Happy Fall! Happy Full Moon! Happy “I Let Some Things Go and I Feel Like a Normal Person Again!”
Good Lawdy Lawd…
Am I the only person who puts a lot of pressure on herself?
The only person who tries to grab one more grocery bag with her free pinky?
The only person who takes one more call or answers one more text even when she said she wouldn’t?
I have a feeling I’m not alone.
Brain space is reallllly, reallly valuable. Yesterday my soul assistant Jessi and I looked at my schedule with this special project I’m creating and shook our heads saying, “Nope. Not gonna happen. Not like this…”
Did I mention that they were self-created deadlines? Deadlines that came from a dream in my heart but I locked into stone in my head and it was making me kind of self-created crazy.
And we shifted some deadlines around so that I could have a lifeline again.
What happened was really helpful and really amazing:
– I stopped feeling squeezed into a corner: trapped and overwhelmed
– The joy for all of my preparation for Italy got turned up 10 notches
– My children could ask me a question without me feeling like confetti was going to burst out of my head.
– My kitchen got cleaned without me stress-rushing through it
– I went on a three mile walk and was whistling in my heart (I don’t know how to whistle in real life — which is kind of fine because I find whistling to be incredibly aggravating and makes me want to find a stick to hit over the said whistler’s head.)
The point is: When the stress left, the joy came.
Self-care came.
Whistling in the heart came.
It’s like I stopped being some ginormous human to-do list and I started being me again.
Which is superdee dooper important because I am not a to-do list, even though sometimes I play one on TV.
(Insert eye-rolling here).
No, really…
Sometimes I so over-identify with my role of promise-keeper that I lose my connection to me.
Sometimes I get so focused on my commitment and project that I fail to see where it’s taking from my life instead of adding to my life.
Sometimes I get so focused on the willful ‘yang’ doer in me that I neglect and forget about the surrendered ‘yin’ receiver in me.
And I want you to know, as a student of Humanism which I define as:
“Using the strongest part of your inspiration to activate the best possible outcomes in your life”,
I learned that stretching yourself can be expansion when you’re dreaming big dreams and up to big things.
Big promises and big dreams are great but sometimes it can feel not-so-great when you’re pressing through to the next level.
I’m okay with that pain.
That pain is worth it.
But sometimes stretching yourself can mean:
Stealing joy
And
Breaking.
I don’t like that feeling. I had been stretching for this one particular goal for the last few months but the timing became so tight and the stress so high that I felt both: Like I was breaking and my joy was leaving.
No bueno.
So, I played a game with myself last week: “If I could remove anything, what would it be…”
And even though my brain went, “Nonononononono….not that…” the one thing that I came up with is what we removed.
Or rather, delayed.
And I feel so much mo’ bettah.
I’m happier
and
My family’s happier.
And that deep crease in between my eyebrows has started to relax.
Mo’ bueno.
So, this week I want to invite you to play a game if you’re feeling stressed and maxed, “What would I remove?”
And let yourself really lavish in the thought of letting something go.
Sometimes we get relief from just knowing we have permission to take something out — even if we never choose to — it re-acquaints us with our power to make a difference in our lives.
And sometimes we get relief because we have clarity that it’s time for that thing to be released.
And we release it.
Either way, I highly recommend you play it and would LOVE to hear from you what that was that you let go — and I promise you this: Your heart, at some point soon after, will start whistling a happy tune.
But just don’t do it out loud.
I don’t want to have to find a stick…
I have enough going on without adding that to my list.
Sending love and letting things go,
