I gave up 75 hard after like 3 days.  I’ve tried to write to you about it 5 separate times.  I don’t know if I’m feeling shame or regret.  I don’t know if I feel like an idiot for telling you about it and then literally the next day slipping up.

I don’t know if I stopped doing it because it made me feel so good or because I slipped up one thing one day, and then I felt like I couldn’t go on.

One thing I do know is it’s given me more insight into my process.  I have learned these things about myself:

1. I am very good at hyping myself up to do the thing.  I can tell myself all the right things, be my biggest cheerleader.  I can put together a whole list of why I should do this.  Run through all the reasons in my past that I’ve never been able to do this before.  Throw all those things to the side and move forward because this time will be different.

2. At the first sign of struggle, I start to tell myself why I can’t or shouldn’t or don’t need to be doing the thing.  When it doesn’t go exactly my way, right out of the gate, part of me throws in the towel.  These voices start saying things like “don’t beat yourself up, you tried” or “whatever, you didn’t need to do this anyway, it was just for fun.”  The voice isn’t compassionate though, it’s almost sneering.

3.  I very easily let myself off the hook when the commitment is to myself and myself only.  If I don’t have anyone holding me accountable, there is about a 98% chance that I’ll veer off the path I setup for myself.  I’m a quitter.  It hurts part of me to admit that.

4.  Beginnings aren’t really my strong suit.  I can handle the lead up like a champ.  Hype it up, talk it up.  When it gets a little hard, I put the car in reverse and avoid like my life depended on it.  I guess it’s my way of protecting myself from struggle.  Or is it my way of creating struggle?

5.  Once I realize my avoidance, I try to start again and again with a different approach.  I’ve modified my 75 hard plan again.  I told myself I’d start Monday.  But I quit before I even start.  It feels like since I already quit once, I know it’s going to happen again.

I am working to extend myself grace and compassion here.  Quitting has always been pretty easy for me.  Soccer, classes, relationships.  At the first sign of struggle, I throw up my peace sign and book it.

One thing did hit me with throwing in the 75 hard towel.  If this had been 2 years, maybe even 1 year ago, I’d have shamed myself for months for messing up.  I wouldn’t have been able to look at myself because of all the nasty things my head would be telling me.

Those voices in our heads, amiright?

Don’t get me wrong, that voice has still been rearing its head and I haven’t been able to post anything on Instagram for whatever reason since I threw in the towel.  I am just choosing to approach this voice differently.

I’ve gotten to know myself very well over the past 3 years.  I know that I have a lot of voices in my head.  One of them is a little student who loves to get things right.  Another loves to cause chaos in my life.  Another is enamored with the struggle of things.

My approach to these voices has been to love them to death.  I’ve come to understand they are all parts of me that were installed by someone else.  They are all parts of me that had to cope with some very hard things.

They are not the true me.  The true me is the one who can witness the voices and understand what they are: just voices.  And when I’ve witnessed these voices, I’ve always tried to give myself tons of grace and compassion and really just extended a lot of love towards myself and these versions of me.

With this approach, I’ve been able to release a lot of really old stories and beliefs about myself.  And as I’ve done that, the mean parts of these voices have gotten quieter and quieter.

I’ve tried that with this shameful voice, too.  The one coming in reminding me that I wasn’t good enough to finish 75 hard.  She always speaks up first with some negative shit to say.  It’s sneaky and it will masquerade itself as helpful or trying to look at things from another perspective.  But its message is always the same: I’m not good enough. 

It doesn’t matter if I’ve completed every task on my to-do list, this voice will always be there to tell me I haven’t done enough.  Or that I should be doing more.  And believe me, I’ve tried to love this voice.  

I’ve tried understanding how I can help her.  Can I play, listen to music, dance, sing?  Nothing seems to make this voice happy.

So I’ve come to a realization.  At this moment in time, this voice doesn’t need love from me.

As I’ve really been paying attention, I’ve seen that it doesn’t know how to receive love and even if it did, I’m not sure love would be enough.  It doesn’t know how to be happy.  She can’t make herself happy and if she can’t make her happy, how can I?

I need boundaries with this voice because if I don’t implement them, I will stay stuck.  Stuck in fear of not being good enough.  She will rule my life, as she has for years.  She’ll stop me from doing the things that I know I need to do.

She’s stopped me before I’ve even ever gotten started on probably hundreds of projects and ideas.  And I can’t let that happen anymore because while I do understand and respect what she’s been through, my relationship with my highest self is more important.

I want what I want in my life more than I need her.  Even though what I know from her is some sort of fucked up safety.  We love what we know.  And knowing I’m not enough is safe for me.  

I’ve known my whole life what it’s like to not feel good enough.  And I’ve manifested that into my life in a lot of different ways.  I’m ready to flip the script.

What if I started feeling good enough?  What does good enough mean to me?  How do I feel when I feel good enough?  I want to explore these options.  Get in tune with THAT voice.  

I want to experience what it’s like to pick myself up and keep going instead of throwing in the towel.  I vow to start 75 hard again.  My version because I really do believe in what I was doing for myself.  And I am grateful that I did quit once.  

It helped me to see that voice for what it is: just another voice.