There is nothing wrong with not always being your best self. Life is meant to give us the opportunity to grow and develop. Not from a place of not enoughness, but into a place of becoming. The one constant in life is change, and it will always be happening right now. How you interact with that change will determine your experience of it.

Today I recognize the ‘tone’ of my tones, and choose to start to develop a new way of being in conversation. This came to my attention while thinking back on a conversation I had yesterday with a friend. It was about an interaction I had with my nephew. In telling him about this interaction my tone became defensive in relating how and why I responded to a conversation my nephew and I were having. I couldn’t just express or explain why I said the things I did in a neutral tone, I had to add a hard edge to my voice. Not harsh or mean, just…hard.

And as is often the case with life, random thoughts come at unrelated moments, or at least we don’t always see the relativity in the moment, and my mind wondered back to that conversation.

“Why did I feel the need to express myself with a defensive tone?” This question popped in my head. And while I could have gone into the default of defending, justifying, or dismissing, my practice of inquiry and curiosity kicked in.

Because it is the default, was the answer. It’s not the conscious, present choice, it’s the inherited, conditioned, learned behavior that has been programmed by observing the world around you.

Then the question becomes, “what do I do with this realization and awareness?” Ignore it and continue to behave in a way that is not my choice, that was given to my by the society I was conditioned into, or choose my own way of being?

I choose to choose. Starting a new practice of being neutral in my tone, unless it needs to be adjusted to relay certain feeling or emotion that is appropriate to the situation. Not to be in reaction to the immediate emotional response, but to act with thoughtful, deliberate intention for a harmonious desired outcome.

Am I now over this habit, and instantly acclimatized to this new desired behavior? NO

What I am is in conscious recognition, and making the declaration consciously, to be in practice. That is how you create change. You don’t just want a thing, and ‘Poof’, there it is. You have the desire and willingness to commit to, and devote your behavior, too being in practice.

You will stumble and have missteps. You will have days of immense disappointment. But you will also have small moments of awareness and choice that will increase consistently and frequently. Forgive yourself the missteps, and acknowledge the victories. That is how practice becomes being.