A belated New Years resolution: Do things wrong

Many, many years ago, I was going to a therapist to try to address my fear of flying. We found that there was a yoga nidra program that I could listen to as the plane was taking off, and it would help keep me from getting too terrified (once we hit cruising altitude, my fears generally subsided). But there was one section of the program where I was supposed to feel my body getting heavier and heavier, and that section terrified me. I knew it was just my thoughts, but even just the thought of increasing my weight in such a way that might affect the plane’s ability to fly was more than I could handle. I told my therapist this, and she said, “So, just ignore that part.”

My mind was blown.

Maybe that’s a really obvious solution to others, but it never even dawned on me that I could just ignore a component of what the teacher was guiding me through. My therapist encouraged me to use what worked for me, and ignore the parts that didn’t. In this case, the prior section of the meditation encouraged me to feel as light as a feather, so the next time I flew, I continued focusing on feeling light and ignored the guidance to start to feel heavier. It worked like a charm.

That advice stuck with me, and when I began my healing journey, I found that one of the things that helped was doing things a little wrong.

A personality trait that many of us have is a desire for perfection. We often believe that there is a right way to do something, and we can get tripped up worrying about whether we’re doing a technique perfectly. In fact, in many instances we may avoid a healing technique if we can’t figure out the “correct” way to do it, or we may hate ourselves because we don’t seem to be doing it right.

I also have that personality quirk, but as my healing progressed, it dawned on me, that I often had my old therapist in the back of my mind telling me to “just ignore it” anytime something didn’t seem like it was what I needed. I believe this enabled me to better listen to my body’s needs and helped me recover. Some examples:

• All guided meditations, even my favorites, have sections that don’t resonate with me. I just ignore those sections, sometimes mentally rolling my eyes if I find something particularly cheesy, other times mentally telling the guide that “No. that’s not something I need, so I’m just going to pay attention to my breath for this section.”

• When I meditated and relaxed, I also let my body shake and move as much as it needed to, rather than trying to keep it still and calm.

• I ignored meditation advice that I should be sitting upright with a straight spine. Early on, all meditations were lying down, and later, for sitting, I let my body take whatever posture it needed.

• I developed a deep love of chakra meditations even though all of my internal science voices mocked me for it.

• I first tried and then ignored all advice to focus on anything positive, and instead embraced all of my negative thoughts and feelings.

• I stopped listening to external advice about what to eat and instead ate what my body craved. (I admit that I’m heavier now than I wish I was, but I’m also healthy, I don’t get cold anymore, and I can do all the physical activities I want to do.)

• If I needed to lie in bed and wallow, or if I needed to binge mindless TV, I did so until I felt better, regardless of how long it took. All of my fears that I would end up wallowing and feeling worse if I allowed it turned out to be wrong. In fact, when I allowed myself to wallow as much as I needed, it made me feel better.

• Perhaps most importantly, I stopped listening to all the advice on how to be a better, more productive person and focused instead on learning to accept myself as I was.

• There were a lot of techniques that are supposed to be very healing that just didn’t resonate with me, so I didn’t do them.

These are just a few examples from my own recovery. For almost every technique I tried, I would do it as correctly as I could initially, and then I modified it slightly (or a lot) to make it fit what my body seemed to want. Sometimes the modifications would also shift depending on what my body seemed to need on any given day. There was never a single “right way” to do something.

Of course, what worked for me may not work for you, and the way you modify tools and techniques will depend on what you need. But that’s really the take home message. Each of our healing journeys are going to be different and we need to learn how to listen to our bodies and honor what our own bodies need. We can learn a lot from what other people have done, but trying to replicate their journey may not work for you.

Ultimately, to heal, you may need to figure out how to do things wrong so that you can find what works for you. So this year, I encourage you to do it wrong. Figure out which parts work for you, and ignore the rest.