What Knitting Taught Me About Mindset

What you do externally, impacts you internally.

More than once, my yarn balls became tangled in knots, even after I started knitting. Let me tell you, it’s not easy to undo knots when you have to work around giant needles and an unfinished project! It took time and concentration to weave through those unruly knots. You have to be so careful not to pull too quickly because you may end up tightening it and only making it worse. As I unwound those strands for hours, I felt the knot in my gut- the one I hadn’t even known I had been carrying– unwind slowly. It took the combination of the methodical process, the quiet, and the symbolism to help me breathe through all that had compressed inside of me. I felt the loosening of my own tangled web of anger, unforgiveness, and guilt that had clenched into a hard knotted ball in my gut. Tears flowed from my eyes in that sweet release of the unravelling.

When you are attempting to follow a new pattern in your life, you need constant diligence.

I’m guessing many of you have not tried knitting or crocheting before, so let me tell you a little about it. After you have learned the basic stitches, you can do it pretty mindlessly unless you have to count the stitches for a more intricate pattern. Often I would sit in front of the TV and knit something simple like a blanket or a scarf. But when I attempted to watch TV while knitting a new pattern, I quickly made numerous mistakes. I would forget to switch to a different stitch, drop a stitch, or even add a stitch by accident. This would require going back to undo, and then redo, several stitches. Sometimes I would not even notice my mistake until 10 or 20 rows later. Both a painstaking and timely process, this would leave me kicking myself. “Pay attention, Julie.”

Mistakes are not the end of the world.

At the same time, I felt gratitude that I could simply undo the mistake and move on…no permanent harm done. Much like the mindset that mistakes are not the end of the world. It may take time, but they can be corrected, and beating myself up about it certainly doesn’t help. Not to mention that sometimes my mistakes actually led to something more beautiful. Once I created a whole new pattern based on a mistake and now I use it for other baby blankets that I make. If I hadn’t made the mistake to begin with, I likely would not have ever discovered this uniquely delightful design.

About the Author: Julie Glaser is a healer who creates sacred spaces for people to share, release, and grow. She’s in the habit of being in awe and wonder and writes to share her own experiences and learnings with other inquisitive souls in the process of transforming.