Work on your craft, not on yourself

How is it that I’ve been on this Earth so long, and still I can’t shake this off?

Worries about the same old things. Grey, tired, tormenting ideas. Isn’t it time to stop?

Can’t I drop it all and start anew?

Take a holiday somewhere nice from the cubicle of my mind.

Because I need to. Thinking about these things keeps it on my mind.

Why?

Because it’s important, dummy.

I need fixing.

There are things wrong with me that others will never imagine. I have to be busy and engaged with this issue to find that cure for what is not right about me.

I’ll get there.

If you could just hold on a little longer if you please.

I keep going. The search is everything to me.

It’s driving me crazy. I’m obsessed. I frequently wake in my sleep with a damp shirt.

I’m close to the edge now, and I teeter.

I’ve reached the boundary of the matrix. I can see each pixel of in mocking, isolated detail.

The momentum of falling pushes me over the gap to a new plane.

It’s quiet here.

And it is apparent that I must stop.

Dark visions float out like angry moths in a car with windows rolled open.

I never knew it could be so easy, but now it’s as clear as a glacial lake in sunlight.

Stop.

I have seen the abyss that exists between thought and what is real, and I have to laugh that I ever thought the two were the same.

The ground at my soles is reassuring.

I see that I can not fix myself. There is nothing that needed fixing, only that my attention was in a place that never served me.

I turn to what I can do right now.

The ligaments and muscles in my arms twitch.

I set to work on a path of gradual mastery. Merely making the decision is enough to stir my soul.

My attention is on becoming more skilled, leaner, more proficient. Something I can finally touch.

Repetition turns resistance into hypnosis.

The arrogance of my former self astonishes me now. To think that my poor performance owed itself to my inadequacies, not because I rarely practised.

Talented writers have bent fingers.

The genius is at peace with the stories failures tell.

Callouses on my fingers show me the right path.

My new purpose is to strike with a sweeter sound. No longer is it spent searching for the cure to an absent illness.

Energy rushes in to support this quest from reserves previously locked away.

I do things to get better at them.

My attention is solely on becoming extraordinary at the things that matter to me.

Those things I fear the most, now matter the most. They show me what is worth mastering.

Tormenting thoughts that came knocking stay out in the cold. Many have given up and have drifted away. I stoke the fire: active, assertive, and care-free.

Even if I don’t feel tip-top one hundred per cent ready for it today.

Even if I don’t see myself as perfect.

These things don’t affect me as they once did.

I just look ahead, never in the rear-view.

Because the focus of my work isn’t me.

Only my craft.

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“The more important an activity is to your soul’s evolution, the more resistance you will feel.” — Steven Pressfield

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