A repository, a meeting place, a collection of ideas, to be deposited and withdrawn. Curated by writer Erin Bank.
My childhood nickname was "lollygagger" My blog started out as a regular practice for me to both quell my latent lollygagger by establishing momentum in my writing and to indulge my lollygagger side by slowing down enough to notice my inner self. My lollygagger self is always framed by anxiety and depression. Instead of hiding… Continue reading Who is the Latent Lollygagger?
The more I talked about my blog, and the more questions I answered about it, I became curious: what is this blog all about? This curiosity put me, almost accidentally, in a place of vulnerability.
If I ask this inner critic, “What are you trying to say,” and really listen, I hear its fear, its desire to protect me from failure and rejection, and I can say to the voice, “Thank you for trying to protect me, but I’ve got this.” What is the “inner critic” part of the brain, if not a string of judgmental words?
Being curious about a problem opens space around it. It allows us to detach from it.
Gratitude is not something to be earned by solving a problem. It is something we all deserve and something we can give to ourselves even when everything seems terrible. It’s not a denial to our own problems or the world’s problems, but the key to being able to solve them.
The reason gratitude is hard sometimes is the same reason that it works at all: it pulls us out of our own monkey brain, chattering away nonsensically, and plants us back in the moment. Back into the world around us.
For me, there are two important elements related to these daily gratitudes that help me with the way my brain seems to be wired, and to help me feel less like I’m passively drifting through my life rather than being IN my life fully.
