Fill your bowl to the brim and it will spill.
Keep sharpening your knife and it will blunt.
Chase after money and your heart will never unclench.
Care about people’s approval and you will be their prisoner.

Tao Te Ching - Verse 9
(Translated by Stephen Mitchell)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I’ve taken time off from writing posts to work on a manuscript I’m finishing and there was a twinge of guilt about not posting here in that timeframe.

Of course, the whole thing was in my head because there’s no one pressuring me to write a blog or a book at all, so how silly.

But productivity has been a little devil on my shoulder whispering in my ear for as long as I can remember. Or rather, it’s the lack of productivity that causes whispers (which is both a blessing and a curse I suppose).

But when I noticed this feeling creep in I thought, “I’m not gonna be a prisoner to the blog I’m creating as a platform to release the book I’m writing by taking focus away from finishing the book itself!”

I’m not sure exactly how this ties into the quote above (other than the fact that they both had the word “prisoner”) because the person’s approval I’m caring about here is a ghost in my own subconscious, not a physical being.

But perhaps those ghostly little devils on our shoulders are the ones causing us to fill our bowl until it spills, to sharpen our knives until they’re blunt, to chase whatever makes our hearts clench.

Anyway, it led me to question what other areas of my life where I’m a prisoner to my own expectations.

Can you think of any in yours?