Today was a good day. I benched the gremlins.

For those unfamiliar with gremlins, these are the voices inside your head that say things like, “You’re not good enough. You’re not smart enough. You’re already behind. People won’t love what you’re creating, or you, for that matter. You’re just not enough. Period.”

Have any gremlins? They’re brutal. You’ll know when they show up for a scrimmage. It’s generally a bruiser.

Some days it’s Gremlins – 50, Me – minus 3.

In fact, that is how this morning started.

6:10 am. Late to my 6 am morning writing sprint. Tired, again. Body wanted to stay in bed. Mind immediately worried about my self-imposed submission deadlines and my self-assumed lack of material. Mentally rattled. Staring at the same damn chapter I’ve been wrangling for the last three months.

Completely stuck. Hating writing. Hating myself.

I want to run and hide. I want to crawl back into bed with my partner for comfort and a pep talk, the same one he gave me last night at 10 pm. I want to sign off Zoom and tell my writing buddy that I can’t do it and I’m up against a wall, but I don’t want to interrupt him or appear incapable or non-cheery, even if it is 6:22 in the morning. The fact is, we’re both morning people and have fun at this hour connecting with our manuscripts and each other as we jumpstart another day of authorship.

Writing a book is hard . Really hard. Ernest Hemingway had it right: “There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.” Indeed.

There is no one else in the room. And I’m in a complete collapse.

I’m writing about how we give our power away.

This is how it happens. This is the exact moment I need to unpack.

For me. For you. For this chapter.

When you’re stuck in a moment of complete powerlessness, how the hell do you get out of it?

This is the moment that confounds me again and again. This is the moment my friends and I, all dedicated seekers and lifelong disciples of wellness and awakening with decades of awareness and practice under our belts, agonize over again and again. Despite our successes. Despite our accomplishments. Despite the fact that we are teachers and coaches and doctors and healers, helping others every day with their own torturous moments.

Nevertheless, this is the moment that still trips us up.

Because this is where it starts. We hurt, we feel lost, and we start grasping. For the balm. For the fix. For the guru. For something out there.

In the blink of an eye, self-doubt steals in and on its heels, self-judgment. All the shoulds. Comparing. Neediness. Pre-verbal fear. Self-hatred. Wanting to be saved. To again be reminded that we’re good enough.

And before you know it, it’s an all-out melee between these gremlins and all their friends.

What happens to me in these instances? I get totally sidelined. It still happens way more than I think it should. Way more than I want to admit.

But this morning, it was different.

I gave myself a time-out.

I stopped. I looked. I quit fighting.

I texted my writing partner, “Ugh. I’m stuck. Signing off.”

Safe in my offline cocoon, I burst into tears.

That lasted about 90 seconds.

And then from my spot in the stands, I watched. With sweat and tears still drying on my cheeks, I quietly observed this game that I play. I saw how much effort I spend battling these imaginary opponents, energy better spent creating the work and life I love. I saw how the gremlins are just having fun, granted rugby-like, because that is what they do. Their rough play had nothing to do with me, and certainly nothing to do with my capacities or worth. I saw how no one but me, no parent, no lover, no pundit, no guru, can fill this void that sometimes opens wide its maw, trying to swallow me whole. The irony here is that this “me,” the one who stands up for myself and stands up for others, is actually the result of a totally liquified ego. When I dissolve into the void of not knowing, I return to wisdom and action in harmony with the world, rather than struggling against it.

I reached out to my inner little one who was reaching out to me – for safety, for comfort, for reassurance that everything was going to be okay. I gave her my stuffed green fuzzy squishy gremlin (I have one, you know, a gift from a soul-sister) to hold. A different kind of teddy bear.

This is also how it happens.

I took a breath. I came back to my body. I said hello to and accepted the little devils. I even smiled at them and saw them winking back at me. I accepted myself, too. For my lifelong challenges with self-confidence. For all the times I’ve outsourced my knowing. For why it’s so critical for me to write this book.

Rather than stay stuck and frustrated, I flipped my mind state on a dime. I saw through suffering and relaxed with pain. I felt appreciation and gratitude and strength rise within me. I returned to trust. I remembered the big picture, the long game.

I took a break from my computer and went for a walk.

And then I came back and wrote this.

Today, I scored. Notice I didn’t say that I “beat” the gremlins. There’s no winning and losing here. These hellions are too fast. They’re too slick. They have tricks and fakes that would outwit the most dexterous of athletes.

But today I stepped off the turf for a moment and gave myself the time and space to regroup.

And when I did, it didn’t take long before the game completely shifted.

Suddenly, it was as if I blew the whistle and yelled, “You! 34! Off the field! And take the rest of your teammates with you!” (How’s that for agency?) And just like that, all my gremlins headed to the bench. No argument. Not a peep. Well, okay, maybe I heard one of them whisper, “Phew! Finally!”

Now they could watch me. And they were very content to do so. In fact, they revealed their team slogan to me. “When you win, we win.” They delight in being cheerleaders. Who knew?

I’m sure we’ll play again. I am learning I have to share the field with my gremlins. But maybe they will graduate to only the pre-game show, or maybe occasionally half-time. But they won’t be standing on the podium at the end. Or actually, maybe they will, but I’ll be there too, and we’ll have come up with a damn good set of rules to play with because together we’ll have learned, through wrestling in this mud and sweat and tears, every last trick in the book.