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Wherever You Are Is Exactly Where You’re Supposed To Be
It’s not wrong to have goals. But it is wrong to make those goals your everything.
Nothing has helped me in calming a racing mind and staying grounded like mantras — repeating a phrase or word in my head over and over again.
For a long time, I didn’t like to tell people I repeated words in my head out loud because I thought I would seem unstable and abnormal, but now I realize people just need to do what they have to do to get through the day, and if repeating mantras in my head is the most idiosyncratic thing I do, while balancing being a teacher, law student, runner, and writer, then that’s pretty good.
But, in an ordeal of trial and error, it took me a long time to find the right one.
Mantras that didn’t work
The problem is I’ve experimented with a lot of different mantras that haven’t always been the best or healthiest. I used to tell myself “two,” meaning getting through two minutes of a given task or the first two steps of a problem to get going and started on an important task.
That worked well temporarily, but I would feel burned out by mid-day through being so singularly goal oriented. The same went for a mantra like “you’ve put in too much work…
