There are moments in life when you’re placed right in front of yourself. It sounds like a line from a book, from a film, and in a way it is, but words lend themselves to language games, as my friend Wittgenstein would say, if only because of the context they fall into. The same sentence can push you to act, or wake up a strength you didn’t know you had, or simply make you think. It comes from hard moments, from a conversation with friends, from a book, or from a vacation where your mind has nothing left to control and starts to wander, and in that wandering a space opens up. Not an empty space. A space that shows you things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During this vacation, maybe for the first time lived with real peace, my mind found itself in that space. And in that space, I saw. I saw ghosts I’m working through, and they hurt. When you don’t see them, you think you’re doing better, but the pain is still there, it just stings when you finally meet it, and in that moment you think you’re doing worse. You’re not. Or rather, it’s different. You’re seeing them, you know them, you’re dealing with them. And that’s where the fear shows up. And that’s exactly where the work needs to happen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Despite flat days, hard days, even days with tears, I lived that vacation for real, because my mind was reflecting, watching, thinking. Coming home, to my surprise, hit harder than I expected, almost enough to tip me into crisis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Greta understood without me saying a thing. That led to a conversation, and that conversation opened something deeper to work through together.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Reflecting and thinking often get looked down on, set against doing, or dismissed as too abstract. They’re not, if you actually work at them, if you question yourself while you do. If you can pull out that little bit of energy it takes, the mind has spectacular capacities, and I mean that word, spectacular, because these past days I watched it work exactly like that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What’s ahead of me is still rough, damn if it’s rough, but I feel a strength and a calm that’s almost unsettling. The more I stay in touch with my own thinking, the more I understand it, the more tools I find. The more I get the power of doing this step by step, the Go way, and if you’ve read me for a while you know what I mean, the more strength I find to act. The down moments are still there, damn if they are, but one evening out with friends can already flip them, and the brain is right there again, ready to take the wheel, to remap the connections.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Because I remember the connections that built the triggers, the biases, the problems. Now I’m working to remap them. They don’t disappear, they stay there, even as a warning, but those neurons build new paths right alongside the old ones. Another remarkable thing the brain can do, if you listen to it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Listening to it also means setting a ceiling, some limits, to feel better. And feeling better sometimes means saying no to people who used to be there and now aren’t. Someone who only stuck around as long as you had no boundaries drifts off on their own the moment boundaries show up, a dead branch that breaks free. Others, and I’m glad for this, stay, and almost tell you well done, because they see you doing better even when doing better means a no.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Step by step. Stone by stone.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
On vacation, maybe for the first time, my mind actually stopped. And in that stillness, the ghosts I’ve been working through showed up. Facing them hurts more than ignoring them ever did, but that’s where the real work starts. Coming home hit harder than I expected. <\/p>\n
What happens when your brain stops running and starts remapping the connections that used to hurt you?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[118,1],"tags":[936,1735,2154,368,2158,1552,2156,2160],"class_list":["post-528","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-complexity","category-free-thoughts","tag-boundaries","tag-go-en","tag-innerwork","tag-metacognition","tag-networkedthinking","tag-personalgrowth","tag-rewiring","tag-vacation"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lucainfante.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/528","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lucainfante.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lucainfante.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lucainfante.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lucainfante.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=528"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lucainfante.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/528\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":529,"href":"https:\/\/lucainfante.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/528\/revisions\/529"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lucainfante.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=528"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lucainfante.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=528"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lucainfante.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=528"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}