Day 36- Pushing Myself to Study Effectively

I’ve been in school for two years non-stop now, and I’m still having some difficulty with focus and concentration on my studies. I know I spent 18 years developing bad study habits and so it’s going to be a bit of a process to correct it, and that’s cool- I can do ths. So I’m just bringing it up here once again, from a new angle/dimension as I have slowly been addressing all dimensions of my toubles with studying. I started with stress and anxiety, fear of failure, problems with authority and lack of self-movement and discipline already, and now it’s just some nitty gritty stuff. Some real practical application stuff that requires diligence as I actually continue to walk this change into the physical reality of myself. Self-forgiveness makes pushing through resistances more do-able I find, because of the understanding involved where it’s like: “okay, I know why I ‘m doing this, I know why it seems hard, I know where I’m going with this, I know this is not going to last forever, I know how much better I’ll feel later if I do his now” …etc…

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to resist studying, reading my lessons and taking notes for an upcoming exam.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to become distracted and preoccupied while studying my lessons, reading and taking notes, because I have defined it as boring and not what I would prefer to be doing, instead of realizing that everything I do can be utilized as an opportunity to apply myself, to push myself and to expand myself- no matter what it is I am doing.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to think/believe/perceive that my lessons are hard because of the vocabulary.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to define texts with more advanced vocabulary as hard instead of realizing that it only takes one moment to look up the word in a new tab and to then integrate that word by looking at its context within the sentence.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to become lost and overwhelmed within the denser parts of the chapter, because I would rather be skimming through all the material within the desire for it to all be simple and easy and something I can complete quickly, instead of realizing that some parts of the chapter will require more focus and attention to fully understand, and that I need to take it slow at those points so as to fully comprehend the lesson.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to want/desire to skip over the parts I don’t understand within the text, as if I’ll piece it all together by the end, instead of realizing that this causes me to become frustrated because I end up not completely understanding what I’m reading.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to judge myself when I don’t completely understand the text because I’ve skimmed over some parts due to laziness, thus sabotaging myself and hashing up old memories of being completely lost in school wherein I developed the belief that “I just can’t do this, I just can’t understand, there’s something wrong with me, I’m not like the others, it’s more difficult for me” and so on, without taking a moment to look at how I actually created this reality for myself by not applying myself as much as is/was required of me to.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to relive two particular memories of doing quizzes which I had not studied for, wherein I did not take any self-responsibility, but instead allowed myself to fail and go into self-judgment, and after repeating this type of behavior enough times I ended up defining myself as one who is not capable of school.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to play the victim by defining myself as incapable, instead of standing up and changing my habits and actually applying myself fully, as I know full well I am capable of.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to use my self-definition of ‘incapable of schoolwork/focusing/concentrating/understanding’  as an excuse to not have to fully apply myself, because it’s easier to judge/define myself than it is to actually push myself to change.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to define myself as incapable of schoolwork.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to think or believe that school is more difficult for me.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to abdicate my self-responsibility by believing I simply can’t do it, instead of realizing that I can do it because I have all the tools I need available to me.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to overdo it at times when I’m studying, within the belief that I need to push push push all the time, instead of taking myself and my physical body into consideration by giving myself breaks and doing it in shorter spurts, such as studying for 45 minutes, and then taking a 15 minute break.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to think or believe that pushing myself to sit there and stare at the screen is effective, instead of realizing quality over quantity- it’s doesn’t matter how much time I put in if I’m not learning, absorbing, understanding anything.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to build up studying as some big arduous task that ‘nearly kills me,’ and then procrastinating from doing it because I’ve built up this belief, instead of simply setting up my spot, setting up my timeframe, sitting down and starting. It doesn’t have to be so miserable- that is entirely self-created.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to define studying as miserable instead of taking self-responsibility and looking into how I created that experience for myself, wherein I am now using it as an excuse to become distracted and make it worse.

I realize I have made studying ‘miserable’ ‘arduous’ and ‘difficult’ by skimming over tough sections of text, by not adequately looking up and integrating the vocabulary I don’t understand, by defining the entire experience on past memories, and by projecting those past memories into the future thus setting myself up to procrastinate.

When and as I am going to study I DO NOT STOP moving me towards the task. I DO NOT give myself the time to project how it’s going to be. I simply keep putting one foot in front of the other until I am sitting down and ready to go, and then I breathe, clear myself, and start with 45 minutes.

When and as I see myself becoming distracted while studying, I stop, and I breathe. I bring myself back to awareness and check why I am allowing myself to be/become distracted: is it the vocabulary, is it a tough spot in the text, is it past memories or am I defining the moment as too hard, too arduous as an excuse to escape self-responsibility.

I commit myself to push myself within studying, within the understanding of the importance of being able to discipline myself and utilize every moment and every breath as an opportunity to push and expand me.

I commit myself to gently change myself from the bad habits and definitions I have created for myself within school/studying over time, so that I may stop creating the same experience over and over, and instead simply move myself through the task, within presence as who I am.

I commit myself to push through the resistances I will inevitably face as I change the habits and patterns I have become so used to within studying.

Day 2- I’ll never get it all done!

Today the pattern that I found most noticeable was the feeling that I needed to get everything done all at once, and I went into an energetic possession when I realized I wasn’t going to have time to do it all. I have been doing end-of-term papers for the past two weeks and have put other stuff off, telling myself I’d get it all done when I’m finished with school. School took longer than I expected and now I don’t have as much time as I would have liked. However, now that I look back on it all, I see that if I had done a little bit each day, I could have done more than I believed, which relates to yesterday’s pattern.

So, I woke up this morning and I did a lot, and I didn’t realize that I was working myself up in to a bit of a crazy woman. Actually, I was pleased that I was getting so much done, but within this pattern I tend to do too much and then burn out instead of realizing that I need to just be consistent and do a little bit every day. By the time I left the house I knew I was in an energetic possession, because my mind was all over the place and I forgot a bunch of stuff so I had to go back home, then I was unclear as to where I should go first. It took me the whole bus ride downtown, plus some more time before I was able to get myself together again.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to participate within and as the energetic experience of ‘getting it done’ and ‘doing it all’, instead of realizing that I can only do so much in one day, and that I can only move one breath at a time.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to think, believe or perceive that if I rush rush rush and do it all right now, then it will make up for lost time and I will ‘catch up’ to myself (my mind) and experience a feeling of ‘being done,’ when in fact, there is always more to do and more that can and should be done. So within this I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to chase the mind-created idea of the experience of ‘finally being all done’ as if it is a point ‘out there’ somewhere instead of realizing that I can accomplish much while remaining Here, in the present moment.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to procrastinate while I was busy with school, because I accepted and allowed the belief that I could ‘only handle school’ and only do one thing at a time, instead of pushing myself to be and become more disciplined, precise and effective within my daily application of myself in my life and my world within the context of all the things I have to do from day to day. Within this, I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to participate in the polarity opposite of trying to do too much, because I knew that I had been procrastinating and so I created a situation in which I sabotaged myself by allowing things to pile up.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to believe I can ‘only handle school’ and ‘only handle one thing at a time’ and I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to limit myself within how effective I allow myself to be by existing within and as this belief. This beLIEf be a LIE I tell myself in order for me to not have to push myelf through resisting doing more that I believe I am capable of.

I forgive myself for not accepting and allowing myself to gently push me and test my limits in order that I may expand those limits.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to justify laziness with the excuse that I work really hard at school, instead of pushing through my resistances to keep up on my daily tasks when I am also doing schoolwork.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to draw out my school work when I have extra time because I don’t have a deadline to motivate me to push through my resistances towards learning the coursework. In this I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to indulge in the mind of idleness instead of facing reality and the fact that I can move me instead of depending on the energetic ‘push’ of stress that I call motivation.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to deny the fact that I know all too well that I am able to push me and move me, and that it is a choice when I do not do so. When I make the choice to not push me or move me I am choosing the limitations of the mind over realizing myself as life- doing nothing instead of doing everything, -wasting time instead of living (wasting life instead of living life).

I accept and allow and commit myself to, in moments of resistance when I see I have the choice, to choose life each and every single time until it is who I am.

I allow and accept myself to fearlessly face the fact that I am capable of self-movement and self-change, and that I will chose Life.

I commit to proving to myself that I am more than what I believe myself to be by walking through resistances in breathe as Life here, an when I see that I am holding a self-limiting belief I remind myself that it is not real, but only based on past experiences which are past. Who I am is Here, in the present moment where I have the power to choose Life in each breath.

I commit myself to directing myself through my entire day, and to do work consistently each day, without forgetting to also enjoy moments in my Life  within a gratefulness that I am able to do so.