The other day, sitting in my therapist’s office during a session, I was reflecting on some of the things that have been changing in my life over the past few months. The changes, when measured against the sweeping grand claims of modern self-help gurus, seem so minuscule, barely worth noting in comparison.

I’ve learned that some of the most potent change in my life has come from those tiny, fractional shifts that didn’t seem like much at the beginning, but then rippled out in ever greater waves that carried me to distant shores and ways of being I never could have imagined.

I’ve learned to trust that even when things don’t feel like they’re changing that underneath it all, deep in my psyche and in my bones, the tectonic plates of who I am are constantly moving in response to the questions I ask, the hopes and dreams I hold, and the small imperfect practices I stumble my way through each day.

Because we’ve been trained to turn our small, humble little questions and pauses into weapons with which to beat ourselves up for not being big enough or important enough or sweeping enough. Self-help culture is toxic.

This world of neoliberalism tells us that if we aren’t constantly improving ourselves, making ourselves more efficient, more productive, more impressive, then we’ve failed. But what if that’s not at all what life is meant to be?

I want to break up with hustle. I want to break up with comparison. I want to shatter the beliefs that insist that I cannot rest. I want to live the rest of my life turning towards myself as gently and as compassionately as possible, allowing what is true to BE true.

I have hurt myself deeply, over and over and over again, by resisting the truth of how my body is, what I’m hungry for, what hurts, what needs tending, what I’m feeling in service to wanting to be or feel or look like something that is NOT true.

What would you like to break up with? What would you like to gently and tenderly offer to yourself instead?