Block Smashing Like Mario

  I know I mentioned self-shaming the other day in class, and todays reading for Boice has shown just how much it applies to nearly all the problems I have in my life at the moment. Couple that with yesterdays contemplative reading about judging, and it is a wonder I never noticed how big of an effect it has. I would agree with Boice and his "subjects" that blocking is intensely personal, stemmed from self-defeating behaviors that are addictive, such as what my psychologist pointed out: laziness. What makes me label myself as lazy? Why do I feel the need to be lazy in the first place? Perhaps my psychologist's explanation that I am lazy because I label myself as lazy does not solve it entirely. She has given me the X intentionally, but I have to finish the equation on my own. I can choose to be lazy, but why do I choose it? The same could be said about blocking. Earlier in the course, in my first blog post, I mentioned that I had taken a creative writing poetry course which I believed caused me to cease writing poetry. Now, having read Boice and talked to a psychologist, I realize that categorizing the professor as the problem is only part of the answer. Blaming is easy, it relinquishes our responsibility at examining ourselves and dealing with things. I allowed her to make writing hell, instead of talking with her, explaining that I found her methods a hinderance to my creativity, I remained passive, silent. That act is a form of blocking. Silence solved nothing, passiveness solved nothing. Over time blame produced nearly every one of Boice's bad habits in Rule #15.
  Of course, these habits are not formed from one isolated incident. The professor is only one factor out of many. I mention it to argue that not only do we have to be mindful, notice our self-destructive habits, but evaluate them in order to move on to eradicating them. Actually, I think Boice mentions this as one of his methods for unblocking through "insight therapies." To be honest, I have not looked up whether or not insight therapy is anything like psychoanalysis. Even if it is entirely different, what I gather from the past few readings of Boice is that we are what facilitates and allows blocking, and therefore only we can solve it.