gaining recognition, it fell flat. I wasn’t happy with the results. And I got frustrated. My writing didn't seem to touch anyone. Why wasn’t all my trying working?
 
I became subtly angry at my shortcomings, and at the world for failing to fulfill my ambitions. And as I did so, I got further and further from understanding and protecting my ruling center... and I distanced myself from my true strengths. I was doing everything for the sake of an audience that was either absent or just didn’t care. 
 
It was when I reached inside to find what truly mattered to me that my work became meaningful to me. And that, too, is when readers started to tell me that they had learned something, or that they had achieved an insight into their own struggles after reading something I shared. 
 
There's a lot to learn here, though it's not so easy to see in our competition-driven culture. We have become accustomed to trying to dazzle others with our achievements and talents.

Both Stoic philosophy and the Alexander Technique encourage those who practice them to adopt simple core principles, from which all else flows. These basic ideas resonate universally. 
 
In my current Stoic practice, I have been turning back to the key virtues: wisdom, justice, courage, temperance. Those are the basic ideals to live by, the crux of the work of Stoicism. For me, it is a lifelong process to live a good life (and I think ancient philosophers would agree). There is no Stoic sage nearby to show me the path; I am feeling my way forward as best I can. 
 
Every day I ask myself, how can I be wise, honest, just, brave, and self-controlled? I fail often. But I gradually through these principles I’ve begun to develop better habits of the mind and to alter my own behaviors and habits too.
 
This happens in ways large and small. I ask myself, how can I exercise self-control today? Is it by simply not checking online news headlines all afternoon, or skipping that tempting slice of cake? It is by refraining from pitying myself when something goes wrong? When it comes to wisdom, have I questioned my thoughts (and fears) about that email exchange that bothered me at work, rather than falling into paranoia? Have I been brave about providing honest feedback to colleagues and management, even when it's easier to stay silent? Have I been fair to my children and have I been open to their honest thoughts? How can I temper my high expectations of them, letting them find their own path forward while still offering good guidance and support? 
 
It is an ongoing struggle - but not one that I’ll win by just trying.

So, after years of doubtful trying, I know that I can indeed change... gradually. Everyone can. It starts with a willingness to adjust your intentions, question your thoughts, and evolve your habits.

​It's the kind of work that I'm glad to undertake for a lifetime. 

0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    About The Stoic Mom

    I'm a writer, editor, and mom to two daughters in Northern California on a journey to discover how Stoic philosophy and mindful approaches can change a parent's - or any person's - life.

    To subscribe to my newsletter and receive all my posts, visit 
    The Stoic Mom Substack !
    ​

    Follow me on Twitter:
    @thestoicwoman

    RSS Feed

    Categories

    All
    Art/Craft
    Blogging
    Body Image
    Children
    Compassion
    Compassion Cultivation Training
    Culture
    Education
    Enlightenment
    Epictetus
    Happiness
    Life Philosophy
    Marcus Aurelius
    Meditation
    Memento Mori
    Mindfulness
    Mistakes
    Modern Life
    Mortality
    Motherhood
    Negative Thinking
    Parenting
    Perfectionism
    Psychology
    Seneca
    Senses
    Stoicism
    Stoic Philosophy
    Stoic Week
    Teaching
    Technology
    Teens
    The Body
    Virtues
    Work

    Archives

    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    May 2022
    February 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016

Proudly powered by Weebly
  • Stoicism, parenting, and modern life
  • About
  • Follow
  • Contact