2018, continued: slow your roll, find your voice, live your truth

So I wrote my plan for 2018– focus on me, loving me, accepting me and let what happens happen.  Live in the NOW.  Be present.  All the buzz words.

But how?  How does one really do this?  Where do you even start taking apart the years of busy-ness and preoccupation in order to really stop and love the now?

It’s been an interesting journey, and not one conjured up just in time for the new year.  It’s been building quietly within me, but now seemed as good a time as any to officially declare a shift in mindset.  It might sound annoyingly liberally cliche, but it really all began for me the night of the election.  That was the night I opened my eyes to see that not all things were as I thought in this country and that I couldn’t mindlessly put myself through the paces in order to end up in a place I wanted to be.  This realization wasn’t about politics.  It was about what I perceived that people were willing to overlook or maybe what they saw and deemed acceptable.  Maybe people weren’t overlooking at all.  Maybe they just felt the political stances were worth the human cost.  Or maybe they saw no cost.  I really don’t know.  It really doesn’t even matter now.  I only know that I didn’t like the way I felt responsibility for this, for staying silent when I believed others were being hurt.  For staying silent for fear of upsetting others when silence was the very thing that ended up doing the harm.

Then, my grandmother passed away.  My perception of our country’s values shifted at the same time I lost my family’s moral compass.  I remember never wanting her funeral to end.  I have never been to a more celebratory service of LIFE.  There were so many, many stories about the lives she touched and the battles she fought for social justice.  Y’all, she was a renegade.  And she passed it on.  And she changed the world (her world, my world).  And I knew when people stopped telling stories of her battles, when we sang the last hymn and said the last goodbye, that she would really be gone.  That it would be my turn, our turn, to pick up where she left off, to be her legacy, to answer her call to action for social change.

So I was kind of unwillingly, unknowingly thrust into facing a new reality and figuring out my place here, my cause here.  I’m a super sappy, sensitive person so I read sappy, sensitive people books.  Usually I don’t discuss them because I’m also a private, sappy, sensitive person.  But suddenly it seemed VERY IMPORTANT to talk about all the things.  But I didn’t know how because I spent my whole life surrounded by talkers and I never really felt the need to join in.  They said all the things.  I agreed and processed.  It all worked well.  Suddenly, though, being silent wasn’t working anymore.

Suddenly, also, all the things I had been so busily working for seemed a little pointless too, honestly.  But the sappy people books all had told me that you can’t change the world or spread your voice or do your thing until you really, truly love and accept yourself. I am a researcher, a scholar; I read a lot.  And I also use this analogy a lot:  I can read every single gymnastics book ever.  I can know how to do all the moves.  I can explain every concept.  But I am not a gymnast unless I get on the floor and implement. I will fail many, many times no matter how much I know.  So, that was step 1.  Step 1: Reread the books!  Figure out what the heck it all means and how to do it.  Then, really focus on Step 2: Actually apply it to self.  I hadn’t really ever done this yet because, quite frankly, the application seemed hard and maybe I was scared of where I would end up.  I realized, though, that the efforts would lead me to where I wanted to go, even if that place was uncertain and scary from afar.

To apply, I had to decide what mattered most.  I had to take a hard look at what I said mattered most and what actually mattered most based on my actions.  What I said mattered most was kindness, fairness, unconditional love and acceptance, service to others.  What I emphasized through actions seemed more centered on self criticism, busy-ness, achievements, stuff.  It wasn’t clicking together.  I wasn’t implementing the things I wanted to embody.  I couldn’t love others unconditionally if I didn’t love myself.  I couldn’t emphasize service to others if I was too busy to serve.  I wasn’t walking the walk.  Why did I feel like upgrading my kitchen mattered so much?  Why did I care if other people thought my half-finished basement was a less than ideal place to hang out?  Whoever didn’t like it didn’t have to come!  It’s not that I was overly materialistic really; I was just mindlessly trying to have all the things one is “supposed” to have in a standard suburban home.  I was on autopilot, checking off all my boxes, but I had forgotten why I ever cared about the boxes in the first place.  

This led to Step 3:  Figure out what was hindering the implementation of my values in the first place.  I had already identified busy-ness and autopilot, but self criticism was harder to tackle.  I know we are all hard on ourselves and I like to think I’m not more or less hard than your average person.  I did start to realize I was so much easier on others than I was on myself.  I happened to see an article and video with two teenagers reading to each other all the mean things they thought about themselves. These two beautiful girls had all these hateful things running through their minds, and we all do that to some extent. I realized how much negativity I fed myself on a daily basis.  I couldn’t love myself while demeaning myself all day long.   I also heard the comments others would make about themselves, and I would think about how silly it was that that person was worried about whatever thing, because that person to me seemed to have it all together.  I guess we all put on a strong front.  Likely they felt the same about me.  Why do we do this to ourselves? As far as kindness, I had to accept the fact that I was being selectively kind to animals, even when I knew the truth about the meat industry.  That, however, is another post altogether.

So, on to Step 4: Remove barriers.  Removing busy-ness is kind of tricky when I am finishing an EdD program, working full time, and being a mom to two school age girls.  I will be busy for the foreseeable future.  I have a busy life.  I have a life goal of finishing this EdD, and my career is where I feel I best serve others.  I prioritize this.   To combat the busy-ness, I am making more of an effort to be conscious of how I delegate my time.  I think I have always done a good job of keeping my family first, but I am making more of an effort to spend time with the girls just being silly and hanging out.  It’s hard when you know you have a paper due or an email from a parent to return, and our culture of NOW NOW NOW makes you feel like those things are oh so pressing.  They aren’t.  Somehow, the things that need to get done all get done.  What should be pressing is modeling for my girls how to relax, have fun, goof off, let the dishes pile up and ignore the dust balls and just laugh together.

I prioritize exercise as a way of de-stressing, but I also hate the time it takes away from my family.  I always had a constant loop in my head of “go to the gym” vs. “don’t ignore your girls” that sounded like: “if I leave by 4:54 I can make it to work out….Oh great look now it’s 4:56 you are still here and traffic is getting all bad and now you failed again… you will be so late if you go now and they will be the last ones at after school pick up and you can’t let that happen or they might have memories of feeling abandoned after school”… and so forth.  I think it’s the curse of working moms.  Guilty no matter which choice we make.  I decided exercise should not stress me out.  It’s my stress relief.  I make a schedule, and if the schedule falls through no one says I can’t do jumping jacks in my (half finished) basement.  Or run around the yard with the girls and dog.  Or take a walk.  I was being too hard on what I “counted” as activity.  I was “busy-fying” my free time.

Somewhere along the way, I stumbled upon a mention of the book Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends on It.  Caution if you click the link; the book has a terrible cover, but the content is quality.  Basically, it taught me to refocus all that negative talk.  No more berating. Action step:  Rephrase!  At school we use positive language with the kids.  Why was I giving myself any less?  Not to say I want to give myself excuses or let myself off the hook, but I realized I wasn’t being kind to myself and that just changing my thought patterns made a huge difference.  

The last thing I realized was that I needed to really, as all my authors say, live my truth. I was so worried about what other people would think of me or how they would feel about me that I was hiding behind what I thought everyone wanted.  I have never and still do not wish to offend anyone.  My beliefs are mine; I respect yours as yours.  But I caught myself all the time thinking “What will other people think if I wear this or eat this or say this or do this…”  and really, who cares?  Why do I care what they think as long as my actions, thoughts, words are not abrasive/offensive?  I don’t like everything everyone else does and that’s fine.  I still like the people themselves.  I was just so busy hiding, trying to blend in, that I lost my voice.  

Not that any of this is easy or that I have it all down, but that’s my plan and my rationale. To work toward it, I bought a Best Self Journal and wrote my goal:  Be as authentic and mindful as possible and stick to my core values, 24 hours at a time.  I only focus on 24 hours.  I said could do anything for 24 hours.  But– confession– I messed up my Best Self Journal.  I did not do the stuff for like 48 hours.  A few times.  Old me would have been like “This is crap.  You always do this.  You never stick to anything.  Great job wasting money.”  New me tries to rephrase to sound more like  “Hey, things don’t always work the first time.  Maybe you set yourself up for failure picking this time to start when you knew that other thing was coming up.  It’s ok.  Week 3 is the new Week 1.  WHEN I get to the end, I’ll just copy some more pages from the website to finish it out.  Or I maybe won’t.  Maybe my journal is an 11 week journal.  That’s ok.”  It’s not pretty and it’s not perfect, but we are all works in progress.

I am rereading everything Brene Brown has written about being imperfect, taking chances, dusting yourself off and getting up after failure, and embracing and living your truth no matter what the cost.  I also love Glennon Doyle Melton’s blog (feeling all the feelings, doing the hard things, belonging to each other despite our imperfections).  I’m learning more about mindfulness, slowing down, breathing and really thinking through my motivations for actions.  I’m reading all the John Pavlovitz I can take in, so thankful to read a renegade take on Christianity.  

Maybe you think I’m going off the deep end– that’s ok.  I’m feeling pretty comfortable here.  I’m not worried if you think I’m a hippy dippy bleeding heart liberal because I am so proud to be one.  I don’t care if you aren’t one…. You’re still cool.  You do you; I’m going to start doing me.