I’ve noticed that
I – and some of my friends and clients – have an interesting tendency to get
stuck in certain decisions we made earlier, as if our own decisions were set in
stone and non-negotiable. Whenever the issue arises we keep coming back to our initial
decision and thinking, Well, I have to do that because … I said I would, or
because I know I need to, or because such and such will happen if I don’t. I’ve come to see that often when I feel
stressed about how much I’ve got “on my plate,” there’s something on my list I
think I have to do just because I decided at some point earlier that I
should. So when I start to feel
overwhelmed, it helps me to look at my plan for the day and consider: Do I really have to do this, and if so do I
really have to do it today? What would
happen if I postponed it or didn’t do it at all? Would anything real, bad happen if I didn’t
do it, or am I just telling myself that I have
to … have a yard sale, make a website, create a vegetable garden, et cetera,
just because I decided at some point that it would be a good idea.
Of course, there’s
something to be said for the value of sticking to plans we’ve made, even when
we don’t necessarily feel like it. I’ve
been making myself sit down and write for years, often when I didn’t really
feel like it, and have always been glad that I did. But when things we started
off wanting to do morph into things we have
to do but don’t have time for,
it’s a good idea to get quiet for a few minutes and reassess.
Even though I’ve
experienced the truth of this over and over, I still find myself forgetting
it. The other day, in the middle of the
afternoon, I found myself looking at what I’d planned and feeling
confused. I definitely needed to do
everything on my list – write for an hour, and go to the bank and pay a bill,
and do about half an hour’s worth of editing for a client. I’d also made plans to go to my friend’s
house at seven and to bring something simple there for us to have for dinner. I really wanted to go to my friend’s house
and I really needed to do all the other stuff, yet no matter how I moved things
around to try to fit it all in I just could not figure out how. And I was tired. I didn’t want to be tired, I didn’t feel like
I should be tired, but I was.
And then I remembered,
once again, that I could use the magical tool of flexibility; I could sit down
and really think about what I wanted to do and the bottom line of what I had to
do on that day. When I thought about it,
I saw that nothing bad would happen if I postponed the editing and going to the
bank for one day although not indefinitely, and that as long as I wrote most
days it was okay if I didn’t write today – that it was perfectly fine to not do those things today and it was
only some inflexible part of me – some should-saying inner voice I
unconsciously use to motivate myself -- that said I had to do them. I realized
that I had been listening to that voice once again and believing what it said.
Just for today, I
decided, I’m going to cross everything off my list that I feel like I have to
do and do only what I want to do. I
crossed off the writing, the editing, and the going to the bank. Instead
I wrote down “rest,” “go to the Coop and buy something for dinner,” and “go to
Bruce’s at seven.” And then I lay down
on the daybed in my study and read my book and rested. As I was lying there doing that, I had an
uncommonly good feeling, a feeling like what you think you’ll get, maybe even
do get temporarily, from falling in love or getting a new job or buying a
bigger house or going on antidepressants.
It was such a good feeling I made a note of it for future
reference.
Although it’s not
usually that dramatic, I have noticed over and over that if I can cut anything
out of my plan once I’ve made it, it’s like getting a little money back from
the bank. I love it when I can think of
some way to get out of one or more items on my list by simplifying or
consolidating or doing something else instead.
I find that if I just pause and take a few minutes to consider alternatives
when there’s something I have to do but can’t find time for, I often come up
with some perfect solution that’s easier and just as good or even better.
For example, once,
when a friend was visiting from out of town, we decided to hold a little party at
my house. My friend knew a lot of people
in Iowa City because she had lived here for a while, and we decided to gather
them all together so she wouldn’t feel like she needed to cram in separate
dates with everyone during her relatively short visit. So the party itself was a time-saving
measure. But as her visit got closer I
started to feel anxious about the time it would take to get ready for the
party: There were a number of things
that would have to get done – cleaning the house, buying food and possibly
paper plates and cups to eat and drink it, taking my old blind dog to the
groomer to make him presentable, and on and on.
I kept worrying about how to fit all of that into my busy schedule. But we really did need to have a party, the
party was my idea and I had already invited some people and … And then, once again, I remembered what to
do: I stopped and asked myself whether
there were any easy alternatives to what I had already planned. It came to me that we could have the party at
a public gathering place, and then the perfect place to have it came to me. I called my friend and proposed the idea to
her and she said, “Great!” I called the
people I had already invited and told them what we were doing and they all said
“perfect!” And I was able to relax
instead of rushing around in the week before and during my friend’s visit; we
had a nice little party in Panera, and the whole thing turned out great.
All of which leads
me to insight number two about slowing down:
(For insight number one see On
the Beauty and Grace of Slowing Down.)
Sometimes slowing down is a matter of simplifying our lives, not
necessarily in any permanent way but just for today. (If we had to do it for all time we’d
probably get bogged down in figuring out how to do that.) And simplifying may
mean stopping, considering everything we’ve got on our plate for today (I hate
that expression, as if tasks were food you didn’t want to eat), then
deciding: Do we really have to do/consume/expend energy on all these tasks
today? Or can we postpone some or not do
them at all?
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