Life & Therapy

Imagine a table that is covered in so much dirt, you can barely see the surface. All the specks of dirt combine to make one unified mess. Now, if you clean off that table, you might be able to see individual specks of dirt. In fact, suddenly one little speck can become intolerable to look at, because in contrast to the rest of the clean table, it really stands out. This one tiny speck could take all of your attention, and you might forget that the table was much dirtier before now.

In life, we can often get focused on the one “speck” that is bothering us while ignoring all the rest. It may be that we didn’t notice this little quality in ourselves before- maybe life was too hectic, traumatic, overwhelming in the past. We may have “cleaned up” a lot of things in our lives, but there is always something more. We can get perfectionistic, focusing on any imperfections or issues that remain, rather than looking at how far we’ve come. If we become too focused on the small things in ourselves that still aren’t perfect, they can seem much bigger than us.

We can go back to the table, notice the speck of dirt, and then expand our attention to the entirety of the table. The speck of dirt becomes much smaller when we let ourselves see just how clean the rest of the table is. We can also notice the remaining issue or imperfection in ourselves, but then expand our attention to include the entirety of our being. This one imperfection is a just a speck that we can work on, but there is so much more to us than the speck. When we shine our attention onto our true wellness, rather than latch on to the imperfection, we have a much clearer picture of how things really are.