The beauty of wobbly beginnings

newborn fawn just 2 minutes after birth by Clay Junell

Each day that I engage deeply with my process of self-transformation is an opportunity to learn more about myself and grow as a person. This can feel really exciting and empowering, yet also disconcerting and unsteady as I dig deeply into the hidden parts of my psyche. While I try to engage in this process with a beginner’s mind, with not needing to be an expert in order to feel a sense of worthiness, I find it difficult to maintain this outlook at times. The more I yearn for a particular change inside myself, the harder it can be to accept the reality of my current experience. For example, I struggle to name my emotions as I’m experiencing them, often needing to refer to a list of feeling words to try and find the applicable emotion on the chart. The dissonance between where I am and where I’d like to be in this process can feel overwhelming, and the voices of self-judgment take the opportunity to reappear. I am working to shift from resistance to acceptance of where I am in my process by seeing the beauty of wobbly beginnings.

I want to view my own early stumblings and tentative steps like the endearing wobbliness of a baby fawn just learning to walk. The tender vulnerability of that moment is beautiful and precious, and is always happening at just the right time. The critical voice inside my head disagrees – it proclaims that perhaps wobbliness is indeed beautiful in a baby, but that I am too grown to be a beginner at anything. The voice says that it is too late for me to improve, and that I should just feel shame for where I am and never let anyone see me until I have everything perfectly formed. This is a very familiar voice, one that I have lived with for as long as I can remember. It used to sound like my own voice, like this was my own true belief. The more I have worked on self-compassion, however, the more I am able to externalize this critical voice. Now that it is no longer a constant companion, it is easier to recognize it as distinct from my own voice. Once it starts talking, however, it sounds so familiar and so personal that it is very difficult to disbelieve what it says. So today I am trying a new tactic – giving this critic a funny voice and unfamiliar accent – to emphasize that it is a foreign entity trying to infect me with negativity rather than a part of my true self. Today I choose to not just accept, but to celebrate, the beauty of being a beginner in order to counteract the judgments running through my head – in a strangely high-pitched Australian intonation.