Over time, we mostly develop a quite strong sense of our own identity. We understand ourselves as this or that kind of person, with certain kinds of cares and commitments, certain kinds of likes and dislikes, certain kinds of tastes and values. And we also know ourselves from the way our relationships go, as someone who is loved or not, gets close to people or not, can speak up or stay quiet.What we don't often see so strongly is how our daily practices - the repeated way we go about things - are an active force in maintaing the particular identity we've got used to. And how they can be an equally active force in changing it.How you get up, how you get dressed, how you eat, how you speak with people, how you listen, how you move your body, how you care for yourself, how you apportion your time, what you choose to pay attention to, your habitual patterns of thinking, when you shrink or come forward, how you stop (if you stop) - are all shaping you every time you do them.Our unconscious practices quickly form a self-sealing circle, or a self-fulfilling prophecy, making possible certain experiences and actions, and keeping others far away from us.So, if you want to shift your sense of yourself, and the way others know you, consider consciously and purposefully finding practices that can take you in a new direction.The more comfortable and familiar they are, the less possibility they'll have to change you. The more they take you into new territory (into a new world), the more they stir up, the more they call on you to learn a new way of being that's unfamiliar and uncomfortable, the more powerful they can be.New practices interrupt the way we've gone about constructing ourselves.An example from my own experience: after a lifetime of knowing myself as thoughtful and considered, as one around whom people feel safe, a bringer of peace in the midst of conflict, I've taken up kick-boxing.And now, I'm starting to know myself also as fierce, super-disciplined, sharp, graceful and expressive. I'm learning how rage can be part of me - integrated - rather than forever denied or kept in the shadows. And I more and more have a body that can do all of this. As a result new conversations, new relationships, and new ways of working with other people are becoming apparent to me.And all of this is so important any time we find that the identity we've taken up holds us back from contributing, or leads to suffering for ourselves or those around us.
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I've written before about my sense that what we're doing, in our incessant and habitual checking of our devices, is looking for reassurance.For many of us, it's a way of settling the restless, anxious, fearful longing that arises from a world that's always shifting and from the sense that there's nowhere solid to stand.Rather than turn towards the longing, to explore it and know it and be changed by it, we numb it by turning away into our devices. Perhaps, we think, we'll see the message or news item or tweet that will show us everything is alright, that we don't need to feel so afraid or uncertain any more.And, of course, such a message can never come. The momentary soothing of our jitteriness is soon over, and we reach impulsively again for a glowing screen that we hope can save us.I saw this short film for the first time this week. It shows us clearly what we're doing, and some of the consequences.[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=OINa46HeWg8]
Do you think it’s possible that your daily commitment to respond to all your emails simply invites other people to send more to you?And that what you’re doing is adding to the email madness that many people’s lives have become?What would happen if you put some of this down and became a stand for talking to people instead?
You won’t address the vicious cycle of busyness that you’re in simply by getting more efficient, or going faster, or keeping going for longer.It looks like that’s the way to salvation, but in fact you’re just digging yourself in deeper.Because it’s likely that there’s an endless list of things for you to do. Going faster completes more of them, more quickly. But it also reveals to you just how much more there is that still needs your attention.No, efficiency and speed and longer hours on their own simply feed the cycle. And while you may feel heroic, or important, or that your endless effort is unquestionably needed by everyone, you’re on a path which becomes ever more vicious in its capacity to consume you.It’s time to step out of the more and faster story. Give up wearing your busyness as a badge of honour, so that you can discover a new way of doing what matters.Here’s a risky, brave and life-changing alternative, one that’s going to call on you to know yourself in a whole new way:a) Decide what’s genuinely important and what’s not.
One of the sources of profound difficulty in human relationships: trying to 
There are seasons in all of our lives.It's easy to imagine that the circumstances you're in, or the experience you're having, will continue just this way always.But the limbo summer, in which nothing felt stable, or the autumn full of rushing self-confidence, or the winter of quiet sadness, each turn out to be a way-station, a transition time between this and that.Sometimes our transitions unfold slowly enough that we cannot detect them from within, until we turn back and see just how far we have come.And then we realise that however certain we were that we were stuck, or that we had it made, everything is really changing all the time - neither blessing nor curse, but just life's way of doing what life does.
Forgiveness.Among the most healing of all human possibilities.Today, can you start by forgiving yourself?.. for your forgetfulness, your anger, your irritability, your desire to please, your frustration, your resentment, your boredom, your rushing, your waiting, your confusion?