What is a Give Up & Pick Up Practice?
I’ve been following the Yoga with Adriene channel for a few years now and every January I get super excited to start her annual 30 days of yoga journey just to find myself flaking around day…hmm…five. Next year I always said, next year. It didn’t occur to me that I could have just started the following month. I never did.
I’ve always been a goal oriented person. Give me a clear target and lI’ll get to work with discipline and dedication. Maybe it’s the catholic school student in me. In fact, after graduate school when there was no syllabi to follow, no agreement between me and a “qualified” human that explicitly stated the reward for my hard work, I developed a bit of anxiety. There is something about knowing exactly what I needed to do to win that is extremely comfortable and appealing to me. That’s why I always thrived in the classroom and in the volleyball court. That’s why I always struggled in almost every other hobby or pursuit that didn’t come with a roadmap and I’d eventually quit all together.
While having a clear goal made me feel like life was easier to navigate, I wasn’t always a fan of resolutions. I love the spirit of commitment and hope we all have on January 1st but I also realize how much of that is crowd behavior, an attempt to fit in with the wave of self-improvement because that’s what everyone else is talking about. In 2018, I tried something different. I set a goal for the last month of MY YEAR. I created a gratitude practice, posting pictures of things I was grateful for every day for the 30 days immediately before my birthday. It was also my 30th birthday and I was more than ready to kiss my 20s goodbye, thank them for the good times and move on with a smile, Marie Kondo style.
What I learned during that gratitude exercise really surprised me. I could stick to a tedious routine just because I set a deadline. That count down of the days I had left before I didn’t have to do it anymore was extremely effective. At the end of the 30 days I could choose whether I wanted to keep this habit or decide that it didn’t serve me after all, giving myself permission to quit without feeling like a failure. This is no groundbreaking information. I’ve noticed that people have been using this 30 day method in all kinds of ways.
This year, again I committed to completing the 30 yoga journey that Adriene releases every January. This time I had very strong reasons to take care of my body. Illness had hit my family towards the end of 2018, a wake up call I hate to admit I very much needed. During the holidays I wanted to be fully present with and for my family. Without really making a conscious decision I did not have a drink for 12 straight days. This may not sound like a lot to most people but this was Christmas time in the Dominican Republic, believe me, this was not the norm. Ironically I didn’t miss alcohol one bit and when I finally had a drink it didn’t do for me what it did before.
The effects of alcohol in our mood are well known. For me, it was always a way to suppress pain and at times it was perfect for turning pain into anger that would fuel some sort of action I wouldn’t take otherwise. But at the end of December I realized this pain was different and immune to that emotional alchemy. I still haven’t processed this type of pain fully but I know alcohol won’t “help” this time.
I returned to the states just in time for New Year’s Eve. I had quite a bit to drink that night but I was also very aware of what I was doing so much so that I made sure I had enough water and food to avoid what seemed like an inevitable hangover. The next morning I felt fine. Alcohol-0; Juli-1. I figured that if I gave up a habit for a month I would somehow create time and space to pick up a new one. It seemed like I had already began to ditch alcohol so I committed to give it up for the entire month. Choosing to pick up yoga for this first month was also a no-brainer.
After two weeks I felt great. I was killing it in my yoga practice, often looking like a big human pretzel on the mat. I did not crave alcohol at all and was saving tons of money in the process. Around this time it was also clear to me why I had such a hard time doing these things before. It was easier to explain to others that this was just a 30 day thing. I was not giving up alcohol for good which appeased a lot of my friends. Yoga was less important to them. I got used to doing my 20–30 minute practice first thing in the morning so it didn’t really interfere with any social time. It’s amazing the sense of loss some people seem to experience when I told them I wasn’t drinking, as if I had become a person they no longer recognized. That says a lot about them yes, but it also said a lot about the friends who were not at all surprised or disturbed by this. When people really know and love you, they roll with the punches. They know the real you. Shout-out to my boyfriend, my long time favorite drinking buddy, for supporting every step of this journey.
By week three I was struggling. Between the weather getting ruthless here in NYC, me getting sick and being soared from all the new moves I was doing on the mat, I was ready to give up. But how could I give up when I had already past the halfway mark? I had to keep going. It turns out it was not only my drunk friends who felt better to be reminded that this would soon be over, I did too. As hard as it was though, I started to wonder what I was going to do in February. I didn’t quite feel like I wanted anything to change. I wanted a long term relationship with my one month stand. I referred back to the original question: is this serving me? The truth is, it was.
As soon as I committed to these new habits I knew that in order to keep going I’d need to make some adjustments. As I’m writing this, it’s day 29. One more day and I will accomplish my goal. I’m super proud of myself as this is the longest I’ve stuck to these two habits in particular. I’ve decided that I will keep the yoga practice 5 days week, resting on the weekends. I’ve also committed to drinking once a week, every other week. I know the latter is not perfect since technically you can get alcohol poisoning in one night. But I know my boundaries now a lot better than I did before all of this and I know that if I was able to manage my drinking on NYE, this can’t be much harder.
But Juli, what are you giving up and picking up in February? Glad you asked. I’m giving up social media. Facebook won’t be missed at all and IG gives me more headaches than joy. Twitter though…that will be the true challenge. I’m also picking up journaling which I’ve tried to do before unsuccessfully. However I figured that anything I would have liked to capture or share on social media will probably make a great journaling prompt too. We shall see…in March 2019.
