Dear Helen,
How do you know when it's the right time to "push through" and "keep going," versus when it's actually the right time to stop doing, deeply re-assess your commitments, and pull back? And also, maybe you have some good advice on how to deal with commitments. I think of them as being set in stone—but, in reality, I think most things can be changed, adjusted, stepped away from, etc. (And I want to work on my mindset there.)
Thank you!
Stop or Go
Dear Stop or Go,
I don't think you actually have to manage any of this!
You think you do—that you have to know about a thing called "the right time" and that there could be signs or signals that tell you what to do or not do, accordingly—but that's all a layer of thought.
What does "the right time" even mean? What is it even made of?
Who could say, one way or the other, what "the right time" is?
Is it future you, looking back, and reviewing whether or not it was, in fact, "the right time" to do this or that?
Is it some authority figure who will let you know if you guessed correctly and chose the right action at "the right time"?
You see how this doesn't really hold up to questioning, yeah?
But this is what a mind does.
A mind pulls that sense of "knowing" out of context and makes it a capital-T Thing: a set of operating instructions that you need to decipher, learn, and follow from here on out. That's the layer of thought that I'm talking about.
Let's talk about it less abstractly for a moment.
Say you're running a marathon. (I've never run a marathon, but this is the first thing that popped into my head.)
How do you know when it's the right time to push through and keep going, versus when it's actually the right time to stop running, deeply re-assess your commitment to the race, and possibly change tack altogether?
First of all, is this idea of "the right time" something you actually need to know? Can you even know it? And what does it mean? Could there actually be a wrong time to stop?
It seems most likely that your body kind of decides for you; a decision gets made, without your mind's interference (though your mind will take credit for it, because that's what minds do), and you find yourself either pushing through or pulling back.
Secondly, doesn't it strike you as a little...redundant? I guess what I mean is, the thinking is pretty excessive when you consider the fact that the body has probably already reached a decision (mind you, a decision that an active, overly involved mind is probably trying to talk you into or out of).
So, here's the thing. By the time you stop to ask the question, "Is it the right time for me to push through or pull back?" I'm pretty sure you already "know" that you want to pull back.
You "know" it in the deepest sense—a sense that's probably beyond verbalization or reasoning or logic or "right timing."
It doesn't need to match up with some rubric that you've mentally established to assess whether or not it's "the right time" for you to act on your changing feelings.
It doesn't need to make sense to that part (or any part) or you. It can just be an inkling of desire to be done. To bow out.
And you can listen to that inkling! Without deeply reassessing anything!
I hope this helps.
Love,
Helen