How do I Work on myself? I’ve taken the phrase, “work on oneself” for granted for so many years. My first teacher, Mrs. Popoff, told us about the three lines of work—work on myself being the first line. She gave us “tasks” like brushing your teeth with your non-dominant hand, or “remembering yourself” as you walk through a doorway. Accepting the realization that I didn’t have enough presence to remember to do the tasks, was probably my first bit of “work”.
If it makes you uncomfortable, that’s a clue.
My year with Mr. Bennett, on the course at Sherborne, resulted in instilling practices in me. Like morning ablutions, morning exercise, the decision exercise, carrying a Theme within, sharing observations, working at movements. All of these activities involve some amount of self-discipline, which can bump up against my likes and dislikes. Again, not always comfortable.
My Work Now
But how about now, Roberta in her fifth decade of work on herself? Now my practice, including all those things I’ve named above, has become a part of my life. I also see the things I don’t like about myself as the compost I use to grow my garden. Some years ago, I hit upon the notion of “effortless effort”. I wanted to work from a different place in myself, to see if my efforts to work could come from an alignment with my thoughts, feelings and body. My three brains, as Gurdjieff called them, or three centers, which Ouspensky describes. On the occasions when all three line-up, through conscious effort, the result seems effortless. Yet I still need to dig the manure into the garden.
At the same time, I’ve long held the belief that to grow my work, I need to treat it like an isometric exercise. That is, I push against myself with efforts for a period and then I relax and stand down. Over time, I’ve experienced that it’s during those periods of rest from my activities that my inner self somehow grows.
Another way of working is what some call “long thinking”. For me, I often carry a curiosity or a question mark around in myself concerning a Theme, or a work idea, or something about myself. Mrs. Popoff once told me to “drop your question into the void” with the instruction not to actively think about it, but to remember it was there. “Then, one day out of the blue, an answer will pop up.” More and more often now, I am doing that with things I thought I already knew. Like the question, “how do I work on myself?”
The Flavor of Work on Oneself
I still need friction—to work with likes and dislikes, with yes and no. I don’t want my effortless efforts to become complacency. There is an unmistakable flavor to real “work on oneself.” It often happens in a moment of choice, which usually isn’t possible without on-going inner work of some kind. In that moment, it’s choosing what makes you squirm, what tastes like shit, what is the “anything but that” option. Choosing that option is when I most know I’m working on myself.
1 thought on “How Do I Work on Myself?”