Friday

So many times, I think I have finally learned a lesson, but I realize I've gone right back and done that same thing again. I go back to that old place. In singing, in life situations. It really bothers me to see myself in patterns like that, because I feel like real growth is about breaking the negative patterns that aspects of one's upbringing and various insecurities have created.

In my coaching the other day, I left frustrated. Because it felt like she was still having to remind me of the same things now that she did a year ago. I thought I had fixed those things, but I listened to the recording afterward, and was not sure I could even specifically understand how to put into practice the things she was asking me to do. The minute you think you know how to sing, you realize you're still learning how to do everything. So I started thinking that maybe I need to come up with a very specific warm-up mantra that I can use to remind myself when I practice of all the things I should be focused on. The problem is that I think it would be like a paragraph long.

Also, I realize that I am a person with very specific ideas of how things should be. Of how people should behave, and how they should treat each other. It can be a little much. I thought I was learning to lighten up, at least to the point that while I may still have been really annoying other people, I was at least becoming tolerant enough to not drive myself insane. I found I was getting angry or overly annoyed about things that just really are not A) anything I can control, or B) something I could actually set a boundary about and not have to feel bad about enforcing it. I thought I had learned these lessons. But I think it may have actually just been that I hadn't been faced with many situations that tested me in that way.

So here I am, back to baby-dom again. Learning how to really connect a phrase, how to stay completely reliant on my breath, how not to let things piss me off, how not to judge people when they don't act the way I think they should. Also, I have no idea what is going on for the most part in yoga, either. So, maybe I am going through some kind of karmic phase.

It is not a bad thing. But sometimes it is scary.