What Getting Off-Track can Teach us about our Roots

“I’m going to get back on track.” — Everyone

As most of you are aware, we are fully into the holiday season. A couple of weeks ago I hosted extended family for Thanksgiving. Because the week was so busy, I didn’t have time or energy for any of my practices. I really didn’t have a moment to myself at all. I was so looking forward to the Monday after the holiday when things would return to “normal,” and then it snowed. My kids had 2 snow days from school. Then my younger daughter got sick and was home another day. Following that I realized that I still needed to do my holiday cards, shopping, and decorating, and that my kids have an incredible number of holiday activities coming up. And I haven’t had a good night’s sleep in ages between holiday madness and my sick daughter.

I’ve been so busy doing other things for what has turned out now to be a couple of weeks that I haven’t been eating well, exercising, meditating, practicing yoga, or writing. I’ve been less patient with my kids and I’ve felt less balanced and grounded. I’ve clearly gotten off-track, and I feel that familiar sense of regression or failure that comes along with it.

Have I truly regressed, though? If I focus solely on what I failed to do for several days, then yes, I have allowed myself to veer off-track. There are other ways to see this period of time of “regression”, however.

When I was working as a psychologist I used to say that regression often isn’t the step backwards it appears to be, it’s often a sign that we are entering a new phase or peeling away a new layer. Sometimes we have to go “back” to learn something that allows us to take that next step forward. As such, regression is often a step forward in disguise.

For example, in addiction work, a relapse is viewed as part of the recovery process. Many, if not most, people in recovery relapse at least once. Each time can teach them something new, something that can help them continue to move forward. Even though going back to using is not a healthy thing to do, it does not necessarily indicate a step back in true healing, and it can actually be instrumental in the next step forward. It can lead to a place that is actually further along in the recovery process than prior to the relapse.

When we are practicing anything at all, very often our beings continue to process what we are practicing during the breaks, whether they be regressions, periods of rest/recovery, or relapses. Athletes know the value of rest and recovery and include it in their training. We novice athletes can also come back feeling quite strong after a period of rest and recovery (aka, not working out). I’ve experienced this as a runner. I also remember this so vividly when I was a musician as a kid. I remember often struggling through a piece at my weekly lesson, then going home and “failing” to practice it. I’d dread going back to my lesson the following week, sure that I’d struggle and it would be clear to the teacher I hadn’t practiced. What I often found surprised me. Somehow my brain and hands had continued to learn the piece of music and I often played better than I had the previous week. I could never figure it out, but reflecting back on it with a new lens I can see that stepping away is sometimes exactly what you need to do to continue to grow.

Our society views success at anything in external measures that carry little or no internal value. We measure fitness in the number of days per week we exercise, the level of strain to our bodies, and/or what our bodies look like on the outside. We measure addiction recovery in the number of days sober rather than in the true benefits of the healing process. We even measure mindfulness in how often and consistently we manage to sit for formal practice. In viewing ourselves in this way we choose to see ourselves as lacking or failing or regressing when we stop practicing for a period of time. We really miss opportunities to cultivate our roots while we are “failing” to cultivate our roots.

Taking it back to my period of non-practice, if I focus on what I have been doing for these days, things start to look different. What I have done is provide a reasonably nice holiday for my extended family, nurture and care for my daughter who hasn’t been feeling well, spend time with my husband and kids at various holiday activities, plan what will surely be a joyful Christmas morning for my children, and make holiday cards that will provide me with a small sense of connection with people I don’t get to see very often. What I’ve missed in my view of this time is the importance of connecting with and helping others, which actually cultivates my own roots, provided I choose to view it this way. Obligation or self-care and connection with others? My choice.

When I view these days from this perspective, I don’t see failures or regressions, I see roots. The only “problem” is my perspective. I wasn’t aware of them as full of practices that actually cultivate my roots. With that awareness, they become part of the foundation that allows me to rise. All it takes is some reflection and a shift in perspective.

How many times have you said something like the words “I need to get back on track”? I often say or write it as an intention for my day. I did it this morning! It seems like a reasonably harmless thing to say, and perhaps even positive or motivating. It implies, however, some sort of failure or lack somewhere in our view of ourselves. If we need to get back on track, we’ve somehow fallen off it.

Perhaps the practice isn’t to become aware of how we’ve gone wrong and get ourselves back on track. When I think about the negative message that perspective sends, I can see how easy it becomes to get stuck “off track.” It feels bad to be there, and bad feelings often generate a sense of disempowerment and/or lack of motivation for change, and then more bad feelings. It’s a self-defeating cycle. Instead, perhaps the practices are to find the root-cultivating opportunities in all of our daily activities, and to find the lessons in our “regressions” that can continue to move us forward. Everything we do has a purpose and a lesson. It might be disguised or hard to find but it is there if we can open ourselves up to it.

Next time you get off-track see if you can shift your perspective. Find the roots you actually cultivated while you were doing other things. Find the roots you can cultivate with the lessons you learned from regressing and/or doing something less than healthy. Find the empowerment and motivation that comes from seeing yourself as never having truly veered from your course, but rather having only prioritized something else your being needed in that moment, something that is actually on that same course.

Choose to see these things you failed to do as opportunities to do something else, something that was also part of your process. And thus, continue forward on your journey, because that really is the only direction to go.