Be here for the triumphs.
Be here for the losses.
Be here for the dreams.
Be here for the doubts.
Be here for the courage.
Be here for the fear.
Be here for the victory.
Be here for the defeat.
Be here for the laughter.
Be here for the tears.
Whatever you do
Whatever you fear
Be here.
Language helps us describe the world we perceive. Yet in doing so, it closes our eyes, our ears, our touch, and our heart to the parts of the world we don’t have words for.
Every language is a lens on a felt reality within and around us – both clarifying and categorizing the world, and limiting it by the words it has available.
Learning more languages gives you new lenses – and a richer sense of reality.
But just like the structure of our ears limit the sounds we can hear, and the structure of our eyes limit colors we can see, the structure of any language somehow limits our felt experience of the world.
How do we re-access memories, emotions, hidden away in a long-forgotten language?
How do we re-learn to listen to the voices of the wordless world speaking to our animal self… the voices that once upon a time, before verbal language emerged, were all we had?
there’s an eternal song
drowned out by the confines of my mother tongue
a wordless melody that once made sense
until our brain started blurring it with a lens
narrowing it down
neglecting its nuances through verbs and nounswith all its might language wants us to abide
Lukas Van Vyve
but the wordless world it tries to hide
will forever be inside
Introspection prompts of the day:
What are the things you truly can’t do without?
How do you know?
Have you tried?
Are you scared to try?
If you could, would you WANT to do without them?
Or are you happy to have them in your life?
No good or bad answers. No action needed – unless you want to.
If I don’t meditate today, will I ever become a consistent practitioner?
If I don’t go for that run today, will I ever become a runner?
If I don’t stick to my diet today, will I ever get in shape?
There’s a time and place for being a hardliner about your habits – the first 30-45 days when the naysayer voice in your head still says, “let’s see how long it takes before I give up again.”
After all, you’re building a new identity and will still be pulled back towards your old ways.
But at some point, hardliners need to make the switch to “elastic discipline“:
Being disciplined about your daily practice while trusting yourself enough that when life inevitably puts you in a situation where you HAVE to violate your principles, you can navigate it, adjust your behavior, and afterward, like an elastic band, bounce back to your disciplined practice.
This is an overlooked part of habit-building. Because if you don’t consciously build the self-trust that you can, in fact, persevere despite setbacks, you’ll live in fear of giving up forever.
So initially, when you start a new habit, be a hardliner.
Use Tiny Trust Builders to start building confidence in your ability to persevere.
After 30 days, start asking yourself: do I trust myself enough to skip a day and then bounce back to my disciplined practice tomorrow?
Skip a day, then start again.
Build self-trust.
Feel your confidence and self-worth grow.
Cultivate “elastic discipline” and become free.
If you wouldn’t see overwhelming results in your first 30 days of writing, working out, dieting, or learning an instrument, would you still show up?
Are you okay with small, almost invisible gains because the process of learning, creating, practicing is fulfilling enough in itself?
And if not, could you be okay with that, if you knew it was the key to learning or creating anything you ever wanted?
There used to be a time when you didn’t have words for your feelings. You just felt them.
You didn’t have words to say that your parents are your parents. You just knew it.
You didn’t have words for the sounds other humans made. Like singing birds, a buzzing bumblebee, or a rolling thunder, it was all just vibrating air.
What was your experience of reality like before words started categorizing, abstracting and limiting what you could see, hear, touch and feel?
You may decide to change path in the spur of a moment.
But to keep moving in that new direction, you’ll have to reaffirm your decision many times.
Day by day, taking actions that pave the new path.
Day by day, making decisions that keep you on the new path.
Day by day.
Step by step.
Until the new path isn’t the new path anymore, but just the path.
