#41: The Art of Recommitting
Hello friends, and welcome to Living Boldly. I am so delighted I get to hang out in your inbox this week. In our fragmented, overwhelming, too-much-content-everywhere-at-once kind of world, it means a lot for me to be able to do so.
If you’ve ever heard me speak about the creative path—the one where you pursue your creative talents or aspirations as an artist, photographer, writer, storyteller full-time—you know that I place a high value on commitment. Committing to a path, in my view, is one of the key ingredients we need to succeed. Mostly because our successes on this path do not happen overnight and so we need patience, stamina, and commitment to be able to make anything real of the dreams we hold dear.
Lately, I’ve been extending this thought even further. I’ve realized that there is perhaps an even more apt way to describe this than committing: it’s recommitting to our path.
Commitment implies that we set a course once and go forth toward it in an unwavering fashion. And that sounds wonderful in theory, but in reality, we veer off course often.
Perhaps you had a dream of making this the year you get multiple assignments and finally quit a job and go freelance full time. You were committed to this path for a long time and it seemed like all the stars were aligned.
Then Covid happened. Or a loved one got sick. Or you realized you needed way more stability than you thought you did at this point in your life and so this dream had to be let go for a while.
We all let go of our dreams every so often. That is absolutely and totally ok. And just because we do, it doesn’t mean that the road is forever closed. It only means we now get the opportunity to recommit to it and to begin again.
I love this concept so much. Recommitting to our path over and over as life throws us obstacle after obstacle feels like a much more realistic and kind-to-ourselves way to approach this.
I see the practice of recommitting to our path similar to the practice of mindfulness and meditation. In meditation, we practice the art of returning our focus, gently and without judgment, back to our breathing. We fail, we begin again. We fail, we begin again.
Just so with recommitting to our path: we practice the art of returning our commitment, gently and without judgment, back to the path we’re called to be on. We fail, we begin again. We fail, we begin again. There is freedom and expansiveness in knowing you have permission to begin again, no matter how far behind in your dreams you may think you are.
Why did recommitment come up for me this week? I’ve been looking over the goals I set for myself at the beginning of this year and I realized that many of them have not been met as of this fine mid-October day.
And yes, I know: Covid disrupted much of it. Still, the never-satisfied inner critic in me says that I could have done more, worked harder, knocked on more doors. “What will people say?” the critic mutters. “Look at where you wanted to be and where you are instead. They will see it and they will laugh at your shortcomings.”
The sooner we realize that there is no “they” and that we are the only ones keeping tabs on our failures and our successes, the easier it will be for us to practice the art of recommitting to our path.
Will you join me?
Always onwards (no matter how late we are),
Yulia
P.S. This week’s Genius Womxn podcast episode, Finding Humanness in Our Human Mess, was with my dear friend Vibha Chokhani, a brave human with an incredible life story who escaped marriage in India to start a new life in the US. “The challenge comes from the absolute polarity of: in one moment I will hold myself as a giant, like I can do anything. But I can also hold myself as the smallest, most worthless, minuscule version of me. I’m learning that ‘humanness’ lies somewhere in the middle of this specter.” (Listen on Apple here.)
P.P.S. I won a thing!
This week’s joy links:
I’m reading In Uzbekistan, Encounters With a Dead Goat. But in a Good Way. This piece just won bronze in the Foreign Travel category of the annual Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism awards. See the full list here.
I’m listening to In Pursuit of Portugal on the AFAR Travel Tales podcast (it’s short, sweet, and perfect for armchair traveling)
I’m watching this Instagram spoof of this TikTok video because I’m not on TikTok and it makes me feel old and I still resist joining it
