The discipline diet and I will stop doing it

The first thing before I go into my post, is to recommend typewriter astrology. Her astrology newsletter has been one of the most amazing things I found recently and she writes in such a brilliant, human way but still calling all of our bullshit.

Here is what my Aquarius rising had to read this week and one of the reasons I wrote this newsletter today:

Aquarius risings

For four months, you've been doing emotional labor wrapped in productivity. Effort dressed as ease. You didn't just complete the project, you carried its weight in your body. You adjusted your tone in meetings, buffered conflict between coworkers, checked in on friends between client calls. You showed up, again and again, not just to tasks, but to the feelings no one else could hold. You became the emotional infrastructure. No one noticed the foundation was you. You weren't just busy, you were bracing. Bracing for disappointment. For another ask. For the moment the calm cracked. And yet, you didn't break, you bent. Around everyone's expectations. Around the calendar. People saw this and they assumed that because you were functional, you were fine. But you weren't. That's what no one talks about: how exhaustion doesn't always announce itself with breakdowns. Sometimes it shows up quietly, in the form of hyper-efficiency. In the way you schedule every hour, not to thrive, but to keep from collapsing.

Well, this is it, isn't it? I've been going deep inside my fears and one thing I found out was my relationship with productivity and discipline. I'm not saying this is how everyone sees it and I hope as you read this you understand that I'm showing my perspective on concepts but it doesn't really mean this is a universal law. Nothing is fixed or rigid which is the whole point of this newsletter today.

My relationship with authority and discipline or productivity is a reflection of my feelings of lacking. It doesn't reflect my entire life but it puts a light on the areas of my life where I clearly feel I'm lacking. That being said, when I was little, I was everything all at once. I went from thing to thing as my intuition and joy pushed me but an unpredictable child, one that doesn't seem to fit anywhere or be in line, is a potential adult that society won't be able to control, so like many of us, society did shatter my sense of security within myself and my intuition. It pushed me through this belief that discipline was how I earned love. Discipline was a determined way to be predictable and create some predictability in my life instead of trusting my feelings and my intuition. For years, I repressed my inner voice so much when it told me that I needed rest or that a certain path wasn't for me and yet, I shoved it down because it seemed that fitting in, being this organized and in-line version of myself got me more admiration and respect than when I was being myself, my chaotic self. Well, not in all aspects because like binge eating too, my repression made me binge on very chaotic behavior (hello deleting social media apps on and off and on and off and shopping and skincare and whatever felt like was giving me space to be myself and yet still in a very controlled way). I put up this front of control, I hated a mess, my OCD spiraled and each time something was "out of line" in my life, it felt terrible. It felt I was going back to being chaotic which made adults in my childhood not treat me well. That is the thing with trauma, it makes you fear yourself, your own judgment and your own inner compass.

I was on and off my disciplined ways with sports, with nutrition, with every single productivity hack, with my own acceptance of my softness (which made me cover it as much as I could but clearly not successfully). It made me buy everything from fitness plans, to planners, to all these things that promised me that they would help me be closer to my ideal self which was that nonchalant, doesn't care, fuck you all type A person with their shit together. Until, my true self screamed at me last year with such intensity like "when are you going to stop performing?" when will you choose me over everyone else's opinion of you? When will you come back to me and truly face your fear of letting go? My perfect front was falling apart and I couldn't take it anymore so with all my fear I jumped into the chaos and the lack of certainty and since then I'm working on getting back to who I was when I was little which was so comfortable with taking each moment by itself and being present without needing structure or a map. Because here is the thing, each time I search for confirmation about how to exercise, how to work, how to do this and that, as much as curiosity is great, I can admit now that I wasn't doing it just for the sake of loving knowledge (which I do) but because I wanted some sense of certainty because I was too afraid to trust myself. Being disciplined and following rules was almost like an existential diet plan where I wanted someone to tell me what to do instead of trusting myself to tell me each moment what felt right, even if it didn't make any sense to anyone else. I tried all the affirmations and all the different self-help books to come to the conclusion that none of that matters if my mindset remains the same which is, being at war with myself and having a distrust in my inner knowing.

So right now, unemployed, with all my life feeling like it's falling apart, I wonder if that isn't something the universe has been trying to tell me all along "don't run from the chaos" it seems to say, embrace it. I think that for the first time since my childhood that actually made sense, it felt right even with all the fear I have for my current sense of lack of direction. I'm currently one of those stickers in maps saying "you are here" but there isn't a map around me. The possibilities are endless and instead of looking for external references to guide me, I'm finally going in and saying, ok where do you want me to go today? Is it rest? Is it a full sprint of things to check in my list of to-do's? Is it me not doing skincare for a night then doing it again the next morning? And as I strip all my "need to do's" and "need to be's" I find that I'm happy if until my last day on this planet my purpose is going back to that sense of trust within myself and shifting my mindset to a state of enoughness, regardless of what my present looks like. It is tough and I'm uncovering fears every single day and it's so messy but at the same time, I wonder if that is the point, if people who are messy and happy with the mess aren't actually the most accepting people or present people of them all? Because to accept you can exist with the chaos without it consuming you, is a level of self-love instead of the shame our society tries to push down our throats. So bring it on mess, I'm ready. I'm ready to go back to you like I was when I was a child and my creativity was free in all that chaos. I'm ready to go home again.

Have a great weekend!

Francisca