avidya-ahimsa

[avidya-ahimsa-blog]

on choices.

as i served coffee to what felt like hundreds of people this morning, i thought about how most of the time i was interacting with them was spent waiting for their order. how many hours do we spend this way, i wondered. with no shortage of options in sight, it seems that it has become more, and more time consuming to make a decision! this isn’t just true for your next coffee shop purchase, but for virtually every choice you’re confronted with.  

as stated in barry schwartz’s, “a paradox of choice”, “the fact that some choice is good doesn’t necessarily mean that more choice is better . . . there is a cost to having an overload of choice” (3). 

with more choices comes more time spent making a decision, and the chance of feeling uncertainty.  how can we remain self-assured when it may not be feasible to weigh every option? if you were shopping for a pair of shoes for an event it would be impossible to sort through every pair in order to know that you got the absolute perfect ones. that’s stressful! 

it’s even more tolling when you realize that not all decision making processes are as light, and mundane, as caffeine and fashion. from a very young age we’re all asked the question, “what do you want to be when you grow up?”. how intense it is to think that we should have any concept of that answer at age 10?! the question is still asked nonchalantly as we grow up, but just because our options have veered away from the fantastical doesn’t mean expecting a solid answer is any more realistic. many people spend their entire lives working on this decision and are still never fully resolved with their choice. 

i’m sure you’re thinking, well great, but what can we do about it? i think the first step is being aware that this exponential increase of choice has no end in sight, and maybe that’s how we want it. if you want to be able to customize and get precisely what you want, knowing everyone has individual tastes, there will never stop being more and more options. secondly, i think we need to decide what kind of choice makers we are. are we able to contend with a choice made with less time invested, that still satisfies our need; or, must we spend more time in order to feel confident we made the best judgement? maybe this changes with the nature of each decision. 

as i spend more time honing in on this for myself, i hope to understand the situations where choice can be overwhelming, but there may not be a need for anxiety and guilt. knowing that the thousands of choices we are confronted with daily can create a feeling of intensity, but that ultimately we can be satisfied despite the missed options, can help ease decision-making worry. as long as you choose the things that bring you the most happiness, the risk of disappointment is so much lower.  the best truth of all to hold onto is that it is never too late to change your mind, and to make another choice - there may be a billion options, but the choice is always yours! 

[avidya-ahimsa-blog]

part of my most recent reading: “you’re working too hard and have put in too many hours. there’s a need to balance the professional and personal sides of your life…”

[avidya-ahimsa-blog]

on managing time.

even as i typed the title of this entry, a smile crept across my face. time management, what is that?! as a person who enjoys, and believes some of their best work comes from working under the gun, this concept is not my best strength.  i could buy a thousand agenda books, calendars, and notepads, but it never seems to help the cause. 

i recently started to consider not only my own, but our society’s obsession with a fast paced, scattered, stress littered life.  it can feel so fulfilling to be busy, and have packed schedules.  why is it so often then that we resent the tasks, instead of questioning the place they’re coming from?  

it has been hard, but important, to acknowledge my own role in creating a crazy work load of things to accomplish.  although we like to blame feeling heavy on the things we have on our to-do lists, it’s often true that we are partially, if not completely responsible for putting them there. as i spent time reflecting on this, i realized the importance of taking time for yourself, of saying “no”, and of not only expecting respect from others, but assuring that you’re giving it to yourself. this means doing the things i must like saving money to pay bills, and going to work, but it also means painting, going on hikes, spending time with friends, and nurturing my relationship. 

take notice of the focus of conversations you’re having; are you spending time and headspace focusing on the heaviness, the anxiety, the stress, and unhappiness? if the things you spend your energy on are no longer serving you, know that you have the power to write your own schedule, to make your own choices, and draw your own calendar. yes, time is a constant, and we can’t stop it, but we can decide the way we fill it. 

time management may be less about packing it all in neat and tight, and more about balancing between external responsibilities and the responsibility you have to yourself, to take care, be happy, and healthy. life is short, and maybe the best indication of how well we manage our time is whether we remember and look back on the days that have passed fondly, or if we don’t remember them at all. 

[avidya-ahimsa-blog]

[avidya-ahimsa-blog]

on change & progress.

any one of us is capable of reciting a vision we have or have had for our lives, a plan of grandeur, of mastery, of family. many of us spend so much time sorting through the possible outcomes for our lives, trying to decide what our future should look like. despite all of this consideration, it often takes much longer than we anticipate to get to anywhere resembling our predictions for ourselves.

i’ve recently decided to take a break from college and pursue a yoga certification, and with all the questions surrounding this decision, i’ve been forced to consider many things, and have luckily found a bit of clarity. i can not count the amount of times i’ve been excited by something whether it be a career path, a hobby, or even a person, that never grew into anything significant. i can remember my frustration and even confusion as to why i couldn’t seem to make these things stick. i could envision a different me, and how i would feel pursuing these various avenues, but i never really enjoyed the full embodiment of a lot of them. for years i thought i only cultivated fleeting interests, or that i lacked commitment.  this time around, i felt that in yoga i had found something that i could truly identify with, something that made me feel weightless, and most importantly, happy.  i had begun to play out the visual of my life, many steps beyond the start, of what it may look like to choose this path.  what i had always thought of as playful daydreaming soon took on a different agenda all together. i began to explore the emotions that all of these ideas were evoking.  i felt pressure and anxiety from the blueprints i was drawing of a journey that had only just begun.  after much meditation over my past decisions and subsequent outcomes, i started to wonder if the problem wasn’t in my inability to stick with a plan, but in the ways that i paralyzed myself to even start. 

it’s almost automatic to be confronted with something new and wonder how integrating this new idea, interest, or person in your life might change the current picture, but i’ve begun to understand that for me, this comes at a price. i have perfectionistic tendencies, and i lost touch with this truth for a while. i put myself down, instead of understanding that with each new interest i was trying to force myself into a preconceived idea, for example, of what it would or should look like to be a professional writer, a star athlete, or an artist. i now know that this insane pressure was crippling me from ever taking pleasure in the process, and in my own individual journey.  the fear of not living up to phantom expectations made me unable to see the real problem. it was not that i was incapable of seeing anything through to fruition, but that i was afraid of that changes i might have to make in order to do so. 

it’s been said that nothing is impossible, and however overdone, i now believe that this is true.  i feel that the key to true progress is change. when you change your way of thinking, your habits, your friends, your job, your choices, there is no way that there will not be ripples from these decisions and that these ripples won’t be different. i never thought i was afraid of change, in fact, with all my grand visions for my future, i very much believed that i embraced change and welcomed it.  i know now that change is much harder in practice than in prediction. although this is true, the fact that i have uncovered some of my old thoughts and habits means i am not condemned to the same fruitless cycle. i am so excited to start my journey, whatever that means and whatever that looks like i can’t be certain. this reality may have given me anxiety in the past, but i welcome the mystery because it means that the story is mine to write, no outlines, no previews. 

avidya is a sanskrit word meaning misconception and misunderstanding, the lack of knowledge. ahimsa is a word, in the buddhist and hindu traditions, that means non-violent, but more specifically, a conscious consideration and love for yourself and others. i hope that through writing and sharing my thoughts i can not only find a way for myself, but to also encourage others, to abandon misconceptions, seek knowledge, and to cultivate an environment of self love for a life that is pleasing, conscious, and pure to unfold.