To peel back the curtain on Soul Play Family for just a moment, before Jung and I put up our posts each day, we give them to each other for comments and edits. Not only has this been a great way to get a fresh eye to catch typos and clarify our language, it has led to some very interesting conversations, even though it does tend to be rather late at night!

Back on day 95 when Jung read through my post for that day, “Learning to Dance,” I was taken aback when she suddenly laughed. I asked her why she was laughing, and she said it was funny that I thought I needed to learn how to dance. Her observation of me was that I naturally danced through my daily life and she was surprised that I didn’t know that about myself! My instinct at the time was to scrap that post and write a new one, but it was late and much of what I wrote was still important to me so I decided to let it stand as it was. I figured I would write a pseudo-retraction the next day, but as it turns out I’m only getting to it now, three weeks later!

Once Jung held her metaphorical mirror up to me so I could see myself more truly, I saw that I do dance through much of my life. Looking back, it’s always been my natural tendency to follow my energy and bounce from one activity to the next and back again. I’m a horrible multi-tasker, but I’m very good at task switching. In fact, I tend to complete long projects faster if I’m allowed to take frequent breaks during which I make progress on other projects. On the other hand, if I try to slog through one activity from its start to its completion in one sitting, the project is guaranteed to last much longer than it needed to!

I have no doubt that the suppression of my natural drive to dance through life contributed heavily to my “procrastination problem” during graduate school. As I convinced myself that I should (there’s that troublesome word again) be putting all my energy into my studies, I forbade the dance. Ironcially, that was the beginning of the end for my studies. Once I stopped dancing, completing projects became more-and-more painful until I had to quit my Ph.D. studies altogether to escape the cage of misery I had constructed around myself.

Once I learned to jettison my assumptions about how I ”should” be spending my time and re-acquired the wisdom of following my energy, instinct, and creative impulses, I allowed myself to begin dancing again. It was never something I needed to learn to do, I only needed to allow myself to do it. I’ve noticed that in most areas of my life where I thought there was something I needed to “fix,” really all I’ve needed to do is to get out of my own way. I only needed to allow myself to do what comes naturally to me and stop trying to do something that is artificial.

Although I believe that most self-proclaimed self-help gurus mean well and they truly want to help people, I don’t believe that much if any of what they say will work for me. My true way needs to come from within me. I am not clay to be formed, but an existing form whose only lack was clarity. I have become crusted, covered and oxidized. The first part of my true work over the past few years has been to chip, scrub, and clean off everything which accumulated on and obscured my true form. Now my work is to stay out of my own way and allow myself live the life which comes naturally to me.

I don’t need to learn anything new after all; I already learned what I need to know decades ago. I only need to stay out of my own way and enjoy the dance!