Sometimes life does not turn out exactly as you imagined or maybe hoped for. Yesterday I started a new project, one I had set as one of my goals for this year. And it did not go exactly as I had planned. When this happens the first thing we tend to doubt and blame ourselves. It is noticable that when some thing goes wrong we quickly move to think that we are wrong. In those moments, if we look closely, we can feel separate and alone. Our gut sense of us as deficient can come into play. However, mindfulness helps us to see that stories - about ourselves and about how our lives are going - are always arising in our minds and we can mistake them for reality. Some of these can arise from our own personal history and the patterns we have built up to help us deal with disappointment. These thoughts can keep us in limiting beliefs and lead to suffering. They are not easy to leave behind because our nature tends to easily generate self-depreciating comments. Practice helps us to see this as a story about our self and an unhealthy one at that - a story of falling short - and when we notice it as such we turn our attention to how do we want to work with it. In other words space enters in.
However, when we reflect a bit more, we can see some other dynamics at play. One of these is our tendency to project. Our work, just like our relationships, is a primary place where we project our identity and our need for sustenance, which we seek by being beneficial and constructive in our achievements. By doing this we wish to allow our inner spirt attain its need for growth. The letting go of projections is nearly always a painful process. However, it is useful because it reminds us of our tendency to look to things outside for the happiness which comes from inside.
Another thing we notice is our habit of turning our plans into some sort of goal, and losing our focus on the path which is always ongoing. In other words, we already have a fixed outcome in our mind and failing to acheive that creates dissatisfaction. We are attaching our satisfaction to something in the future which may or may not happen. This means that we do not find it as easy to respond to what actually happens, and to stay in the present moment. Our practice is to find happiness in what is actually happening and not attaching it to what we thought should have happened, and then going on to blame ourselves, others or events.
