Enlightened in 3 Ways in 2 Weeks

Well the two weeks are almost over and even after forgetting all the time, my left arm is sore just from doing normal things. It was a hard couple of weeks but I honestly learned way more than I thought I would about how I go about everything every day and there are three main realizations I want to share and hope to keep with me.

First of all, I've just become conscious of everything I do and how I do it. Some days or even every day with certain activities, we go through the motions. We follow a routine that we've become so used to that we don't even think about it. Routines are good and helpful but if what we are trying to attain in life is to "live in the moment," we can't keep going through the motions. It was a rude awakening thinking about what I was doing every second and trying to change it and then realizing that for years I haven't even known or tried to pay attention to how I compensate to floss my teeth or pour a glass of milk. Of course I knew that I've always compensated for a lot of my every day life but it's become such a habit that I don't even know how I'm compensating. Where do our minds go when we follow a routine? After these two weeks, I understand myself better and I know what I need to fix in order to keep my left arm healthy.

The second eye-opener has been my progress. After these two weeks of working my left arm harder than I ever have, it shakes if I try and lift up my phone. But no matter how it seems, I'm not sitting here and telling myself I'm weak because of that. The first few days of this project was a huge struggle. I tried to brush my teeth and I could barely hold onto the toothbrush or navigate it over each tooth. The fine control of my arm, especially my hand and fingers, was atrocious. And as much as I would laugh at myself in the mirror at how terrifyingly focused my face looked when I was trying to complete my nightly routine with my left hand, that focus and that practice made a difference. I haven't gone to physical therapy in a long time but I'm going to use this as my own form of physical therapy because in two weeks I've already seen progress (I'm sorry I sound like a cheesy commercial for a weight loss program). It takes focus but practicing the control of my left side has made that control easier and easier and I have to focus less and less to complete these tasks.

And finally, reinforced in me has been the idea that nothing is ever as bad as it seems. Too often we avoid confrontation of issues whether the issues are with something, someone, or even ourselves simply because we're afraid of what might come of it. We imagine the worst and it scares us off forever. I was terrified at the beginning of these two weeks. I thought I was gonna see that I do everything really strangely and never use my left arm and realize that everyone probably looks at me like I'm crazy because of it. But of course I realized that this isn't the case at all. Of course there were parts of it that were surprising and worse than I thought but I use my left arm way more than I thought I did, to the point where at times this project seemed kind of pointless. Everybody has a dominant arm. Rarely do people use both of their arms equally and I've found that I land more on the side of a normal person with a normal right-handed preference than someone who's living like she doesn't have a left arm. There's a reason why people don't ask me every day about my ignoring of my left arm and I saw that in the last two weeks.

Overall, it was a successful and surprisingly positive two weeks :)

Feel free to keep clicking on the link to my blog specifically for this two week project that I've put on the right! I will be posting on it a couple more times this week.