Grab your steaming mug of tea, or java, or hot toddy (there’s one from the archives), and put on your reading socks. Or if you’re not in the deep freeze with us Albertans #actuallytoocoldtorunaway then blend your margherita and take a slow sip of sympathy, or gloat if you must while you join us in a visit to ‘bridging the gap between gentle hope and boot camping your way to 2020 glory’.
Last week I wrote you all about hope. How wanting for yourself is not wrong. It is a sign of emotional health that we are not all Eeyore the sad donkey espousing 1001 reasons why it’s too late for us and happy endings are for Poohs and Tiggers and boys named Christopher, but not me *wipes tears with floppy ears. It’s healthy to believe that you deserve to have Robert Downy JR chase you down the streets of Italy with your lost shoe declaring that his destiny is to love you, even if statistical probability of it materializing is not so, well, probable. It’s even okay to stake a claim on an outcome that isn’t very likely, because better to have that laugh about the trip to Italy where Robert didn’t show up for you, but YOU DID. It is okay to hope. Lots of good is born of hope and good things tend to cause hope.
Having said that, we are all expending effort all of the time. We are going to wake up in the morning and eat some toast or a Keto extravaganza made from the whites of a hundred eggs that we post on Instagram or that quick vodka smoothie when we can’t make the gym or six am mediation class #selfcare. We are all going to DO some THINGS. I will venture to say that almost all of us, are going to want some things, to happen or to go away, or to simply feel better.
How do we connect the DOING to the FEELING? How do we massage 2020 into a cuddly friend we can bro down and watch a film with, or adorn it with sparkles and fireworks and take it dancing? What do we have to DO to make it show up for us? Can we and should we put more effort into making it what we want it to be? You know, in our spare time, with our spare energy, after all of the other doing is done.
Well my first straight up answer is that we don’t have to do it better, bigger, badder to get a gold star, or be dubbed a satisfactory human being. No. The reason to change the game is not for an extra stamp from the OUTSIDE WORLD, or even for that free gourmet beverage at the local Starbucks. The reason we review the game and the rules of the game, and how we approach the game, is because we deserve to feel good; a sense of meaning and purpose; loved and loving; even joyful.
Friends. It’s too cold for me to bamboozle you a bag of goods, or dazzle you with a cleanse that will scrub clean your karma, colon and browser search history.
I am not camping out at the laptop in my own reading socks and Chapter’s blankie in matching soft pink, so that I can feel good fluff you. I deeply and truly am here to help.
You actually ARE worthy of love and the things that come in the worthy of love starter pack, such as esteem and equal partnership and less suffering. Relationships of all kinds, familial and romantic, that support you and give you an opportunity to feel seen, heard, respected; to give and teach love and respect. Camaraderie and celebration.
You are worthy of expressing yourself creatively, whether that is in how you stitch up your patients, how you manage your practice, your parenting tricks and hacks, your golf swing, or vegan stew, or the actual sculpture you are sculpting in your studio. You are worthy of experiencing meaning, sharing, giving, contribution. Of feeling big hearted, in a way that matters to you.
You are worthy of feeling safe and secure and relatively peaceful.
You deserve to feel like the hero of your own story.
And none of that, love support giving rest stuff happens by running faster than the other hammies on the wheel, or lining up your wheel against theirs.
So how to we make our effort feel less effortful?
Is effort truly connected to our happy and our just desserts?
Can we direct our efforts in a more useful, self loving, meaningful way, for the love of Mary (I am not Mary, but I am pretty sure she factors in)?
Why, by George (he also matters), the answer is YES.
Here are some ways:
Stop fighting yourself. When you pour a little sugar on those areas, things, projects, that feel inspiring, and start weeding out unnecessary “shoulds” from your life, THINGS get a helluva lot more efficient. Guaranteed some of the things on the should do, impossible Rubik’s Cube 2020 version problems, are only judgments and fears and can come off the list stat, and will be more likely to be solved when they aren’t marinated in fear. Guaranteed giving some mojo to lighting yourself up will make the other things easier. When we feel like a hero we do heroic things, but we have to feed our inner hero some hero cookies now and again, right!??
Get Help. Get some practical help if you can. Do you REALLY have to mow the lawn yourself? Get some help with the things that elude you, frustrate you, raise the battle cry in you. Stop trying to prove you can do your own accounting, if you hate accounting. There is no special place in heaven for creative people who struggled through their own tax return five years late in order to save a couple hundred bucks (who, me?). Guilt and strain have their own costs, they are not efficient and they ring in at a bit more than the $200 buck range.
Gain Some Insight: There are 9 ways out of a feedback loop. Put a little TLC into what you actually want, not what you think you should want, or what it is politically correct to want, or what GOOD PEOPLE want. This is my secret to you. Goodness is complicated, and multi-tiered and layered. It’s not a simple as buying a stranger a coffee or giving a homeless person a sandwich. There is an invisible hero in all of us, and the greatest gifts we give ourselves of ourselves are so often not in the obvious places. Take a walk. Let yourself breathe for five flat minutes. Decide not to decide something. I have all kinds of ways to help with insight. I know the questions to ask. I have the feedback to give. I have a keen radar for separating fear as a motivator from true desire. It doesn’t have to be me, but heck, I am around, and I am kinda nice. I also have this whole intuitive side, which can be a great way to just get grounded and get of your head, to focus in on what is truly important to you and yours and your path. Even if you are a rational, reasoning, thinking strategizing personality. It can’t hurt us to steer all of that reason and intellect in the direction of our emotional thriving. Rather than having it running amok and chasing it’s own tail.
Get Some Support: Get some unconditional support. Schedule someone to talk with regularly. Monthly, bi-weekly, whatever works for you. Knowing that you have someone to hear you and a place to unload all of the doubts and the stress, stops the doubts and the stress from steering your path and your life, and sinking you into to one rut or another. We carry ourselves differently. Show up braver. Catastrophize less. Not that I am saying you do that. You totally do that. Get some guidance on creating whatever it is that you wish to create. Meaning and purpose, and thriving relationships, and professional success aren’t conquered, they are products of thoughtfulness and emotional insight and self illumination and compassion. When we nurture those qualities and areas we achieve meaningfully. We give, rather than expend. Again, me. Hello, I do this. It doesn’t drain me. Because I actually see the light, in you, in your situation. Turns out that feels pretty good, and lifts me up. Help me, help you by letting me help you. Okay it doesn’t have to be me. I am not going to get all Eeyore on you because you’ve always had a thing for Tony Robbins or Beyonce. And if you just lost your shirt in that hamster grooming biz that has yet to get off the ground, well there are free people out there too. I have a dreamy colleague and friend who knows all kinds of help for no bucks. We do bigger better badder WITH help than we do with competition and solitariness.
Fake Laugh. You don’t have to fake it until you make it. You’re made baby. But fake laughing will crack you up. Laughter is a bit of an ego busting shortcut. It relieves, releases, breaks the feedback loop. Even Eeyore can’t resist a fake laugh. Laughing takes the power out of all those enemies we make out of circumstances and strangers. It dissolves fear and deserves a dedicated place in the 2020 daytimer.
I mean sure toilets need cleaning and floors need sweeping and files need filing. Better to Mary Poppins that shit. Be sparing with the GRIND because it wears a person down.
AND HIT ME UP, if you would like an intuitive look into your 2020. A fearless vision. If you need to up your HOPE factor.
Or if you’d like to schedule some regular support. To part the seas and clear the path, and start walking in some sunshine.
I am not going anywhere. Unless it drops below minus fuck, in which case I’ll skype you from a gentler continent. If Robert calls tell him Godspeed. I’ve lost my shoe running through the warm streets just hoping to be chased by destiny. Nudge nudge wink wink.
— Love Erin
P.S. Do you or someone you love need help with your 20/20 Vision? I’m booking intensives and gift packages for your upcoming year.
P.P.S. One of the kindest things you can do for me is to share my writing. If you enjoyed today’s Monday Musing and know someone else who would please forward it to a friend.
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