Digging In isn’t the answer.

We’ve all been told it. By our parents, friends, even therapists.

We’re sold it on social media.

The message? “You lack discipline. You need to dig in. Push harder. Push through”.

Look y’all if that worked then we would have changed the world by now!

Nuance is shunned in our society. Pushed to the side by the parts of us that like a clear winner. By the parts that want there to be a single answer. To see the nuance, to hold the subtly has been lost by many.

We are uncomfortable with the duality, the plurality of it all. We think that a single, clear answer makes it simpler. But choosing to look at only one part of the building doesn’t make the building any less complex.

It makes us blind to what else is going on in and with the building.

We seem to have developed this fear that if we acknowledge that there are windows in the walls then the walls will crumble. That if we acknowledge that there is a hole in the wall that somehow the whole building is broken.

There is a difference between rigidly applying rules under the guise of discipline and being disciplined by listening to all the facts and information and choosing wisely.

When we create the space to honour all the parts of the building that make up our life, our inner world, then we are free choose what we want to do with the building and how we want to use it. We are able to modify what needs to be modified, fix what needs to be fixed. We are able to decorate as we so desire.

We get to choose.

The first step in being able to do this is to be able to acknowledge all of the parts of the house that we own. To be able to name and see what is there. What is not there. When we can walk through the halls of our house and simply name and acknowledge the parts of our house we are well on our way to being able to choose what we would like to do with that house.

And when we get to choose what we want to do with our house we get to have fun with it. Even the ‘hard work’ is ‘fun’. Not necessarily by definition of it being full of laughter and joy but because we get to be calmly present for the work. There is no sense of fear, not sense of dread, no demanding tenants yelling at us because of the state of our house.

The irony is that if we want to be more disciplined, the answer is not found in ignoring what is going on in our house. The answer is found in getting more familiar with our house.